• Bartricks
    6k
    I am opposed to enforced lockdowns to protect us against viruses.

    Don't get me wrong: if there's a dangerous virus on the loose, then I highly recommend locking yourself down (other things being equal, that is - if it'll cost you your livelihood, then it may be wiser not to, depending on how dangerous the virus is.....but you're probably in the best position to make that judgement).

    And if you know that you have a dangerous virus - or even if it is reasonable to believe you do (and the reasonableness of believing you have it may sometimes depend on just how dangerous it is) - then I think you have a duty to lock yourself down and that others may be entitled to make sure you lock yourself down (so, if you have - or, depending on how dangerous the virus is, reasonably believe you have it, then you no longer have the right not to be locked down).

    What I am opposed to - and I think careful ethical reflation vindicates my position - is forcing those who do not have a virus, or who reasonably believe themselves not to have it, to lock down. What I am opposed to, then, is what's happened and happening in response to the covid virus. What has muddied the moral waters in this particular case and blinded many to the injustice of it all, is that governments have made us do what it was probably sensible for many of us to do (though by no means most - for many the lockdowns have made their situations considerably worse than it would have been had they caught the virus.....especially if they've caught it anyway!). (An aside: most of those making these decisions are in jobs that are among the safest - the experts...and they're not ethics experts.....are academics in tenured positions).

    Anyway, here's why I think these lockdowns are unjust. The philosopher Judith Jarvis Thomson came up with a famous thought experiment involving a violinist. There's a violinist who needs the use of someone else's kidneys - yours, specifically - for 9 months or he'll die. The society of music lovers take it upon themselves to kidnap someone - you - and hook you up to this violinist. When you come around the doctor who hooked you up explains the situation. Are you entitled to unhook yourself and leave?

    Virtually everyone's intuitions deliver the same verdict: of course you can. It would be very generous of you to stay for 9 months and allow the violinist the use of your kidneys. But it is well beyond the call of duty and you're within your rights to leave. The violinist is innocent and his life is in danger. But nevertheless, he's not entitled to restrict your freedom for 9 months so that he may live.

    Now imagine you get pregnant through no fault of your own - you have been raped, say. Do you have to go through with the pregnancy, at considerable cost in terms of your own comfort and freedom, or are you entitled to abort? Well, the situation seems relevantly analogous to the previous one. Yes, the child (if child it be) is innocent and depends for its life upon your body, but that was true of the violinist as well. And so it seems that we can reasonably take the judgement about the violinist case and apply it to this one: you are obviously entitled to abort. The innocent foetus is not entitled to the use of your body for 9 months - not, then, entitled to restrict you for 9 months, even though its life depends on it.

    What's the moral of these cases? Well, that a person's right to life does not amount to a right to restrict the freedom of another person for 9 months. YOu could save a life by restricting your freedom for 9 months. But you do not have to - no one has the right to make you. If you unhook, then your behaviour has resulted in an innocent person dying who otherwise would have lived; but your behaviour did not violate that person's right to life. My right to life does not give me a right to restrict your freedom for 9 months.

    Apply that to lockdowns. There's a virus on the loose. And it kills some of those who get it. Well, do we have to give up 9 months freedom in order to prevent those people from being killed? Is that what having a right to life amounts to? No, that's what we just learned from Judith Jarvis Thomson's thought experiments.

    If it helps, just imagine that pregnancies are like viruses and can be caught just by going out and going about your everyday business. Would women who go out now have to endure their pregnancies or would they be entitled to abort? I think they'd obviously be entitled to abort. And it'd be quite unjust to insist that women lock themselves down or else go through pregnancies to avoid innocent people from being killed. Again: an innocent person's right to life is not a right to have from others everything they need to stay alive. Among us there are those who, through no fault of their own, are liable to die if they get covid. I may be one of them. But my right to life does not extend to entitling me to restrict your freedom so that I may not get covid and die from it, anymore than a foetus's right to life extends to restricting the freedom of the woman it is inhabiting.

