No, what you’re saying is that being emotionally compromised and biased might make me choose differently. And of course, we’re people. But the better, more humane, nobler and fairer option can be easily found, and if not, at least the direction of action. I mean, trolley wise, everything else being equal it’s obvious that it’s better to be 4 people up than 4 people down, and with more details in this thought experiment (which, btw, is extremely unrealistic and has very little uhh ecological validity) you can develop, slowly but surely, a set of answers to it (what if the 5 guys are 5 Hitlers?! and stuff like that requires a bit more analysis, but again, it’s very divorced from reality).
Emotion is not necessary for the different scenarios to have potentially different moral considerations. For example, does your moral responsibility as a parent to nurture and protect your children change the equation?
Even if you assume everyone involved are strangers, what is the better, more noble, more humane option or direction of action?
No, no it doesn’t, because we’re all equally valuable by default, they’re all someone’s kid and that doesn’t change just because I’m involved. It would just be a superbly shitty position to be in and I would almost certainly save my kid in exchange for 5 lives, but that ain’t right, it’s just what I would most likely do. I mean, sacrifice my child (that I truly love) for the greater good (and more lives saved, ceteris paribus, is the greater good)… who am I, Abraham? 😅 You need to be on the level of a prophet to see this clearly and then act upon it, detached because the worldly life is passing and not that important, etc etc, basically.
So if I’m understanding your answer correctly, and assuming everyone involved were strangers, you believe that saving many lives at the cost of one is the more moral choice.
What would you say to someone who disagreed because they could not bring themselves to be actively responsible for the death of someone, and considered inaction the more moral choice because the group would have died anyway if they weren’t there and able to intervene?
The point I’m trying to get at is that I don’t believe there is a correct answer as to which choice is more moral. There are valid reasons to conclude that either option is both moral and amoral in equal measure. You could argue for either choice in circles, and both parties would be correct while never convincing the other.
In my opinion some questions of morality are clear and easy to answer, but some are much more nuanced, and that is where there is room for subjectivity.
Nuanced doesn’t mean there are many equally better options, it just means it’s harder to get to it because we cannot see and understand everything, some things are beyond our capacities to see clearly. Even more so when we’re presented with unrealistic scenarios I don’t think anyone yet has ever experienced IRL, lol. But we can both agree with the background moral framework at work (murder is wrong, life should be protected), with the fundamental values.
And just because you cannot bring yourself to do the big right thing doesn’t mean there isn’t one, lol, you’re admitting to its existence by refusing to do it! Not being able to go through it just shows our weakness, that’s all, which is human and all, I’m not saying it would be something easy for me either but the answer is clear. How’s the more moral action letting people die when you can help it? And like I said, everything being equal between participants (it’s not an innocent kid Vs 5 Palantir executives 😅), the decision is clear cut: you wanna be 4 up and not 4 down. And of course with more different participants we would have to analyse it further, that’s all, and maybe we hit a roadblock cause we don’t truly know the individual values of the people involved (only God knows, and going to Heaven or Hell is the final proof of your value) but we can still make working general rules based on this sometimes clouded but still visible moral reality. It’s a mixture of the limitations of our mental capacities and fundamental epistemological issue that permeates everything we can think about and say that involves reality, not just a thing about morals.
Nuanced in the sense that there is no absolute, objective correct answer.
That person may argue that actively causing the death of a human is murder, which is always objectively and morally wrong. Doing nothing is the morally correct option from that perspective. To be clear, I’m not personally arguing in favor or against either choice, because I personally believe that there is no objectively best option.
There have actually been studies that involve this exact scenario, but of course without anyone being in actual danger (unbeknownst to the subject).
Let me ask the question in another way. Do you think that God would judge a person who acted one way or the other?
To answer the last question promptly: yes, but the difficulty behind making that decision would certainly have a softening effect on His judgment.
But again, okay, I’ve given you my views when it comes to the trolley situation involving my kid, or being scared of pulling the lever, I’ve even admitted it would be difficult for me even if the answer, everything else being equal, is obvious: 4 lives up is better than 4 lives down. But you also say you don’t really disagree… so do you just not want to pronounce yourself on the topic? That’s fair/your prerogative but that’s not proof that we cannot, individually and together as well, reach a very good subjective understanding of the objective moral reality, that we can recognise being somewhere there even if our vision is clouded/doesn’t go that far clearly. You just don’t want to take that step which, again, is your right and all of that. You have to take a stand, on my side or whatever other, that is better than the one I proposed in your view, that’s all, to have a productive conversation about any moral issue, you can’t just say “we cannot know so I don’t say A or B” when A or B are presented…
Please try to remove any personal connections from the scenario. Remember, all participants are strangers.
