Actually, let me clarify.
I do not want the source of your faulty logic.
I want the proof.
Prove what they were thinking…
- Status
I do not want the source of your faulty logic.
I want the proof.
Prove what they were thinking…
F
Fone_Bone_2001
Guest
Okay, fine, I admit I can’t have absolutely infallible knowledge that none of them wanted to die that day.
But I also can’t have absolutely infallible knowledge that the sun will rise tomorrow. Guess what? I don’t care. I don’t need it; I’m willing to make that assumption anyway, because there’s not one good reason for considering the possibility that the sun won’t rise tomorrow.
Likewise, there’s not one good reason for thinking that even one victim of the September 11 terrorist attacks went into the WTC tower that day thinking, “I don’t want to live anymore. I think I shall kill myself,” and then later thought, “Well, this is convenient” as they leapt burning and flailing to their deaths.
Is it true that I cannot definitively, deductively prove that not a single 9/11 victim thought that? Yes, it is true that I cannot definitively, deductively prove that not a single 9/11 victim thought that.
But how is it reasonable to doubt it? You don’t doubt that the sun will rise tomorrow, do you? You don’t doubt that the world won’t end in 2012, do you? So why would you doubt that a fellow human being just going about his or her day would not have preferred to go on living than to have his or her life abruptly destroyed?
How could you possibly think that anyone could have wanted to die like that? Are you not a human being? Do you not breathe the same air they did? Do you not feel hunger and thirst as they did? Is there no one you would begin to miss and to long for if you knew you were going to perish like that in a matter of minutes? Is there nothing you’d regret? No one you’d want to say goodbye to? Nothing you’d wish you had done before your life was cut short? Have you never felt pain? Have you never wondered at your own mortality? Have you never wondered at all?
Thank you.
I believe we may be close to agreement here.
You may be understanding my argument to be something entirely different from what it initially sounds like.
OK, you can make that assumption if you wish. In fact I will grant you that is a fair assumption. The sun is very likely to be there tomorrow.
But the assumption that the sun will come out tomorrow is not the same as assuming intimate knowledge of what other people think and feel.
Correct. There is no good evidence to believe that. Although that is possible.
But that is not what I have been arguing at all.
I believed I was fairly clear in previous posts. Once faced with what they believe is horrible suffering, some may have decided upon the course of action for all of the wrong reasons.
Right. And all I argue is that because of this uncertainty, we cannot judge their actions. We must have faith that God will judge these people pefectly.
I do not doubt these people would have preferred that the day was just the same as any other day.
But as stated earlier, that is not my argument.
My argument centers upon their thoughts in actions that day leading up to their jumping from the towers.
Did they intend the double effect you are arguing? We do not know.
Did they intend to live? We do not know.
Did they not intend the act at all? We do not know.
Did they take this action for all of the wrong reasons? We do not know.
Faced with the circumstances they were faced with, it is likely that some chose to die rather then face their fate. That they took into their own hands what is God’s.
It is also likely a number of other reasons for jumping were in process.
But we really cannot know this.
I am simply willing to address the possibility that some took on a Jack Kavorkian attitude to it all.
I suppose it reduces the horror of the entire circumstance to believe that all of these people were given a ticket straight to heaven for the circumstances.
But we cannot know this, and must deal with the horror of the situation with the uncertainty of their final fates.
Faith in God’s perfect mercy and judgement are the only things we can truly hold to here.
M
Monte_RCMS
Guest
Please try to limit the entire discussion to a time limit of about one second.
That’s all the time the people who jumped had to decide.
And just to make it more realistic, start your barbecue and put some hamburger on it … and when it is hot and smoking, put your face and hands inside the grille.
Perhaps, just to add to the realism, play a recording of people screaming in terror … the other people on your floor … some maybe are screaming or moaning: “Oh, God, help me!!!”
Now you have ONE SECOND to discuss all of the issues regarding jumping versus staying inside the building.
That’s all the time the people who jumped had to decide.