    Thus, as I see it widely shared intuitions about Thomson's violinist and abortion cases imply that enforced lockdowns are unjust. They violate our rights. They greatly restrict our freedom and impose costs and burdens on us for the sake of preventing innocents from dying. We have a right to life, but my right to life does not entitle me to restrict your freedom to go about your life as normal for months on end, even if your doing those things means I may die, as seems obvious in the pregnancy case (where it will definitely result in a death!). It is not my fault there is a virus on the loose. And it is not yours either. And even if I happen to have given it to you while freely going about my business - so, not intentionally or knowingly - and you die from it, then I did not violate your right to life (and nor you mine if the reverse happens), anymore than a woman who is pregnant by rape violates the right to life of the unborn child inside her if she decides to have an abortion.

    Note Thomson's position is not absolutist (and nor is mine). If you only have to give up, say, 10 minutes of your time to save the violinist, then probably you ought and maybe others can make you stay; so she is not saying that the right to life of another doesn't place any restrictions on our freedom. The point is that there are limits - even if we can't come up with a crystal clear rule that describes them - on the amount of restriction, cost and burden another person's right to life can impose on another. And it seems pretty obvious that the costs and burdens of a pregnancy exceed that limit, as - I think even more plausibly - do the costs and burdens of lockdowns.
  • Down The Rabbit Hole
    516


    For me it is all about the consequences. I take it you believe there are rights that should be respected, in spite of the consequences? As my ethics are suffering focused, my decision as to whether there should be mandatory lockdowns would depend solely on which option best reduces suffering. There are so many variables, I don't feel comfortable saying either way.

    Note Thomson's position is not absolutist (and nor is mine). If you only have to give up, say, 10 minutes of your time to save the violinist, then probably you ought and maybe others can make you stayBartricks

    How would you decide where to draw the line?
  • Bartricks
    6k
    Why are you a consequentialist? It's obviously false.
  • Down The Rabbit Hole
    516


    Consequentialism just seems more down to earth to me; it is the way we do science after all.

    It seems too arbitrary picking values and how they compete with other values.
  • Michael
    14k
    Thus, as I see it widely shared intuitions about Thomson's violinist and abortion cases imply that enforced lockdowns are unjust. They violate our rights. They greatly restrict our freedom and impose costs and burdens on us for the sake of preventing innocents from dying.Bartricks

    It's a matter of degree. One has more of a right to the sole use of one's kidneys than to go to a restaurant or nightclub, and the burden of sharing one's kidneys with another is far higher than not being able to eat out or dance in a crowded room. Both ethical and practical considerations require something of a cost-benefit analysis. It's a false equivalency to treat all cases of one's right to freedom being restricted as the same.
  • Amalac
    489
    The violinist is innocent and his life is in danger. But nevertheless, he's not entitled to restrict your freedom for 9 months so that he may live.Bartricks

    Would the violinist die painfully if I unhooked myself? If so, I would consider it my duty to avoid his suffering, since it is within my capabilities to do so. I am perfectly willing to sacrifice my freedom for 9 months, which seems to me to be a very small price to pay (assuming the doctor was telling the truth).

    If he/she were to die a painless death, then I could understand more why some people wouldn't consider it their duty to keep themselves hooked to him/her, and I myself may not see anything wrong in unhooking myself (I'd have to think about it though).

    Death by Covid-19 tends to be very slow, despairing and painful, something I want to avoid as much as possible with my actions, and I would also want to prevent, as much as I can, other people who I see in the streets and markets to go through that because of me.

    So if the violinist dies a painless death in that thought experiment, the analogy with covid confinement breaks down there.
  • AJJ
    909
    One has more of a right to the sole use of one's kidneys than to go to a restaurant or nightclub, and the burden of sharing one's kidneys with another is far higher than not being able to eat out or dance in a crowded room.Michael

    As if lockdowns mean little more than being deprived of restaurants and nightclubs.

