Using Trends to Make a Moral Decision?

[thewanderer]

You have cited an amoral choice, which means you did not address the issue.

Because of the nature of this issue, the burden of proof is not on me to show that the principle is true; bringing out fifty examples would prove nothing. If you can cite one truly moral act where it is clearly appropriate to consider the trend of how other people–all sorts of people, this is different than seeking the (name removed by moderator)ut of multiple respected friends–have chosen to act, then you will have shown the principle to be false.

Furthermore, if you maintain that trends ought to factor into moral decisions, then please apply that principle to the following case:
You, a friend, and 20 strangers are prohibited from leaving a convenience store by the manager whose keen eye revealed to him that a special object had been snatched. The manager asks each person whether they took it or know who took it; all said “no.” You are the last to be questioned. You know that your friend has the object, and you know that most of the people in the store are aware as well. How do you decide what to do?

If you don’t like that hypothetical, please propose one.

You are definitely making some assumptions here. Voting for the person who is Romney is not objectively immoral. Therefore, whether or not one votes for Romney must be determined by other circumstances, such as what he plans to do as president and whether voting for Romney will be better for the country than voting for any of the other candidates. In this matter people are to use their own judgement and reason. If their reason tells them that voting for the person who is Romney will be best for America ** then they are bound by conscience to vote for him**. End of story. Just because the fact that many others will vote for him was one of the factors they considered in using their own personal reason to determine how their vote would effect the good of the country does not change the fact that they are choosig who to vote for based off of their own reasoning and conscience as to who they feel will be best for the country. Your example of choosing to follow a course of action because it is the trend is wrong to do ** precisely** because he individual involved is ignoring his own reasoning and concsience. However, that is ** not** the case with the example of voting for Romney because your own reason tells you that he is the best candidate to vote for. I’m sorry, but as i pointed out in my earlier post, your previous reasoning just does not apply in this case.

 

[thewanderer]

thewanderer, you wrote: “not voting for him would be worse for the country.” In saying that, you are citing the future as the reason. First, there is no objective certainty about the future, which nullifies your reason, but it goes deeper.

What the future will be depends very largely on just the choice which you now invoke the future to help you make.

Nonsense. Damned Nonsense.

If that weren’t enough, it sets up a self-fulfilling prophecy. “No third party can win…therefore I won’t vote for a third party…therefore no third party can win.”

More damned nonsense.

Of course our perception of what will happen in the future ought to determine our actions. To claim otherwise is ridiculous.

As to the self-fulfilling prophecy, yes, it is a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy, but that doesn’t make it any less true for a particular person at a particular time. As I said earlier, this is my biggest pet peeve about the American voting system, but just because I don’t lime it doesn’t change he fact that this is the way it is. We live in a fallen, not a perfect world and we will never get perfection from any political system. Instead you work with what you’ve got to achieve the best you can with it. That’s how life works.

 

[clem456]

Of course it is okay to do so. Aritstotle himself in many places (especially in his “Rhetoric”) says that most men reach the truth and that one should follow how most people use a word, and that what happens mostly is natural, etc. So it only seems likely that when you can’t think of any other way to approach a problem, then you should follow what most people are doing.

What if the crowd is wrong? What if you live in a decadent society where children are inconveniences to sex, and most people think it is ok to murder them so the licentious lifestyle can be continued? Does that make it ok to murder because the majority has no moral compass?

