I think that, in your scenario, most reasonable people would say the guy with the babies tied to him (lol!) would be liable for their deaths as he was the one that purposefully put them at risk. That's why I tried to change the original trolley case to remove the evil philosopher tying the guys to the tracks, but that the people just happened to be on the tracks (we don't know why).
JonBostwick: Richard A Garner: . However, one can revise the scenario such that B has an even bigger bomb that would kill far more people in the crowd if he threw it at A. In this case, the doctrine of double effect seems to justify A throwing his bomb at B. I disagree. The premise assumes that individuals have perfect knowledge of the future. I have no way of truly knowing how someone else will act or if my actions achieve a smaller amount of damage.
Richard A Garner: . However, one can revise the scenario such that B has an even bigger bomb that would kill far more people in the crowd if he threw it at A. In this case, the doctrine of double effect seems to justify A throwing his bomb at B.
. However, one can revise the scenario such that B has an even bigger bomb that would kill far more people in the crowd if he threw it at A. In this case, the doctrine of double effect seems to justify A throwing his bomb at B.
I disagree.
The premise assumes that individuals have perfect knowledge of the future. I have no way of truly knowing how someone else will act or if my actions achieve a smaller amount of damage.
Perfect knowledge is not required - some knowledge is. Human action in a social environment would be impossible unless people were able to be reasonably sure, if not 100% certain, how other people would act.
Richard A Garner:However, this seems to violate rights. If, then, we may never violate rights, then how would a libertarian solve the trolley problem? I don't think the trolley problem has enough information to be solved from a libertarian perspective because the scenario does not address the issue of property, and property rights are the source of all other rights.
Richard A Garner:However, this seems to violate rights. If, then, we may never violate rights, then how would a libertarian solve the trolley problem?
I don't think the trolley problem has enough information to be solved from a libertarian perspective because the scenario does not address the issue of property, and property rights are the source of all other rights.
People own themselves. Killing them may well by thought of as a violation of their property rights, then. Property is plainly addressed.
JonBostwick: Ego: Does that mean that it becomes immoral to stop him? Does that mean that I become an aggressor if I shoot and kill him (of course, killing at least one of the babies as well). I think if an agressor creates a situation where innocent life must be lost in order to stop him/her, any life lost should be blamed squarely on the aggressor. If I use a nuclear bomb to stop the man, killing him, the babies, and the entire city, should that be blamed on the aggressor? As I previously said, I have a right to defend myself but I do not have a right to sacrifice others in order to do so. If innocent life is going to be lost whether the man is stopped or not whats so desireable about stopping him?
Ego: Does that mean that it becomes immoral to stop him? Does that mean that I become an aggressor if I shoot and kill him (of course, killing at least one of the babies as well). I think if an agressor creates a situation where innocent life must be lost in order to stop him/her, any life lost should be blamed squarely on the aggressor.
Does that mean that it becomes immoral to stop him? Does that mean that I become an aggressor if I shoot and kill him (of course, killing at least one of the babies as well).
I think if an agressor creates a situation where innocent life must be lost in order to stop him/her, any life lost should be blamed squarely on the aggressor.
If I use a nuclear bomb to stop the man, killing him, the babies, and the entire city, should that be blamed on the aggressor?
As I previously said, I have a right to defend myself but I do not have a right to sacrifice others in order to do so.
If innocent life is going to be lost whether the man is stopped or not whats so desireable about stopping him?
The scenario's are not analogous: Using a nuclear bomb to save the few people the gunner would kill is not proportionate, using a rifle to shoot a few sufficient babies to be able to take the gunner out is: In Ego's example, you kill a few to save a few more. In yours, you kill many in order to save a few.
Ego:No one is saying to use a nuclear bomb to stop him; you have to try to minimize the loss of innocent life. So whats most moral is whatever achieves the fewest deaths?
Ego:No one is saying to use a nuclear bomb to stop him; you have to try to minimize the loss of innocent life.
So whats most moral is whatever achieves the fewest deaths?
Not in the scenarios as I set them up, as can be seen by the differences between pulling the switch in the trolley case, but not pushing the fat man in the second case or butchering the traveller in the third case.