    It strikes me that the “cost-benefit analysis” is precisely what is *not* made by those who advocate for lockdowns.
  • tim wood
    8.7k
    Folks, Bartricks denies that refusing to take a vaccine entails risks to others than himself. Such silliness is not to be reasoned with. Is he that stupid? Or vicious, or a troll? Hard to tell, maybe some of all, but certainly a waste of time in discussion. Be wise, don't waste your time.
  • NOS4A2
    8.3k


    I agree.

    “Lockdown” is a revealing term. It’s prison jargon. The same consequentialist fears about some impending scenario, whether it happens or not, can be used to justify restricting people to real prisons. Consequentialism is basically a sort of racket in this sense: the fear-mongering absolves the consequentialist from the consequences of his actions.

    Those who are not infected with the virus cannot spread the virus. So the only reason one would restrict the healthy is ignorance, and whether through laziness or an impulsive fear, rather than change his ignorance he chooses the most sweeping measures to make up for it. There is no ethics behind it at all.
  • Bartricks
    6k
    That's how you determine which ethical theory is true? Which one seems more 'down to earth'? What does that even mean?

    Arbitrary means 'without reason'. Most ethicists reject consequentialism because it makes predictions about morality that are not confirmed by our rational intuitions. What would be arbitrary would be to ignore that counter evidence. For now your belief in consequentialism is not reason informed or responsive.

    Incidentally, if consequentialism is true and the good to be maximised is pleasure or happiness, and the bad to be minimized is pain, then presumably you too would be against lockdowns?
    For the virus, if allowed free reign, would kill mainly the elderly, who are a big drain on resources. Their productive years are over, they themselves are fairly miserable, and the resources used to cater to them could produce much more utility if spent elsewhere. So you would reason - if you were a true consequentialist and not simply someone who tries to find negative or positive consequences to justify doing what they were going to do anyway - that letting the virus blaze through us all would be far and away the most utility maximizing policy. And you'd stop the media whipping up fear of impending doom in everyone (lots of censorship - ignorance is often bliss). Just shut the media up and let the virus do its thing. Most of us wouldn't notice. "Steve got ill....and died! He was only 55. He was fit as a fiddle, but by thursday he was dead" "Oh, gosh. That's terrible. Poor Steve. Makes you think, doesn't it? Anyway, what's for dinner? Cough" That'd be it.
    And as a good consequentialist, you'd stop covid patients clogging up ICU by just implementing proper triage procedures. If someone has covid and needs ventilating, then they're probably going to die - so spare the ICU bed for someone more likely to benefit from it. It's not how much you need something that matters, but how much benefit giving it to you would achieve.

    The clever and wealthy would be able to hunker down and let covid pass over - for in 6months to a year herd immunity would have been achieved and the virus would have mutated into something much less deadly (as is their tendency). And the feckless and elderly and stupid and otherwise expensive, burdensome part of the human community would have been reduced (for without assistance, they do not fare well). In a year or two there would be a massive boom - as there was in the roaring twenties after spanish flu - and covid would be but a distant memory. We'd miss gran and steve, but gran was dying anyway and we've inherited early, and Steve. ..well, you make new friends don't you? (Individuals are replaceable with consequentialism - they're just containers of utility, not bearers of rights).

    You are a very bad consequentialist - appalling - if you think the most utile thing to do is to force everyone into their homes, regardless of whether they want to do that (most people really dislike having their freedom curtailed). All those people who have died from covid - they'd have died of it if there wasn't a lockdown, yes? So locking them down just made them miserable to no gain whatsoever. And most of us - the vast bulk - would not be killed by it. So most of us are being made miserable and poorer and being made to lose businesses for the sake of sparing us a flu-like illness (the vast bulk of us would rather suffer a flu like illness than be locked in our homes for months on end at massive cost to ourselves and others....as you can tell by the fact that if there were no enforced lockdowns, most would not have voluntarily locked themselves down, would they?). How on earth - how on earth! - can you possibly think that's a good consequential profile?

