Jack's answers to moral dilemmas
Dec. 10th, 2010 04:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackThere are many moral dilemmas of the form "given this unpalatable choice, how would you rate the choices?" Although I'm blessed with rarely facing such hard choices in real life (which does tend to give you a more pragmatic and less idealistic view) I find it interesting to track how my answers change over time.
A typical example would be: "A group of people from your village are hiding from insurgents who will slaughter you all if you're found. You're caring for a patient who has just become delirious and you can't shut them up and their cries are going to bring the soldiers. Do you keep him as quiet as possible and hope the soldiers somehow overlook the group? Or smother him and hope he somehow survives?"
There are many variations on this theme, for instance:
* Are you in a position of authority over the patient?
* Are you in a position of authority over the group?
* Is the dilemma horrendously contrived? (eg. "do you push person X onto the train track to stop a train full of people going over a cliff")
* Are the outcomes presented as certainties or high probabilities?
* Is the patient a volunteer or a soldier? An adult? A child? A baby?
* Does the patient stand a high chance of survival if you're caught? Any chance?
My responses now would generally be:
1. Death is bad.
2. Stuff you do carries more moral weight than stuff you merely don't prevent. (I know this doesn't make sense, but it seems to be how everyone thinks.)
3. You should choose the lesser of two evils. (Some sort of utilitarianism, given the various rankings of the other premises.)
4. "I thought of another way out of the situation" is an interesting tangent, but not an interesting answer to the question. The question is supposed to be "what would you do if there isn't". If you're genuinely unable to imagine that, say so explicitly, don't just keep pointing out "clever" answers.
5. Impinging on people's personal autonomy carries more moral weight. (Imposing a downside or a benefit on someone is worse than someone accepting it consensually.)
6. The moral weights above are deliberately quantified: I don't think I have a good heuristic for saying when one outweighs the other as the question demands, other than sensing an individual situation. Only those you're regularly faced with get rules of thumb.
7. There are great benefits in holding to general ideals as much as possible, even if they break down in situations like this. Even if there are situations where you would abandon pacifism (and I think there are), deliberately downplaying those (to yourself and others) is often an integral part in implementing your pacifism. I am very cautious of self-deception: I think it's better to have a general idea of when you may have to reevaluate your beliefs so you don't become fanatic, but I also think there is a lot to be gained by embracing them and not over-concentrating on their limitations. I think society benefits from a range between idealists and pragmatists, and that it's unfortunately implausible to find a "perfect" moral code which everyone can agree on.
8. However, I think that even if people disagree about many fundamental questions, there are vast, vast swathes of morality where everyone mostly agrees on the answers, even if they have different details, and to some extent society is a game of keeping everyone within that sphere.
A typical example would be: "A group of people from your village are hiding from insurgents who will slaughter you all if you're found. You're caring for a patient who has just become delirious and you can't shut them up and their cries are going to bring the soldiers. Do you keep him as quiet as possible and hope the soldiers somehow overlook the group? Or smother him and hope he somehow survives?"
There are many variations on this theme, for instance:
* Are you in a position of authority over the patient?
* Are you in a position of authority over the group?
* Is the dilemma horrendously contrived? (eg. "do you push person X onto the train track to stop a train full of people going over a cliff")
* Are the outcomes presented as certainties or high probabilities?
* Is the patient a volunteer or a soldier? An adult? A child? A baby?
* Does the patient stand a high chance of survival if you're caught? Any chance?
My responses now would generally be:
1. Death is bad.
2. Stuff you do carries more moral weight than stuff you merely don't prevent. (I know this doesn't make sense, but it seems to be how everyone thinks.)
3. You should choose the lesser of two evils. (Some sort of utilitarianism, given the various rankings of the other premises.)
4. "I thought of another way out of the situation" is an interesting tangent, but not an interesting answer to the question. The question is supposed to be "what would you do if there isn't". If you're genuinely unable to imagine that, say so explicitly, don't just keep pointing out "clever" answers.
5. Impinging on people's personal autonomy carries more moral weight. (Imposing a downside or a benefit on someone is worse than someone accepting it consensually.)
6. The moral weights above are deliberately quantified: I don't think I have a good heuristic for saying when one outweighs the other as the question demands, other than sensing an individual situation. Only those you're regularly faced with get rules of thumb.
7. There are great benefits in holding to general ideals as much as possible, even if they break down in situations like this. Even if there are situations where you would abandon pacifism (and I think there are), deliberately downplaying those (to yourself and others) is often an integral part in implementing your pacifism. I am very cautious of self-deception: I think it's better to have a general idea of when you may have to reevaluate your beliefs so you don't become fanatic, but I also think there is a lot to be gained by embracing them and not over-concentrating on their limitations. I think society benefits from a range between idealists and pragmatists, and that it's unfortunately implausible to find a "perfect" moral code which everyone can agree on.
8. However, I think that even if people disagree about many fundamental questions, there are vast, vast swathes of morality where everyone mostly agrees on the answers, even if they have different details, and to some extent society is a game of keeping everyone within that sphere.