Ego: I hold a gun to your head and inform you that unless you kill a particular person, I'll kill you. You kill that particular person. Who gets charged with murder?
I hold a gun to your head and inform you that unless you kill a particular person, I'll kill you.
You kill that particular person.
Who gets charged with murder?
The scenario is not analogous to the trolley case, but to the pushing the fat man case. In the trolley case you action (pulling the switch) kills the single person. However, you did not intend their death, and their death was not the means to save the five other people. In your example, though, if I kill someone because you have a gun to my head telling me to, the death of the other is something I intend, and their death is the means by which I save myself.
Grant: IMO, this scenario highlights a limitation in traditional natural rights ethics. Can we say that the presence of a villain alters the preferred outcome? Why? If the cause of the problem is a conscious decision as opposed to an engineering mistake, why does that alter what the 'best' outcome is? What if the villain is a qualia-less zombie or machine AI?
IMO, this scenario highlights a limitation in traditional natural rights ethics. Can we say that the presence of a villain alters the preferred outcome? Why? If the cause of the problem is a conscious decision as opposed to an engineering mistake, why does that alter what the 'best' outcome is? What if the villain is a qualia-less zombie or machine AI?
Good question. Or, what if the people were on the tracks because they were backing off from prowling tigers. We don't normally assign moral responsibility to animals, so the animals cannot be blamed for purposefully constructing the set up, unlike the evil professor.
I'm not sure that this undermines traditional rights theory, it just means that rights theory is more complex and multi-facetted if it is to account for people's moral intutions in cases like these.
Brainpolice: In all of these scenarios, noone has a positive obligation to do anything.
In all of these scenarios, noone has a positive obligation to do anything.
That would suggest that not saving the five people would be moral? How can you square that with people's moral intutions?
It is one thing to say that the people involved have no right that you save them, and so you have no obligation correlative to that right. But, unless you can show that all obligations to others are correlative to rights that they hold against you, it is quite another to say that you have no obligations to help them that are not correlative to any right they hold against you.
I suppose doing nothing would in fact be better than doing something in the case of pulling the switch. In the case of pulling it one has now caused a death to take place. In the case of doing nothing, one has eschewed no obligations that they can be said to have.
Duress removes moral culpability from the one, yet it does not remove the rights of the current possessor to defend himself and what he owns. Not as simple a world as some would like, but the one I think exists nonetheless.
Surely the rights-violator would at least owe the victim compensation?
Grant, at best the natural sciences can tell us what phenomena occur when we engage in ethicizing. Facts cannot speak for themselves though, and this is perhaps why Kant was so intent on stressing that morality must be known a priori. All the natural sciences can reveal is which internal bodily functions coincide with which actions we take. If I recall correctly, Steven Pinker associates cognitive as well as emotive facets of the brain as active when engaging in moral reasoning. But such explanatory accounts of what morality consists in biologically, how it arose &c. are of little use in grappling with it. Conceptual work is necessary to resolve the issue of what morality is, exactly, if we are to achieve more than mere correlation. I agree with Richard's counter on natural rights.
-Jon
Freedom of markets is positively correlated with the degree of evolution in any society...
Ego:Let's say that a man walks into a local daycare, weapons drawn, and proceeds to tie several of the babies to his legs, torso, arms, and head in a manner that made it nearly impossible to kill him without killing one of the babies (not to mention what happens if his dead body were to hit the ground).
This is so funny and disturbing for a Monday morning.
liberty student: This is so funny and disturbing for a Monday morning.
Lol. definetly.
...And nobody has ever taught you how to live out on the street, But now you're gonna have to get used to it...
equack:You are still the murderer as in both cases, you have decided with your own free will to coerce another individual. It does not matter what forces have caused you to commit murder, you have still committed the act.