    So, consequentialism is false. But if it is true, then lockdowns fail any halfway plausible coldblooded consequentialist analysis. Note: deaths aren't a big deal on consequentialism (unless the only consequence you are interested in is keeping the maximum number of persons alive). You don't have a right to life at all. Not if consequentialism is true. We are all just counters on a scale.
  • Bartricks
    6k
    Yes, others need your advice - they can't decide for themselves. Consulted a lot, are you?

    Anyway, what you wrote there was just a personal attack. No philosophical content. No attemp to address the issues raised. Just a childlike venting of frustration. If you find that you can't refute a position, adopt it - that's my advice.
  • RogueAI
    2.4k
    Suppose a patient walks into a hospital complaining of abdominal pains. Doctors discover he has a virus that he is immune to but which is highly communicable and kills 99% of those infected. Doctors ask the patient to stay in the hospital, but he refuses to. Is it ethical to then forcibly keep the patient from leaving the hospital?
  • Bartricks
    6k
    Yes, I certainly think so.
  • RogueAI
    2.4k
    What about locking down the entire hospital in an effort to contain the virus? I think you would agree with that too. What about locking down the local community in a last ditch effort to contain the virus? It sounds like you support some kinds of lockdowns if the stakes are high enough.
  • Bartricks
    6k
    I think it is ethical to lockdown someone who has a deadly virus - as I said in the OP - and those it is reasonable to believe have it.
    But I do not support locking down those who do not have it or that it is not reasonable to believe have it.
    In the case you describe, the extent of a justified lockdown would be determined by whether it was reasonable to believe those in the hospital have been infected. And like I say, the dangerousness of the virus will bear on that - that is, the amount of evidence needed to make it reasonable to believe you have been infected will vary according to how dangerous the virus is.
  • Down The Rabbit Hole
    516


    Considering your views, for example that our parents should pay for us for the rest of our lives without us ever having to work, I take it you accept popularity does not prove what is moral? Then what is left is your intuition against mine. Why is your intuition right and mine is wrong?
  • Bartricks
    6k
    Putting your theory to one side, what does your reason tell you is the right thing to do? If your reason tells you that you are entitled to unhook from the violinist, then your reason is telling you something inconsistent with your theory.
    Perhaps your theory is correct and your intuitions false, or perhaps your intuitions confirm your theory. But your intuitions count for no more than someone else's, other things being equal. And most people have the intuition that one may unhook. So your theory appears false - it contradicts most people's intuitions about what it is right to do in all manner of situations.
  • Down The Rabbit Hole
    516


    The violinist example may result in more suffering by remaining connected for the 9 months. I think a clearer example is the trolley problem, with people that live happy lives. I think it right to pull the lever and murder someone than let multiple people die.

    But your intuitions count for no more than someone else'sBartricks

    That's my point. You can't say as a fact your non-consequentialism is morally right, and my consequentialism is morally wrong.

    it contradicts most people's intuitions about what it is right to do in all manner of situations.Bartricks

    That's the appeal to popularity. As I said, if popularity proved morality, your views are in trouble.
  • Ennui Elucidator
    494


    Why should I accept that rights theory is meaningful in this analysis when not one word you uttered was about anyone but the rights bearer? A society where everyone lives with no obligations but lots of right sounds offensive to my moral intuition. At what point in this conversation are you going to allow that a community can ethically violate the rights of an individual if it is in the communal interest?

    How do you differentiate "a good idea" where government coercion is ethical from a situation where a "good idea" does not warrant such coercion?

    I grant that you setup a bit of a battle between rights bearer A and rights bearer B, but that hardly sounds in anything but individualistic strife (competing rights).
  • Mikie
    6k
    Folks, Bartricks denies that refusing to take a vaccine entails risks to others than himself. Such silliness is not to be reasoned with. Is he that stupid? Or vicious, or a troll? Hard to tell, maybe some of all, but certainly a waste of time in discussion. Be wise, don't waste your time.tim wood

    Seconded. Don't say you weren't warned. If you're interested in a serious medical ethicist, check out Dr. Arthur Caplan:

    https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2021/08/10/vaccine-financial-liability

    https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/955509

    https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/second-opinions/93808

    Unfortunately, continued resistance to commonsense public health measures has demonstrated that too many people in both Europe and the U.S. have a simplistic and erroneous view of liberty. Liberty does not mean you have the freedom to do whatever you want wherever you want. Nor does it make sense to conflate the concept of individual rights, which inform our liberties, with that of privileges, which are predicated on each of us upholding certain responsibilities.

