Christ; sorry, for whatever reason I thought neomac's response was part of yours. Doh. Rookie move.

What are your guys' thoughts? Can we morally justify sacrificing people for the greater good, especially if it is a huge sacrifice (like getting tortured constantly)?

Not for me because the “greater good” is unknown, and as such, could never be met. In the end, and at its core, the act would amount to sacrificing or torturing a living being based on a hunch.

In any case, I would do justice though the heavens fall. I would protect the potential victim from the aggressor’s advances and deal justly with the consequences however they turned out.

Christ; sorry, for whatever reason I thought neomac's response was part of yours. Doh. Rookie move. — AmadeusD

Ah. No worries.

Not for me because the “greater good” is unknown, and as such, could never be met. In the end, and at its core, the act would amount to sacrificing or torturing a living being based on a hunch.

In any case, I would do justice though the heavens fall. I would protect the potential victim from the aggressor’s advances and deal justly with the consequences however they turned out. — NOS4A2

Good answer. It doesn't matter if it's for the greatest good, even if we objectively know what that is. It is immediately not the greatest good if it requires us to sacrifice someone. We would no longer deserve anything good.

Suppose a good friend comes over, whom you know to be a strict Kantian. The Gestapo know this as well, and question him regularly. He notices a yarmulke inexplicitly lying on the couch. "Is someone staying here?" he blurts.

I completely agree that Kantianism is counter-intuitive; but I was wondering about deontology in general. On this specific point, I think a deontologists, and even a neo-Kantian, can circumvent this example by appealing to ‘rights forfeiture’.

You are taking a relaxing day off, fishing in your rowboat. Around a river bend, you come upon a drowning man. "Oh, thank God!", he cries. "Save me!"

"Sorry, friend!", you respond with a grin. "I didn't push you in, I'm afraid it's not my problem. But, best of luck!"

His final moments before submerging for the last time are spent watching you in astonishment as you row your boat down the river, whistling gaily.

Are you
a) As morally culpable as if you had pushed him in the river?
b) Less morally culpable than if you had pushed him in the river?
c) Not culpable at all?

I choose A.

I like this. My intuition is that at least B is true. I am not advocating that a person should not save someone when it is of little cost to themselves on the grounds of ‘letting it happen’ entails no culpability. I am saying that if I had to throw you over board (knowing you will drown) to free up a life vest that would save them for this other person, then I cannot violate you to save them. I am not culpable like the person who pushed that person into the water knowing they would drown: I didn’t violate their rights. Perhaps me morally blaming me for going by instead of saving them at little cost to myself is contradictory to the ‘letting’ vs ‘actively participating in’ the violation of a person...not sure.

Rephrasing my question in terms of your quoted appraisal: Of what ethical good is intending to keep one's established duties if so doing produces unethical results?

You can’t control the consequences of one’s actions but, rather, only one’s intentions. Sure, if I am negligent in my reasoning and some bad consequent becomes of it, then I may be punished for it; but the point of deontology is that analyzing the consequences of an action doesn’t relate to whether anything is good or bad: if you have a duty to not violate a person’s rights, then what does it matter what consequences one calculates in relation to violating a person’s rights to save another? It doesn’t. You just can’t do it: period.

I see your point though: shouldn’t we at least analyze the reasonable consequences of our actions? Isn’t it negligent to just focus on intentions? I sort of agree, but I don’t think the deontologist is against using consequences to make inform decisions, they just disagree with determining what is good from it. I can determine that if I perform action X it will most likely result in saving this person’s life and since I have a duty to uphold their sanctity, then I should do it. Notice that the consequence just informs the intention, but this is not the case in consequentialism.

The maintaining of duties within a community of slave-holders and slaves resulting in the lynching of those slaves that don't uphold said duties

I don’t see how this is a critique of deontology. It is perhaps a contention with a deontological theory that I haven’t heard of, but deontology in general is not contended with here in your example (as far as I can tell). Most deontologists don’t think we have a duty to just anything.

Interesting: I am leaning towards a virtue ethical theory myself. I just always thought Aristotelian ethics was a form of moral realism.

:up:

People as a means to an end? We find it permissible to hire people as a means to an end which is making our own living as much as they make their own living by doing business with us, and some may find morally permissible even to do business over currently illegal jobs like prostitution, selling organs, dealing drugs.

That is fair. I think deontologists usually mean it in the sense of their rights, and they don’t consider those to be rights we have. So “we cannot use a person as a means to an end” is short-hand for ‘you cannot violate their rights, whatever they may be’.

How about living creatures, animals? Can you torture and kill animals as a means to people’s end? One might obviously argue that we already do this, we eat animals after all, and the food industry from start to end is a torturing experience for animals. So what makes human beings so special?

