Action vs.
Reasoning
Caution: The following blog is full of possibly the following:
erroneous comments, irrational sentiment, ignorance, and contrite reasoning. It
may also resemble: knowledge, thought provoking matter and ideas that make you
question your own conclusions.
I do not believe that this is my
week to post a blog; however, I feel that I am moved to do such. My goal is
always to further complicate and as the southern proverb says, “Muddy the
waters”, and I do this so that you (reader) can taste what the battlefield of
my mind is like. I missed my opportunity last week to post, therefore, even
though I won’t be graded on this post, I will still try my best to give a good
situation to make you use your noggin!
Using
the multiple situations today presented in class as your basis for reasoning,
my goal is to set up a situation in such a way that makes you come to a
conclusion hopefully somewhat similar to my own, or to negate my reasoning. My
conclusion that I drew today from class is this: In having to bring yourself too
mentally and physical do more to kill, does that change your ability to kill?
In the
situation of the trolley, as presented, it is coming and you can pull a lever
saving the ten people and killing the one; or, do not pull the lever and the
one lives and the ten die. My reaction (and some of yours) was that I would
pull the lever. When the fat man on the bridge idea was presented (push the fat
man over, killing one, saves the ten because his massive body stops the train) I
had to mull it over for a minute. My reasoning for doing so was because I felt
as if I was actually killing (pushing him to his fate) through my actions.
This, in comparison to pulling a lever and not actually pushing a person, in my
mind, made the lever not as wrong as actually pushing. Yes, your killing in
either circumstance, however, you are putting more effort in terms of mental
decision making, in my opinion.
Now if
any of that makes sense, on to the “Taylor situation of impending doom”, as I have
named it. Imagine waking up in a room that is completely pitch black. You then
hear over a loud speaker, “Let’s play a game”. The “game” is now described to
you in a very terrifying manner, and the content of the message is as follows:
You have a decision to make.
You can strangle the person to your left who is bound
against their will and save ten who are in a gas chamber.
You can decide not to strangle the one to your left, but the
ten in the gas chamber will be suffocated by poisonous gas.
If you decide to kill yourself, everyone dies.
If you decide to not do anything, everyone dies.
Now, you seem to be in a situation, one which has impending
doom for some if not all. What do you do? Can you bring yourself to strangle/
brutally murder another person?
This leads me back to my conclusion as stated above: In
having to bring yourself too mentally and physical do more to kill, does that
change your ability to kill?
What do you think? Does this make your brain hurt, as it did
mine?
P.s. (I was thinking of the movie Saw as I came up with my situation).
Well, this is terrifying.
ReplyDeleteI think in this situation I would be disinclined to kill the bound person, for a number of reasons.
Firstly, I am a part-time subscriber to Kant's categorical imperative; killing is never justified or moral, even to save the lives of many. The bound person's life is not a means to the end of rescuing the gas chamber's residents, who may or may not be real. Regardless, I didn't put those people in the gas chamber, and I am not the one threatening to release gas into the chamber.
Also, how do I know that the voice is telling the truth? I haven't seen the people in the gas chamber, nor do I know enough to measure the trustworthiness of the voice.
I think this moral dilemma lacks a bit of the zing of the Trolley Problem because you are not the "switch-puller" yourself, as it were.
We stated in class that the trolley problem was a moral dilemma and not based upon justice. So your answer to save the ten people should not change if we can assume that in this scenario there will not be any legal consequences for your actions. If the greater moral issue is to save the ten people then it should not matter if you are pulling the lever, pushing the fat man, or strangling a person. Even though each scenario increases in vulgarity, you know for a fact that the person will die regardless of how it actually happens. So in this case pulling the lever to send the trolley to the one individual instead of strangling a person does not make you a better person morally, because you are still causing the death of an individual.
ReplyDeleteThe only other possible action that would differ from the rest is inaction. Even in this case, the moral dilemma is still present but it shifts to ask, whether or not it is morally right to do nothing when you have the ability to save someone. So my question to is if is there a moral difference between inaction when you have the opportunity to save someone and actually killing someone?