Well, now, free will is a thorny idea, is it not? Is a woman who acquiesces to sex under threat of death not raped because that was her free will? Since we seem to be using examples of strapping ridiculous things to ourselves, ought the Somalian, watching his children die of starvation, stand by idly while a fat European, wearing a jumper made of donuts, skips merrily through, refusing to part with a single one? I know many here will say yes. Yet I think the ethics of civilized man operate only in civilization. When people starve, when killers threaten, we have lost civilization, and are now dealing with a primal and animal situation. We are animals, just as we are men, and while it is very nice and convenient for people to moralize from an armchair for those facing death, I am unconvinced that it is legitimate.
You are still the murderer as in both cases, you have decided with your own free will to coerce another individual. It does not matter what forces have caused you to commit murder, you have still committed the act. As towards claims that you were acting in self-defense since you could still live if you murdered Smith when Jones put a gun to your head, you weren't. For it to be self-defense, you would need to combat Jones' aggression. Thus, its always and still be murder in those situations.
I can't agree with any of this. It's not fair to claim that someone acted in free will when he/she is being subjected to torture. In that case, the real agressor is the coercer, and that's who should be charged with the crime.
Ignoring whether or not you want the coerced to be charged with the crime, do you want the coercer to be charged with the crime?
Don't allow leftists to play games with definitions! Some of the libertarian-leaning leftists at this forum will try to redefine "left-wing" back to its original defition (Third Estate, limited government, free-markets, laissez-faire reforms, etc.). Fine! We non-leftists can't stop them from using their own personal definitions; they can use whatever labels they want to describe any concept they want.However, they have the audacity to then use their personal definition of "left-wing" (remember, the original definition, which is no longer valid) to prove that modern leftists are more libertarian than modern rightists! They will say that libertarianism is "inherently leftist" (again, using the original, no longer valid definition), and use that to insist that we should prefer and side with modern leftists over modern rightists.
Question their motives.
JCFolsom: equack:You are still the murderer as in both cases, you have decided with your own free will to coerce another individual. It does not matter what forces have caused you to commit murder, you have still committed the act. Well, now, free will is a thorny idea, is it not? Is a woman who acquiesces to sex under threat of death not raped because that was her free will? Since we seem to be using examples of strapping ridiculous things to ourselves, ought the Somalian, watching his children die of starvation, stand by idly while a fat European, wearing a jumper made of donuts, skips merrily through, refusing to part with a single one? I know many here will say yes. Yet I think the ethics of civilized man operate only in civilization. When people starve, when killers threaten, we have lost civilization, and are now dealing with a primal and animal situation. We are animals, just as we are men, and while it is very nice and convenient for people to moralize from an armchair for those facing death, I am unconvinced that it is legitimate.
Those are all straw man arguments. Obviously the women was coerced into having sex under threat of force which goes against the whole idea behind libertarianism.
But that's beside the point. You're using the same logic as the statists - we must sacrifice the individual to benefit the masses. That kind of thinking leads us down a long and slippery slope not to mention that it isn't compatible with libertarianism at all.
justinx0r:You're using the same logic as the statists - we must sacrifice the individual to benefit the masses. That kind of thinking leads us down a long and slippery slope and isn't compatible with libertarianism at all.
On the contrary, it is you who asks the individual to sacrifice his life to preserve the smooth operations of the contractural society. I do not propose that one who is hired to steal (as if a starving person has the resources to do so) for a starving man is right to do so, but only the party who is actually operating under coercion.
JCFolsom:Yet I think the ethics of civilized man operate only in civilization. When people starve, when killers threaten, we have lost civilization, and are now dealing with a primal and animal situation.
This is true. The ethics of civilized man operate only in civilization. When people are starving or being threatened, their time-preference tends to rise. They become more short-term oriented and less civilized. They tend to lose their moral inhibitions and behave like other animals instead of human beings. They tend to lose their moral inhibitions.
JCFolsom:We are animals, just as we are men, and while it is very nice and convenient for people to moralize from an armchair for those facing death, I am unconvinced that it is legitimate.
The thing which seperates us from the rest of the animal kingdom is that we can critisize our behaviour and establish norms. Our ability to make moral judgements is what seperates us from the rest of animals. And it is perfectly legitimate to judge morality in extreme situations. Most people have trouble with it because they have confused, muddled ideas of right and wrong rather than a clear, consitent, well thought out, and complete system of ethics. Many just give up trying to discover one because they are unable or unwilling to put the effort in. Testing our ideas in extreme situations to ensure their consistency is the more civilized thing to do.
