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Would it be moral to kill Hitler as a baby

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Certainty about a future event is not possible in reality.

Actually, I don't think that's the Objectivist viewpoint. If I drop a rock, and there is no evidence of anything untoward going on (I'm not in an airplane, or at a magic show, or in space, etc), I can be certain it will fall to the ground. That's certainty about a future event. We identify certain courses of action, like dishonesty, as vices because we have certain knowledge about their future consequences. And so on. Given that the function of knowledge is precisely to allow us to grasp the consequences of our actions, a lack of certainty about future events per se would imply skepticism.

The "baby Hitler" case is a special subtype, as I noted, because free will does introduce a new factor into projecting the future. The best we can say about a person's future actions is that, given our knowledge of his character and values, if he chooses to focus, he will act in a certain way. But that basic choice to focus is never a given.

In reality, the point at which we are CERTAIN someone will violate rights is the exact same point in time at which they BECOME guilty for doing so, because this is the instant they ACT in order to do it.

How does this view integrate with the concept of threats and preemption?

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We can know basic simple events relatively shortly before they happen, i.e. gravity. We cannot know the minds and free choices of others, thousands of others, which gave rise to Hitler. Why do you feel the need to justify your impossible scenario saying that we can know a baby's nature and choices 40 years before it's done its worst.

People even gave you intelligent and actual occurring scenarios yet you ignore them for the impossible.

And here's my answer to your B.S. scenario: I would become close to the baby and direct it's will and energy towards productive rationally self-interested tasks and let it be happy and benefit the future instead of accepting determinism and causelessly murdering a child for no reason.

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I don't think there's any need to get personal. The most likely explanation is that the question is intended to set up and explore a perceived tension between two values. For this to work, the stakes have to be high: kill a baby or let millions die. You see similar kinds of questions in professional philosophical literature all the time.

There's no evidence of anything psychological going on here, and introducing such speculation is frankly both pointless and rude.

Hey, this cat proposed a ridiculous scenario with the intent of exposing a supposed loophole in O-ism and then got huffy and condescending when the other posters wouldn't indulge him. You reap what you sow.

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One is either going to entertain the opening topic completely, and give it some respect - no matter how ridiculous it may seem

There are better questions to spend time on than ridiculous ones. Specially ones that require magic to exist.

You're doing exactly what I asked people not to do.

What do you think of the principle behind this scenario?

We are assuming here that you know for sure he will kill millions.

Well, then let's assume some more, then - when you take logic out of arguments, it's very easy.

Let's assume that unicorns pop out the Rhine and infant Hitler is trampled under their shiny, glittery yet fatal hooves.

Now you don't have to kill him. Now go and have dinner already.

Edited by kainscalia
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I don't think there's any need to get personal. The most likely explanation is that the question is intended to set up and explore a perceived tension between two values. For this to work, the stakes have to be high: kill a baby or let millions die. You see similar kinds of questions in professional philosophical literature all the time.

There's no evidence of anything psychological going on here, and introducing such speculation is frankly both pointless and rude.

I don't suggest anything, I simply ask questions. Like these:

Why a baby? Why not a young man, a boy, a grown man? Don't other options set up stakes just as high?

And I will reiterate: even if you kill baby Hitler, you don't stop WWII and nearly 50 million casualties.

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Why a baby? Why not a young man, a boy, a grown man? Don't other options set up stakes just as high?

Probably because the maximal stakes occur when the person being killed is innocent, and a baby is considered presumptively innocent in a way that young men, boys and grown men are not.

And I will reiterate: even if you kill baby Hitler, you don't stop WWII and nearly 50 million casualties.

I'm not arguing that the question is sensible; I explicitly argued the opposite. It's internally contradictory, just not for the reasons most people in this thread have been citing.

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Probably because the maximal stakes occur when the person being killed is innocent, and a baby is considered presumptively innocent in a way that young men, boys and grown men are not.

Why stop there? Why not repeatedly rape Hitler's mother so he won't even be conceived?