This is the main reason I reject Kantian ethics. I don’t think humans are all that special, and I think persons are objects of respect, which includes animals (or at least the vast majority of them). I just think it is permissible to kill them (as painlessly as possible and treated prior to death with respect) for the sake of our own health.

Why am I not blameworthy for the annihilation of the remaining human species, exactly? My choice to sacrifice the remaining human species as a means to save a child would still break the rule “do not sacrifice any life to save another for whatever reason in all possible scenarios”.
There is no room for distinguishing choice abstention from choosing to sacrifice (not to mention that even abstentions are often perceived as morally blameworthy).

You are not blameworthy because the reason they will all die is out of your control and is there prior to your decision: you killing the child is an intervention to try and prevent the annihilation of the human species. You did not actively violate anyones rights by refusing to kill the child.

By analogy, imagine a pyschopath serial killer walks up to you, shows you sufficient evidence that they are torturing 12 people in their basement, tells you if you stab an innocent person that is walking by they will let the 12 people go, and let’s say you know 100% they are telling the truth (so they will actually let them go if you stab that innocent person to death) and everything else is equal (so forget about calling the cops). Can you stab that innnocent person to save the 12? I say no. You are not blameworthy for what is happening to those 12 people: the serial killer is. You are, however, blameworthy if you stab that innocent person to death.

I’m reluctant to accept the distinction between consequentialism and deontology because I’m not sure to find it intelligible.

Analyzing consequences of actions or having duties to rules does not make one a consequentialist or deontologist respectively: the kernel of the view has to center around such.

Scenario 1: We may save either mother or baby during a difficult delivery, but not both. Yet we know the kid has developed a torturing and deadly disease which will make it die any time soon after birth, should we let the mother die so we are not blameworthy to kill the baby?

This is a good thought experiment: the deontologist route would be yes. We cannot violate that kid’s right to exist because we anticipate it to die (or actually know with 100% certainty it will) shortly thereafter. A person is someone which we cannot violate (in terms of their rights). I see how this seems, though, like the right answer is kill the kid.

I would say that since I know in this scenario that the kid is going to die that I would go the consequentialist route, or at least my intuition leads me that way, but in practical life where I don’t know it for certain I would say we cannot violate that person’s rights because we don’t actually know 100% they will die. Of course, that isn’t relevant to the thought experiment you said.

- Scenario 2: We may save either mother or kid, but not both, and if we do not intervene they both will die. Killing a mother/baby even to save the other is immoral, so we let both die but we wouldn’t be blameworthy for it?

This is also a good example. I would say kill one of them...so consequences win on this one.

You can at least draft arguments for why people must follow what you claim to be “moral rules”, can’t you?

I am still working on my normative ethics, and originally was going down the deontologist route; but I am now working on a virtue ethics account. I don’t want to share that yet because it is too premature.

I didn't know that: interesting. Can you please elaborate?

Fair enough.

I am saying that if I had to throw you over board (knowing you will drown) to free up a life vest that would save them for this other person, then I cannot violate you to save them. — Bob Ross

But that is just making it easy for yourself: all else being equal, you should not violate someone's rights.

Instead, what if we modify the original example. You don't have to kill or torture the child. Just, slap him around for 10 minutes or so. He will cry, and will probably suffer a bit of long term trauma. Either commit this active violation of the child, or passively allow everyone on earth to die. Which do you choose?

Instead, what if we modify the original example. You don't have to kill or torture the child. Just, slap him around for 10 minutes or so. He will cry, and will probably suffer a bit of long term trauma. Either commit this active violation of the child, or passively allow everyone on earth to die. Which do you choose?

Prima facie, I would say slap him around, but, I am inclined to say no because this is how torturing people gets justified: where is the line we are drawing here? Can I slap him? Yes. Can I punch him? How many times? Can I just cut a bit of his flesh off? Is that too far?

Perhaps the answer is yes to slapping him, and it is just intuited from considering the balance between other people and the rights of that particular person. To me, I am starting to think there is no equation possible that accurately calculates right and wrong for every possible situation; and that's why I am trying to work on a virtue ethical theory instead. Maybe if we have the proper virtues instilled in our characters, then we would intuit that slapping him for 10 minutes is the right thing to do, but punching him for 10 minutes is taking it too far. Not sure yet, but that is a good thought experiment!

To me, I am starting to think there is no equation possible that accurately calculates right and wrong for every possible situation — Bob Ross

:up:

that's why I am trying to work on a virtue ethical theory instead. Maybe if we have the proper virtues instilled in our characters, then we would intuit that slapping him for 10 minutes is the right thing to do, but punching him for 10 minutes is taking it too far. — Bob Ross

I would be interested in seeing you work this out.