If I die, no one necessarily wronged me:
There needs to be an aggressor acting upon his/her free will.
If I had been shot between the eyes, however, chances are someone wronged me! Now, does the gun get the blame? No, the gun isn't the aggressor acting upon his free will.
Do I blame the man who pulled the trigger? Probably, unless he wasn't acting upon his free will. If he was acting under the threat of death or the stress of torture, the aggressor is the beast threatening or torturing him.
edit: didn't proofread :(
Stephen Forde:The thing which seperates us from the rest of the animal kingdom is that we can critisize our behaviour and establish norms. Our ability to make moral judgements is what seperates us from the rest of animals. And it is perfectly legitimate to judge morality in extreme situations. Most people have trouble with it because they have confused, muddled ideas of right and wrong rather than a clear, consitent, well thought out, and complete system of ethics. Many just give up trying to discover one because they are unable or unwilling to put the effort in. Testing our ideas in extreme situations to ensure their consistency is the more civilized thing to do.
I believe you will have to make a more rigorous case than that to convince me that anything seperates us so essentially from other animals. I have studied zoology as a hobby all my life and my college education is in biology, and I can tell you that some animals have social norms just as we do, albeit less sophisticated ones, and that they make judgements, which can in a sense be called moral judgements, of their members who violate those norms.
I suppose it is your position, based on your tone here, to agree with the previous poster who basically said that the mass-murderer strapped with babies ought to be allowed to rampage unchecked, lest we violate the rights of the humans strapped to him.
I am curious as to what you mean by "testing" moral ideas. How do you test such things? Do you view the results of certain behaviors? Who is to judge which result is best?
equack:You are still the murderer as in both cases, you have decided with your own free will to coerce another individual. It does not matter what forces have caused you to commit murder, you have still committed the act. As towards claims that you were acting in self-defense since you could still live if you murdered Smith when Jones put a gun to your head, you weren't. For it to be self-defense, you would need to combat Jones' aggression. Thus, its always and still be murder in those situations. You would just have special consideration when go to court. That's the logic behind gun ownership in a free society, hopefully yourself or others could simply kill Jones with their superior marksmanship. As for the trolley problem, we must decide first who _owns_ the switch you must press to save the 5 persons. Obviously, switching it would aggress against the property right of the owner of the trolley. Second of all, a person doesn't always have full knowledge which the problem assumes. How do you even know that there is another person on another tract, that the switch will save the 5 people, etc. Third of all, since it was by your free will exercised that led to the death of that single person, you would be held to murder. If the 5 people survived, you would still be charged with murder as your _own_ actions contributed to the death of that single person. Again, with all these moral dilemmas, they are vague, assume a lot, and don't really add much to practical theory and always imply some zero-sum situation. In the real world, these rarely happen and in a libertarian society as for the case where you have to murder someone else to survive, we would have more gun ownership, more and efficient police protection and other safety mechanisms of the free market. In the trolley problem, we wouldn't be using the city's municipal trolley which is total crap and kills people in operation. We would have our trollies provided by free market which wouldn't lead to these situations. P.S.: Utilitarian considerations may justify flipping the switch in the trolley problem, but pure utilitarianism lacks a sound theory of justice in property rights. Your _actions_ contributed to death of that single person whereas the death of the five (including yourself presumably depending on how the problem is worded) did not involve any internal actions among participants. Theres also no such thing as moral arithmetic, assuming 5 people are more valuable than 1 is silly. Theres no such that as some kind of intrinsic value in human beings to start this kind of addition and subtraction unless you assume explicitly in your theory that there is.
I agree with everything you said. I just want to add that it is as much of a crime for 100 people to act in concert in the murder of 1person, as it is for one person to murder 100 people.
