(no subject)

[jackofallgeeks]

If Ethics is your thing (I'm thinking notably of Daniel and Nifer), I'd be facinated to know what your thoughts on These are.

Comments

[dikaiosunh.livejournal.com]

I'm not going to go through these one by one, but rather give some general comments.

I stand by my skepticism of the killing/letting-die distinction. Nonetheless, that doesn't mean that you should always save the greatest number or some such utilitarian principle. To get all technical, I think human lives are incommensurable goods. That is, while the morality of your action should be judged in terms of its consequences for human lives (and not whether those consequences are "direct" or not), you can't just add and subtract lives.

This has a couple implications, I think. First, Sophie's choice is a moral dilemma, but not for the reasons most folks tend to say it is. Of *course* she should choose one child rather than letting both die. But the choice between her children is a tragic one - it's a choice between two incomparable goods, and so something irreplaceable is lost either way. Either choice is one for which good reasons could be given, but against which strong reasons could also be given. As a result, I think the mother's regret is perfectly appropriate, though not necessarily *guilt* - she took the only morally apporpriate course, yet also committed a grave moral transgression. Unfortunately, morality is sometimes like that - cf Antigone, though that was an interpersonal clash of values, rather than an intrapersonal one.

At least, if you accept plural incommensurable values (as I do). I think anyone who tries to tell you that there's a neat way of reconciling truth and beauty, or justice and compassion, etc. is selling you a bill of goods.

It also has implications for the impartiality question. Friendship, love, etc. are perfectly respectable values that I can put in the mix with other values. In the case at hand, I think fairness should probably prevail, but that's not always going to be the case. In more serious cases, this might also generate moral tragedies - if I have to choose to save my friend or ten others, I may be able both to morally choose either yet be morally criticizable for choosing either. Taurek's classic "Should the Numbers Count?" is pretty good on some of these issues, though he doesn't feel the force of the tragedy.

On a different note, it pays not to conflate morality and law. If I could save a drowning man at minimal cost to myself, I'm not just a dick for not doing so, I'm evil to almost the same degree as if I'd pushed him in (depends on how minimal the cost of saving him is). But whether there should be a good samaritan *law* is a semi-empirical question: will the law actually encourage good samaritan behavior while not imposing too much of a cost on society at large or people who get accidentally caught by it, can we write the law such that it correctly identifies when such behavior is or is not required, etc... (this rant applies also to debates over parental- and spousal-notification laws for contraception and abortion, but that's a whole 'nother discussion)