On Moral Right

(If this does not belong here let me know)

There is a virus that is going to kill everyone in the world. One man created the cure; no one else can possibly create it in time. He decides not to give it to anyone but himself. Is what he doing morally wrong?

[lehighguy]

Try the philosophy forum.

And no.

[Kurn, son of Mogh]

Sounds sort of goofy to me. I'd at least give the vaccine to myself *and* Selma Hayek.

[mackthefork]

Everyone in the world is lying on a bed of nails, a big weight will drop on them in 5 seconds, a man has discovered the button which will stop this from happening, he decides he will not press it, is this <font color="green"> morally </font> wrong?

Mack

[lehighguy]

No. Assuming he has nothing to do with the situation being set up in the first place, he owes the world nothing.

There are no moral absolutes, only what we decide on for ourselves. To me there is a big difference between a sin of action and a sin of inaction.

[ QUOTE ]
No. Assuming he has nothing to do with the situation being set up in the first place, he owes the world nothing.

There are no moral absolutes, only what we decide on for ourselves. To me there is a big difference between a sin of action and a sin of inaction.

[/ QUOTE ]

Don't you think that any moral system that allows this to happen is ridiculously flawed? I could never believe in something that allows this scenario. It's so... inhuman.

[lehighguy]

Well, your free to believe that, I just don't agree.

To do something wrong to someone is bad, but to allow something bad to happen through your inaction is fine. If that were not so, you would be responsible for every single bad thing that ever happened in the world. That seems just silly.

[ QUOTE ]
Well, your free to believe that, I just don't agree.

To do something wrong to someone is bad, but to allow something bad to happen through your inaction is fine. If that were not so, you would be responsible for every single bad thing that ever happened in the world. That seems just silly.

[/ QUOTE ]

It doesn't actually seem all that silly to me. Again, I suppose this is a matter of base assumption.

[lehighguy]

The assumption i made a few posts ago, or the very idea of innate responsibility.

I should say, its not that I object to saving the world, I simply don't believe in the concept of moral debt in a vacumm. In other words, you don't owe strangers anything if they never did anything for you.

This is not to preclude being nice, but being nice is an affirmitive action you perform because you want too, not because you are obligated too. In other words, you should feel good about doing good things, not bad.

First of all, I don't really believe in innate morality. I think morality is really only useful to societies in the most base manner, that is that a society is 'judged' by how well it survives, and morality is judged on how it helps a society survive.

This is extended to not just nation states but the human race as well.