 

[dvrcthewrld]

You are definitely making some assumptions here. Voting for the person who is Romney is not objectively immoral. Therefore, whether or not one votes for Romney must be determined by other circumstances, such as what he plans to do as president and whether voting for Romney will be better for the country than voting for any of the other candidates. In this matter people are to use their own judgement and reason. If their reason tells them that voting for the person who is Romney will be best for America ** then they are bound by conscience to vote for him**. End of story. Just because the fact that many others will vote for him was one of the factors they considered in using their own personal reason to determine how their vote would effect the good of the country does not change the fact that they are choosig who to vote for based off of their own reasoning and conscience as to who they feel will be best for the country. Your example of choosing to follow a course of action because it is the trend is wrong to do ** precisely** because he individual involved is ignoring his own reasoning and concsience. However, that is ** not** the case with the example of voting for Romney because your own reason tells you that he is the best candidate to vote for. I’m sorry, but as i pointed out in my earlier post, your previous reasoning just does not apply in this case.

thewanderer, I wasn’t addressing you with the post you’ve quoted here. Sorry for any confusion. It was a response to Pug.

 

[thewanderer]

What if the crowd is wrong? What if you live in a decadent society where children are inconveniences to sex, and most people think it is ok to murder them so the licentious lifestyle can be continued? Does that make it ok to murder because the majority has no moral compass?

If you note the last sentence in his post, thoughts in trends are not to be relied upon as solid proof for something, this is for the very reason you bring up sometimes the majority is wrong about something. But it is true that looking at what most people say will usually set you in the generally correct direction, and becaus of this, if you have no other way o determining what is right then you can use you reason to say that since more people believe it and since a large number of people usually head in at least he general direction of the correct answer, and so decide to go with it. Trends should never replace reason, but they can aid and complement reason.

 

[dvrcthewrld]

What if the crowd is wrong? What if you live in a decadent society where children are inconveniences to sex, and most people think it is ok to murder them so the licentious lifestyle can be continued? Does that make it ok to murder because the majority has no moral compass?

clem, your objection is reasonable. The person you’ve quoted failed to consider that we are talking strictly about moral choices.

 

[thewanderer]

thewanderer, I wasn’t addressing you with the post you’ve quoted here. Sorry for any confusion. It was a response to Pug.

Yes, I realize it was a response to Pug, but I still wanted to address what you said in it. This is a public forum so you must expect other people to respond to your posts even if you were not directly addressing them.

 

[dvrcthewrld]

Of course our perception of what will happen in the future ought to determine our actions. To claim otherwise is ridiculous.

As to the self-fulfilling prophecy, yes, it is a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy, but that doesn’t make it any less true for a particular person at a particular time. As I said earlier, this is my biggest pet peeve about the American voting system, but just because I don’t lime it doesn’t change he fact that this is the way it is. We live in a fallen, not a perfect world and we will never get perfection from any political system. Instead you work with what you’ve got to achieve the best you can with it. That’s how life works.

I suppose I needed to be more direct in my approach and not assume you would draw the meaning out; I apologize. Yes, our reasonable expectations about future consequence should help shape our decisions. * But let’s look again at what you wrote: “…not voting for him would be worse for the country.”

First, I must assume that of numerous possible meanings, you meant that “[An individual] not voting for him would be worse for the country.” Why must I assume thus? Simple: because only individuals vote, and we’re talking about each individual deciding how to vote. (If you meant otherwise, you can say so, but then I’ll have no response because you will have not addressed the topic.)

Now, what did you mean by “worse”? I feel more than certain that you were referring to the idea that a Romney loss, which happens if too few people vote for him, means an Obama win. Essentially: “Obama is worse than Romney, and we’ll get Obama if too few people vote for Romney.” If I’m wrong about what you meant by “worse,” correct me before reading further.

Here’s the thing, as if I need to tell you: one vote has never decided the election of a U.S. President, and even if it will, there’s no way to know that ahead of time. If I vote for Gary Johnson and Romney wins, did my “not voting for [Romney]” make the country worse? Or how about: If I vote for Gary Johnson and Gary Johnson wins, did my “not voting for [Romney]” make the country worse? In both cases of my personal moral act of voting for Gary Johnson, Obama loses and the country is not “worse.”

This is why your appeal to the future to decide what to do now to affect the future is nonsense.