And just to make it more realistic, start your barbecue and put some hamburger on it … and when it is hot and smoking, put your face and hands inside the grille.
Perhaps, just to add to the realism, play a recording of people screaming in terror … the other people on your floor … some maybe are screaming or moaning: “Oh, God, help me!!!”
Now you have ONE SECOND to discuss all of the issues regarding jumping versus staying inside the building.
I could make stuff up too.
Of course, I do not need to. The facts of the matter prove out my contention.
F
Fone_Bone_2001
Guest
I know you’re not saying - and never were - that they wanted to die that day, that their end goal itself would have been to perish.
But I keep bringing it up like that in order to emphasize that that is what would be necessary in order for any one of them to be guilty of suicide. Of course you don’t really think they willed their deaths as an end.
But what you need to acknowledge here, vz, is that what is objectively the case is that they didn’t will their death as a means, either. Clearly they willed to escape unbearable pain, but death was not a means to that end. If they had somehow miraculously survived, they still would have fulfilled their “goal” of escaping from the agony of the flames. It’s that third condition (according to my above breakdown) of double effect.
So if they didn’t will their death as an end (and while that isn’t deductively provable, justice, reason, charity, and - principally - sanity demand that we assume it), and they didn’t will their death as a means, then they didn’t will their own deaths at all.
Not suicide.
(a) You’re delusional if you don’t understand how unimpeachably applicable Monte’s thought experiment (above) is.
(b) And even if it weren’t applicable, what would the “wrong reason” be, vz? You already admitted that they didn’t want to die as an end. And I’ve demonstrated that leaping through the windows meets what I listed as the third condition of double effect, which is not one of the two subjective criteria but one of the objective ones.
So in no way is it conceivable that they were sinning. Your questions make this even clearer:
Good. Then we’re sane enough to have ruled out that any one of them ruled his or her death as an end.
You don’t “intend” double effect - it’s a principle. The question is, did they meet the criteria. Unquestionably and objectively, it meets the first, the third, and the fourth.
And by admitting that none of them willed their deaths as an end - “these people would have preferred that the day was just the same as any other day” - you have admitted, de facto, that their act meets the second condition, too.
Again, they weren’t thinking. They were ON FIRE. What they “intended” to do is escape pain, which is a perfectly morally acceptable intention.
If they didn’t, then they’re not culpable for it.
If they did, double effect clearly and unequivocally exonerates them.
What wrong reason would have made it a sin?
No. They all faced their fate. It was not avoidable. But what do you mean “chose to die”? You already admitted that it’s implausible beyond all believability to posit that death was an end for any of them. So if they didn’t choose to die as an end, and if they didn’t choose to die as a means (a means to escaping pain), then they didn’t choose to die at all. We can know this.
It would seem that in spite of my posts, you have decided you know what I am thinking. I guess given that it is reasonable to expect that the thoughts of someone in a burning building would not be that difficult for you to perceive.
Of course, I would still like to know what exactly your source is for knowing the thoughts of other people.
You cannot speak for the thoughts of these individuals.
Some may have all of the honerable intentions we all would like to believe they had.
But we must acknowledge as well that we do not know, and therefore must also accept it possibility that some did not have such honerable intent.
That would be reasonable.
But it is not reasonable to blanket apply the logic to all.
Particularly when we simply do not know what they were or were not experiencing and thinking.
You can see the flaw in that logic right there “assume it”
We should not be assuming anything.
Actually, I have admitted that some may not have intended the end.
Not that they all did not want to die. There is an important distinction there.
In one statement, I account for what I do not know. In the other there is an unreasonable assumption being made.
OK, please quote the specific post where I made such an outrageous and unreasonable statement.
I know well that I cannot speak for these people.
You do not know this.
Again, you do not know this. You are not a mind reader and therefore cannot say with any certainty what their final intentions were.
And what of the third option? The one you seem unable to take?
The option that says some chose death for all of the wrong reasons??
That’s easy. I thought that my reference to Jack Kavorkian would have made that clear. When we take upon ourselves what is clearly God’s, we sin.
