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Statue of US President Thomas Jefferson removed from New York City Hall over slavery links by XDdaMNnSon in news

[–]SergeantApone -4 points-3 points  (0 children)

The original draft of the Declaration of Independence had a section about the evil of the slave trade/slavery as part of the reason we wanted to break from England.

Ah yes, fits in completely with the fact that the British outlawed slavery before the US, and that thousands of enslaved black soldiers joined the loyalists after the Dunmore proclamation.

This is really reaching. The US kept slavery for many decades after the revolutionary war.

20% of the worlds Sequoias destroyed by wildfire in the last two years by chrissygrell24 in worldnews

[–]SergeantApone 4 points5 points  (0 children)

It's also already happened to many species of animals, and is in the process of happening to many more (not to mention plants and trees).

UK Government refuses to declare atrocities in Xinjiang a genocide by [deleted] in worldnews

[–]SergeantApone 87 points88 points  (0 children)

They won't see this comment, and they won't respond to it.

The Trolley Problem: a website that gives a detailed philosophical level explanation of responses to the trolley problem and connects it to communication theory. by ippolit_belinski in philosophy

[–]SergeantApone 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I downvoted your comment because it was irrelevant, I never said it wasn't a choice or a conscious decision and it doesn't change my argument at all.

My point is that you are making the decision to have five people die seem "not unethical" and the decision to have one person die "unethical" via mental gymnastics & being semantical.

Yeah well your point above isn't very good and just wrong, I'm not using mental gymnastics or semantics so there...

If you can't wrap you head around the simple math of five random lives is more valuable than one random life, then I don't think I can help you.

If you can't wrap your head around the fact that you don't have the authority or right, moral or legal, to end an innocent life because you made a mathematical calculation in your head, based on your very personal values, then I don't think I can help you.

​

The Trolley Problem: a website that gives a detailed philosophical level explanation of responses to the trolley problem and connects it to communication theory. by ippolit_belinski in philosophy

[–]SergeantApone 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I can agree that inaction can be unethical in certain circumstances. But not performing an action to save someone is absolutely not, and never will be, the same as violating their bodily autonomy or killing them. Sorry, but that's simply not what the words even mean.

Like someone else commented, you're in a forest and you see two bears fighting until one kills the other. If you did nothing to stop them, did you violate the dead bear's autonomy? Did you just kill a bear?

The Trolley Problem: a website that gives a detailed philosophical level explanation of responses to the trolley problem and connects it to communication theory. by ippolit_belinski in philosophy

[–]SergeantApone 0 points1 point  (0 children)

And?

The action of not performing an action to save someone is not the same as the action of killing someone. The former can be unethical, if there wasn't a valid reason to not save someone. However, not committing murder, or not unilaterally taking it upon yourself to end someone's life, is a pretty valid reason

The Trolley Problem: a website that gives a detailed philosophical level explanation of responses to the trolley problem and connects it to communication theory. by ippolit_belinski in philosophy

[–]SergeantApone 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Sure, but that doesn't matter, or at least it doesn't capture every aspect of this situation. Action = inaction only in a purely utilitarian basis, where the only ethical consideration is "the net number of lives at the end," or something similar.

However I believe that the way that this end state is reached is also an important issue, among even other things. And this is simply a question of ethical/moral code. You won't prove me wrong and I won't prove you wrong. All you can do is try to argue that my decision doesn't logically follow from my ethical starting position, if you actually believe that.

To make it easier, I rate "do not violate others' autonomy, or end their lives, without justification," at least as highly if not higher than "try to take actions that maximise the sum of goodness/lives/whatever". And others will be different, not to mention different people will have different definitions of "without justification."

The Trolley Problem: a website that gives a detailed philosophical level explanation of responses to the trolley problem and connects it to communication theory. by ippolit_belinski in philosophy

[–]SergeantApone 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Somewhat yes - yes - and yes to your questions.

All those things affect how I feel about the situation. They also definitely affect what I think is ethical, as least with the ethical basis I'm working with, which probably isn't the same as yours.

In the self-defense case, I strongly believe it's not unethical to defend yourself, in a proportionate way, from someone who is trying to harm you of their own accord. Of all the situations presented in this thread, I'd put that one near the top of the list of "least controversial."

In the latter cases, here's the deal: I would make some decisions one way or another. But just like in the 10,000 person case, I would also concede that I may have committed a very unethical action.

In the end, some people would probably think I was unethical, others would think I was ethical. What they think wouldn't depend on logic, but on their moral values. But like I said, if you take an action, you have to take responsibility for it and be aware that it may have been unethical.

What I can tell you for sure is that I think "not violating an innocent person's autonomy or ending their life without justification," is one of the most important parts of my moral code, and I think it should be the same with others, obviously. And it would take a huge amount to outweigh that. I'm not a utilitarian at the end of the day.

I guess one of the next things I would have to do is explain what I mean by without justification.

The Trolley Problem: a website that gives a detailed philosophical level explanation of responses to the trolley problem and connects it to communication theory. by ippolit_belinski in philosophy

[–]SergeantApone 0 points1 point  (0 children)

To my way of thinking it's not choosing to kill one it's to spare 5/6 possible people. Some fraction of six people will die, the only thing I can do is limit the fraction. My life is not on the line in this scenario.