    It is hard to argue in good faith that American citizens have an inalienable "right" to dine at restaurants, attend shows in a theater, and travel for leisure. Indeed, if these were truly protected as rights, our government would be obligated to ensure basic access to them through entitlement programs or legal protection. But while food stamps are meant to ensure that all citizens can feed themselves, and federal law (namely the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act) guarantees universal access to emergency medical care, equivalents do not exist for leisure or recreational activities. We have a tacit societal agreement that these are privileges to be obtained only if one has the requisite time and money for them, and if one agrees to abide by the rules of these establishments, such as wearing clothing and refraining from smoking.

    Furthermore, there is ample precedent for limiting individual liberty. What you choose to do cannot impinge upon the liberty of others. Driving is a privilege that must be maintained by ongoing licensure, registration, vehicle inspection, and adherence to the rules of the road for the sake of personal and public safety so that all may drive. If you reject these responsibilities, you risk losing the privilege of driving. The concept of requiring COVID-19 vaccination to access privileges involving social gathering similarly protects public health and prevents reckless individuals from harming others, particularly those who cannot receive vaccines due to age or underlying illness or those who are unable to respond to them due to immunodeficiency.
    — Art Caplan

    The article goes on -- worth a read over the self-proclaimed "expert" who so far has limited his analysis to undergraduate thought experiments.

    I agree.NOS4A2

    ...A foolproof sign to run the other way, this.
  • Bartricks
    6k
    I think a clearer example is the trolley problem, with people that live happy lives. I think it right to pull the lever and murder someone than let multiple people die.Down The Rabbit Hole

    Our intuitions - most people's anyway - about the trolley cases provide yet further evidence of consequentialism's falsity. Most people's intuitions say that it is morally right to divert the trolley into the path of the one to save the five. But most people's intuitions also say that it is morally wrong to shove the fact man off the bridge such that he lands on the tracks below and, by means of his mass, stops the trolley and saves five lives (at the cost of his). Consequentialism delivers the same verdict about both acts, as they have the same consequential profile. Thus, consequentialism is false. (Note, the conclusion is not that consequences don't matter - clearly sometimes an act is right because of its consequences - but rather that other things matter too, such as intentions and not using others as mere means to an end. What's a plausible explanation of the difference between the two cases that accounts for our differing intuitions about them? Well, that in the diversion case one does not use the person one diverts the trolley into as a mere means to an end, rather one merely foresees that they will be struck by the trolley. One does not intend it. By contrast, when one shoves the fat man off the bridge, one is intending him thereby to be hit by the trolley and thus one is using him as a mere means to an end).

    But even if it is true, consequentialism would deliver the verdict that lockdowns are unethical. Indeed, it seems to me that a consequentialist about happiness or preference satisfaction should be even more passionately opposed to lockdowns than me, for reasons I have already surveyed above. Lockdowns make even less sense on a consequentialist view than they do on mine.

    That you seem to think otherwise can only be, I think, because you are cherry picking what consequences you focus on (which is to abuse the theory, not apply it).
  • Bartricks
    6k
    Why should I accept that rights theory is meaningful in this analysis when not one word you uttered was about anyone but the rights bearer?Ennui Elucidator

    I argued my case. I did not put forth a 'rights theory'. I am anti substantial normative theories. I argued by appealing to rational intuitions about relevantly analogous cases. It's how Thomson argues too. No point appealing to intuitions about abortions if you want to gain insight into the ethics of abortions - for clearly people's intuitions about the ethics of abortions conflict (and thus we know - know - that someone's rational intuitions are not accurate on that issue, and so we must look to our rational intuitions elsewhere for insight......hence she asks us to imagine a sickly violinist etc).

