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Theben
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Dance Dance for the Revolution!
Jan 1970
time: 00:33
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quote:
Originally posted by GePap
Well, as MtG has already stated, one single fertile female is NOT neough to save the human race. So trying to rape this woman, or kill her in the hope of another female baby to become the one sole breeder is simply cauisng pain to extend the inevitable, and given who knows what health concerns kids would develop as they kept being breed due to incest- is that trully moral? |
He said that in reference to the woman who would die, creating only a single baby with a ~50% of being female (not including chance of viability to breeding age, sustainability of current environment, etc.).
The 2nd agrument allows for multiple births from the woman. I'm not happy about the choices offered, but rather that than the death of the species.
And genetic variation can occur with multiple male partners. Over time, given above average conditions, the race could survive.
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GePap
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of the Big Apple
Nov 2001
time: 23:33
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quote:
Originally posted by Theben
He said that in reference to the woman who would die, creating only a single baby with a ~50% of being female (not including chance of viability to breeding age, sustainability of current environment, etc.).
The 2nd agrument allows for multiple births from the woman. I'm not happy about the choices offered, but rather that than the death of the species.
And genetic variation can occur with multiple male partners. Over time, given above average conditions, the race could survive. |
What arguement? Boris gave a simple question- so he already caved in to making it a sure thing the baby would be female- but even then, all of MtG's objections remain valid. You have to keep morphing the scenerio to make it more papatable for this..well, I say no:
there is no way to know the baby will be female, or that it can survive- what kind of diet will it have? have large amounts of baby formula miraculously surivived? Cause if not, baby without any females=fat chance it living long enough.
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Ben Kenobi
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McGregornobi!
Oct 2002
time: 21:33
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MtG. 
Feel free to send me a PM if you need someone to talk to.
As for the original question.
quote:
While on holiday, you and your loved ones (partner/family/etc) are taken kidnapped and captive by terrorists/criminals.
They give you the choice of either shooting your loved ones or yourself – What do you do?
You could be heroic, and try and shoot them, resulting in you and your loved ones being killed anyway.
But would that be murder?
And if forced to shoot yourself, is that still suicide?
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Okay. Trying to shoot the kidnappers is not murder. However, I am a pacifist, so that option is not open to me, when presented with the option of giving myself over.
Now, what I would do, is say, yes I will shoot myself but only with the assurance that my family is safe, and that
no harm will come to them. I will ask that they be taken away, and given over to the police.
Then, once they are safe, I would either try to escape and they would shoot me, or I would try to convince them to leave me alone in the shame of my suicide.
Then I fire a gunshot in the corner and try to escape.
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Ben Kenobi
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McGregornobi!
Oct 2002
time: 21:33
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M'sieu Godunov:
quote:
Thanks to a massive war/famine/catastrophe, etc., the human race has been virtually wiped out except for a small enclave of humanity. By luck, there is only one woman left and the rest are men. The woman is 8 months pregnant, but is having major complications. There is luckily a doctor who diagnoses the situation as thus: The baby is healthy, but the pregnancy will kill the mother if it continues. The woman will be saved by an abortion, but it will damage her uterus beyond repair and end any reproductive hope. The woman wants to have the abortion to save her life, and the doctor has the means of doing it reasonably safely.
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quote:
So, do you let the woman abort the baby to save her own life, but end humanity in the process, or force her to carry it to term in the hopes the new child will become a progenitor of the next wave of humanity?
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Not hard M. Godunov, not hard at all. The woman is 8 months pregnant
At this point, the child is viable outside the womb, and a c-section would save the mother's life, and preserve her fertility, while saving the life of the child.
Curtsibling had a much more difficult question for me.
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Ben Kenobi
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McGregornobi!
Oct 2002
time: 21:33
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Give me a minute, azazel. I'm preparing a response that will likely surprsie you.
GePap:
quote:
During the night you recieve a dream in which God tells you you must murder a man in order to save X amount of people. This man is not evil, he does not plan to do anything evil, but he will do something whose reprecussions will bring about X amount of suffering.
Now, you wake up, but are utterly unable to shake the conviction that this is NOT just a dream, but real.
NOW, what do you do? Do you go talk with some religious authority to see what they say? Would you follow their advice if they did? Would you ignore it becuase what is being asked is a crime?
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I would see a religious authority, my pastor. I would ignore his advice if he recommended following the dream, though I sincerely doubt he would ask me to fulfill the dream. What might some of their reasonibng be? Satan can take many forms. He could easily come to me in a dream, as he has with others.
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Agathon
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Leafs 4TW!! - CPA
Dec 2002
time: 00:33
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Same from me. I will speak no more of it.
Anyway - some phil I saved up.
