Ethics vs. Life, Make Your Choice.

[linusrichard]

1 - I might let the other family choose one person to survive, shoot the rest, give my wife the gun, and throw myself to the sharks. After all, if the raft has room for my family, then it has room for my family minus me plus one. Or I might choose the one who survives.

2 - Does "rape" mean the traditional definition it has when used along with "steal" and "pillage," or does it have the more modern definition? If the former, I don't know if I would consider theft, rapine, and pillage to be per se unethical when it's in the context of "a state of constant warfare for survival between competing tribes." If the latter, I would not do it.

3 - assumes torture is an effective way to get accurate information quickly. I don't know what the basis for that assumption is. The choice is to spend my last minutes throwing out everything I believe for something that's not likely to help anyone anyway, or spend my last minutes saying good bye to the ones I love. It's not a life/ethics choice at all. I would probably do neither - but try to convince the terrorist to give up the password without using torture. If you add the condition that the torture definitely will work, then the hypo becomes absurd, but in the interest of not fighting the hypo, I would torture.

 

[Hokulele]

1. Put kids in the life raft, cobble something floaty together out of the stuff on the sinking boat, and start shooting sharks.

2. Fight for the time being, but work on learning the language in the hopes of eventually teaching the people how diplomacy works.

3. Why is this a choice? Call spouse/SO briefly, then get out the hot needles, etc.

 

[Macoy]

Bluffing involves whipping my trusty portable soldering iron from my briefcase/pocket, kneeling upon their person and threatening to place the soldering piece against their eyeball.

 

[Loss Leader]

Sorry, but that just doesn't make sense to me. You prioritise your family in the first instance, but then follow that up with the concession that you will end up committing suicide, an action that will have drastic consequences for your family (both emotional and financial).

Why not try therapy?

If I am capable of dealing with the stress of having murdered a husband, wife and children, then I would be a monster and my children are better off not having me as an influence.

If I am incapable of dealing with the stress of having murdered a husband, wife and children, then I would be a broken, hollow man and my children are better off being free of me.

 

[Mobyseven]

No offense LL, but to me that just seems a little bit too black and white in a problem that is necessarily in a gray area. I'm not saying that it wouldn't be difficult, but it is possible to survive a highly stressful and traumatic situation and recover - remorseful, but not a broken man.

 

[Marquis de Carabas]

Oh, I'm very sorry. I just always liked abstract questions .

Anyway, let me try traditional moral dilemmas. Ahem,

1. You are on a sinking ship. As you rush to a life raft, you see that someone has beaten you to it and is getting ready to set off. All the other ones have left. You have a gun. The raft is only large enough for one family (Yes, you both have families, the same size). Do you shoot him and the other family so that you and your family can get the life raft? Or do you accept defeat and let them escape. Oh, and the boat was over a thermal phenomena that attracted hundreds of sharks that will eat anyone bleeding who enters the water, and you are all bleeding.

That's easy. I share the boat with the other family. They get the bottom half.

2. Your plane crash lands in a place with no modern technology. You aren't MacGyver. A tribe is kind enough to take you in, as you are injured. As you heal, you find out that the area is in a state of constant warfare for survival between competing tribes. You can't communicate with the other tribes, and can barely do so with this one. Being male (For the purposes of this situation, lets say you are), they arm you and take you with them on their next attack. Will you steal, rape, pillage with the tribe to stay alive? Or would you decline and lose the relationship with the only people you know, facing certain lonely death?

At least until I can communicate with another tribe to try and broker a better deal for my services, I fight with these guys.

3. You are with the Government, and have uncovered a terrorist plot to blow up an important, and very tall, building just in time. The building is being evacuated and on the top floor you catch a terrorist just as he activates the bomb. It is on a timer, and the correct password will deactivate it. You can't move it and there isn't enough time for the bomb squad or escape from the building, as the building is very tall and the elevators are down, and the bomb is huge. Oh, and the windows don't open, and a jump would be fatal. And the roof is a spire, so no helicopter. The terrorist isn't talking. Do you go like Jack Bauer and try to torture the password out of him in the time you have left? Or do you call your spouse and or significant other before you die?

I'd rub one out. If I have any time left after, I might kick the terrorist a bit just for amusement.

 

[Ladewig]

3 - assumes torture is an effective way to get accurate information quickly. I don't know what the basis for that assumption is.

I agree. There might be a situation where I would torture someone, but the hypothetical is definitely not it.

 

[Marquis de Carabas]

I agree. There might be a situation where I would torture someone, but the hypothetical is definitely not it.

Particularly when one considers the terrorist must have knowingly put himself in the same situation you are in. He has already committed to dying. Why should he care too much if you're particularly nasty to him for the last few moments?

 

[verusl@centurytel.ne]

You speak of this in "abstracted" venue when you should be looking at the larger picture: ethics is life and life is ethics - one cannot separate the two. They are part and parcel of man's existence upon this earth.....from the very beginning of time, as any true thinker must believe, one doesn't pick ethics or life - he personifies his ethics (i.e., his ethos, his credo, his philosophy, his faith - they are all one and the same) through choices (actions, deeds, his pursuits, and his accomplishments) in his living.
In this larger frame of mind, then, one exemplifies his choice to live by his conduct and, if I am correct in my thinking, the path I have taken determines my ultimate fate - life ended when this physical body ceases to function or a forever continuing of the self in an altered state, a spiritual form given by its Creator God, if I have upheld His ethical code of conduct while yet in the physical body.

