How far does the My life or theirs argument go?
Most people believe it would be morally right and justified to kill someone to save yourself or someone else because its basic self defense whether the person youre killing did anything or not.
What about the moral permissibility of killing multiple people to save yourself or your loved ones?
Would it be moral to kill two or more people to save yourself even though their lives outnumber yours?
At what point would it be morally better to sacrifice yourself or your loved ones because the alternative is costlier in human lives?
If forced in such a situation at what number of lives would you prefer to die or prefer your loved ones to die than take?
How do different moral philosophies respond to an issue like this?
What about the moral permissibility of killing multiple people to save yourself or your loved ones?
Would it be moral to kill two or more people to save yourself even though their lives outnumber yours?
At what point would it be morally better to sacrifice yourself or your loved ones because the alternative is costlier in human lives?
If forced in such a situation at what number of lives would you prefer to die or prefer your loved ones to die than take?
How do different moral philosophies respond to an issue like this?
Comments (34)
If two or more people were threatening me and my loved ones, certainly. That's what the self-defence defence is. The killing of innocent bystanders in order to save yourself is never accepted as justification.
The number you sacrifice or the number you save thereby are not at issue. (Except in religion, of course.) The moral justification only works if you kill someone in order to prevent them killing you or some innocent victim(s).
(No throwing the fat guy under the trolley, unless he's controlling its downward hurtle.)
"Whether the person you're killing did anything or not"? This sounds like the exact opposite of self-defense. Self-defense implies that the other person did something.
I would suggest reading the thread on How to Write an OP.
The reason why "self-defense" in the moment of imminent or ensuing harm is acceptable is that the central nervous system does not allow reflection at the moment of crisis. Instead, physical resources are marshaled and directed against the threat. We either survive or we are dead. If we had time to carefully sort out the moral implications and then act, we probably were not existentially threatened.
If you can flee, you should flee.
Needless to say, provoking an attack so that self-defense can be invoked is immoral.
Nice pickups!
Nobody knows what they would do in that situation. If it happens, you do what your instinct dictates, which you either do not survive or regret for the rest of your life. Unless you're a psychopath.
No. The moral status of self-defense is an age-old issue. It is not a de facto non-moral issue.
Neither is it practically irrelevant, for there are pacifists who maintain their pacifism even while in danger.
Wait a minute. You've 'clarified' the matter out of existence. IF they are not attacking you, then there is no justification for an attack in self-defense. What the hell are they doing?
A man was just convicted of second degree murder in Minnesota. There had been an altercation at a river park in Wisconsin, Names were called, threats were made. The convicted person (a guy in his 50s) fell into the water, and when he stood up he brandished a knife, which he proceeded to use to kill one of the people who had been yelling at him.
The judge noted that the convicted man could have -- and should have -- left the scene of the conflict when he climbed out of the river -- nobody was stopping him from departing. Nobody was threatening his existence, however abusive the verbiage being tossed around might have been. It was homicide, not self-defense.
Im suggesting something like the trolley problem except youre the person that has to die for a larger number to live.
I suppose a collapse of society and a "man trying to feed his wife and kids" changes the scenario. Somewhat. Maybe you're old and dying of cancer and the man trying to rob (and kill you if necessary) is young and I don't know, genetically or intellectually gifted, and can yet contribute to the world of tomorrow in ways you no longer can- or something.
Sure, if men were psychic and you could somehow know the man trying to kill you would somehow go on to pioneer a cure for cancer or something one might be inclined to let him live or allow oneself to be killed, not sure why the two have to be mutually exclusive. Personally, I'd at least give him a fair crack under such a scenario.
Or take a different scenario. Let's say you happened to have inherited a vast amount of generational wealth from a family you found out accumulated such wealth from less than honorable means and a large mob of angry villagers has breached your legal property line, nearing your dwelling. You also have a mounted military grade mini-gun for some reason. What do you do? What to do indeed. "Sin is a matter of perspective", some claim. While doing the sinning and not on the receiving end, naturally.