[Also, Romney’s total privation of integrity is not grounds for claiming the country will be better under him than Obama.]*

 

[dvrcthewrld]

You are definitely making some assumptions here. Voting for the person who is Romney is not objectively immoral…

Where did I say that anything in particular was objectively immoral?

 

[thewanderer]

Where did I say that anything in particular was objectively immoral?

I’m sorry if I was not clear enough, I was not claiming that you said this, this was a part of my explanation of what the correct way to look at this situation is.

I suppose I needed to be more direct in my approach and not assume you would draw the meaning out; I apologize. Yes, our reasonable expectations about future consequence should help shape our decisions. * But let’s look again at what you wrote: “…not voting for him would be worse for the country.”

First, I must assume that of numerous possible meanings, you meant that “[An individual] not voting for him would be worse for the country.” Why must I assume thus? Simple: because only individuals vote, and we’re talking about each individual deciding how to vote. (If you meant otherwise, you can say so, but then I’ll have no response because you will have not addressed the topic.)

Now, what did you mean by “worse”? I feel more than certain that you were referring to the idea that a Romney loss, which happens if too few people vote for him, means an Obama win. Essentially: “Obama is worse than Romney, and we’ll get Obama if too few people vote for Romney.” If I’m wrong about what you meant by “worse,” correct me before reading further.

Here’s the thing, as if I need to tell you: one vote has never decided the election of a U.S. President, and even if it will, there’s no way to know that ahead of time. If I vote for Gary Johnson and Romney wins, did my “not voting for [Romney]” make the country worse? Or how about: If I vote for Gary Johnson and Gary Johnson wins, did my “not voting for [Romney]” make the country worse? In both cases of my personal moral act of voting for Gary Johnson, Obama loses and the country is not “worse.”

This is why your appeal to the future to decide what to do now to affect the future is nonsense.

[Also, Romney’s total privation of integrity is not grounds for claiming the country will be better under him than Obama.]*

Just so we are clear here, I am not trying to argue that everyone should vote for Romney. What I am doing is defending those who wish to vote for Romney, even if he is not their favourite candidate when cosidering personality and positions, because they ultimately think it will be better for their country.

As to whether or not I was talking about an individual, of course I was. But your argument is a little misleading. Your argument assumes that my voting for someone has no effect. If this werre true then there is no point in any individual voting, which when taken to its full consequencces, means that we should get rid of the idea of voting politicians in because it is just a scam to make individuals think they actually have a say in things.

Look, esssentially, my point is that this:
dvrcthewrld;9903234:

So the consensus here is that I am obliged to choose the option that is, in my best judgment, the best.

Which is exactly what you correctly took to be the answer you were given, is precisely why this:

Choosing Romney because he has the statistically best chance of defeating Obama is immoral.

Your conclusion in the same post, is incorrect.

 

[Pug]

You have cited an amoral choice, which means you did not address the issue.

Because of the nature of this issue, the burden of proof is not on me to show that the principle is true; bringing out fifty examples would prove nothing. If you can cite one truly moral act where it is clearly appropriate to consider the trend of how other people–all sorts of people, this is different than seeking the (name removed by moderator)ut of multiple respected friends–have chosen to act, and how one ought to follow the trend, then you will have shown the principle to be false.

Furthermore, if you maintain that trends ought to factor into moral decisions, then please apply that principle to the following case:
You, a friend, and 20 strangers are prohibited from leaving a convenience store by the manager whose keen eye revealed to him that a special object had been snatched. The manager asks each person whether they took it or know who took it; all said “no.” You are the last to be questioned. You know that your friend has the object, and you know that most of the people in the store are aware as well. How do you decide what to do?

If you don’t like that hypothetical, please propose one.