I’m giving a counter argument to your own without taking any stance of my own, because I personally don’t believe that either answer is more or less moral or correct.
Would you say that murder of an individual is always more moral if multiple lives are saved as a result? Would you murder an innocent person in cold blood so that their organs could be used to save multiple lives?
I don’t currently personally believe in God, but if a God does exist, I think it would be foolishness and hubris to assume that any human could ever predict how that God would judge any situation.
It’s not a big prediction, I’m not just freestyling here, it’s founded on Qur’anic and pre-Qur’anic knowledge. And no, you’re not providing a “counter argument”, you’re just refusing to engage. You’re saying “the thing cannot be said, so I won’t” whilst I’m saying the thing, or something close to it, and leaving it open to criticism. And no, everything else being equal I wouldn’t (again, 5 Palantir CEOs and one innocent kid I let the CEOs die, clearly, which actually is something that probably happens IRL but in the opposite direction, sadly), and we all die and the afterlife is more lasting either way and I wouldn’t want to make that decision (this is a crazy scenario meant to stress test the framework either way, not like an actual one that happens often enough like whether we should kill thousands of children because oil is free in the Middle East if you murder the locals, for instance), but that would just be a proof of the limitations of my intellectual and information acquiring and processing capacities. Let’s remember the Socratic truth: “all I know is that I know nothing”.
Perhaps this person was king Leopold and these are 5 Congolese kids, then again the decision is obvious, so we can see which directions these things go and any answer that goes south instead of north is obviously wrong, even if we can’t fully quantify the values of the lives at stake.
This line of inquiry can’t go anywhere because the answer Monotheist will give to every question is that an objective answer does exist, it’s ordained by god himself, and conveniently lines up with whatever his feelings on the matter are anyway.
You know what’s interesting, though. Monotheist will talk about how we, people, are fallible and sometimes get morality wrong, without acknowledging that this fallibility forces us into a relativistic morality regardless of whether or not an objective one actually exists. And that’s because you’re supposed to read The Bible. Famously impervious to reinterpretation The Bible.
No, what you’re saying is that being emotionally compromised and biased might make me choose differently. And of course, we’re people. But the better, more humane, nobler and fairer option can be easily found, and if not, at least the direction of action. I mean, trolley wise, everything else being equal it’s obvious that it’s better to be 4 people up than 4 people down, and with more details in this thought experiment (which, btw, is extremely unrealistic and has very little uhh ecological validity) you can develop, slowly but surely, a set of answers to it (what if the 5 guys are 5 Hitlers?! and stuff like that requires a bit more analysis, but again, it’s very divorced from reality).
Emotion is not necessary for the different scenarios to have potentially different moral considerations. For example, does your moral responsibility as a parent to nurture and protect your children change the equation?
Even if you assume everyone involved are strangers, what is the better, more noble, more humane option or direction of action?
No, no it doesn’t, because we’re all equally valuable by default, they’re all someone’s kid and that doesn’t change just because I’m involved. It would just be a superbly shitty position to be in and I would almost certainly save my kid in exchange for 5 lives, but that ain’t right, it’s just what I would most likely do. I mean, sacrifice my child (that I truly love) for the greater good (and more lives saved, ceteris paribus, is the greater good)… who am I, Abraham? 😅 You need to be on the level of a prophet to see this clearly and then act upon it, detached because the worldly life is passing and not that important, etc etc, basically.
So if I’m understanding your answer correctly, and assuming everyone involved were strangers, you believe that saving many lives at the cost of one is the more moral choice.
What would you say to someone who disagreed because they could not bring themselves to be actively responsible for the death of someone, and considered inaction the more moral choice because the group would have died anyway if they weren’t there and able to intervene?
The point I’m trying to get at is that I don’t believe there is a correct answer as to which choice is more moral. There are valid reasons to conclude that either option is both moral and amoral in equal measure. You could argue for either choice in circles, and both parties would be correct while never convincing the other.
In my opinion some questions of morality are clear and easy to answer, but some are much more nuanced, and that is where there is room for subjectivity.
Nuanced doesn’t mean there are many equally better options, it just means it’s harder to get to it because we cannot see and understand everything, some things are beyond our capacities to see clearly. Even more so when we’re presented with unrealistic scenarios I don’t think anyone yet has ever experienced IRL, lol. But we can both agree with the background moral framework at work (murder is wrong, life should be protected), with the fundamental values.
