Sacrificing Principles

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Reply Sat 17 Apr, 2010 09:09 pm
I was thinking about a couple things the other day that were sort of related to a thread that cropped up titled, "The Choosing Dilemma", which basically portrayed a hypothetical where you are forced to choose which person dies between 2 people and if you don't choose, then they both die.

I found this question to be, in some way, related to the "trolley problem" which, if you aren't familiar with it, basically says, a runaway train is headed down a track and 5 people are tied to the track...but you're in luck because you can switch the train onto a different track....unfortunately 1 person is tied down on that track...Do you switch the track or not?


Now, in that thread, I came to the conclusion(after a change of thought through the discussion)that, the only "moral" thing to do would be to not switch the track; as switching it would mean that I would have actively killed someone who, otherwise, wasn't going to die.

Anyways, the way this related to "The Choosing Dilemma" thread is that my initial thought was the only "moral" thing to do(if I'm going to be consistent) would be to not choose. Thereby meaning both people would be killed.



But this got me to thinking.......is it "right" for me to not choose just to maintain my principles/conscience/peace of mind? Wouldn't it be a bit self-righteous on my part to let 2 people die when only 1 had to just so I don't "get my hand's dirty?"

I mean what if it was the same scenario only with 10 people and he said choose 1 or all of them die?

To be consistent with my thoughts on the "trolley problem" I'd have to not choose thereby letting 9 people die who didn't have to....

I guess the question is.....in such a case would "hiding" behind my principles be a cop-out? Is one's own "self-righteousness"/principles worth letting people die needlessly just to not be directly implicated?

Especially when I can rationally understand that such an isolated thing is NOT going to set a precedent for the world as whole. With the trolley problem someone might say, "well if you think you should switch the track does that mean we should start killing people and harvesting their organs to save a much greater number?" But in reality are the small scale scenarios worth sacrificing one's principle(for the greater good) that one would never sacrifice on a large scale(basically the fundamental difference between a kill 1 person or both die scenario vs. a kill someone to harvest their organs to save dozens type scenario)?

I'm really conflicted on this...either that or I need to change my mind about the trolley problem
 
HexHammer
 
Reply Sun 18 Apr, 2010 06:01 am
@Amperage,
Interesting dilemma, however in the train switch, you still make a concious choise if you choose not to choose, because you are aware of the problem at hand, anything else is only a big fat lie to youself.

One should never save/sacrifice a person/people to save others, that leads to curroption, trade ..selfish gain.
 
Krumple
 
Reply Sun 18 Apr, 2010 07:47 am
@HexHammer,
HexHammer;153528 wrote:
Interesting dilemma, however in the train switch, you still make a concious choise if you choose not to choose, because you are aware of the problem at hand, anything else is only a big fat lie to youself.

One should never save/sacrifice a person/people to save others, that leads to curroption, trade ..selfish gain.


I was going to say something similar but then it got me thinking that these questions are a little silly and that is why they are difficult to manage.

It's like they are purposely placing you into a no win scenario but life isn't always this bleak, so why should this question bother you?

For example, if you can actually do something to save them all, wouldn't that be the choice you would make? If you can't do anything to save them then by all means it is out of your control.
 
Amperage
 
Reply Sun 18 Apr, 2010 08:40 am
@HexHammer,
HexHammer;153528 wrote:
Interesting dilemma, however in the train switch, you still make a concious choise if you choose not to choose, because you are aware of the problem at hand, anything else is only a big fat lie to youself.

One should never save/sacrifice a person/people to save others, that leads to curroption, trade ..selfish gain.
well that's the problem. If you think switching the train to the other track is the correct course of action then you have sacrificed a person to save others. The cause may be noble but someone could argue the exact same way about killing 1 healthy person and harvesting his/her organs to save several unhealthy people who need an organ.

The thing about this that I was thinking was that, though these 2 situations are not different per say, can't I easily delineate between them, so that, while I may switch the track in the trolley problem, I would never kill someone to harvest their organs? Or would that be inconsistent/hypocritical?

The problem always arises about how to distinguish between the 2 situations. And shouldn't your feelings be consistent between the two, lest you be hypocritical?

