Catholic view on utilitarianism

[o_mlly]

Every choice always implies a reference by the deliberate will to the goods and evils indicated by the natural law as goods to be pursued and evils to be avoided … [T]he negative moral precepts, those prohibiting certain concrete actions or kinds of behaviour as intrinsically evil, do not allow for any legitimate exception. (p. 67).

All of these VS citations precede JPII’s specific condemnation of consequentialism and proportionalism which form the bases of your argument beginning in paragraph 74. All who are truly interested in knowing the truth ought to read p. 74 and following to understand why these “ false solutions, linked in particular to an inadequate understanding of the object of moral action … claim to draw the criteria of the rightness of a given way of acting solely from a calculation of foreseeable consequences deriving from a given choice. The latter, by weighing the various values and goods being sought, focuses rather on the proportion acknowledged between the good and bad effects of that choice, with a view to the “greater good” or “lesser evil” actually possible in a particular situation.”

 

[o_mlly]

When there are two agents acting in a killing case, we CANNOT credit the evil act of one agent to the other agent.

I’m not sure I understand the argument. Can we agree that a physical evil (malfunctioning plane that kills innocents) involves no human agency and that a moral evil (a human act that kills innocents) are essentially different?

There is no agency in the former and therefore no blame to be assigned and in the latter there is agency and blame is to be assigned.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

Can we agree that a physical evil (malfunctioning plane that kills innocents) involves no human agency and that a moral evil (a human act that kills innocents) are essentially different?

Of course we cannot assume that the malfunctioning of the plane was devoid of human agency. It may have been sabotaged. In that case it would be exactly like trolley. Use thar argument , @Latin.

At the time the pilot has to make his decision, he cannot even know why the plane is malfunctioning, so that distinction cannot be required.

 

[Elf01]

Nonsense. There is no “who” in your pilot’s choice; his only goal is to kill the “fewest” who are in peril.

They aren’t in peril, unless the pilot redirects the plane.

 

[o_mlly]

They aren’t in peril, unless the pilot redirects the plane.

all the pilot can do is pick his impact point …

The pilot ought make the choice in which he foresees the fewest die. The pilot is not omniscient and could error in his choice so everyone within the plane’s range is in peril.

Now we come to a clever nesting of a straw man in a red herring

The argument being made is that it is immoral of him to do anything other than let the plane crash where it will without taking action, because if he directs the plane to hit here instead of there he is directly killing whoever he crashes on. Better to let it fly into the tenement building it is aimed at than redirect it to fly into the house next to it.

First, the straw man; criticizing an argument no one has made. It begins, “The argument being made …” which, of course, no one has made.

And then the red herring, the attempt to divert our attention away from the moral dilemma in the trolley case to an irrelevant case in which there is no moral dilemma. The pilot may make an error in choosing the site that would cause the fewest number of deaths but that is a prudential error in judgement, not a moral failing in conscience.

 

[Elf01]

The pilot ought make the choice in which he foresees the fewest die. The pilot is not omniscient and could error in his choice so everyone within the plane’s range is in peril.

Why can the bystander not make the choice in which they know the fewest will die?

I don’t just want the objects are different, I want to know why they are different without referring me to posts that have not helped me see the difference.

 

[o_mlly]

Why can the bystander not make the choice in which they know the fewest will die?

What is the difference between Catholic morality and consequentialism?
Both ethical systems agree that the ends do justify the means. But the Catholic system teaches that the ends never justify any means, the ends never justify an evil act.

Does the pilot face a moral choice in limiting the number of deaths? No, only a prudential choice. The case is irrelevant.

Does the bystander face a moral choice in limiting the number of deaths? Yes. Are the means he might choose morally licit (directly killing an innocent)? No. One may never do evil that good may come of it “not even to save a nation.”

 

[Elf01]

Does the pilot face a moral choice in limiting the number of deaths? No, only a prudential choice. The case is irrelevant.

Does the bystander face a moral choice in limiting the number of deaths? Yes. Are the means he might choose morally licit (directly killing an innocent)? No. One may never do evil that good may come of it “not even to save a nation.”

Why is the bystanders choice a moral one and the pilots a prudential one?

 

[o_mlly]

Why is the bystanders choice a moral one and the pilots a prudential one?

The bystander decides on the morality of an act that has good and evil outcomes. That is a moral choice. The church offers ample teachings on how one ought to make that choice.

The pilot decides based, on his present knowledge (practical wisdom), the act which will cause the fewest deaths. That is a prudential choice.

If the pilot’s act is as specified, if the intention is good and Ender has not withheld some circumstance from us that is evil then nothing the pilot chooses to do is evil. He has no moral dilemma.

I don’t think I can answer your question any differently than I already have. Perhaps other informed Catholics have better explanations for you.