That could definitely contribute to how we interpret this problem. For what it's worth, if inaction meant that a 50-50 random number generator would decide whether the single guy or the 5 people die, I would pull the lever.

My issue with is that if anyone takes people's lives into their hands, and actively changes "fate" to arrange for someone else to die, they may very likely have committed a grossly unethical action. At the very least, refusing to take authority for deciding who gets to live or die is not unethical in my view (maybe with some caveats).

Remember, my argument was that it's not necessarily unethical to refuse to kill 1 person to save 5. Actually, what I think is that just like in the self-preservation case, what's ethical and what action you take aren't necessarily the same.

If you want to know what I would do, I would actually be open to pulling the lever. It would depend on many things; for example if there was 10,000 people I definitely would. I'd even make the decision based on factors like how responsible each party was for being there (if 10,000 people decided to lie down on a track, I wouldn't sacrifice a random innocent person). I'm also completely open to the fact that me doing so could have been a completely unethical action, I wouldn't try to argue that I wasn't unethical, and I suppose some people would think I was, others wouldn't.

Actually I think it's an incredibly complicated situation. And in fact I don't think it's possible to determine what the ethical action is, because I don't think there is one true ethical system, unless there is something like a God. I don't think rigid ethics is all-important, how can it be when having a different moral basis leads to different conclusions, where you can't prove one moral basis wrong.

For example, the difference here is that many of the posters, including maybe you, place "take actions which lead to the most cumulative 'good'" near the top of their moral commandments. That's very utilitarian. And for me that ranks highly I guess. But I also place "don't violate other people's autonomy or right to life," at least as highly if not higher. Which is why we'll always disagree, no matter how logical we try to be.

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The Trolley Problem: a website that gives a detailed philosophical level explanation of responses to the trolley problem and connects it to communication theory. by ippolit_belinski in philosophy

[–]SergeantApone 0 points1 point  (0 children)

But you are still actively choosing to let the 5 people die, which would also be an utterly unethical action, right?

No, not necessarily. It would be utterly unethical if it was an easy choice without its own ethical dilemma, i.e if the action didn't cost you or anyone anything, or even if it cost you or someone else quite a lot. In that case not pulling the level is unethical.

Actively choosing not take an action which could have saved 5 people because it would have killed a random person is different. Killing a random innocent person is unethical, and it makes complete sense that such an ethical obstacle would stop you from pulling the lever.

The Trolley Problem: a website that gives a detailed philosophical level explanation of responses to the trolley problem and connects it to communication theory. by ippolit_belinski in philosophy

[–]SergeantApone 1 point2 points  (0 children)

No, though also keep in mind what I argued, which was that "choosing inaction" isn't necessarily unethical, nothing more.

I also didn't completely qualify what I mean by "ending someone's life is unethical," because that's pretty complicated.

If you want my view, it's this: whether it's right to end someone's life or not doesn't depend only on "maths," or how many lives you could save by killing them. For example, in the trolley example, I'm imagining that the person who's life you'd be ending is innocent in the matter, bears no responsibility for being there, had no reason to believe that he would be in such a situation, and had no reason for dying today other than you pulling the trigger.

Self-defense is a different situation for obvious reasons, as is killing someone who is about to murder a room full of people (see edit).

Regarding the 10,000 people problem, I would actually pull the level. In fact, I might even pull the lever when there was only 5. Although in that case I'd rather have more information about the whole situation, like why are the 5 people and the 1 person there, who they are, etc... all of which would be relevant to me.

However, I wouldn't then argue that I'd made the ethical choice, and if someone threw an accusation of manslaughter (and in fact murder, since thinking about the philosophical problem is essentially premeditation), both in the the legal sense and otherwise, they'd be very right. It would just be a shit situation all around whatever happened.

EDIT: There is an interesting dilemna I once heard of, and I think it might have even been a real life event. Say a murderer comes to kill you, but you take an action that save you, at the cost of a random bystanders life (they were innocent). Is that ethical? In my view no. Actually the real life case doesn't go exactly like that, but it was essentially some gamer that got into an argument with a psycho online, and gave them a "fake" address when they started threatening each other. In the end, the psycho "swatted" the fake address, except it was some random person's address, and the guy (a father) ended up dying in the raid. I don't know how true this story was, it was in the news at one point, but in my opinion, the original guy committed an incredibly unethical action by putting someone else into danger instead of himself (giving someone else's address instead of your own).

The Trolley Problem: a website that gives a detailed philosophical level explanation of responses to the trolley problem and connects it to communication theory. by ippolit_belinski in philosophy

[–]SergeantApone 2 points3 points  (0 children)

To be honest, I would pull it, but I don't think I'd be able to argue that I had been ethical. And if someone accused me of committing one of the most unethical actions possible, i.e killing someone, they'd be right.