And I think that the whole idea that it is justified to murder innocent people to stop an agressor, justifies terrorism. If country X is bombing nation Y and causing alot of collateral damage, a terrorist might say it's justified to kill innocent taxpayers from country X, because they are funding the bombing. By killing a number of taxpayers, X now has less resources to build bombs with. The terrorist might just dismiss the fact that they're innocent by saying they're hostages that are a necessary sacrifice to reducing X's aggression.
Obviously, you have to employ reason. If someone is going on a murderous shooting rampage, you don't go and blow up every ammo-shop in town to prevent him from getting more ammo, you go for him.
Stephen Forde:And I think that the whole idea that it is justified to murder innocent people to stop an aggressor, justifies terrorism. If country X is bombing nation Y and causing a lot of collateral damage, a terrorist might say it's justified to kill innocent taxpayers from country X, because they are funding the bombing. By killing a number of taxpayers, X now has less resources to build bombs with. The terrorist might just dismiss the fact that they're innocent by saying they're hostages that are a necessary sacrifice to reducing X's aggression.
Hah! What innocent taxpayers? As you say, they are giving away their money with the full knowledge that it will be used to harm the people of the terrorist's country, and that they are under threat of force, under your calculus, matters not, they should resist to the last. Otherwise, they literally labor to help kill the terrorist's countrymen. There are no innocents there, excepting children, and again we come to the human shield dilemma. Anyone who holds your position and pays their taxes is a hypocrite, for surely, any government shall use your money to do injustice. Indeed, if you work at all, you are helping support an economy from which the government draws resources to commit atrocity. Until unjust government is done away with, any non-black-market activity makes you a hypocrite.
JC, that's not consistent with your other views (and I agree with those). If we're to believe that taxes are non-coercive, we're not libertarians.
Stephen Forde:I agree with everything you said. I just want to add that it is as much of a crime for 100 people to act in concert in the murder of 1person, as it is for one person to murder 100 people. And I think that the whole idea that it is justified to murder innocent people to stop an agressor, justifies terrorism. If country X is bombing nation Y and causing alot of collateral damage, a terrorist might say it's justified to kill innocent taxpayers from country X, because they are funding the bombing. By killing a number of taxpayers, X now has less resources to build bombs with. The terrorist might just dismiss the fact that they're innocent by saying they're hostages that are a necessary sacrifice to reducing X's aggression.
You are wrong that the two are analogous. I have a post on this at my blog http://richardgarnerlib.blogspot.com/2008/04/terrorism-collateral-damage-and-double.html
Ego:JC, that's not consistent with your other views (and I agree with those). If we're to believe that taxes are non-coercive, we're not libertarians.
Let me be clear; I am not saying that paying your taxes makes you a hypocrite holding my positions, which state that one is not morally culpable for actions taken under duress. Rather, I mean that paying taxes makes you a hypocrite while holding the opposing positions, which state that you should not act in self-preservation if that act might harm another.
Richard A Garner: Richard A Garner:However, this seems to violate rights. If, then, we may never violate rights, then how would a libertarian solve the trolley problem? I don't think the trolley problem has enough information to be solved from a libertarian perspective because the scenario does not address the issue of property, and property rights are the source of all other rights. People own themselves. Killing them may well by thought of as a violation of their property rights, then. Property is plainly addressed.
But it doesn't address ownership of the trolley, or the tracks, or anything.
Am I the owner of the trolley? Or am I hijacking the trolley?
Peace
Richard A Garner: Stephen Forde:I agree with everything you said. I just want to add that it is as much of a crime for 100 people to act in concert in the murder of 1person, as it is for one person to murder 100 people. And I think that the whole idea that it is justified to murder innocent people to stop an agressor, justifies terrorism. If country X is bombing nation Y and causing alot of collateral damage, a terrorist might say it's justified to kill innocent taxpayers from country X, because they are funding the bombing. By killing a number of taxpayers, X now has less resources to build bombs with. The terrorist might just dismiss the fact that they're innocent by saying they're hostages that are a necessary sacrifice to reducing X's aggression. You are wrong that the two are analogous. I have a post on this at my blog http://richardgarnerlib.blogspot.com/2008/04/terrorism-collateral-damage-and-double.html
I think I'm right. The difference only arrises because you are applying the doctrine of double effect. I don't see how this doctine is justified.