First, before confusion ensues, I am not into rhetoric or formal debate. I pursue truth/understanding and try to be helpful if possible. You made a claim that leads me to suggest that you consider the quote that I will provide below your claim, mentioned here to help remind you.
the claim:

You won’t find a decent Catholic theologian or philosopher to deny one of the premises

d) One sometimes should vote for the less bad of two unworthy candidates. As explained above (in a), one usually should vote for good candidates even if they seem certain to lose. However, sometimes there are three or more candidates, no worthy candidate has any chance of winning, and the race is close between two unworthy candidates, one clearly worse than the other. Then, instead of voting for a worthy candidate as a mere gesture which will have little significant effect on the common good, one should try to prevent the election of the worse of the unworthy candidates by voting for his or her less bad opponent.

emphasis in original as some type of heading

I’d like to understand if you think Mr. Grisez is a worthy moral theologian and if you think he is violating your premises by thinking people ought to vote for the less bad opponent in the situation he describes. I only suggest to you that he might be violating your premises because the tone of this thread seems to be that his reasoning is exactly what you mean by violating those premises.

Hmmm. You requested another scenario. Perhaps the following will seem more about morality to you. (I’m not going to argue about if choosing to exit a building in a safe manner verses a non-safe manner along with the herd is a moral choice). How about choosing how to secure an education for your child? Catholics consider this their duty to do well, so I think it is a moral choice. If my options are a morally corrupt public school, a Catholic school, or homeschooling, I may find myself weighing between the Catholic school or homeschooling. The administration at the school is turning liberal these days, though, so I would reject the school, except this influence is mitigated by a solid, conservative student body and that I think my child will do fairly well in an active, full school as opposed to at home. But if all the conservative parents start making the decision to homeschool on account of the changes in administration, then the conservative student body is going to evaporate and be replaced with random kids or no kids, changing the balance for my decision. I end up homeschooling, even though I would not have if so many conservatives hadn’t jumped ship. (The label of “conservative” is chosen for convenience here. I’m hoping it won’t be a point of contention. If it is, just substitute a really long paragraph describing the families I have in mind.)

Note these conservative parents aren’t my close friends and advisors. It is not their actions that are *guiding *mine by way of advice. Rather, their actions as a group changed the circumstances of my choice, by altering what I perceived to be possible to achieve for my child at the available school.

 

[dvrcthewrld]

Pug,

I’m beginning to feel like this discussion is going nowhere. Your latest post is a perfect example of why.

I respect Mr. Grisez very much. You made a fine choice in him. However, he, atleast in the text you quoted, did not deny any one of the three premises in my syllogism. What he did was to espouse an idea contrary to my conclusion, which does not necessarily mean that he disagrees with a premise of mine. Rather, it is technically possible that he would disagree with a premise, but it is equally possible that he has not considered the issue along the lines that I have.

So, your quote, while given in good intention, was irrelevant to the matter, and so the discussion made no progress.

Likewise, with your new moral scenario. Sure, it was an improvement over the first, but it too is fatally flawed.

…if all the conservative parents start making the decision to homeschool on account of the changes in administration…

In the scenario, every parental unit makes a choice, whether their child/ren stay or go elsewhere. The instant that the first parental unit that chooses to pull their kid makes that choice, the situation is different, and you and every subsequent parental unit will be presented with a new choice than the one presented prior to the kid being pulled. Initially you are, hypothetically, presented a school with 800 conservative kids; a week later that number is down to 700. Those are not the same options, so they’re not the same decision made by different parental units. Obviously you can also see the potential for changing one’s mind. When you thought there would be 750 good kids, you wanted your child to attend the school. Now that you hear more kids have been pulled–the new count is 650–you change your mind.

Again, the discussion makes no progress. Still, I want to give it atleast one more shot.

Pug, if you wouldn’t mind, apply your principles to the act of voting on a marijuana initiative; the options are: prohibit, decriminalize, legalize. A moral question.

 

[Pug]

I’m beginning to feel like this discussion is going nowhere.

If it is any consolation, that’s how I felt for the first half of this thread.

