So you’re saying “I have an answer, but I’m not going to tell you what it is.”. I repeat, the trolley strikes the man and kills him just as the withdrawal of nutrients and warmth kills the baby. If you have a reason to believe this is not so, please have the courtesy to say why you think so.LeafByNiggle:
Nope. Asked, answered and, apparently, ignored.
No, I wrote that I answered and you (pretend?) to ignore my answer. Your selective ignorance merely adds unnecessary posts to an already over-taxed thread. In charity, I must presume you are merely ignorant rather than demented or devious.
The trigger is designed to shoot a bullet. The bullet, if aimed at a person is designed to injure or kill.
I doubt you’ll agree but I’ll bring up war. I think either side (at least at lower levels) is morally permitted to defend themselves and their allies against enemy combatents regardless of the justice of the war.
Then why is the moral object in the trolley problem not to save the life of the five?
I know the object is more than throw a switch but given the purpose of the switch I would not rule out direct a trolley. That would be neutral.
We know this?
No more contrived than the trolley problem.
Right.
The airplanes that struck the World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon and crashed into a field in PA were not designed as weapons. We do not give the terrorists a pass on their choice of instruments to kill innocents so neither should we give a pass to the bystander. Most anything can be weaponized so I don’t think your analysis holds up.
Those who prosecute an unjust war are not morally permitted to defend themselves against the necessary force of just defenders to render their aggressors incapable of causing further harm.
No, the trolley case is concrete. We know what the bystander foresees, his intention and the circumstances. Only in abstract cases can we speak of a neutral human act. The moral object must be more than anything merely on the physical order. “Direct a trolley” is not the moral object. “Direct a trolley that kills an innocent person” is one of the two moral objects. No getting around that fact.
I would be willing to give my answer but a new thread I think is needed. We have all we need to resolve the OP in this thread.
It does not show any silliness in saying that the direct cause of death was being struck by the trolley, any more than saying the direct cause of death of the baby in the tube is the lack of nutrients. The little story you quoted just shows that being struck by the trolley was the result of a switch being thrown, just as the lack of nutrients was the result of the tube being excised.
The intent has always been to save the five.
The latter claim is demonstrably untrue. If we allow for the possibility of rescue after the switch is thrown it is clear that throwing the switch per se does not kill. In such a situation the person on the track has at least the possibility of survival, which is more than can be said of the fetus.
I’m not speaking of a neutral act. I’m speaking of a neutral object.
I would say the evil there is also on the intent font.
The OP does not make such an allowance. The bystander foresees, as stated in the trolley case, that throwing the switch directly kills the innocent person. Nor is it reasonable to think otherwise – the innocent person is immobile, the trolley is at speed and magnitudes greater in mass. Mass times velocity equals force. In this case the force is reasonably lethal.
Again, intent does not alter the moral objects of an act. The fonts are independent. Please stop conflating, that is not Catholic teaching.
“Inevitable” has nothing to do with “direct” as Pius XII clearly explained. In both surgical procedures, the death of the child is inevitable but one is permitted because the death of the child is indirect, the other not because the death of the child is direct.
If by “neutral object” you mean anything other than a moral agent then such a description does not meet the requirements necessary to define the moral object of a human act.
Agreed.
Agreed. However, for a human act to be good the act must be good in all three fonts. The act fails in its moral object. The direct killing of an innocent person is intrinsically evil and vitiates the act regardless of good intent and good circumstances.
You clearly are aware that the nature of acting is a key part of this. That’s not an assumption, you just wrote it. Yet you keep trying to avoid that issue and put the focus on other elements. You aren’t adapting to the discussion, you are attempting to force arbitrary and ill-fitting choices. If you are trying to act in good faith, you are doing a very bad job of it.
Are you Economist? If so, I would suggest that having a second account to participate in the same conversation is not a sign of good faith. If not, why are you responding to this?