JCFolsom:I believe you will have to make a more rigorous case than that to convince me that anything seperates us so essentially from other animals. I have studied zoology as a hobby all my life and my college education is in biology, and I can tell you that some animals have social norms just as we do, albeit less sophisticated ones, and that they make judgements, which can in a sense be called moral judgements, of their members who violate those norms.
I don't see any other animals creating sophisticated machines, inventing complex languages or systems of knowledge which represent the world, or creating ethical systems or arguing over ethics. I don't think you have to be a biologist or zoologist to observe that animals just go about their business blindly following their instincts. They don't consider anything except for the immediate moment. Anytime that they do plan ahead, such as when a squirrel saves nuts for winter, it's not the result of conscious thinking. It's still just instinctive behaviour. Ants and bees form societies which have a high degree of specialization and division of labour, but this is also just instinctive. Some animals have property norms, like a dog willing to defend it’s masters property. But, they have nothing as elaborate as humans. Some monkey’s can be taught sign language. Dolphins I believe can be taught a few words. But, the ability of monkeys and dolphins to make abstractions is very limited.
In respect to ethics, if you come into conflict with an animal, you can’t argue with it. It doesn’t have rationality. It won’t be persuaded that maybe you and it should coexist peacefully. And this is why uncivilized people belong in the same category. They don’t care about anything other than immediate gratification of their wants. They are unable or unwilling to make any immediate sacrifice for a greater mediate gain.
JCFolsom:I suppose it is your position, based on your tone here, to agree with the previous poster who basically said that the mass-murderer strapped with babies ought to be allowed to rampage unchecked, lest we violate the rights of the humans strapped to him.
That’s right. A man’s human rights are his own to hold against the whole world. If he’s being held hostage by a crazed gunman that might hurt you, that’s your problem. If you shoot him to save yourself, or to save anyone else, you’re guilty of murder. And if his family wants your blood afterward, they’re entitled to it. The law doesn’t change because of special circumstances, or for people under duress. Everyone is liable for their own personal actions.
JCFolsom:I am curious as to what you mean by "testing" moral ideas. How do you test such things? Do you view the results of certain behaviors? Who is to judge which result is best?
You apply your system of ethics to the moral dilemma and see if the resulting judgments are non-contradictory. This is the same way you test the validity of any axiomatic-deductive body of knowledge. A person cannot coherently hold two opposing judgements. Therefore they cannot coherently hold a system of ethics which arrives at opposing judgements.
So not only do you believe a woman should be held responsible for her actions while under brutal torture, you believe a mass-murder should not be stopped if she is using human shields?
edit: grammar
Richard A Garner: Brainpolice: In all of these scenarios, noone has a positive obligation to do anything. That would suggest that not saving the five people would be moral? How can you square that with people's moral intutions? It is one thing to say that the people involved have no right that you save them, and so you have no obligation correlative to that right. But, unless you can show that all obligations to others are correlative to rights that they hold against you, it is quite another to say that you have no obligations to help them that are not correlative to any right they hold against you.
Not quite. Rather, all I merely meant to imply by my statement is that it would not be immoral to do nothing. And that it would in fact be immoral to enforce an unchosen positive obligation onto someone to intervene in the situation on the behalf of others.
It's sort of like the strange application of the NAP to pacifists. The pacifist has a right to defend themselves but they may choose not to do so, at their own risk of course. They do not have a positive obligation to defend themself, and hence noone can force them to defend themself. And the proponent of self-defense may defend themself and noone may force them not to.
Likewise, I don't think anyone has an unchosen positive obligation to defend someone else. It may indeed seem heartless for them not to, but it is their perogative. To force them to defend someone else would violate their rights. On the other hand, neither do I think anyone has an abstract right to defend someone else against that person's consent. But then again, would anyone in their right mind really complain at being defended in a dire situation? Probably not.