Perhaps you are right that I do not understand your point and cannot help you. Perhaps I am misunderstanding your principle because you do not apply it as I would and because the thread was mysterious to start and trying to understand colored how I read it. I don’t make a moral decision based upon merely that other random people are making that same decision a certain way. That would be irrational. But how I act can be changed by the choices that I perceive are available to me and how I evaluate their utility. What people do, or what I anticipate they will do if I am forced to guess, may change what I think is reasonable.

Pug, if you wouldn’t mind, apply your principles to the act of voting on a marijuana initiative; the options are: prohibit, decriminalize, legalize. A moral question.

Meh, I have not researched marijuana, since it is not germane to my life, so I have no opinion on the morality of each choice as of this moment, so I cannot treat it as you would like.

Assume abortion is already fully legal and I can vote on three things, keep the status quo, change to abortion being illegal in all cases but rape and incest, or change to outlawing it entirely. I am on some legislative body of 99 lifetime members, all healthy and young. I realize there are 2 members who will vote to outlaw, 48 for rape and incest, and 49 for status quo. Everyone is entrenched and will stay that way for many years. When the issue comes for a vote, plurality wins. I think the 2 of us can get to together and change our vote and get rape and incest to pass, thus stopping many abortions over the next years, until we are all dead and out of office, whereupon hopefully more progress will be made and it will get outlawed because the new members grew up under rape and incest and have a much greater detestation of abortion that our old members. Yay! No more dead babies!

But I could be wrong. I’ve not considered myself as a legislator before :hypno:. I offer another quote out of sheer insanity. No, really, there is some remote chance you could find it relevant to your pursuits.

EVANGELIUM VITAE[/I]

]A particular problem of conscience can arise in cases where a legislative vote would be decisive for the passage of a more restrictive law, aimed at limiting the number of authorized abortions, in place of a more permissive law already passed or ready to be voted on. Such cases are not infrequent. It is a fact that while in some parts of the world there continue to be campaigns to introduce laws favouring abortion, often supported by powerful international organizations, in other nations-particularly those which have already experienced the bitter fruits of such permissive legislation-there are growing signs of a rethinking in this matter. In a case like the one just mentioned, when it is not possible to overturn or completely abrogate a pro-abortion law, an elected official, whose absolute personal opposition to procured abortion was well known, could licitly support proposals aimed at limiting the harm done by such a law and at lessening its negative consequences at the level of general opinion and public morality. This does not in fact represent an illicit cooperation with an unjust law, but rather a legitimate and proper attempt to limit its evil aspects.

In the scenario, every parental unit makes a choice, whether their child/ren stay or go elsewhere. The instant that the first parental unit that chooses to pull their kid makes that choice, the situation is different, and you and every subsequent parental unit will be presented with a new choice than the one presented prior to the kid being pulled. Initially you are, hypothetically, presented a school with 800 conservative kids; a week later that number is down to 700. Those are not the same options, so they’re not the same decision made by different parental units.Obviously you can also see the potential for changing one’s mind. When you thought there would be 750 good kids, you wanted your child to attend the school. Now that you hear more kids have been pulled–the new count is 650–you change your mind.

I can’t tell if your point is that the choices of others change the circumstances of your choice so that there is no way that you are making a choice under identical circumstances as someone else, or if your point is that if I made a choice and then I change my mind later, then the first choice wasn’t a moral choice and only the second counts as a moral choice. I think I disagree with the latter. As to the former, we don’t have to imagine the choices all lined up in a row. I wasn’t, in fact. I imagined a parent meeting and I got the trend of what people were saying/grumbling, and went home and made a decision based upon my expectation of some 70% of them bailing and my need to get moving if I’m going to homeshool. Yes, that decision could be later reversed if I found out more information and if the school still had room, but as I understand moral choices, I still had already made a choice that I am responsible for having made and it would be my fault if it was evil.

