It is to me personally, but divorced from how I feel about it, what import does it have?Forest Goose wrote:"In an abstract sense, there isn't any reason that living 1 second is any better than living a full life" is just as legitimate a sentence, so death is never tragic because of a life cut short, I suppose.
Not what is good, but what is needful if we are to coexist. Good, if you want to use that word, is dependent on how wide you spread your gaze. There is what is good for me and there is what is good for everyone close to me, and then what is good for everyone else. Morals, at least to me, is how we reconcile those different goods. I offer no justification of that, other than that model is my evaluation of how it seems to work.Forest Goose wrote:Statements that are justified by, "to me", usually appear to be being implicitly justified on some alternative moral principle that makes what is important to you reasonable, but not what is important to Crazy Bob The Serial Killer, or seem more to be a matter of psychology and a repackaging of "This seems good to me, therefore it is".
Precisely true. Which is how we end up with genocide, wars and lawful executions. And why there are so many views on those subjects.Forest Goose wrote:Again, I want to be very clear: if you really mean that "you" have some bearing in this, as in a generic you, then whatever nonsense someone thinks starts becoming harder to object to - unless there is some reason that you, the specific you, is in a position that that is reasonable; in which case all of this subject rooting doesn't really make any sense since something else justifies it.
I'm asking you to state a rule that resolves the moral dilemma posed by the trolly problem. Answering the question, is there a correct choice? Your moral intuition tells you to save the greater number. Is that position absolute? If it is then what if killing the one turns out to somehow be the causal link in killing 5 million? It gets very sloppy, given expanding amounts of information about the context.Forest Goose wrote:I'm not sure what it is you're asking me for
Choosing my child over five is a product of what I know. Given different knowledge I might make a different choice. However not choosing my child would always be immoral, as would choosing to let the five die. It would cease to be a dilemma if that weren't true. The same would be true for any number you can write.Forest Goose wrote:You said that you would chose your child over 5 people and that that would be moral (you don't say "not immoral", but, specifically, it would be the "moral" thing, that's a lot stronger). I asked if it would be so if it were a 1,000,000 people, if you have the answer for 5, why not for the larger? I'm not sure why you are in a position to assert that the moral choice is your child for 5, but are unwilling to make an assertion for the larger (or even explain why that might be different).
As an absolute I choose to believe that all life has some value. Therefore ending life is always immoral. However I assert that I can act morally and immorally at the same time. The limitation is in my ability to influence events. Not in my ability to make moral choices. How I choose to balance those choices is dependent on what I know. So for instance, if I were a refugee hiding with a group, would I kill my infant child to keep it from betraying us by crying? It depends on what I believe I know about what will happen if I don't, and even given that it falls to a second question could I force myself to do so? What I do will always be immoral in some fashion and moral in still another.Forest Goose wrote:Why would it be moral? There is a world of difference between moral and not immoral, you chose to assert the far stronger of the two.
I don't believe that there is an ultimate answer to the trolly problem, and some ethicist are questioning it's utility for real world ethics.