I realize that most of this conversation has revolved around the question of "what should you do in situation X?", but I wanted to stress the degree to which there really are no unchosen positive obligations or "shoulds" in these situations. Some of these situations seem unresolvable without implicating the resolver in some kind of immorality themselves. Damned if you do, damned if you dont. Except if you don't do anything, at least you are not implicated in the situation in terms of any direct action. Which is why I'm compelled towards inaction as an answer.
Stephen Forde:I think I'm right. The difference only arrises because you are applying the doctrine of double effect. I don't see how this doctine is justified.
Whether or not the doctrine of double effect is justified, killing people to save more by terrorism is not analogous to killing people to save more as collateral damage. The question is whether it is disanalogous in morally relavent ways. I certainly think that whether a death is intended or not is morally relavent, and I certainly willing a bad thing in order to achieve a good thing is relavent.
Self-Ownership loses none of its power in political philosophy by suggesting that it only prohibits intentionally using people as means, for isntance. In fact, it becomes more intuitively attractive.
Ego:So not only do you believe a woman should be held responsible for her actions while under brutal torture, you believe a mass-murder should not be stopped if she is using human shields?
You can stop the mass-murderer if you are in the position to do so, as long as you're willing to face the conseqences of murder.
JCFolsom:Hah! What innocent taxpayers? As you say, they are giving away their money with the full knowledge that it will be used to harm the people of the terrorist's country, and that they are under threat of force, under your calculus, matters not, they should resist to the last. Otherwise, they literally labor to help kill the terrorist's countrymen. There are no innocents there, excepting children, and again we come to the human shield dilemma. Anyone who holds your position and pays their taxes is a hypocrite, for surely, any government shall use your money to do injustice. Indeed, if you work at all, you are helping support an economy from which the government draws resources to commit atrocity. Until unjust government is done away with, any non-black-market activity makes you a hypocrite.
I think one can only be considered an accomplice and held responsible for a criminal’s action if they have entered into a contract with them which supports and sanctions their action. Taxpayers haven’t entered into a contract with government agents. They in no way sanction the actions of government agents.
I deny that there are no unchosen positive obligations, and I find it counterintuitive to say there are none. Are you really saying that if your mother was sick and couldn't tend for herself, it would not be immoral for you to refuse to help her?
Stephen Forde: Ego:So not only do you believe a woman should be held responsible for her actions while under brutal torture, you believe a mass-murder should not be stopped if she is using human shields? You can stop the mass-murderer if you are in the position to do so, as long as you're willing to face the conseqences of murder.
How about this: A few hundred evil people form an organization and come up with a devious plot. One member of the organization will kidnap someone and hold them captive in an undisclosed location. Another member will go to a crowded place and announce that he is going to go on a mass-murdering-shooting spree, and if anyone kills him, the captive gets killed, too.
Let's say that this happens several times in a row, each time with the mass-murder getting killed, and each time with the captive being killed as a result. It becomes clear that if you kill the mass-murderer, the captive will die.
Would you consider it murder to kill the mass-murderer, knowing that it would result in the death of an innocent person?
Stephen Forde:I think one can only be considered an accomplice and held responsible for a criminal’s action if they have entered into a contract with them which supports and sanctions their action. Taxpayers haven’t entered into a contract with government agents. They in no way sanction the actions of government agents.
I don't see how it's different than the bomb-throwing scenario. You are taking an action (sending in that check) to save yourself from the violence of an aggressor (the government) which you know will result in the harm of many others who are innocent in this situation. Your alternatives may be ugly, but it is still, as it has been said, by your free will that you do your work and pay your taxes. So, are you or are you not justified in taking an action that harms another to save yourself? If you answer no, and you pay taxes, you are a hypocrite.
Ego:How about this: A few hundred evil people form an organization that comes up with a devious plot. One member of the organization will kidnap somone and hold them captive in an undisclosed location. Another member will go to a crowded place and announce that he is going to go on a mass-murdering-shooting spree, and if anyone kills him, the captive gets killed.
Indeed, just to clarify the situation, perhaps the mass-murderer is wearing a life monitor that will kill the kidnapped victim in some autonomous way if the murderer dies. That removes the second moral agent from the situation, and the complications that would introduce.