 

[Elf01]

The bystander decides on the morality of an act that has good and evil outcomes. That is a moral choice. The church offers ample teachings on how one ought to make that choice.

The pilot decides based, on his present knowledge (practical wisdom), the act which will cause the fewest deaths. That is a prudential choice.

Why is the bystander not just deciding which act will cause the fewest desths?

 

[o_mlly]

Why is the bystander not just deciding which act will cause the fewest desths?

Going to have to punt. I’ve tried to answer your concerns.

But I think you have evidenced in your questions that you have some uncertainty whether the bystander may throw the switch. Any uncertainty in the bystander requires that he not throw the switch. And that’s enough to keep the innocent one alive (and good enough for me).

If man acts against this judgment or, in a case where he lacks certainty about the rightness and goodness of a determined act, still performs that act, he stands condemned by his own conscience, the proximate norm of personal morality (Veritas Splendor, JP II, p. 60).

 

[Ender]

Your pilot case is irrelevant to the trolley case because the kill zone of the trolley case has another element not present in your pilot case. An innocent one outside the kill zone in the trolley case is exactly why the pilot case has nothing instructive to add to the debate regardless of what you assert.

“Kill (crash) zone” is another undefined, irrelevant term. The plane will fall in a limited area; that’s its crash zone. The trolley is limited to only two paths; that is its crash zone. In both cases an individual makes a decision that controls where the plane or trolley will crash, and who will live and who will die.

There is no “who” in your pilot’s choice; his only goal is to kill the “fewest” who are in peril. The bystander can and should do the same.

I’m mystified by this. This is exactly what the bystander does.

But instead you would, as any consequentialist would, have the bystander do an a immoral act under the error of intentionalism that anything goes as long as a good will is present. Face the fact that your bystander directly kills an innocent one.

You keep applying labels to my arguments instead of trying to rebut them. I do not understand how in one place you can say the bystander can and should kill the fewest who are in peril and then accuse him of directly killing an innocent person when he takes the only action available to him to achieve that end.

But the bystander can put the trolley outside the kill zone if, and only if, he commits an intrinsically evil act. You make my point.

This is why introducing undefined terms simply confuses things. “Kill zone” as you use it here appears to mean “where the trolley will go if no one does anything”, yet you use it differently to describe the entire are where the plane can crash. Define your term.

Is it as you specified the mechanical failure of the plane that creates the dilemma? You said so, therefore the case is a simple matter of managing a physical evil and no one is to blame. Its irrelevant to the trolley case.

The catechism defines behavior that is moral and immoral. It doesn’t provide caveats when the danger is natural as distinct from contrived. Our behavior is controlled by the same restrictions as to what we may legitimately do. That you define the plane case as “managing a physical evil” is not an extenuating circumstance that allows behavior for the pilot otherwise forbidden to the bystander.

 

[o_mlly]

“Kill (crash) zone” is another undefined, irrelevant term. The plane will fall in a limited area; that’s its crash zone.

You say tomato, I say tomato. Any point as this appears to be only quibbling?

The trolley is limited to only two paths; that is its crash zone. In both cases an individual makes a decision that controls where the plane or trolley will crash, and who will live and who will die.

The plane case is irrelevant in se. No moral dilemma. Perhaps you haven’t read all the posts. ???

I’m mystified by this. This is exactly what the bystander does.

Np mystery, just no moral dilemma in the choice facing the pilot as you have laid out the case.

You keep applying labels to my arguments instead of trying to rebut them.

No, I let JPII and Aquinas rebut.

This is why introducing undefined terms simply confuses things.

Silly. Now the “final end” term does really confuse. Whatever do you mean by that. Certainly not the Catholic morality meaning.

The catechism defines behavior that is moral and immoral. It doesn’t provide caveats when the danger is natural as distinct from contrived. Our behavior is controlled by the same restrictions as to what we may legitimately do. That you define the plane case as “managing a physical evil” is not an extenuating circumstance that allows behavior for the pilot otherwise forbidden to the bystander.

What? Talk about undefined terms. What is “danger that is natural”? Do you mean “physical evil”? What is a “contrived danger”?

 

[o_mlly]

I do not understand how in one place you can say the bystander can and should kill the fewest who are in peril and then accuse him of directly killing an innocent person when he takes the only action available to him to achieve that end.

Please quote me rather than paraphrase poorly. I’ve asked you to not “straw man” me before.

I never wrote, “the bystander can and should kill the fewest who are in peril”. Please stop the high school debating tactics. It is you and the other consequentialists on this thread who think the bystander should kill anyone. What I wrote is:

There is no “who” in your pilot’s choice; his only goal is to kill the “fewest” who are in peril. The bystander can and should do the same.