If someone were to leap from a burning building with the intent of choosing their own end and removing the decision from God, that would be a sin.
We all do.
No, I did not. Please quote the proper posts to show this.
Or retract this ridiculous accusation.
We can know the criteria for a sin. And we can know some of the circumstances of their deaths. But we cannot know if their deaths fit the criteria for sin or not. We do not have that information available.
To believe otherwise is not reasonable.
F
Fone_Bone_2001
Guest
Whether or not they willed their deaths as a means is not a matter of intent here.
Whether or not they willed their deaths as an end, is. I admit that, though we have no good reason whatsoever even for being open to the possibility that they did. I nonetheless admit, however, that whether those poor people’s action fit the second criteria of double effect is something that I cannot deductively prove.
Whether they willed their deaths as a means is a different matter, though. That condition isn’t one of the two subjective ones, but rather one of the objective ones. It’s not determined by what they ultimately intended - that’s the previous condition - rather, it’s determined by whether or not the bad effect of their action is, objectively and causally speaking, a means to the good end.
In this case it objectively is not. Death was not a means to the end of escaping the flames - if it were so, then they would have had to die in order to escape pain, but if they had somehow miraculously survived, they still would have escaped pain. So it is logically demonstrably true that they didn’t will their deaths as a means.
The subjective part that I can’t prove is whether or not they willed it as an end. But they’re literally no more likely to have done this on that day than any random passerby you’ve encountered on the street has on this day, vz.
Yes, we should be. We should assume that for those people to die went against what they would have preferred if they could have controlled their situation. That’s not an unreasonable assumption to make.
Cartesian skepticism is just unnecessary here - and what’s worse, it really is, I think, insulting to those who perished on that day.
But you don’t understand which side of the distinction your argument falls on.
What you’ve suggested is that it’s possible for some of those people to have “taken into their own hands what is God’s” - i.e. the manner of their death. That is not equivalent to “willing their own death as an end,” because to die wasn’t their ultimate goal, obviously.
Rather, your suggestion that it is possible that some of them may have “taken into their own hands what is God’s” - the manner of their death - is the suggestion that they may have “willed their own death as a means” - i.e. a means of escaping a more painful manner of death - burning and suffocating.
But here’s the key
I cannot know anyone’s intention. But I can gauge the objective part of an action. And whether or not they willed their death as a means is one of the objective criteria of double effect. It’s not subject to what an individual thinks he or she is doing, but rather by the objective structure of their moral act’s effects:
Either the foreseen evil effect and the foreseen good effect are both the results of their act.
Or the foreseen evil effect is the result of the foreseen good effect of the act.
Or the foreseen good effect is the result of the foreseen evil effect of the act.
In this case, the foreseen evil effect is death. The foreseen good effect is an escape from unbearable agony. The act is jumping out a window.
This objectively meets the third criteria, regardless of intention, since causally speaking, “death” - the foreseen evil effect - was not a means to the good effect - “escape from pain.” In other words, “less pain” didn’t cause their deaths - jumping out the window did.
Thus, no evil act or effect was willed as a means.
And since your suggestion that they could have taken the manner of their own death into their hands is a matter of means and not ends, you’re wrong to suggest that they could have sinned in this way.
As I explained above, your “third option” is simply equivalent to “willing their deaths as a means,” which is one of the objective and not the subjective criteria of double effect.
But you see, that’s just it! The Kevorkian attitude that you’re referencing is euthanasia to prevent suffering - in other words, willing one’s death as a means.
That is objectively not the case here. As I explain above, that criterion is one of the objective ones, since it’s based on the cause-and-effect structure of an act’s consequences.
Yes, but if their motive is to escape pain then it’s not suicide they’re intending, but rather simply to escape pain.
The only way such an act could still be suicide would be if they will their death not as an end, but as a means. That objectively is not the case with these individuals, for the reasons explained above - that lack of pain is not the effect of death, but rather that both death and the lack of pain are results of jumping.