I do agree that if we all make our choices in a nice line that we end up making the choices in a different set of circumstances. The problem is that I don’t think of *national *elections as such that *all *the voters are facing the identical choice, but perhaps you do.

Anyway, enough time spent today.

 

[dvrcthewrld]

Pug,

You seem to believe that “Moral decisions should be affected by the trends of how other people make the same moral decision.” (If not, say what you do believe in principle.) Please, do me a favor, and apply that to another moral decision, a hypothetical:

Abortion is totally illegal in your state. The ballot in the coming election will present voters with three options: preserve the ban, allow some abortions (cases of rape, etc.), or totally legalize abortion. Polling shows that 46% of people are in favor of legalization, 43% favor allowing for some abortions, and 11% favor preserving the ban. How do you vote?

(Bear in mind that the Church teaches both that “the ends don’t justify the means,” and “the means don’t justify the ends.”)

 

[thewanderer]

dvrc, are you purposefully ignoring my post?

Look, you came on here trying to prove that it would be inherently immoral to vote for Romney because you believe he is the best candidate with a real shot at winning. You took the answers people gave you and twisted them to try and make them fit that scenario, but it just doesn’t work. You can go ahead and say that in your opinion it is better to not vote for Romeny even though you know that doing so will result in an even worse person being elected, but you cannot claim that it is inherently immoral to do so, especially using the responses you received on this thread, as I pointed out, those responses actually led to the exact opposite conclusion of that which you are trying to make. In other words, that it is actually in some cases the only moral option for a person.

Its one thing to try and convince someone they shouldn’t vote for Romney because of X,Y, and Z reasons, but don’t claim that factoring in the chance of his being elected into your decision making process is immoral, because thats just not true and has not been supported by anything you were told on this thread.

 

[dvrcthewrld]

you came on here trying to prove that it would be inherently immoral to vote for Romney because you believe he is the best candidate with a real shot at winning.

You’ll need to revise that statement. I neither believe it is inherently wrong to vote for Romney, nor do I believe that he is the best candidate.
I do contend that it is immoral to vote for a candidate who is not, in the voter’s best judgment, the best candidate.

Re-read the responses on the first page if you think the majority of respondents wrote that outside opinions determine morality.

don’t claim that factoring in the chance of his being elected into your decision making process is immoral, because thats just not true…

What I wrote to Pug applies to you as well.

Three Premises
Each moral decision ought to be based on the natural law.
Each moral decision should be unaffected by the trends of how other people make the same moral decision.
Voting is a moral act.
One Conclusion
Therefore, the act of voting ought to be based on the natural law and be unaffected by the trends of how other people vote.

You seem to object to the second premise. So answer the hypothetical I just posed to Pug.

 

[Pug]

Pug,

You seem to believe that “Moral decisions should be affected by the trends of how other people make the same moral decision.” (If not, say what you do believe in principle.) Please, do me a favor, and apply that to another moral decision, a hypothetical:

Abortion is totally illegal in your state. The ballot in the coming election will present voters with three options: preserve the ban, allow some abortions (cases of rape, etc.), or totally legalize abortion. Polling shows that 46% of people are in favor of legalization, 43% favor allowing for some abortions, and 11% favor preserving the ban. How do you vote?

(Bear in mind that the Church teaches both that “the ends don’t justify the means,” and “the means don’t justify the ends.”)

I’d vote to preserve the ban. But your question is odd to me because my ballots don’t arrive with three options on them for laws/propositions. We get stuff like, “Shall the constitution be amended to read blah blah blah? Check Yes or check No.” However, sometimes they factor in a failure to check either box via some formula. Are you speaking of such a formula to get three options?

No, I don’t support that “Moral decisions should be affected by the trends of how other people make the same moral decision.” I explained in my last post:

I don’t make a moral decision based upon merely that other random people are making that same decision a certain way. That would be irrational.

Then I gave you an example of how I do think with the 99. Are you of the opinion that I cannot vote as I described in my scenario about the 99?