Who is in peril in the trolley case? Only the ones presently on the same track as the trolley. If the bystander could then he should try to save as many of the persons on that track just as your pilot should do.

A change to the trolley case to draw out the issue between the consequentilaist and Catholics on this thread. If the consequentialists care to opine, we should see unanimity in their posts.

The madwoman who tied everyone to the tracks is present. She has a remote control that will stop the trolley. She says to the bystander, “Fornicate with me and I’ll stop the trolley and nobody will die”. What should the bystander do?

Or, if that is too intrinsically evil to contemplate, she says, “Whack the one on the track repeatedly in the head with this sledge hammer until he’s dead and I will stop the trolley so the others will not die.

Just how dirty can the bystander’s hands get before he does the right thing, which is nothing?

If the consequentialists are consistent in choosing to minimize the loss of human life, the bystander will do anything as long as the body count favors the living. Not so the with faithful Catholics.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

Who is in peril in the trolley case? Only the ones presently on the same track as the trolley.

Who is in peril in the airplane case? Only the people directly ahead as the plane is flying now. The ones to the right and to the left are not in peril. But if the pilot turns the plane, they become in peril. Similarly, the one man on the other track is not initially in peril, but he becomes in peril when the bystander throws the switch. It is exactly the same. The “Kill Zone” definition, if followed uniformly, yields these answer for these two cases. (Of course o_mlly will not see this post.)

 

[LeafByNiggle]

A change to the trolley case to draw out the issue between the consequentilaist and Catholics on this thread. If the consequentialists care to opine, we should see unanimity in their posts.

The madwoman who tied everyone to the tracks is present. She has a remote control that will stop the trolley. She says to the bystander, “Fornicate with me and I’ll stop the trolley and nobody will die”. What should the bystander do?

This change to the trolley problem does not prove that throwing the switch is wrong.

In this modification, agreeing to the madwoman’s demand is wrong for a reason that does not apply to the original trolley problem. Compliance with the manwoman is wrong because the means of saving lives is committing a sin. The evil of that sin is not merely a consequence of saving lives. It is the means. That is explicitly not allowed by the principle of double effect.

But now that you have brought into the problem the possibility of a remote control that could save everyone, if the bystander is smart he will throw switch (in case what follows fails) and try to wrestle the control away from the manwoman and save everyone before the one man on the other track is struck. It might not work. But then again, it might. It is worth trying, and it does not require using evil as the means of accomplishing good.

 

[Ender]

You’ve just changed the act, tell us nothing about the moral object of that act, told us nothing about intent or circumstances surrounding that act and then tell us no one would believe a judgement never made about the morality of that act exactly because you have not offered the essentials necessary to judge the act’s morality. What is your point?

In the case where the pilot chose to hit the house instead of the high rise you said “No matter who dies in the plane crash, the pilot’s act indirectly kills them.” If that was true then for choosing the house why is it not true in the case where he chooses the high rise? The point of changing that scenario was to show that your argument was invalid.

Here’s your reply to @Rau a couple of years ago admitting that electrocution directly kills the innocent one and astonishingly claiming that the the trolley does not. At least now you are consistent in your error.

My real error here was in making assumptions about your less than well defined scenario:

the rails are wired to conduct lethal levels of electric current. The switch presently directs the current to the five. The switch will redirect the current form the five to the one.

So, if the switch currently directs current to the five as in your scenario they are already dead. I assumed you meant something else, which I took to be the current would be sent only when the trolley reached the switch. It appears you were trying to set up a condition where the five are saved by the death of the one, a situation already described and rejected by whoever it was who said you could not throw a person off an overpass in order to throw the switch. You cannot kill one person as the means to save the five. In which case my reply to Rau still stands: “Throwing a track switch puts a person in a position to get run over, but throwing the switch doesn’t actually kill someone.”

Your argument hinges on the fact of whether or not the bystander’s act directly kills an innocent one.

You see? We can agree on something.

You say no and rather than address the fact in the moral object, you place the unpleasant fact in the circumstance font…

By unpleasant fact I assume you mean consequences?

…JPII, St. Thomas disagree.

The consequences are included in the circumstances, and neither JPII nor Aquinas say otherwise. I really don’t think there is any other way to understand this statement:

1754 The circumstances, including the consequences, are secondary elements of a moral act….

 

[Ender]

The pilot ought make the choice in which he foresees the fewest die.

It is still incomprehensible to me how this can be the right choice for the pilot and immoral for the bystander to do exactly the same thing. You assert that a difference exists but your rationale is inadequate to support your claim. “Outside the kill zone”? Where is the moral justification for this distinction? You can justify the pilot choosing his target - choosing who will live and who will die - but condemn that bystander for making the same choice.