    All I am doing is pointing out that the widely shared intuitions about Thomson's violinist case tell us something important, namely that our right to life does not give us a right to 9 months of inconvenience and hardship from others.

    We're in the middle of a pandemic. A lot of people are scared, including the decision makers. And furthermore these issues - the issue of what measures are justified - have become politicized and polarizing. That means our intuitions about them are probably corrupt and not reliable. That's why I am not appealing to them, but looking elsewhere for insight.

    Now, Thomson's violinist cases are well known and well discussed. And there's a broad consensus that they do indeed show that abortions in the case of rape are ethically fine and do not violate the rights of the unborn.

    So they're a good, calm, well trod place to go for insight. And what do they tell us? They tell us that an innocent person's right to life does not entail an entitlement to 9 months of inconvenience and hardship from another. THe word 'entitlement' is important: an entitlement is something you can use force to extract from another. If your life, through no fault of my own, has come to depend for its continuation on my having to endure 9 months of inconvenience and hardship, then you are not entitled to that from me. I would be generous if I were to give it to you. But you're not entitled to it. So you have to ask, not demand. And if I don't give it, you have to accept that there are spheres of responsibility and your death in this case falls within yours, not mine.

    Applied to lockdowns: it means they're unjust. The innocent people who'll die from the virus - and you and I may be among them, for we just don't know (so this is not special pleading) - are not entitled to have the rest of us endure 9 months of hardship, cost and inconvenience.

    Sounds harsh, right? But I may be one of those innocents. I am not being harsh, I am being decent - being decent involves recognizing that there are limits to what you're entitled to from others . It involves recognizing that others have lives and that you're not the centre of the goddamn universe. It involves recognizing that you're not entitled to have others be slaves to your vision of the good life. Lock yourself down, don't insist others lock down. As Shaw said, do not do unto others as you would have them do unto you - they may not share your tastes.
  • Ennui Elucidator
    494
    I did not put forth a 'rights theory'Bartricks

    our right to life does not give us a right to 9 months of inconvenience and hardship from othersBartricks

    widely shared intuitionsBartricks

    So you aren’t advocating a rights theory, you are just using rights language badly to cover up a majoritarian hurrah/boo theory of ethics as expressed by a particular culture?

    Sounds harsh, right?Bartricks

    Doesn’t sound harsh, but sounds exactly like what I asked you about. When do we focus on the community on your account of ethics rather than the individual? That is, rather than evaluating individual claim against individual claim, do we ever get to evaluate individual claim against some other locus of ethical regard?

    And if government is predicated on a public negotiation of individual interests as subordinated to public authority, why suppose that an individual claim that, in the aggregate, undermines the public interest has any ethical sway on what government should do?
  • Bartricks
    6k
    So you aren’t advocating a rights theoryEnnui Elucidator

    Yes. A 'right' is simply shorthand for something force can be legitimately used to secure. That's how I use it. But when it comes to figuring out when and where force can legitimately be used, I appeal to intuitions about cases rather than to principles. It's just that when our intuitions are unclear about case x, then if case y is sufficiently similar and elicits clear intuitions, then the clear intuitions can be reasonably carried over to case x.

    So it is not a substantial theory. And if one wanted to be pedantic, one could insist that I put 'other things being equal' clauses in all over the place.

    you are just using rights language badly to cover up a majoritarian hurrah/boo theory of ethics as expressed by a particular culture?Ennui Elucidator

    Er, what? No, matey. No. You're very confused. I am not a non-cognitivist about ethics and nothing I said implied otherwise. And overlapping rational intuitions that Xing is wrong constitutes excellent evidence that Xing is wrong, other things being equal, just as overlapping visual sensations that Y is red is excellent evidence that Y is red, other things being equal (presuambly you now think I a boo haurrah theorist about colour!).

