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BlackFriar
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Rau
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At least one of has. Like I said before, if you have a contribution - just make it. Perhaps the site is presenting the discussion texts to us differently??
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BlackFriar
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@Rau would be interested in your view of this one also.
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BlackFriar
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Ah, just playing games then.
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Rau
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I presume you need to end the threat as opposed to kill, though lethal options may be all you possess. Do your best!
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Rau
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That’s because you’ve presumed my post was in answer to a particular question - which it was not.
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BlackFriar
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If you cannot intelligently take a person seriously no one will take you seriously.
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Rau
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If you wish to make a contribution to the thread (recognizable as such) I will take you seriously.
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whyeyeman
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Murder is wrong. Even if it saves 4 people’s lives.
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BlackFriar
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Suddenly you have gone coy on the somewhat technical analytic assertions you were making previously to back your approach. e.g.
Runaway trolley problem Moral Theology
My question was:
Its a fair question, your haven’t really stepped up to surely?
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Rau
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Such a 3 year-old is not “innocent” (as the term is applied in this context); just as the psychologically disturbed is not “innocent” when wielding a knife toward my heart; so lethal force may be admissible. We both know this.
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Rau
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Are you asking about the morality of the atomic bombing of a city? This is often debated. My view is that such bombing was the direct and voluntary killing of innocent civilians and its execution during a war does not change its moral character. The dropping of this bomb was inherently directed to the killing of large numbers of innocent people [a moral evil], not to a legitimate military target. “Any act of war aimed indiscriminately at the destruction of entire cities of extensive areas along with their population is a crime against God and man himself. It merits unequivocal and unhesitating condemnation.” Gaudium et Spes [80]
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o_mlly
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So, your position is to claim that the two (bystander and the one tied to the track) both act justly in committing lethal acts, one against the other. But the death of anyone is an evil. You claim that the death of either or both at the hands of the other is merely a physical evil. That is, regardless of outcomes, no moral evil exists in the acts of bystander or innocent person. Really?
You justify the bystander by his good intention and justify the one on the track by his right to self-defense. But the right to lethally self-defend is only in the presence of a lethally unjust act. Your position has an internal inconsistency.
Your analysis, I think, confuses the moral meaning of the words “deliberate” and “intention” as if they word were synonyms. They are not. Murder is a always a deliberate act regardless of intention. That is, one murders if one deliberates, that is foresees the act as the means to the death of an innocent person and freely chooses to commit that act. Throwing the switch is the means to the death of the innocent person. (The excision of diseased body tissue is not the means to the death of the fetus.)
“Deliberate” means freely, that is the actor could act otherwise. In examining the moral object of an act, the criteria are the foreseeable outcomes and the freedom of the actor to act otherwise. The moral object is always independent of the intention and includes all foreseeable outcomes as deliberate, that is willed. The moral object of an act is fixed for all actors, regardless of any one actor’s good or evil intention.
Note that the instruction does not mention intention. The intention font indicates the first goal of a particular actor. A particular actor may have a good or evil intention but a good or evil intention does not change the moral species of the act. A deliberate murder can never be justified by of a good intention. The bystander who deliberately throws the switch murders the innocent person.
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BlackFriar
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So the question was an exploration for discovery of the principles of what makes for innocence. And whether there is a form of passive aggression validly predicated of the “innocent” by reason of the inherent teleology of a situation even if it be outside of their choosing and control.
It would seem there can be.
Others can cause them to be passive aggressors.
It may be possible to say the one tied to the track is an aggressor of the lives of the five thanks to the madman who roped him there.
If wise and intelligent people can validy disagree over innocents at Hiroshima then the above may surely be reasonably asserted also.
It would seem there can be.
Others can cause them to be passive aggressors.
It may be possible to say the one tied to the track is an aggressor of the lives of the five thanks to the madman who roped him there.
If wise and intelligent people can validy disagree over innocents at Hiroshima then the above may surely be reasonably asserted also.
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BlackFriar
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If this is not referring to the intention font, and a direct one at that, then I dont know what is! I believe you have got this one completely wrong.
One cannot deliberately murder without directly intending that object…i.e. unjustly killing the innocent.
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BlackFriar
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Its an interesting hypothesis by Ender I have never seen discussed before.
It may be logically possible.
Like the two planes and the border skirmish I mentioned above … perhaps both are not objectively acting imorally in attempting to kill each other in self defence. Yet zooming out to Gods perspective its easy to think that only one can be objectively right.
It is of no significance that a objective physical evil becomes a certain outcome. That doesnt necessitate one person has to be committing an objective immoral act, even non culpably.
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BlackFriar
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Something seems confused here.
The two “criteria” you mention (consequences and freedom) sound like the two other moral fonts to me (circumstances and intent/purpose).
That being so they are not the criteria for examining the object font at all. They are co-criteria (along with the object) for examining the morality of the act as a whole.
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Ender
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Yes, I understand your position: we may not commit an intrinsically evil act for any reason. The question, however, is what makes throwing the switch an evil act? The death of the one person on the other track? Not specifically inasmuch as the doctor’s operation that leads to the death of the fetus is not immoral. Because the other person is “targeted”? What exactly does that mean? There was no intent to cause his death, and the action was not committed with that as a specific end, so what constitutes “targeting”? The inevitability of his death does not mean it was intended since the death of the fetus is just as inevitable, and we know that that death is allowable.
Your answer also assumes that allowing four people to die when it is within your power to save them is not also intrinsically evil. You have two choices: act overtly or act passively. You assume it is only the overt act that is evil; I contend the passive act is at the very least equally immoral. That you were not the cause of the situation does not absolve you of the responsibility for your choice, and it is far from clear that choosing that four to die rather than one is preferable.
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Elf01
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In general I agree with you on this, but we know that we can’t commit an intrinsically evil act in order to save lives (removing the tube as opposed to an injection that will kill the baby).
The disagreement with @Rau is not over whether it is right to save four people but if the means of saving them are intrinsically evil or not.
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