The Value of Human Life (a poll for BigSooner)

[NLSoldier]

IMO, killing the african kids is for the greater good. if they live they are going to reproduce and the result will be more starving african kids who live miserable lives.

[Lestat]

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Pretty sure 85% qualifies as a "vast majority."

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Yes, pretty sad.

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Why is it sad? Do you not value your most treasured love one more than 10 unknown kids from Africa who will probably starve anyway?

I suppose you'd make the decision to allow your child to die a horrible death? Or are you one of those sob artists who just likes to wax poetically about morality?

[sweetjazz]

What about a simpler moral question? Suppose that the 10 people you most care about all have a terminal illness. (Yes, you have that effect on people.) And you can save them all by firing a death ray from space that will kill merely one starving African child.

I think it is clear that the greater good is to save your beloved friends and family. Even so, it is not at all clear to me that is morally correct to kill the African child. We don't, as a society, go around killing people anytime we think it will be, so to speak, +EV for society.

I am not saying that I would blame people for saving the people (or person) they care about in either scenario and it certainly seems like saving your loved one(s) is what most people would opt for. So if the poll is merely asking "what would you do?" then I think the overwhelmingly chosen answer is obvious. If the question asked is "what should you do?" then I think the answer should change.

EDIT: The key distinction to be made is that our choice is between allowing a natural process to continue in which, sadly, a beloved person will die or taking an action which will result in the willful killing of ten people (who we happen to know have a poor quality of life and to whom we have no emotional attachment, and we also happen to know we will suffer no punishment for our action). It seems to me that the ethical principle of not killing innocent people is more fundamental, and therefore takes precedence, over trying to produce the greatest good in society. You can dress the situation up so that just about anyone would, because we are humans and not moral robots, do the morally wrong thing, but that does not make it right.

I strongly suspect that, were the scenario a real one, I would end up using the death ray in the hypothetical situation outlined, even though I am fairly certain that it is clearly wrong to do so.

[Malachii]

Good post Alpha.

in regards to the reason given of people finding things morally wrong with "murdering" 10 children, it is also considered murder if you let to your most beloved son/brother/sister/mother/father die. letting someone die when u have the full power to stop it is just the same as killing them yourself.

so basically changing the wording but asking the same question would you rather kill your most beloved friend/family member or 10 random starving children in some far off country who you have never met/nor will meet.

also in response to
"I could not kill the 10 African children. Can you imagine that on your conscience? I'm an atheist and I couldn't live with myself after that." -above
can u imagine the thoughts of letting a loved one die on your head?- if you can, which is unbelievable, you need to check into a psyc ward, nuff said

-another note- i would hate to be part of your family or one of your freinds if you wouldn't save my life for 10 random people you never met, nor will ever come in contact with!

[sweetjazz]

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letting someone die when u have the full power to stop it is just the same as killing them yourself.

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Since you have the full power to take in one of the starving children in Africa (or one right near your hometown) and provide her/him adequate nutrition to prevent starvation but you aren't doing so, you must consider yourself a murderer.

To equivocate between voluntarily sending a death ray that kills ten people who otherwise would not have been killed at that time and not interceding to stop someone from dying from a terminal illness because there is no morally acceptable way to do so is absurd. Perhaps you can come up with an argument that it is ethically permissable to save your loved one in this hypothetical scenario, but suggesting that it is murder to not do so shows a gross misunderstanding of the term.

[BigSoonerFan]

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Certainly it does. You're committing murder.

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Irrelevant. Choose yes, someone dies. Choose no, someone dies. Which is the lesser of two evils?

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It isn't irrelevant. It's still called murder.

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No avoidance here. I've stated five times that if you can't figure out the answer from my posts, then you must be mentally challenged. Is there some kind of followup trap question you want to pose?

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Make that six. Considering what an idiot I've already made of you, you're in no position to call me mentally challenged [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

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lol, sure you have.

[fuego527]

You honestly believe you made him look like an idiot?

BSF's point is rather simple, no matter what the consequence, murder is still wrong in the moral sense.

Your point is also pretty simple, that YOU (and many others as you speculated and have now demonstrated) would not take into account the moral implications as you would rather save your loved one.

These are both valid points, although yours is just a question of what a specific individual would do in a given situation and isn't general enough to be an interesting topic.

[hmkpoker]

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BSF's point is rather simple, no matter what the consequence, murder is still wrong in the moral sense.

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You do realize that if I don't act and save the one I love, I'm effectively murdering her, right?

[mr_whomp]

HMKpoker, theres two ways to go here. Utilitarian, (the greatest good); or deontology (outcome matters less than the morality of the action itself).

Actually 4 ways to go...

Utilitarian
deontology
virtue-based (should do whatever a person i look up to as a role model would do)
divine belief (should do whatever god says to do)

so your answer to this question depends on which of these you use to frame your ethical/moral belief system. I think also that a utilitarian (greater good) could go both ways on the issue.