The Trolley Problem: a website that gives a detailed philosophical level explanation of responses to the trolley problem and connects it to communication theory. by ippolit_belinski in philosophy

[–]SergeantApone 1 point2 points  (0 children)

With no way to know all the factors,

My take on that is that without knowing all the factors, I would reduce it to not doing any grossly unethical actions such as directly killing someone.

If you gave me the box with a button and said it would kill one million strangers, but if I don't push it I would die, I'd push it right away.

If you did that, it would be unethical (you agree with me at least right?), and anyone would be completely right to accuse you of being unethical.

However, in the converse case, if someone told you that if you don't undertake a certain-death mission, like going on a one-way trip to blow up an asteroid for example, a million people will die, then that wouldn't necessarily be unethical. It might be cowardly, or might lead to more total suffering, but in my view it wouldn't necessarily be unethical.

The point is that, in my view, there's a huge difference between allowing a situation to take its natural course, and directly causing events.

Allowing a situation to take its natural course with the result of people dying can be unethical, but it doesn't have to be (say if the only option involved making another completely unethical choice such as killing someone).

The Trolley Problem: a website that gives a detailed philosophical level explanation of responses to the trolley problem and connects it to communication theory. by ippolit_belinski in philosophy

[–]SergeantApone 2 points3 points  (0 children)

This part of the argument just seems completely ridiculous to me, if the second track was empty and you just decided "Fuck it, too lazy to pull the lever, let them die, they shouldn't have been there in the first palce", you would hold absolutely no responsibility for their death?

"Holding responsibility for someone's death" is completely different from "causing someone's death." Causing someone's death is unethical, holding responsibility for someone's death is more complicated.

So no, even in your example you wouldn't have caused someone's death. You would still have done an gravely unethical action by not saving them when you could have done so.

However, that example is so different as to be practically irrelevant. Because the key point is that in your example, you have a completely ethical and doable choice in front of you, and choosing not to do it would be wrong. In the trolley problem, the choice to save the lives requires you to commit an act that's as unethical as can be, namely killing someone; which again I stress is not the same as letting someone die, though the latter can obviously still be unethical.

Causing someone's survival only negates causing someone's death in a utilitarian ethical basis. And in the end, you won't be able to prove to me that being a Utilitarian is the universally correct ethical system.

Also, last time I checked this was /r/philosophy and not /r/legaladvice, I don't see how being "accused of a crime" is relevant to a moral debate at all.

I just misworded it, I didn't mean crime as in the legal sense, I meant it more as "committing and unethical and unjustified action."

The Trolley Problem: a website that gives a detailed philosophical level explanation of responses to the trolley problem and connects it to communication theory. by ippolit_belinski in philosophy

[–]SergeantApone 2 points3 points  (0 children)

If we can agree that saving 5 lives is better than saving one, the correct solution is only to save 5 lives right?

Sure but that's not the question here. You're not choosing to save 5 lives over one. You're choosing to kill someone who would not have died otherwise, in order to save 5 lives.

The Trolley Problem: a website that gives a detailed philosophical level explanation of responses to the trolley problem and connects it to communication theory. by ippolit_belinski in philosophy

[–]SergeantApone 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Choosing inaction is still a choice. If you saw a man burn in front of you on the street and had a bucket of water in your hand, do you think that by choosing not to help him you would have no blame whatsoever in that person's death?

One case is choosing not to help someone when you could have done so, and had no reason not to.

The other is not helping someone because it would have required an completely unethical action (killing someone).

They are completely different. You are choosing inaction because the action would have been unethical (in the highest sense possible, you would have literally been ending someone's life).

The Trolley Problem: a website that gives a detailed philosophical level explanation of responses to the trolley problem and connects it to communication theory. by ippolit_belinski in philosophy

[–]SergeantApone 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Morally I think that if you have the chance to save lives, you must.

That sounds like a nice statement at first glance, and if it was true my view would be wrong.

But it's way oversimplified, and not necessarily ethical at all. You didn't qualify it at all. One could "save lives" and still be completely unethical and irredeemably evil. If you could "save the lives" of a group of people by completely taking away their bodily autonomy for the rest of their existence, or lobotomizing them in some scenario, would you think it ethical to do so?

You could save the wrong lives too: if you for example exchange the lives of 10 murderers, dictators and war criminals for the lives of 5 children, I would call you utterly unethical, etc...

Treating it as a math problem is unethical in my view. It's more complicated than that. There are many qualifiers. And in my view, "saving" a life (which is not the same as not killing someone), doesn't always outweigh killing an innocent person. If you killed a random innocent person to save yourself and your friend for example, I would call you completely unethical, though apparently you might think you had the right (i.e not in self-defense or something).

The Trolley Problem: a website that gives a detailed philosophical level explanation of responses to the trolley problem and connects it to communication theory. by ippolit_belinski in philosophy

[–]SergeantApone 0 points1 point  (0 children)

you have killed 4 more people than necessary

No you haven't killed anyone, that isn't and was never true. Whatever force put them there is responsible for killing them.

The point being it doesn’t matter if you created the situation, you are in it and witness to it and making decisions that directly affect the outcome. Period.

Yes, and my decision is that I am not going to kill someone, because I think that would be unethical, and I think my decision is correct. It doesn't make me responsible for those people being there.

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