You cannot justify the pilot’s action because he is responding to a “physical evil”. The physical evil determines that someone will die, but it is the pilot’s free choice that determines who that will be, and that choice can be moral or immoral. It is also irrelevant why the situation exists, whether it was bad luck or maliciousness doesn’t matter; the pilot’s choice and his action will be judged by the same standard in either case.

Nor does it matter whether someone tied those people on different tracks or it was just natural forces: the situation exists and the proper response is the same regardless.

 

[Ender]

If the pilot’s act is as specified, if the intention is good and Ender has not withheld some circumstance from us that is evil then nothing the pilot chooses to do is evil. He has no moral dilemma.

But this is demonstrably false, as I tried to point out by having the pilot select the apartment building instead of the house. If he did that no one would consider his action not to be evil. Clearly the pilot can choose between evil and good. He doesn’t get a free pass because of a “physical evil” - “moral evil” distinction. It really is difficult to understand how you can say that a person who is choosing who will live and who will die doesn’t face a moral dilemma.

The bystander decides on the morality of an act that has good and evil outcomes. That is a moral choice. The church offers ample teachings on how one ought to make that choice.

The pilot decides based, on his present knowledge (practical wisdom), the act which will cause the fewest deaths. That is a prudential choice.

What is the “good” outcome the bystander can choose? There are only two possible outcomes: one dies or five die. Are you suggesting the “good” outcome is where the most people die?

The plane case is irrelevant in se. No moral dilemma. Perhaps you haven’t read all the posts. ???

I have read the posts, and they contain assertions, not arguments. No moral dilemma? Everyone would rightfully condemn a pilot who took no action to avoid killing large numbers of people. How is it not a moral choice not to act in such a situation?

What? Talk about undefined terms. What is “danger that is natural”? Do you mean “physical evil”? What is a “contrived danger”?

The origin of the evil/danger is irrelevant to our choices in responding to it. Our moral choices in responding to that evil are not altered by its origin, by whether the evil is physical or otherwise. That distinction is irrelevant.

 

[Latin]

Can we agree that a physical evil (malfunctioning plane that kills innocents) involves no human agency and that a moral evil (a human act that kills innocents) are essentially different?

Of course I can agree with that, moral evil (a human act that kills innocents) are essentially different. – Please see in my post below letter (C ).
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We have to know the exact scenarios of (a), (b), (C ):

(a) Malfunctioning plane that kills innocents, no human agency involved.

Only one agent in the scenario (uncontrollable malfunctioning plane), the plane out of control, human agency cannot be involved.

The pilot neither directly nor indirectly kills anyone.
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(b) Two agents in the scenario (partially malfunctioning plane + the pilot), pilot is able to choose a different impact point, if the pilot does nothing the plane kills a very large crowd of people, if the pilot acts he is able to take the plane to a different impact point where only a few people.

If the pilot does nothing this few people are not in danger, if the pilot acts, these few people are killed.

The pilot INDIRECTLY kills a few people, he cannot even stop the killing.
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(C ) One agent in the scenario (only the pilot), with the perfectly functioning plane he kills as many people as he can.
The pilot is a DIRECT killer.

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SUMMARY

When there is an INDIRECT killing IN A CASE, always two agents acting together, one agent is the DIRECT killer and the other agent is the INDIRECT killer. – Scenario (b).
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If one agent is in the killing he is always the DIRECT killer. – Scenario (a + c).
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The case of the trolley is IDENTICAL with the above scenario (b).
Two agent acting together (the trolley or who arranged it + the bystander).

The trolley or who arranged it is the DIRECT killer and the bystander is the INDIRECT killer, he cannot even stop the killing.

The bystander acting the exact same way as the pilot acting in scenario (b), evaluates the case and minimize the killing, good and moral act.

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The case of the surgeon is IDENTICAL with the above scenario (b).
Two agent acting together (the baby’s wrong position + the surgeon).

The baby’s wrong position is the DIRECT killer and the surgeon is the INDIRECT killer.

An ongoing debate in Catholic circles is whether the administration of the drug methotrexate is an ethical solution to ectopic pregnancy.
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CONCLUSION

The DIRECT killer is the baby’s wrong position, so whatever the surgeon choose, to remove the fallopian tube or methotrexate to terminate the pregnancy he is still the INDIRECT killer.

The very best way to terminate the pregnancy is the use of methotrexate, because It is less invasive than surgery and the patient can be managed on an outpatient basis.

Furthermore, because it doesn’t remove the fallopian tube, the woman’s fertility is preserved.

To remove of the fallopian tube KILLS THE POSSIBILITY of another baby, when it is not necessary to remove of the fallopian tube and still remove it, it is the most evil act of all!!!

For the above reasons, methotrexate is suggested as THE BEST treatment for ectopic pregnancy.
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God bless