 

[thewanderer]

You’ll need to revise that statement. I neither believe it is inherently wrong to vote for Romney, nor do I believe that he is the best candidate.
I do contend that it is immoral to vote for a candidate who is not, in the voter’s best judgment, the best candidate.

That is what I meant, I 'm sorry if I didn’t phrase it very clearly

Re-read the responses on the first page if you think the majority of respondents wrote that outside opinions determine morality.

I did reread them, and I honesstly cannot see how they can be taken to reach the conclusino that you use them for. To my understanding they actually say the exact opposite of what you think they do.

What I wrote to Pug applies to you as well.

Three Premises
Each moral decision ought to be based on the natural law.
Each moral decision should be unaffected by the trends of how other people make the same moral decision.
Voting is a moral act.
One Conclusion
Therefore, the act of voting ought to be based on the natural law and be unaffected by the trends of how other people vote.

You seem to object to the second premise. So answer the hypothetical I just posed to Pug.

Yes I certainly disagree with the sceond, and if you reread the responses that you received (and even look carefully at the way you originally worded your understanding of the responses) you can see that that is not at all what people said.

A better way to phrase the 2nd point is that each person must follow their own conscience and reason in making a moral decision rather than doing something simply because someone else is doing it, which fits with statements you have yourself made. So, when someones reason tells them that the chance a candidate has of winning the election ought to have a role to play in their decision making thenthey are following their own conscious and reason on this matter.

 

[StevenFrancis]

Is it right for one to base a moral decision on the trend of how other people are making the same decision? (I am asking about those moral decisions where one must use their best judgment, not “clear cut” issues like abortion or euthanasia.)

Moral decisions should be made on morality. Morality comes from natural law (God). While it is not all codified, it’s hard for me to imagine what isn’t at least covered by:

1. You shall love the Lord, your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.
2. You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

Or the beattitudes, or 10 commandments etc.

These are all incitements to the conscience. You shall also not violate a rightly formed conscience.

Morality is not based on trending, or analysis, or polling, or any other such thing.

Peace,

Steven

 

[dvrcthewrld]

I’d vote to preserve the ban. But your question is odd to me because my ballots don’t arrive with three options on them for laws/propositions. We get stuff like, “Shall the constitution be amended to read blah blah blah? Check Yes or check No.” However, sometimes they factor in a failure to check either box via some formula. Are you speaking of such a formula to get three options?

I understand the curiosity, but the logistics of how a ballot could practically present that choice is irrelevant to the discussion, is it not? So, moving on…

I don’t support that “Moral decisions should be affected by the trends of how other people make the same moral decision.” I explained in my last post:
I don’t make a moral decision based upon merely that other random people are making that same decision a certain way. That would be irrational.

In your ‘99’ example, you did not vote for a total ban on abortion, and you explained that, though you do hold that abortion ought to be illegal, you chose the ‘rape option’ because of the way that the other 98 were voting. If it were not for your understanding of the probable vote turnout, you would have voted perfectly inline with your conscience understanding of abortion’s inherent evil. (If you were asked to cast the same vote completely unaware of who was voting or the probable outcomes, you would have voted for the ban, wouldn’t you?)

Then, in the example I proposed–let’s call it the ‘11%’ example–you opted to vote for the ban.

So, because there is a definite scenario where probability influenced your moral vote and a scenario where it did not, I will concur with your declaration that you do not support the idea that “Moral decisions should be affected by the trends of how other people make the same moral decision.” Neither fully embracing nor rejecting the premise, you fall in-between. The in-between is expressed as:
“Moral decisions should sometimes be affected by the trends of how other people make the same moral decision.”

The question now becomes, “When, at what times, in what instances, is it appropriate to allow moral decisions to be affected by the trends of how other people make the same moral decision, and when is it inappropriate?” What is the governing principle to distinguish between the two?