Obviously the situation is quite a little silly but it does serve to shed light on the individual vs. the many ethical debate.
 
salima
 
Reply Sun 18 Apr, 2010 08:56 am
@Amperage,
i think one has to do a lot of soul searching to understand his choices and motives. it is easy to feel powerful when making a choice that involves 'doing the right thing' or 'sacrificing' or 'saving someone' etc.

one of the things that i considered (and i dont have a final answer to the question myself, but it is one that i like to come back to now and then) is that of all these people, we dont know who they are or what they might accomplish in their lives, or what their death might prevent from happening etc. we do not really have the right to make a choice. then if i say that, immediately there will be a full description of every person's life so i can make the choice.

at the same time, not making a choice is choosing to do nothing. - but i believe we are also accountable for what we dont do. so far as i can see it, doing nothing seems to be the best choice *for me* because i dont feel i personally am aware enough to know the right choice. that is not to say that if i was really faced with the situation i would react the way i think now is correct. there are a lot of situations where we dont know how we would react until they happen-we might surprise ourselves.
 
HexHammer
 
Reply Sun 18 Apr, 2010 12:54 pm
@Amperage,
To elaborate on my former statemen.

I would choose the person who pose the greatest value, after that, the many over the few, or the young over the old ..etc.
It's a matter of value judgemen, it's very cynically, but nessesary when you stand in the situation, I'v seen too many being too scared of such thoughts, to "get involved" to have "responsability", "to choose" ..etc, and even in lower scale, they'r sooo afrad getting their ass in the shooting line by opposing a leader, being a whistle blower ..that's why so many are so extremly inefficient.

If you have some simple guts, you can get things done! - HexHammer
 
sometime sun
 
Reply Sun 18 Apr, 2010 02:44 pm
@HexHammer,
Surly a principle is sacrifice, to sacrifice is to be principled,
not all sacrifice is good for us not all is bad for us either.
If the sacrifice saves more, is selfless.
Some principles need sacrificing,
just as some need resurrecting.
 
HexHammer
 
Reply Sun 18 Apr, 2010 08:45 pm
@Krumple,
Krumple;153564 wrote:
I was going to say something similar but then it got me thinking that these questions are a little silly and that is why they are difficult to manage.

It's like they are purposely placing you into a no win scenario but life isn't always this bleak, so why should this question bother you?

For example, if you can actually do something to save them all, wouldn't that be the choice you would make? If you can't do anything to save them then by all means it is out of your control.
Imo this isn't silly questions, out there irl, there are absurdly stupid and weird encounters waiting. When I was at a newspaper company, I often told myself ..people can't possible that absurdly stupid, there must be an explenation ..but there wasn't any redeeming features.
 
Mentally Ill
 
Reply Mon 19 Apr, 2010 06:46 pm
@Amperage,
"I'd have to not choose thereby letting 9 people die who didn't have to...."

As someone already mentioned, "not choosing" is actually a choice you are making. The moment you become aware of the fact that you are capable of flipping that switch, your actions become your expression of your ethics.
Whether it is more important to save one or ten, however, is inconsequential. All people have different relationships to everyone else, therefore no one person is more important than anyone else.
For a person who is Catholic, he may opt to save the pope over two teenagers. For the secular father of those two teenagers, the pope is a goner.
For this reason, utilitarianism can not be applied to important ethical scenarios.
Utilitarianism is perfect for, let's say, deciding what toppings to put on a pizza. 5 People want pepperoni, 2 want sausage; pepperoni it is!
But when it comes to determining the value of human life, utilitarianism would allow for different people to place different values on the same subjects, creating a system of selfish chaos, much like the world of politics we live in today.
Instead, it would be more prudent to simply hop on to the tracks and untie those people before the train hit them. If the train is too close, then it seems like the situation would be out of your control.
This is the problem with hypothetical ethical scenarios, or thought experiments. They allow no room for choice, which is the basis of all ethics.
 
johannw
 
Reply Mon 19 Apr, 2010 07:34 pm
@Amperage,
I think the biggest problem you run into in this kind of question is the problem of value in a human life. Is there any totally subjective way to make that judgement? Like "Mentally Ill" said, a Catholic might save the pope over a couple teenagers, but the secular father's choice is obviously the teenagers.

How expendable is an average human life? Is there a fair way to put value on a human life? And if so, who get's to play "god" and assign that value?
 
Mentally Ill
 
Reply Mon 19 Apr, 2010 07:46 pm
@johannw,
This is why we should never use utilitarianism as our system of decision making when human life is on the line.
Consider this (which I read in a different person's ethics post, so don't give me credit for it): Would you defend your mother against a thug? Against two thugs? Would you kill those thugs to protect your mother? Would you shoot up a ten man gang of thugs to protect your mother?
As we follow this line of thought, we realize that some people are infinitely important to us. I would drop a bomb on the headquarters of a hundred man gang if I knew they were plotting an assassination on my mother.
It becomes clear that each person is infinitely valuable in the eyes of their loved ones, and since all people have relationships of this nature, all people become infinitely valuable. Of course, one of those thugs you would have killed in defense of your mother has a mother who he would in turn have defended to the death of another man.
This means that we can't determine the value of a human life, but only the value of a human action.

