How About THIS Morals -Ethics Question?

[West]

I think you probably need to rework your example. Choosing to not be coerced into making a decision like that is definitely an option.

[chezlaw]

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You are brought at gunpoint into a laboratory where you will be forced to choose which of two rooms will have those in it killed painlessly. If you refuse they all will be, so let's not even contemplate that option.

In one room is a very elderly person you have never met. In the other is your devoted three year old collie. Can sparing your collie be justifed by any respected philosophies? What about any respected religions?

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In my morality it's always right not to cooperate with the man with the gun. By removing that option you remove the morality from the situation.

chez

[Lestat]

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If an animal is just a possesion like a rolex, why do we have laws against animal cruelty? Still, it is logical that we would value our own kind over other species, so it would be hard to justify saving the dog.

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Well, because animals are living creatures who feel pain and are capable of suffering. Laws should be in place to prevent their cruelty.

We maintain animals to be used as our pets and/or to otherwise serve our needs. I didn't mean "possession" to be a cold term. I myself love animals, but we have nevertheless made certain animals the possessions of humans. Perhaps a better question to have asked would be the choice between the painless killing of the old man or the torture of the collie.

I personally don't find these types of topics that Sklansky keeps bringing where he asks for a choice between two evils as overly philosophical or even useful.

[einbert]

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Well, because animals are living creatures who feel pain and are capable of suffering. Laws should be in place to prevent their cruelty.

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Trees are living and we can in no way determine that they don't "feel pain", yet if you want to cut down the cherry tree in your backyard noone is going to come down on you for cruelty to living things.
Anyway I'm just nitpicking, overall I agree that a dog is perceived as more or less a possession by society. Whether that is moral or immoral would be a tougher question.


I think the key in the example is that you have to make a choice between something that would cause (probably) just you suffering, and something that would probably cause other people to have to suffer (not the elderly person so much as their families). I would choose to take on the suffering personally rather than cause others to, and I believe that is the morally correct thing to do.

I think the choice would be more difficult for me if I had to choose between my brother dying and an unknown person from the world dying. It would be more difficult because my brother dying would cause me a lot more suffering than my dog (who I love very much) dying. But I can't come up with a good reason as to why it would be correct to kill the unknown person rather than my brother.

[einbert]

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I personally don't find these types of topics that Sklansky keeps bringing where he asks for a choice between two evils as overly philosophical or even useful.

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Personally I liken these kinds of questions to someone asking "What would be the correct way to play a game of LHE where everyone else at the table is hypnotized into believing that you are always dealt the Q[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img]J[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img]?" The questions are sometimes very hard because our moral decision tree (like our LHE decision tree) is created by real situations that come up in our lives. It's much easier to come up with the solution to a problem when you have seen many similar problems to it than when it is totally off the wall like some of David's moral questions. But that is good, since by exercising the reasoning behind our moral process we are able to refine our moral thinking process and become more aware of what we really believe (and doubt some of the things that we have believed for a long time), and hopefully that will help us make better moral judgements in real situations in the future.

[pheasant tail (no 18)]

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Can sparing your collie be justifed by any respected philosophies?

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Perhaps a utilitarian could make a case for it if given more information.

[Piers]

As always I would follow my instincts at the time, although I find it difficult to empathise with a future me selecting the collie.

As for other non-human life, I might give second thoughts to a pregnant Dodo.

Note – I don’t have a Collie, and have not had a pet I have had a deep feeling for a pet. I guess if I went through that experience I would give a different emphasis. I am also assume that never met means don’t know anything else about them (I assume therefore that they probably live in Asia and are most likely Chinese. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img])

[mostsmooth]

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Change it to a cow and put a Hindu in that situation...

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thats a toughy, a cow or a dog.
if the hindu is picking, id say the dog gets it

[housenuts]

i would save my dog over a very elderly person any day of the week.

[spaminator101]

what about hindus