Richard A Garner: I deny that there are no unchosen positive obligations, and I find it counterintuitive to say there are none. Are you really saying that if your mother was sick and couldn't tend for herself, it would not be immoral for you to refuse to help her?
Yes. In my understanding, libertarianism is incompatible with unchosen positive obligations. The key qualifier is the word unchosen. You may choose to fulfill such obligations and you may choose to abide by them through voluntary contracts, but in the absence of any actual debt you may have incurred or contract you signed, you truly have no positive obligations to anyone else. In short, I deny that positive rights claims are legitimate. And to touch on your particular example a little bit deeper, I don't believe that familial ties in and of itself creates unchosen positive obligations either (in holding this view, I merely echo Stefan Molyneux, who has done a lot of interesting work on what he calls "the cult of the family").
"Need" in and of itself does not generate legitimate obligations for other people to appease "need". Even if someone else is starving or poor, I do not have an unchosen positive obligation to give them some food or some of my money. This may seem cold hearted, but it does not equate to the idea that you have an obligation not to. You can help other people all you want. It's just not obligatory if you didn't actually choose the obligations. Most people probably would try to help out their mother anyways. I would. All I state is that you cannot legitimately force/coerce them into doing so, I.E. that it truly is not obligatory for them to do so without consent.
As I've argued to anarcho-syndicalists before (not that I'm insinuating that you are one), there is a fundamental contradiction between ownership over the products of one's labor and the idea of an unchosen positive obligation to appease people's "needs" (I.E. positive rights and altruism). If you truly own the products of you labor then you may freely exclude them from others. If you have an unchosen positive obligation to fulfill "need", then you cannot consistantly have individual sovereignty. These obligations would become coercive and those claiming such positive rights would effectively become thieves.
Again, someone quotes my post pre-edit! I agree, that's probably a good modification.
"That's why I tried to change the original trolley case to remove the evil philosopher tying the guys to the tracks, but that the people just happened to be on the tracks (we don't know why)."
Maybe they all just decided to take a nap on the comfortable railroad tracks.
JCFolsom: Ego:How about this: A few hundred evil people form an organization that comes up with a devious plot. One member of the organization will kidnap somone and hold them captive in an undisclosed location. Another member will go to a crowded place and announce that he is going to go on a mass-murdering-shooting spree, and if anyone kills him, the captive gets killed. Indeed, just to clarify the situation, perhaps the mass-murderer is wearing a life monitor that will kill the kidnapped victim in some autonomous way if the murderer dies. That removes the second moral agent from the situation, and the complications that would introduce.
What if the murderer traps a person to a device that kills them based on the amount of hits a website gets and then posts the video on that website? Morally can we kill anyone with a computer?
Richard A Garner:Whether or not the doctrine of double effect is justified, killing people to save more by terrorism is not analogous to killing people to save more as collateral damage. The question is whether it is disanalogous in morally relavent ways. I certainly think that whether a death is intended or not is morally relavent, and I certainly willing a bad thing in order to achieve a good thing is relavent.
When it comes to personal ethics, I think intent matters. When it comes to interpersonal ethics I don't think it does. If someone is driving drunk, and they accidentally kill somebody, they should be just as liable as if they intentionally killed them. The result of their action is the effect of someone else dying, whether they intended it or not. They are no less responsible for the other person's death because it was accidental. The family of the victim should be entitled to the same proportional restitution and retribution. This is the proper assumption of risk for not taking precautions to avoid killing someone. And even if the driver were sober, the same would hold. He is still responsible for his choice to drive that day, and just as culpable.
Richard A Garner:Self-Ownership loses none of its power in political philosophy by suggesting that it only prohibits intentionally using people as means, for isntance. In fact, it becomes more intuitively attractive.
Self-Ownership implies that people have a right not to unwillingly have a bomb dropped on them, intentionally or accidentally. I think that apply your rule would have the effect of promoting recklessness and I don't find that very intuitive. What I do find intuitive and consistent is that the proper assumption of risk should always lie with the aggressor, and never with the victim.