As interested as I am in philosophy, in recent years I've taken the "go my own way" approach, purposely choosing to neglect reading established philosophers and their related philosophies so as to foster a sterile environment in which I can develop my own, free of influence or persuasion from others (likely based on what was already done, but allows me to enjoy a sense of pseudo-originality regardless). What comes to mind would be "the trolley problem", which doesn't seem to line up exactly considering one's own life is in danger in your line of scenario versus the life or lives of others. To my understanding people generally get their sense of morality from a few main sources, most choosing only one. Dogma (absolute notions, typically derived from religion or the idea of a higher, supernatural power), social contracts (everybody must adhere to some sort of standard in order to bring about a greater quality of life and reduce suffering and anguish), or personal relativism (golden rule, treat others as you wish to be treated, if it hurts me, it would hurt another, therefore, don't do it because ... it's wrong?). Or some haphazard mess of two or more. In some primitive nomadic cultures devoid of science or modern medicine, a broken arm or leg was an easy death sentence. I believe there was a ceremonial cliff or volcano where one would defenestrate oneself if able, or have it done by the group, typically without immense anguish due to a prevailing belief of being "reborn" whole at a later time, or as a bird or something. I can't recall. The reason I bring that up is there is a social aspect where one can become too much of a burden to the point the society suffers or even risks collapse. A modern case would be a violent criminal or dangerous mental invalid, etc. It is generally immoral to imprison someone who is not guilty of the charge of consciously committing a crime, however if the person is a dangerous invalid who would otherwise seriously injure or kill others, not doing so would be immoral. Stuff like that. In short, depends who you ask I guess.
Stick with your original post and don't change it anymore.
"Your money or your life"
You probably have never heard of Jack Benny; too bad if you haven't, great if you have. He was first popular on radio, then later television. Here's the punchline of a radio comedy skit about having to make an existential choice:
I didn't say it was a "non-moral issue". I said that its status as a moral issue may be irrelevant to the one defending themselves in the act of defense.
That there might be pacifists whose ideology carries more weight to them than their own wellbeing or survival, even in the mortally threatening moment, doesn't seem relevant. People enslave themselves to all kinds of ideas, human diversity being what it is.
Therefore...?
I am imagining the parallel where we are having a discussion about whether one should eat unknown mushrooms, and then you come along and say, "Well, someone who is very hungry might eat unknown mushrooms." But what is the purpose of such a comment supposed to be? That people might do things they know to be stupid? Just as people might do things they know to be immoral?
Quoting Janus
How do you figure that it is irrelevant that people will undergo harm for moral reasons? Why don't you try to set out some form of syllogistic argumentation for why you believe this to be irrelevant.
People do things they think to be immoral all the time if it suits them. How much more so will they lose whatever moral compass they may have thought they had when their lives, or the lives of loved ones are threatened?
This reminds me of an argument on another philosophy forum long ago. The question was whether it would be morally right to torture the kidnapper of your wife or child to find where he had hid them, if you knew they had them imprisoned somewhere and had planted a bomb set to go off in a couple hours that would kill them.
The one who posed the question said people were hypocrites to morally condemn torture in any and all circumstances when most of them would torture the kidnapper in that situation. I said that was wrongeven if there is no good argument to support condoning torture in any circumstance, it is nonetheless understandable that anyone who cares about their family would torture the kidnapper in that circumstance and would not be concerned about being justified in doing so. They are two different questions.
Obviously, but again, what in the world does this have to do with the OP?
Quoting Janus
He was right and you were wrong. They are hypocrites. It makes no difference whether their hypocrisy is understandable.
I think not.
Would murdering someone in an act of self-defense irredeemably stain your soul forever and condemn you to eternal hellfire in the hereafter?
Maybe not. But that doesn't make it moral.
There seems to be confusion about the meaning of the word.
I covered that one.
Quoting Vera Mont
Nobody, except the high priests of ancient religions and military commanders, has the right to decide who is to be sacrificed for whom, how many deaths are worth how many lives and which ones. Except in ancient religions and warfare, self-sacrifice is voluntary, not morally required.
A breach of moral standards is wrong, no matter what the practical or emotional justification.