It’s a classic double effect scenario: the moral agent allows a potentially foreseen but unwilled evil effect to occur for justifiable reasons.
K
KostyaJMJ
Guest
This whole discussion is just bizarre.
In order to even have an action be immoral you have to have the ability to choose. You take away free will and then you have no moral or immoral choice.
Have you ever placed your hand on a hot stove before? How much of a choice was it to remove it? Your stove doesn’t burn at 1800 degrees and doesn’t cover your entire body. It is pretty fair to assume that the people who jumped had no choice in the matter.
In order to even have an action be immoral you have to have the ability to choose. You take away free will and then you have no moral or immoral choice.
Have you ever placed your hand on a hot stove before? How much of a choice was it to remove it? Your stove doesn’t burn at 1800 degrees and doesn’t cover your entire body. It is pretty fair to assume that the people who jumped had no choice in the matter.
For some, that could well be the case.
But I am not comfortable making the assumption that we know the motives of every individual.
We simply do not have that information.
You may assume it if you wish, but you need to understand it is merely conjecture.
Perhaps it is less horrifying to believe all of the victims here had a straight ticket to heaven. But we simply do not have the information to say that with any authority.
No, I do not believe we need to make any assumptions at all.
We can pray for God’s mercy and grace, that should be enough.
K
KostyaJMJ
Guest
You’re honestly going to argue that someone who is engulfed in flames has the presence of mind to engage in moral decision making?
F
Fone_Bone_2001
Guest
I agree.
For some reason vz thinks this is an unknowable assumption. He thinks it’s possible some may have been able to choose freely what to do. I’m choosing to defend them as if they did have a choice, because - theologically - I can, and because the victims deserve such a defense.
He’s going to argue that we can’t know for sure that they didn’t have the presence of mind to engage in moral decision making, and that therefore we shouldn’t make assumptions either way.
I agree with you, Kostya, that such an “assumption” is materially verifiable as long as the victims were human beings, and that charity, justice, and sanity demand that we “assume” that they did not have the capacity for moral decision making.
No. What you were responding to with the above quote was not a claim based on those individuals’ subjective intentions, but on the purely tautological self-evidence of the causal structure of their act.
Don’t you see? They could have willed their deaths in only two ways: as an end or as a means.
Tautologically and self-evidently, they willed their deaths as an end only if they wanted to die just for the sake of dying, which is ridiculous in the context of September 11, in which their reason for jumping from the windows was obvious: to negate the unbearable agony of burning alive.
And whether or not they willed their deaths as a means is completely undetermined by their subjective state in this scenario, but rather simply by the totally objective and demonstrably provable position that self-destruction was not a means to their end of escaping pain:
act: jumping out the window of a room bathed in flames
effect: death by collision with the ground
effect: cool air and relief from burning
The only way it would be possible for them to have willed their death as a means is if it actually was a means to that end, and in this case it’s not:
“Cool air and relief from burning” was not caused by “death by collision with the ground.” Rather, “cool air and relief from burning” was caused by “jumping out the window of a room bathed in flames.” So it’s tautologically impossible for any of them to have willed their death as a means, since it wasn’t a means to their end at all.
And though we can’t prove that none of them willed their death as an end, only someone who doesn’t understand the concept of an “end” could think that any of them doing so is even half as plausible as the proposition that the sun will never rise tomorrow.
Your explanations and terminology have been sloppy, vz. If what I just said above is wrong, please help me see where, but you need to be more precise if you’re going to do that. You can’t keep parroting your own vague and philosophically useless skepticism. The terminology I’m using is not that hard: moral act, object, end, circumstances, moral agent, causation, etc. It is the standard and extremely precise and helpful language of moral theology.
I am certain that what I’m saying makes sense. If I’m making a mistake within this moral framework that we share, you should be able to help me see where.
Please: no more parroting. I’ve explained the only two applications of your objection (“well we don’t know what they intended”) that are possible.