I will kill a man who tries to kill me, because I have deemed that his action is deserving of retribution. The man's life is not less important than my own, however. This pushes utilitarianism into the realm of the useless.
 
Amperage
 
Reply Mon 19 Apr, 2010 07:49 pm
@Mentally Ill,
Mentally Ill;154208 wrote:
"I'd have to not choose thereby letting 9 people die who didn't have to...."

As someone already mentioned, "not choosing" is actually a choice you are making. The moment you become aware of the fact that you are capable of flipping that switch, your actions become your expression of your ethics.
here's why I find it the whole "not choosing" is a choice as somewhat misleading

doing nothing is not choosing...it's doing nothing.....choosing is choosing, not choosing is not equal to choosing.(Note: I'm stealing a lot of this from Pyrrho's argument, but I found it convincing). Inaction is not action

Say I choose one person or the other. Well, I have willfully murdered that person. If I don't do anything I have not willfully done anything....what will be will be.

This is the line of thinking anyway, but in this thread I was kind of wondering if such an opinion is 'worth' breaking in certain situations.

I mean given the trolley problem we could potentially put the whole world minus one person on the main track and a single person on the other and given this view it would be wrong to flip the switch. <---I see this as potentially worth sacrificing a principle over...of course that just begs the question of why one would hold such a principle in the first place
 
Mentally Ill
 
Reply Mon 19 Apr, 2010 08:02 pm
@Amperage,
Amperage;154237 wrote:
here's why I find it the whole "not choosing" is a choice as somewhat misleading

doing nothing is not choosing...it's doing nothing.....choosing is choosing, not choosing is not equal to choosing.(Note: I'm stealing a lot of this from Pyrrho's argument, but I found it convincing). Inaction is not action

Say I choose one person or the other. Well, I have willfully murdered that person. If I don't do anything I have not willfully done anything....what will be will be.

This is the line of thinking anyway, but in this thread I was kind of wondering if such an opinion is 'worth' breaking in certain situations.

I mean given the trolley problem we could potentially put the whole world minus one person on the main track and a single person on the other and given this view it would be wrong to flip the switch. <---I see this a potentially worth sacrificing a principle over...of course that just begs the question of why one would hold such a principle in the first place



Perhaps in some situations what you've said is true. In this situation however, if you have the knowledge that without flipping the switch a person will die, and you choose not to flip the switch, you are consciously allowing that person to die.

If for example, a man said "kill either your mother or your father, or I'll do it anyways" and you refused to make a choice, resulting in the man murdering your mother, you would not be responsible.
This is a case where non-action would be permissible.

Can you see why that is different from the trolley case?
 
Amperage
 
Reply Mon 19 Apr, 2010 08:05 pm
@Mentally Ill,
Mentally Ill;154240 wrote:
Perhaps in some situations what you've said is true. In this situation however, if you have the knowledge that without flipping the switch a person will die, and you choose not to flip the switch, you are consciously allowing that person to die.

If for example, a man said "kill either your mother or your father, or I'll do it anyways" and you refused to make a choice, resulting in the man murdering your mother, you would not be responsible.
This is a case where non-action would be permissible.

Can you see why that is different from the trolley case?
can you see where I walk upon a situation where 5 people were going to die by no fault of my own.....and if I switch the track 1 person will die who was not previously going to die all because of my willful choice to kill him??

There is no morally acceptable course of action for me to take if I think every life is infinitely important.

I thought you didn't espouse utilitarianism...

this would be equivalent to me killing a healthy person and harvesting his/her organs to help save 5 unhealthy people who need organs.
 
Mentally Ill
 
Reply Mon 19 Apr, 2010 08:27 pm
@Amperage,
Amperage;154241 wrote:
can you see where I walk upon a situation where 5 people were going to die by no fault of my own.....and if I switch the track 1 person will die who was not previously going to die all because of my willful choice to kill him??

There is no morally acceptable course of action for me to take if I think every life is infinitely important.

I thought you didn't espouse utilitarianism...

this would be equivalent to me killing a healthy person and harvesting his/her organs to help save 5 unhealthy people who need organs.


I would not advocate flipping the switch either - but don't mistake this for an admission that inaction is not a choice. You are choosing to allow those five deaths instead of one - whether it is your fault is inconsequential.

It's like saying that it's not your fault if you allow a murderer to pull the trigger by simply standing by and watching. Technically, it's not your fault, as you didn't pull the trigger, but at the same time, you had the power to stop the murder from ever happening and chose not to, allowing the death of the victim. I would argue that this is just as bad.
Worse than the actions of a bad man is the inaction of a good one.
 