In other words, we have the general rules for society, and then each of us has their own moral sense that we must accept responsibility for. If I didn't torture the perpetrator to find out where my child was, I would feel I had committed an immoral act even though it would have been in accordance with the general rule, and at the same time I would be prepared to accept whatever condemnation or punishment I had rightly subjected myself to and nor would I reject the well-earned epithet of "hypocrite' even though I didn't feel it to be so.
Why should that be the standard? Do you torture the terrorist to get the code to disarm the nuke that's about to go off and kill a million people? I think you have a moral obligation to start pulling some fingernails.
I agree it should be a general rule to avoid torture, but there are hypothetical cases where it would seem to be the moral thing to do. Shouldn't the government carve out exceptions for those cases? Or are those exceptions already "built in"? Consider the following:
Suppose government agents catch a terrorist with a nuke in the heart of NY and there's one of those Hollywood digital readouts counting down 30 minutes. Further suppose those agents start breaking the guy's fingers and he spills his guts about how to disarm the bomb and they disarm it. Would you support prosecuting those agents? No jury in the world would convict them and rightly so.
Governments do. They condemn torture - except when they condone it for National Security. And they don't call it torture; they call it 'enhanced interrogation'.
The RCC condoned it, too, in order to save the souls of people whose neighbours thought they might be witches, warlocks, Satanists, heretics or believers in other solar systems capable of supporting life.
Quoting RogueAI
That's a movie. In real life, what they catch is a seventeen-year-old zealot who is suspected of knowing something about a possible plot to place a nuke somewhere in NY sometime. Six years without shoes in a concrete cell and 82 waterboardings later, he still doesn't know.
Quoting RogueAI
His fingers and toes are all broken, and he still doesn't know how to disarm the bomb, because he didn't make it or arm it. He doesn't know who they are or where they are. The terrorists are smart enough to send an ignorant mule to plant it.
These hypotheticals are Hollywood. Real conflict is not scripted.
I agree with that.
It would be too complicated, the kinds of arguments you would get would be "Well it applies in that case, why not this one?".
The distinction is between a general rule and those edge cases it cannot reasonably deal with. The law as practiced, whether judicial or moral, is never black and white, but the general rules must be set out as black and white.
:up: Ah, some subtlety!
Yes, but suppose they catch one of the smart guys one day...
One ought to assume that sometimes torture is efficacious, otherwise no one would ever be tempted. One thing it is efficacious for, is to instil terror, for example; it functions as a deterrent.
It is not immoral to torture people because it is ineffectual; that is an argument of despair one resorts to with the totally amoral, to whom moral arguments have no meaning. Hurt and harm imposed on another are the basis for calling it immoral. And if hurt and harm should not to be imposed on us, then it should not to be imposed on them either. This simple principle is why the first step in any crime against humanity is "dehumanising". This produces "edge-cases".
Since they never know whether the latest capture is a smart guy, a mule or an innocent bystander, they'll have tortured and maimed two dozen people before they get any useful information, and by then the information is no longer useful.
Quoting unenlightened
Sure. You can get any midwife to confess having sexual congress with Satan, and you can get POW's to babble on whatever tanks or cannon they may have seen going in what direction, and once in a while you catch a spy who can give up the names and locations of other spies, whom you can then trade for your spies that they've captured and tortured. And if it accomplishes nothing except the suffering of the torturee, there are still many torturers who'll volunteer to do for the pleasure.
If torture had been an effective deterrent, uprisings, resistance movements, heresy and political intrigue would have ended five thousand years ago.
Quoting unenlightened
True. It's meant to counter the argument by the righteous that it is "more moral" to use torture than to refrain from using it, when the agony of one person may save the lives of many. (It is a belief held by many cultures, each with a strict moral coda; Christianity itself is predicated on that idea.)
Quoting unenlightened
Yes, but living by that principle is inconvenient. People will find ways around it and still claim moral ascendancy.
Indeed, that's why only the virtuous do it. Even Trump/Putin/the boogieman will tell the truth when it's convenient.
I'll wait, but i won't hold my breath.