Sins of Omission vs Commission

[David Sklansky]

They are not much different. I say that not as a moral judgement but rather as a mathmetician might. The fact is that looked at mathematically, there is really no difference at all. Same thing as the fact that saving a bet adds exactly the same to your bankroll at the end of a month as making an extra bet. There is usually a slight difference because of the thoughts in the perpetrators mind. But that should not be overemphasized.

Contrived example:

You know that if you give someone $1000, ten children in Africa do not die. You choose not to. They die. Sin of ommission.

A doctor presently in Africa is the only one can treat your wife's disease such that it will keep her from being paralyzed. If he leaves Africa his two child patients will die. You give him $10,000 to leave. You have CAUSED two children to die. Sin of commission.

From a moral point of view, is not the first sin worse?

[The Dude]

On your general point, I agree. As to your specific example, you haven't given enough information, nor would I really be inclined to comment if you had.

[txag007]

"They are not much different."

You're exactly right. This is why none of us can achieve perfect righteousness, and we all need Jesus.

[andyfox]

What you are calling sins of omission are endless. The world is filled with suffering that could take up 24 hours of our time every day. Even the saintliest among us does not do all he or she can to not allow death or suffering. One has limited time, energy, knowledge and resources. The world rarely works as simply as your admittedly contrived examples do.

One can only rarely look at real life situations so mathematically. Or rather mathematically without considering other parameters. If you give $10,000 this week, should you be ashamed that you did not give $11,000? And if, in giving $10,000 when you could have given $11,000, does that really put you on the same moral plane as someone who murders ten people?

Is not a person who gives something morally superior to a person who gives nothing?

[The Dude]

David,

When you consider the ethics of a situation, are the only things that matter actions and results? If not, how influential are things like motives and general intentions?

I fear I may have agreed to a statement with larger implications than I had originally thought.

[Piers]

Depends which you think is worse. I think must people would instinctively feel the second one, which in mind is correct.

Human feelings of rightness or wrongness to an event, tends to be bias towards, making active ‘sins’ worse than passive ones irrespective of the net suffering involved.

Most people’s emotional reaction will say ‘not going out of your way to save the lives of two strangers’ is a lesser ‘sin’ then ‘shooting and killing some random passer by’ despite the fact you killed less people in the second situation.

This is because for a well-run society preventing active crimes is more important then encouraging charitable actions. Nature’s way of achieving this is to bias human moral instincts so that active crimes feel worse than passive ones.

One might consider creating a moral metric by giving ‘sins’ a numeric value which is a function of the suffering they cause plus possible other factors. And while this might be all very amusing, it would not map well on to the moral instincts of most of the population, and will likely encourage actions detrimental to society.

Humans moral instincts have been tailored by evolution to generate acceptable societies to live in, an artificial moral metric as described above might score sins in some mathematical ‘pleasing way’ but have no direct connection with the well being of society.

[David Sklansky]

"Is not a person who gives something morally superior to a person who gives nothing?"

First lets change the question to what I'm sure you meant to say, which is to add that the two people are in about the same economic circumstances. If so then the one who gives something is less inferior. To call him superior I think he has to be willing to bring himself down economically to something not that far above the unfortunate. UNLESS he can LEGTIMATELY claim that keeping himself rich winds up helping even more people.

[John Cole]

David, by the way, Peter Singer, a well known and very controversial philosopher, makes essentially the same claim. He believes that people should only retain enough money to live on, and the rest should be donated to charity.

Why do we have different penalty's for manslaughter and murder. Once you answer that question (and agree that we should have different penalties). Then the answer to this problem flows from it.

[David Sklansky]

"David, by the way, Peter Singer, a well known and very controversial philosopher, makes essentially the same claim. He believes that people should only retain enough money to live on, and the rest should be donated to charity."

But I don't claim that. I make the simple, non controversial claim that those who don't do the above (without legitimately feeling that their temporary wealth retention will eventually do even more good), are equivalent to Hitler.