If I’ve failed to see how it is reasonable even to consider that any of them could have willed their deaths as an end, show me where I’m wrong in my assertion that it’s as obvious as tomorrow’s imminent sunrise that escaping burning agony was their “end.”
If I’ve failed to see that death was somehow a means to that end for them, show me.
Of course not.
I’m going to argue that we do not know enough about the last moments these people had to say at all what their condition was at death.
K
KostyaJMJ
Guest
I can agree with that, but the title of the thread is “9/11 Jumpers – was what they did a sin?” not “9/11 Jumpers – do we know the state of their souls?”
Not only do we not know for certain presence of mind, but we do not know for certain final thoughts, intentions, motivations, etc.
We simply do not have any information at all about these people other then two facts:
- they were in a building that was on fire.
- they fell from the building.
We do not even know if they accidently or deliberately went out a window.
Or for that matter if it was a window they exited the building from.
There is too much unknown to make any sort of determination of the morality of their final actions.
Well, I do see one thing clearly.
You have been assuming too much about the whole matter.
You assume their final thoughts.
You assume their intent.
You assume their exact circumstance.
You assume motivations.
When in doubt, simply make it up.
Sorry, but I cannot subscribe to that scholarship.
Assumption: they are in a room bathed in flames
The analogy has been shown incorrect previously in this thread.
You are free to keep repeating it if you wish, but bear in mind that it diminishes your argument with each reuse.
Perhaps. but it also has the vitue of sticking to what is knowable.
You can use all of the creative vocabulary at your command if you wish.
Eventually you may even start using terminology that I am unfamiliar with and gain an advantage in repertoire.
But at the end of the day all of these fancy arguments are built upon a foundation of meaningless assumption.
That alone is the fatal flaw. You must ground your arguments in what is knowable and provable.
So is the word assumption.
You forgot to include that.
Well, as stated earlier. It works, but cannot be considered any more than opinion.
My apologies.
The assumptions you are making are the fundemental flaw.
I do not know how else to make you see it.
We would all like to move on, but I cannot fault any other part of the argument.
It is solid. But it is built upon a foundation of assumptions.
OK, what exactly would you like?
Would you like a perfectly reasonable alternative explanation?
Tell you what.
I can take a list of the facts and place different assumptions in place.
And give a completely different and much darker end.
In fact, I could give you several different perfectly reasonable scenarios changing only the assumptions and not the facts and give you a full range of morality from absolute evil to ambiguous and back to your scenario, innocent.
Perhaps once you see that the assumptions you are making dictate the morality of the act, and that the range of act can be moved from saintly to absolute evil simply by changing the assumptions you would be more open to understanding why I simply want to pray for God’s mercy rather then try to difine their act as moral one way or the other.
Correct.
The morality the jump itself cannot be determined.
I arrived at that conclusion several pages ago.
The longevity of the thread seems to be on a point of contention concerning whether or not the morality of the jump can be determined.
Actually, re-reading this. It looks like I was not clear.
Their condition at death has to do with their thoughts, intentions, desires, and physical condition…not their eternal soul.
Part of that sloppy vocabulary I guess.
K
KostyaJMJ
Guest
Yes the part about intent is where I think you’re making a mistake.
It seems naive to think that anything like
“I intend to jump out of this building in an attempt to save my life”
or
“I intend to jump out of this building in an attempt to take my life”
was going through their heads. And even if somehow there was an intent to harm themselves that is negated because their decisions were made under extreme duress and were not what we could call human acts. The end that the jumpers are working towards is good (saving their life) and you don’t need to know everything that went through their minds on the way down to judge their actions as sinful or not.
The definition you’re using of intention seems problematic because it is almost as if you have to hold the ends of your action in mind while acting.
F
Fone_Bone_2001
Guest
Don’t you understand, vz, that we don’t need to know if they leaped through the window accidentally/instinctively or deliberately?
If accidentally/instinctively, then they’re not culpable for their action, whether that action is wrong or right.