Myself, I think consequentialism is the answer. But, a consequentialism that takes injustice into account. You can't just examine raw outcomes, you have to also consider injustices that have been brought about. So, the 99% who live marginally better at the expense of the 1% would not be a good consequence, as the injustice done to the 1% would outweigh the benefit to the 99%.

Of course, there is no objective answer to how much to weigh injustice or any of the other factors. It ultimately must come down to human judgement. But I think it is the right framework.

I would be inclined to weigh injustice very highly. But, not so highly that the injustice done to the boy outweighs the deaths of everyone else, which themselves would be terrible injustices. I think the active/passive distinction is ultimately illusory, a choice is a choice.

I don’t want to share that yet because it is too premature. — Bob Ross

Unfair enough.

So, I merely created a thought experiment taking this to its extreme: what if, right now, we had to perpetually torture a child (and I will let you use your imagination on what exactly is done to them) to prevent the immediate annihilation of the entire human species: is, at the very least, it morally permissible to do it, then? — Bob Ross

Absolutely yes. We torture our and kill our food every day for our own survival. Yet I still eat to live. I torture bugs beneath my feet that I accidently step on in the grass and leave them to slowly die from a crushed exoskeleton. Does that mean I stop walking? No. We throw pollution up into the air that kills thousands of animals and even people every year. Many don't die, but simply become perpetually sick. Yet this pollution saves hundreds of thousands more from death and suffering.

You don't have to go to extremes. Just look how we live today.

It might have been interesting to attach a poll to this thread - just "Stay" or "walk away".

My money would be on "Walk away".

I finally read it. Good story, though probably not the one I should have read atm. Me and @Baden are both struggling to poop out our stories for the winter contest, and having to read a master of her craft like Le Guin is a tad bit discouraging.

So, in order for society to function, what is sacrificed is the sense of wonder and imagination of the child substituted over time by a conceptual scheme of relationships that impose a set of more or less instrumental values that define what it is to be happy and successful and direct behaviour along clearly delineated paths which aim to make individuals in some sense superfluous. The “inner child” must be continuously tortured for people to be “happy” in so far as those people are integrated properly into an efficiently functioning whole and the more properly integrated they are, the more ideal and well-oiled the society is, the more the child must be continuously neglected, tortured and beaten, up, i.e. the more the imaginative faculties and the freedom they threaten any established order with are repressed and degraded. — Baden

I had a somewhat different take. She presented this city and its inhabitants in an overly idyllic way that belied this interpretation; these people were not cogs in a well-oiled machine, rather, their inner children were flourishing. To me, this was a riff on the kind of saccharine, Disneyfied utopias one encounters in children's entertainment. Why do we find these fantasies so unsatisfying? "Do you believe this?" Le Guin keeps asking. No, we do not. Why? "On whose backs does this blissful utopia rest?" our inner cynic asks. What is missing from these utopias is the pervasive moral corruption that the exploitation, necessary for such utopias, creates. Only when Le Guin provides this corruption, in the form of a single wretched child, that everyone knows about without explicitly acknowledging, can we, also denizens of a corrupted world, allow such a place to exist, even in our minds.

Either commit this active violation of the child, or passively allow everyone on earth to die. Which do you choose? — hypericin

Do you think moral judgment in situ is more a matter of habit or "choice"?

Like Aristotleans, Epicureans, Stoics, Spinozists, Nietzscheans, Peircean-Deweyans et al, I say moral judgments are mostly matters of habit and that so-called "moral choosing" comes ex post facto (or in a speculative exercise / rehearsal).

addendum to ...
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/862582

It might have been interesting to attach a poll to this thread - just "Stay" or "walk away".

My money would be on "Walk away". — Banno

:up:

I would be interested in seeing you work this out

Once I have it fleshed out, I will create a new discussion—just like my moral subjectivism discussion board. For now, I am just inquiring other peoples’ views and contemplating them.

Myself, I think consequentialism is the answer. But, a consequentialism that takes injustice into account. You can't just examine raw outcomes, you have to also consider injustices that have been brought about. So, the 99% who live marginally better at the expense of the 1% would not be a good consequence, as the injustice done to the 1% would outweigh the benefit to the 99%.
…
I would be inclined to weigh injustice very highly. But, not so highly that the injustice done to the boy outweighs the deaths of everyone else, which themselves would be terrible injustices. I think the active/passive distinction is ultimately illusory, a choice is a choice.

It just seems wrong to be to violate someone’s rights to save other people, like in the 1 to 5 trolley example. However, depending on how you factor in ‘injustice’ I may be able to get on board.

For example, what if a doctor has 100,000 super sick patients that are going to die insufferable deaths and the doctor knows that abducting, killing, and harvesting the organs of one innocent, healthy person (to transplant parts to the 100,000) would definitely save those sick patients: should they do it? To me, it doesn’t matter how many sick patients there are: it is wrong to abduct, kill, and harvest the organs of that one person—period.