 

[linusrichard]

You speak of this in "abstracted" venue when you should be looking at the larger picture: ethics is life and life is ethics - one cannot separate the two. They are part and parcel of man's existence upon this earth.....from the very beginning of time, as any true thinker must believe, one doesn't pick ethics or life - he personifies his ethics (i.e., his ethos, his credo, his philosophy, his faith - they are all one and the same) through choices (actions, deeds, his pursuits, and his accomplishments) in his living.
In this larger frame of mind, then, one exemplifies his choice to live by his conduct and, if I am correct in my thinking, the path I have taken determines my ultimate fate - life ended when this physical body ceases to function or a forever continuing of the self in an altered state, a spiritual form given by its Creator God, if I have upheld His ethical code of conduct while yet in the physical body.

What do you mean, "if" you have upheld His ethical code of conduct? You started out saying ethics is life and life is ethics, so if you were alive, you were being ethical, right? Or maybe you were using one word to mean two different things.

When we describe a behavior as "ethical," we don't mean simply that it conforms to an ethos - this would be a useless definition of "ethical." Rather, we mean that it conforms to the right/correct/proper/good ethos. And depending on what you think that good ethos is, it is not hard to construct hypothetical situations in which conforming to that ethos is incompatible with the extension of life.

So, the way for you to read this question would be like this: If you consider it a goal to uphold the ethical code of conduct of the Creator God (per your guess of what that might be), and you also consider it a goal to prolong your life, which do you choose when the two come into conflict? Or, do you consider the prolonging of one's own life to be the primary tenet of the Creator God's ethical code of conduct?

 

[fuelair]

Life

I know what I'll kill for.

I know what I'll risk my life for.

I have yet to find something that I'll simply die for. If you die fighting, you still die, but you were fighting for it as you died. Go down swinging.

DR

Quite correct. The proper goal is to leave more of them dead than you(part of my preference for heavy caliber firearms and high-cap mags for the semi-autos).

 

[fuelair]

#1 & 2...I really don't know.
For 3, though, I'd torture the snot out of the terrorist for sure, and not even feel bad.

1 likely -2 not the rape but otherwise likely 3) yes, and i bet he will be screaming for allah in under a minute and blathering in under two (a science/medical background is a wonderful and useful thing. so is a Leatherman Wave)

 

[verusl@centurytel.ne]

No, not at all....the primary code of ethics that our Creator God has set forth for mortal man is love one another even as He has first loved us - that is an unconditional love which we humans seem hard-pressed to comprehend. If we were ever to just take "unconditional" as just what that specifically implies, there would be no division in thought, no debate over the supposed levels of the "un" portion of the word..... then the rest would be as simple as, yes, I choose that ethic or no I cannot because I believe I am special and rate conditions to be set upon the degree to which I delegate my love. We always fall short just at the point we realize that we still have the power to choose those supposed degrees of loving our neighbors, and that is when we perceive that we may transgress the law of love. So it is the narrow confines of the human intelligence that his heart misses the greater picture of what exactly love is. I choose to define the word as the direct contract our intelligence side has with our emotional side, both choosing to allow will not to have its sway when dealing with others, but rather choosing what our Creator God has shown us to be the way our wills should bend (if you will).

 

[MRC_Hans]

This is more abstract, because I want more than the typical Moral Dilemma.

Which would you sacrifice for the other? Would you chose to live ethically and die, or live unethically and live?

Once your life is at stake, your view on ethics generally change.

Now we could go into specifics, like how bad a breach in ethics are we talking about? Does it make a difference as to how high the offense?

Would you kill to stay alive?

Under certain conditions, yes.

Would you survive by stealing, raping, pillaging?

I am unable to imagine a scenario where raping would be needed tosave my life, but otherwise, under certain conditions, yes.

Would you torture another?

Under certain conditions, yes.

In general, I like to think that I hold ethics in high regard, and I would certainly go a long way to avoid any unethical deeds. But given a sufficiently desperate scenario, I think very few people would stop at anything. I hope never to need to find out if I'm one of them.

Hans

 

[TX50]

...
the rape/torture to stay alive thing is really puzzling to me. i cant think of a situation where that would ever be neccesary for your personal survival, so imma ignore it for now.

eg. you are forced to fight for some guerilla army in some civil war.
Rape/torture is used as a bonding mechanism among the fighters.
If you do not participate then they kill you in a particularly nasty
way.

 

[linusrichard]

For those having trouble with the "rape" part, I don't know what OP meant by it, but I interpreted it to mean:

1 a: archaic : to seize and take away by force b: DESPOIL

Essentially, it means the same as steal and pillage.

 

[Ladewig]

No, not at all....the primary code of ethics that our Creator God has set forth for mortal man is love one another even as He has first loved us - that is an unconditional love which we humans seem hard-pressed to comprehend. If we were ever to just take "unconditional" as just what that specifically implies, there would be no division in thought, no debate over the supposed levels of the "un" portion of the word..... then the rest would be as simple as, yes, I choose that ethic or no I cannot because I believe I am special and rate conditions to be set upon the degree to which I delegate my love.

Could you be a bit more specific about who the "Creator God" is? The god of Abraham and Issac? Jesus's Father? Allah? Some aspect of Vishnu? Mother Earth? Someone else?

I've read your post several times and still have little understanding of what you are trying to get at. If the folks running the United States want to show "unconditional love" to the populace of some famine-stricken African country run by a despot, then will any international aid come with specific economic restrictions or is it simply a matter of sending as much food as is necessary?