And just because you cannot bring yourself to do the big right thing doesn’t mean there isn’t one, lol, you’re admitting to its existence by refusing to do it! Not being able to go through it just shows our weakness, that’s all, which is human and all, I’m not saying it would be something easy for me either but the answer is clear. How’s the more moral action letting people die when you can help it? And like I said, everything being equal between participants (it’s not an innocent kid Vs 5 Palantir executives 😅), the decision is clear cut: you wanna be 4 up and not 4 down. And of course with more different participants we would have to analyse it further, that’s all, and maybe we hit a roadblock cause we don’t truly know the individual values of the people involved (only God knows, and going to Heaven or Hell is the final proof of your value) but we can still make working general rules based on this sometimes clouded but still visible moral reality. It’s a mixture of the limitations of our mental capacities and fundamental epistemological issue that permeates everything we can think about and say that involves reality, not just a thing about morals.
Nuanced in the sense that there is no absolute, objective correct answer.
That person may argue that actively causing the death of a human is murder, which is always objectively and morally wrong. Doing nothing is the morally correct option from that perspective. To be clear, I’m not personally arguing in favor or against either choice, because I personally believe that there is no objectively best option.
There have actually been studies that involve this exact scenario, but of course without anyone being in actual danger (unbeknownst to the subject).
Let me ask the question in another way. Do you think that God would judge a person who acted one way or the other?
To answer the last question promptly: yes, but the difficulty behind making that decision would certainly have a softening effect on His judgment.
But again, okay, I’ve given you my views when it comes to the trolley situation involving my kid, or being scared of pulling the lever, I’ve even admitted it would be difficult for me even if the answer, everything else being equal, is obvious: 4 lives up is better than 4 lives down. But you also say you don’t really disagree… so do you just not want to pronounce yourself on the topic? That’s fair/your prerogative but that’s not proof that we cannot, individually and together as well, reach a very good subjective understanding of the objective moral reality, that we can recognise being somewhere there even if our vision is clouded/doesn’t go that far clearly. You just don’t want to take that step which, again, is your right and all of that. You have to take a stand, on my side or whatever other, that is better than the one I proposed in your view, that’s all, to have a productive conversation about any moral issue, you can’t just say “we cannot know so I don’t say A or B” when A or B are presented…
Please try to remove any personal connections from the scenario. Remember, all participants are strangers.
I’m giving a counter argument to your own without taking any stance of my own, because I personally don’t believe that either answer is more or less moral or correct.
Would you say that murder of an individual is always more moral if multiple lives are saved as a result? Would you murder an innocent person in cold blood so that their organs could be used to save multiple lives?
I don’t currently personally believe in God, but if a God does exist, I think it would be foolishness and hubris to assume that any human could ever predict how that God would judge any situation.
It’s not a big prediction, I’m not just freestyling here, it’s founded on Qur’anic and pre-Qur’anic knowledge. And no, you’re not providing a “counter argument”, you’re just refusing to engage. You’re saying “the thing cannot be said, so I won’t” whilst I’m saying the thing, or something close to it, and leaving it open to criticism. And no, everything else being equal I wouldn’t (again, 5 Palantir CEOs and one innocent kid I let the CEOs die, clearly, which actually is something that probably happens IRL but in the opposite direction, sadly), and we all die and the afterlife is more lasting either way and I wouldn’t want to make that decision (this is a crazy scenario meant to stress test the framework either way, not like an actual one that happens often enough like whether we should kill thousands of children because oil is free in the Middle East if you murder the locals, for instance), but that would just be a proof of the limitations of my intellectual and information acquiring and processing capacities. Let’s remember the Socratic truth: “all I know is that I know nothing”.
Perhaps this person was king Leopold and these are 5 Congolese kids, then again the decision is obvious, so we can see which directions these things go and any answer that goes south instead of north is obviously wrong, even if we can’t fully quantify the values of the lives at stake.
This line of inquiry can’t go anywhere because the answer Monotheist will give to every question is that an objective answer does exist, it’s ordained by god himself, and conveniently lines up with whatever his feelings on the matter are anyway.
You know what’s interesting, though. Monotheist will talk about how we, people, are fallible and sometimes get morality wrong, without acknowledging that this fallibility forces us into a relativistic morality regardless of whether or not an objective one actually exists. And that’s because you’re supposed to read The Bible. Famously impervious to reinterpretation The Bible.