Boris' case introduces an unnecessary complication, since it requires one to resolve the vexed question of whether the rights or welfare of future human beings must be taken into account.
It would be better to use a simpler case such as the old one where the guerilla tells you, you must shoot one of ten prisoners to save the other nine, or that he will shoot all ten. What is the right thing to do in this case?
Well if you are a utilitarian or consequentialist it is pretty simple – you shoot the one man (selected at random) and save the other nine. The welfare loss from the deaths of ten people is, all other things being equal, worse than the welfare loss from the death of one person. Hence it's a no-brainer.
But if you are a rights-based theorist, you will believe that it is either simply wrong to kill people, or wrong to kill people without their consent. Say in the guerilla case, no one consents (which is rational, because the chances of being killed are certain if they consent, but less than certain if they don't). What to do?
Well, the standard answer is to do nothing since it is wrong to kill people. But this is a seriously confused view. In fact everyone who believes in a rights based theory like this is seriously confused.
A critic can always ask, "which is worse, ten violations of the right to life, or one?" If you say ten, then you have admitted that the killing of one is morally preferable to the killing of ten, which is exactly what the utilitarian said. Of course rights-based theorists piss and moan about this and say that it's not their fault and that the guerilla captain is responsible and should take all the blame. I agree, he is morally responsible, since he put you in the position of deciding (which is also wrong). So I agree that you are not blameworthy for being put in this situation nor should you be punished for killing one person, but that doesn't mean you aren't blameworthy if you don't choose between one death or ten. The power has been given to you, and only you to make the decision for a better or worse outcome – hence you are responsible in that respect.
Again people piss and moan about this because they think that there are always other alternatives (the usual suggestion is to shoot the captain and play the hero), but that is an ignorant response, since it ignores the fact that situations where we have to choose between the lesser of two evils because someone else's bad decisions restrict ours, happen all the time. The guerilla captain case is just a case that illustrates this general problem. Changing the case is an illegitimate argumentative technique.
Another fallacious response is to argue that you can't be sure whether the guerilla captain will actually shoot all ten, or preserve the other nine if you shoot one. Of course there are cases where we can't be 100% sure what happens, but we have always had to and will always have to make decisions based on probabilities (especially with regard to what other people will or won't do). To argue that the impossibility of being certain about what another person will do means that you can't make any decision is just plain loopy, since you would have to generalize that principle and that would mean you basically ought to make no decision ever again. The guerilla case is one of those in which you can be reasonably certain about the outcomes, just like you can be pretty sure that when your mother makes you breakfast, she isn't trying to poison you.
So leaving off those lame responses, what is left for the rights-based theorist. Well, not much since they seem to agree with the utilitarian that it is better for one to die than ten.
But there is one other response, which exposes the rights theory for what it really is – disguised religious belief. This group of people will object that whether or not it is worse for one person to die or ten is irrelevant, the only rule is that you shouldn't kill anyone.
But such a person admits then that the fact of whether they do the killing or not matters more than how many killings happen in the world. This view is called moral fetishism. It is the view that your own sense of moral purity matters more than the consequences of your actions or inaction upon others.
How could one make sense of this view? Well, if you ask the moral fetishist this question: "what makes killing bad? Is it something to do with the victim or something to do with the killer?", they have to say that it is something to do with the killer. That's because if it is the effect that makes it wrong, then there is nothing special about me not doing it as long as less bad effects happen overall. But they are going to say that it is the killer's breaking of a moral rule that matters, and it is not the case that more or less rule breaking is better or worse, what matters is only that I don't break the rule. How do we make sense of this? How can it be the case that rule breaking is bad, but that no one is obligated to try to minimize the amount of overall rule breaking, but only to refrain from it themselves?
Well the answer is that it is only if individual clean consciences matter more than the particular rules. What matters is that I am not a bad person and who cares if everyone else is evil. But this is a weird view – most people think that morality should prevent bad things from happening and minimize human suffering rather than being about individual moral purity – indeed, why would a focus on individual moral purity be anything other than selfishness gross indifference to the sufferings of others? The answer is "only if individual clean consciences" are the sole bearers of value. Now we've heard this before – it's the stock Christian view. What may happen in this world does not matter, what matters only is the life after this life – and for that the individual keep his character as clean as possible for his judgment by God.
So there you have it. I reckon that's a pretty persuasive set of arguments to show that people who often argue against the greater good are really endorsing what is a religious belief system, even if they don't think so. For the value of rule breaking, if it isn't tied to human suffering or welfare, must inevitably seek supernatural support.
PS. It was arguing with David Floyd that made me realize that rights based theories are at root religious. 
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06-02-2004 23:21
So much for hypothetical questions. *sigh*
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