I just don't have enough fleshed out yet, I am working on it and will share when it is substantive enough.

Absolutely yes. We torture our and kill our food every day for our own survival.

The intent to torture an animal is wrong, even if we end up eating it. We can kill and eat animals in ways that give them basic respect, which would involve not unnecessarily torturing them.

I torture bugs beneath my feet that I accidently step on in the grass and leave them to slowly die from a crushed exoskeleton.

That is fair; but the intent to crush and torture a bug with no good reason behind it is wrong. Likewise, I don’t think it is analogous to the OP because we were not talking about a bug: it is a human child.

Does that mean I stop walking? No.

Imagine that in order to walk on that sidewalk, instead of crushing a bug, you had to brutally pummel and crush a human child: I think now the answer is an emphatic YES. You can’t really compare a bug or even eating pigs/cows to perpetually torturing a human being.

We throw pollution up into the air that kills thousands of animals and even people every year. Many don't die, but simply become perpetually sick. Yet this pollution saves hundreds of thousands more from death and suffering.

Yes, human society turns a blind eye to a lot of things: I don’t see why we couldn’t pollute (to some extent) without getting people sick—there has to be a way to do it that isn’t killing people. However, this also isn’t very analogous to the OP: what if you were thinking about opening a factory that you knew would kill 1,000 people a year from the pollution, do you think that’s permissible to do? Does it depend on how many people you think will be saved from whatever you are manufacturing?

what if you were thinking about opening a factory that you knew would kill 1,000 people a year from the pollution, do you think that’s permissible to do? Does it depend on how many people you think will be saved from whatever you are manufacturing? — Bob Ross

Yes, it does depend on how many people are saved, and a host of other factors. How many get sick? Does this sow distrust and chaos in society? There are a ton of factors.

At the end of the day I'm weighing the life of one child vs the lives of every other human being on this planet. The benefit vs cost is overwhelming in the case of torturing the child. Now, if we could also have humanity live and not torture a child? Sure. Just like if we could get the benefits we do in producing things minus the pollution. Or be able to eat animals without enacting any suffering on them at all.

Its not that we don't wish for a better situation, but the situation as given is the horrible outcome we must pick vs the even more horrible outcome of the elimination of the entire human race. This of course is all tantamount to "What is good?" Without an answer there, its just opinion vs opinion.

I think as a society we would, hopefully reluctantly, accept the sacrifice of the child, just as societies generally accept young people being sent to war, and suffering torture and death in order to protect mere national sovereignty, or even just to satisfy political affiliations, not to speak of societal annihilation.

I like this, I will try and add it.

A shame you added a question. I won't vote on that. It's easy to invent intractable moral issues. Children use these to claim that there are no answers to moral questions, and pretend to be nihilists. Until someone steps on their toes, whereupon they scream to the authorities.

And refusing to vote on that, I can't vote at all.

IMO, that's instrumental reasoning (re: things, i.e. means-to-ends) and not moral reasoning (re: persons, i.e. ends-in-themselves) — 180 Proof

In Nicomachean, the "means to an end" is part of moral reasoning. But Aristotle was focusing on the means, because the end has already been decided, so the one thing left to decide on is the means to achieve it. Note that he didn't believe in 'whatever it takes' to get there.

Do you think moral judgment in situ more a matter of habit or "choice"? — 180 Proof

It depends on whether the "habits" we have built up over a lifetime are adequate to the situation or not. If the particular situation which requires judgement is easily analogous to previously learned moral rules, we might make the judgement without much conscious effort. But this is not always the case. I'm sure you can think of times in your life where moral judgement required a great deal of difficult, even agonizing deliberation. I'm guessing the op's dilemma be one of these times.

The OP scenario is very different from the one in Omelas. The OP is not an intensification, it's something different. In Omelas the tension is between pleasure and pain. In the OP the tension is between pain and existence.

I genuinely have no clue what you are talking about: you are upset that I added in the question that is the essence of the OP? Both are very clear questions, and have nothing to do with justifying moral nihilism, so I don't see why you would have a problem answering them.

I see your line of thinking, but I think we could justify going to war under deontology which would preclude any justification for torturing a child to save us all.

Just as an example, a deontologist that believes that one does not have the duty to uphold the rights of a person who is engaged in the violation of other peoples' rights, which is usually called a principle of forfeiture, will have no problem going to war with people that have forfeited those rights. However, that innocent child has not done anything warranting forfeiture of their rights, and we would actually be the one forfeiting our rights by violating the child's.

This is the danger I see with consequentialism, is it gets people sucked into the view that 'the greater good is best' and blurs the lines of what a 'right' even is anymore and whether we actually have any.