Amperage
 
Reply Mon 19 Apr, 2010 08:31 pm
@Mentally Ill,
Mentally Ill;154249 wrote:
I would not advocate flipping the switch either - but don't mistake this for an admission that inaction is not a choice. You are choosing to allow those five deaths instead of one - whether it is your fault is inconsequential.

It's like saying that it's not your fault if you allow a murderer to pull the trigger by simply standing by and watching. Technically, it's not your fault, as you didn't pull the trigger, but at the same time, you had the power to stop the murder from ever happening and chose not to, allowing the death of the victim. I would argue that this is just as bad.
Worse than the actions of a bad man is the inaction of a good one.
I guess that is my delimma in this thread. I don't think I ought to flip the switch either, but I wonder if such a view is worth holding? Especially for such isolated events like the trolley problem. I obviously understand the importance of this point of view when applied to the whole but such an event would seem 'different' to me
 
Mentally Ill
 
Reply Mon 19 Apr, 2010 08:38 pm
@Amperage,
Amperage;154250 wrote:
I guess that is my delimma in this thread. I don't think I ought to flip the switch either, but I wonder if such a view is worth holding? Especially for such isolated events like the trolley problem. I obviously understand the importance of this point of view when applied to the whole but such an event would seem 'different' to me


The reason I would not pull the switch is because I refuse to make a value judgment on the lives of sentient creatures. In my mind, the quantification is not 5 vs. 1, it is infinity vs. infinity. Therefore, if the situation is truly out of my hands, except for my ability to flip the switch, then I will do nothing, because there is nothing to be done of moral consequence.
It appears to me that you arrived at your conclusion however by a different means of thought.
Your philosophical reasoning is focused on responsibility - keeping your hands clean of the death of another. In my opinion, your hands are already bloodied by the five deaths you've allowed.

To answer your question, "is such a view worth holding?", I say NO!

If we attempt to place value on human life by judgment of those persons' utility (a doctor is more important than a plumber), we use those people as means to an end, and therefore disrespect them.
 
Amperage
 
Reply Mon 19 Apr, 2010 08:49 pm
@Mentally Ill,
Mentally Ill;154253 wrote:
The reason I would not pull the switch is because I refuse to make a value judgment on the lives of sentient creatures. In my mind, the quantification is not 5 vs. 1, it is infinity vs. infinity. Therefore, if the situation is truly out of my hands, except for my ability to flip the switch, then I will do nothing, because there is nothing to be done of moral consequence.
It appears to me that you arrived at your conclusion however by a different means of thought.
Your philosophical reasoning is focused on responsibility - keeping your hands clean of the death of another. In my opinion, your hands are already bloodied by the five deaths you've allowed.

To answer your question, "is such a view worth holding?", I say NO!

If we attempt to place value on human life by judgment of those persons' utility (a doctor is more important than a plumber), we use those people as means to an end, and therefore disrespect them.
infinity vs infinity is exactly what I said(Post #14) but such a view would mean potentially allowing the entire world to die. Realistically that seems like a problem. I just can't help but wonder if it's a bit of a cop out is all.
 
Mentally Ill
 
Reply Mon 19 Apr, 2010 09:00 pm
@Amperage,
Amperage;154255 wrote:
infinity vs infinity is exactly what I said(Post #14) but such a view would mean potentially allowing the entire world to die. Realistically that seems like a problem. I just can't help but wonder if it's a bit of a cop out is all.

Please describe a scenario in which all people could potentially be wiped out by the inaction of an individual...Maybe a nuclear threat?

This viewpoint would not restrict us from taking action against an individual though. If a terrorist threatened the world with nuclear weapons, I could shoot him right in the face and feel great about it, despite my belief that his life is as valuable as all others, because I would be taking action against his action.
It wouldn't be his life that I'd be valuing as less than other persons', but it would be his actions that I I'd be condemning as inappropriate.
I reserve the right to act ethically by any means necessary. (lol)
 
Amperage
 
Reply Mon 19 Apr, 2010 09:04 pm
@Mentally Ill,
Mentally Ill;154259 wrote:
This viewpoint would not restrict us from taking action against individuals though. If a terrorist threatened the world with nuclear weapons, I could shoot him right in the face and feel great about it, despite my belief that his life is as valuable as all others, because I would be taking action against his action.
It wouldn't be his life that I was valuing as less than the rest of the worlds', but it would be his actions that I was condemning as inappropriate.
I reserve the right to act ethically by any means necessary. (lol)
In my opinion such a terrorist would have forfeited his infinite value.

In defense of life is permissible IMO

such a person(the terrorist) would certainly not be considered innocent
 
 

 
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