If deliberately, that action meets the conditions of double effect, making their act morally acceptable. The only way it could fail double effect would be if they deliberately jumped because they wanted to die, rather than because they wanted to get away from unbearable heat.
No I don’t. I have no idea what they were thinking. I don’t think I could imagine being in that situation, nor do I want to be able to, nor have I made any statements about what any of their last thoughts were.
No I don’t. I don’t have to. I know that when unbearable heat comes into contact with a human being’s body, that human instinctively recoils from pain.
That proposition’s universality is materially verifiable, and it alone can adequately explain their action of jumping out a window.
No I don’t. I have no idea how many people ran for the window and leaped because they could not bear the flames, and how many people had no idea they had fallen from the window until after the fact.
I don’t need to assume either one: either way, they’re not guilty of suicide or self-destruction.
It’s not an assumption in any reasonable sense of the word to say that all human beings recoil from ridiculously high temperatures that cause intense pain.
And that’s all that’s necessary to know how those people ended up plummeting to their deaths.
Again, vz, what other motive - if, indeed, they could even think at all - could possibly explain it?
Forgive the description. I will be more precise:
I do not know that whatever areas each person was in were bathed in flames. But obviously they were in pain. Why would they have leapt out the window - which was almost certain death - unless they did it to escape pain?
Keep in mind the very reason for this thread’s question in the first place, vz: their action seemed to some potentially identical to the sin of killing oneself to avoid pain. That is, of course, a sin, and it is the only potential sin that prompted this topic. But double effect exonerates them from that, because their act itself was objectively acceptable, and their deaths were not, objectively speaking, a means to the end of escaping pain. In order for them to have sinned by their act of jumping, therefore, literally the ONLY possibility left that could make that the case is if their goal was NOT escaping pain, but directly to die, as an end in itself. That’s not the topic here; that’s not what they have been thought potentially guilty of at all. That’s not in dispute; in fact - from what I can tell by the meanings you’re conveying - not even you dispute that they would have preferred to live if they could have. And That Leaves “Death As a Means” As the Only Possible Way For Them To Have Sinned, which is one of the things that we CAN rule out DEDUCTIVELY here.
Why not?
It’s not opinion but deductively provable that death was not a means to the end of escaping pain.
And it’s psychologically inconceivable that they inflicted death on themselves deliberately as an end in itself.
But the only thing I’m “assuming” which I can’t prove definitively - namely, that they did not will their own deaths as an end - is no less “knowable” than the conclusion that my finger will hurt if I light a lighter and hold it in the flames long enough. That’s not something I can prove deductively, but it’s not therefore reasonable to call it a mere assumption.
Yes. That would probably help.
That will probably help a lot. I await your hypothetical examples of what could very well have been the case with at least one of those individuals on that day.
OK, The only things we know is that they were in the buildings, and jumped.
The rest is assumption.
Scenario 1 - evil.
The room is filling with smoke, we do not know if there is fire there or not, but the heat is likely extreme.
Our hapless victim curses God for the circumstance. Why not, they didn’t deserve this, obviously God is willing it upon them. And they decide to jump. God may deem that they die in a burning building, but I can still decide to take their own life rather then allow God into it.
Scenario 2 - ambiguous.
Same victim, same circumstance.
But instead of a curse to God…
I’m not living through this. I can stay here and be burned alive, or jump and die an instant death.
It may or may not be a sin, we do not know if they intend to die that way or simply save themselves the pain of burning. God does.
Scenario 3 - innocent.
Instead of deciding one way or another…
Pure fear and instinct drives our victim out the window.
They may not even be aware of their actions until after they get out the window.
Do you understand what I am seeing now?
Same circumstances, same individuals, different thoughts concerning their circumstance. And a different morality concerning the same action for it.
And since we really do not know anything more of them, we have no business with a blannket proclamation of innocence or guilt.
I can see all three of these scenarios as possible and likely.
But since we cannot determine final thoughts, we do not know which scenario any one would fall into.
As I said at the beginning of this thread, we cannot determine the morality of the act, all we can do is pray for God’s mercy.
- Status