    Doesn’t sound harsh, but sounds exactly like what I asked you about. When do we focus on the community on your account of ethics rather than the individual? That is, rather than evaluating individual claim against individual claim, do we ever get to evaluate individual claim against some other locus of ethical regard?Ennui Elucidator

    I made a case. You're not addressing it, you're just saying stuff. Sounds like waffle, not reasoned argument.
  • Ennui Elucidator
    494
    I am not a non-cognitivist about ethics and nothing I said implied otherwise. And overlapping rational intuitions that Xing is wrong constitutes excellent evidence that Xing is wrong, other things being equal, just as overlapping visual sensations that Y is red is excellent evidence that Y is red, other things being equal (presuambly you now think I a boo haurrah theorist about colour!).Bartricks

    So people say my moral intuition is that slavery is fine (they were Romans after all) and that is good evidence that slavery is morally OK in Rome? Or for all of time? Please tell me exactly how “moral intuitions” is substantively different than people telling you their moral emotions about various scenarios. And in what way is someone expressing their feelings good evidence for anything besides their feelings?

    Imagine a culture that calls red “blue” and you walk around asking everyone whether the red thing you are pointing to is “blue” and they say “yes.” Does that mean that the red thing is “blue” or just that you can use whatever word you want to symbolize? What makes something red is the circumstances in which you have used the word “red” in a particular language community and gotten the response you want. Successful use provides no information about what is “the case”.
  • Bartricks
    6k
    Oh, how tedious - so this is now to be a thread about moral epistemology? Focus on the issue.
  • Down The Rabbit Hole
    516


    I don't see how your intuitions prove something to be morally correct or incorrect. You can't just say intuitions prove morality, without giving reasoning for this.

    All those people who have died from covid - they'd have died of it if there wasn't a lockdown, yes? So locking them down just made them miserable to no gain whatsoever. And most of us - the vast bulk - would not be killed by it. So most of us are being made miserable and poorer and being made to lose businesses for the sake of sparing us a flu-like illness (the vast bulk of us would rather suffer a flu like illness than be locked in our homes for months on end at massive cost to ourselves and others....as you can tell by the fact that if there were no enforced lockdowns, most would not have voluntarily locked themselves down, would they?).Bartricks

    That you seem to think otherwise can only be, I think, because you are cherry picking what consequences you focus on (which is to abuse the theory, not apply it).Bartricks

    No, I'm not worried about unsavoury conclusions at all. If I knew for 100% fact pushing the fat man off the bridge would save multiple happy lives (and there is no other way to save them), I feel it's right to push him off the bridge.

    With the lockdown argument, you've made the case against lockdown, but what about the many many more people that would die suffering if the virus wasn't locked down? Not just them, the grief of all those families losing loved ones; talk about driving people to despair and suicide.
  • TheMadFool
    13.8k
    Good post.

    I'll keep this short and sweet.

    Unfrotunately or not, the violinist's sad condition is not my doing just like a woman who conceives from rape is not responsible for her pregnancy.

    With COVID-19, you are responsible for transmitting the infection to others.
  • Ennui Elucidator
    494


    What is tedious is that you somehow think that your assertion of rights (that you don’t actually mean as rights as generally conceived) based on some people’s moral intuitions as expressed in relation to contrived thought experiments is supposed to serve as a basis for public policy in a pandemic. Some people said it is wrong to X so the government should stay off my lawn!

    What did you intend the conversation to be about? Everyone patting you on the back and saying, “Here here, that violinist analogy really is the way to organize government”?

    My moral intuition is that communities have interest in preventing mass harm by enforcing behavior against the interests of individuals. There is no reason for people to submit to authority where that authority is indifferent to their well-being up until the moment that someone that is morally blameworthy comes along and engages in bad behavior.


    Or if you really wanted to be offended, there is such a thing as justifiable collateral damage.
  • AJJ
    909
    Unfrotunately or not, the violinist's sad condition is not my doing just like a woman who conceives from rape is not responsible for her pregnancy.TheMadFool

    The vulnerability to illness that some have is not your doing either, which is what makes the analogy work.
  • Seppo
    276
    Indeed, this basically renders the rest moot. Not getting vaccinated does have negative consequences for other individuals and the community as a whole- that's it, game over, back to the drawing board, Bartricks.
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