Your moral standards matter more than the lives of people
My moral standards are that peoples’ lives are important, so killing them is wrong. That’s why I don’t accept that there is a good reason to bomb civilians.
My moral standards are not that you can say “well, killing people is wrong, but I prefer these people, so I will sacrifice others”. If killing people is wrong, you do not accept sacrifice.
And my level of understanding of reality is that the trolley problem is a thought experiment which does not exist, and it’s not a zero sum either/or game where the safety of people in America is only ensured by sacrificing people in the Middle East.
Source: medium
In 1976, Judith J. Thomson expanded the problem into the classic version that most of us know today.
Would you push a fat man off a bridge to stop a runaway trolley from killing 5 workers on the tracks?
This version is not just about switching tracks, but brings the moral issue much closer to home by saying if you want to save 5 people, you yourself have to push someone off a bridge.
To make matters worse, these are also the only two choices that you have. There is nothing else you can do; there is no escaping the problem.
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Like many philosophy instructors, I have given this thought experiment to my students many times. In my philosophy classes, Students of all levels and ages are repulsed by the experiment. They think that it is stupid that there are only two choices and that there is nothing else they can do.
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But something I have never seen given much consideration is the initial response that my students and so many others have to the problem.
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Our intuition is that if we are in a lose-lose moral situation where the right moral action does not feel satisfactory, then someone else made a bad moral decision already; leaving us holding the bag.
You are free to dislike me because I don’t rationalise myself into supporting something I, in the same sentence, say I do not agree with.
I am a very straightforward person, being autistic. If it is wrong to kill innocent people, it is wrong to kill innocent people. No amount of rationalising that can change that obvious fact.
You are a slave to a practical human world wherein, to be good, some humans must die. ‘Le shrug, oh well, it is the price of being practical.’
My moral standards are that peoples’ lives are important, so killing them is wrong. That’s why I don’t accept that there is a good reason to bomb civilians.
My moral standards are not that you can say “well, killing people is wrong, but I prefer these people, so I will sacrifice others”. If killing people is wrong, you do not accept sacrifice.
And my level of understanding of reality is that the trolley problem is a thought experiment which does not exist, and it’s not a zero sum either/or game where the safety of people in America is only ensured by sacrificing people in the Middle East.
Source: medium
You are free to dislike me because I don’t rationalise myself into supporting something I, in the same sentence, say I do not agree with.
I am a very straightforward person, being autistic. If it is wrong to kill innocent people, it is wrong to kill innocent people. No amount of rationalising that can change that obvious fact.
You are a slave to a practical human world wherein, to be good, some humans must die. ‘Le shrug, oh well, it is the price of being practical.’