I still think there's something disturbing about such questions, especially when posed seriously.

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I still think there's something disturbing about such questions, especially when posed seriously.
I don't see anything disturbing about such questions. I think many people try to pose such puzzlers to themselves in all honesty, because they hope that by painting a stark picture they can isolate only the important aspects of some question. It is not much different from someone asking: what if gravity did not exist, or what if friction did not exist...or some such question. I've warrant that almost every thoughtful Objectivist has posed some form of lifeboat question to himself at some point.
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I don't see anything disturbing about such questions. I think many people try to pose such puzzlers to themselves in all honesty, because they hope that by painting a stark picture they can isolate only the important aspects of some question. It is not much different from someone asking: what if gravity did not exist, or what if friction did not exist...or some such question. I've warrant that almost every thoughtful Objectivist has posed some form of lifeboat question to himself at some point.

It's not the life boat questions, nor the outrageous hypotheticals. Those are simply annoying and highly unproductive. What I find disturbing is the stress on having to resort to force, the more violent the better, and on babies or children to boot. Look up-thread where I suggested more humane alternatives.

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It's not the life boat questions, nor the outrageous hypotheticals. Those are simply annoying and highly unproductive. What I find disturbing is the stress on having to resort to force, the more violent the better, and on babies or children to boot. Look up-thread where I suggested more humane alternatives.

It seems that everyone is missing the point. This topic was framed in such a way to make all normal philosophical responses redundant. It actually is, beyond its preposterousness, a bit of a 'trick question', I think.

I emphasise: Whatever one does with child Hitler, he will continue to unite Germany, start a war, and initiate the concentration camps. You don't just have a vague premonition, you definitely KNOW IT.

It isn't a question of irrational contradiction; of ends justifying means; of the potential vs. the actual; of Germany and its politics; of 'educating' the baby; of the impossibility of time travel; or even of being humane. You have one chance to stop Hitler - and it's now, when he's a baby.

This is the given premise. (And of course it introduces the ridiculous prescience factor, but that's the nature of lifeboat scenarios.)

Let's make it simpler. It is now 1942, and you find yourself in Berlin with a sniper rifle, and a clear and risk-free shot at the Fuhrer himself. You are what you are now, a moral and judgemental man who knows everything that Hitler has perpetrated, and is horrified. Do you take the shot ?

You want to eliminate him, let's assume, partly for what he has done already (retribution), and to hopefully end the war early (pre-emption).

If you answered 'yes' to this, then, being a consistent O'ist, you will do exactly the same to the infant Hitler. Not so?

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It seems that everyone is missing the point.
Your response misses the point. The question is meaningless, because it presupposes a falsehood, and from a false premise, you can learn nothing.
You don't just have a vague premonition, you definitely KNOW IT.
And there you have the false premise. The premise could not be true.
(And of course it introduces the ridiculous prescience factor, but that's the nature of lifeboat scenarios.)
Which, as you ought to know, are equally irrelevant as tools for discovering the correct moral theory.
Let's make it simpler. It is now 1942, and you find yourself in Berlin with a sniper rifle, and a clear and risk-free shot at the Fuhrer himself. You are what you are now, a moral and judgemental man who knows everything that Hitler has perpetrated, and is horrified. Do you take the shot?If you answered 'yes' to this, then, being a consistent O'ist, you will do exactly the same to the infant Hitler. Not so?
Absolutely not so. Not only do you not know which you know in 1942, but that which is in 1942 is different than that which is in 1900. How can you fail to grasp the difference? How can you miss the central point.
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It isn't a question of irrational contradiction; of ends justifying means; of the potential vs. the actual; of Germany and its politics; of 'educating' the baby; of the impossibility of time travel; or even of being humane. You have one chance to stop Hitler - and it's now, when he's a baby.

Yes, it absolutely is a matter of contradiction. Let me lay it out very explicitly. Your scenario tries to lay out a dilemma, in which neither alternative seems acceptable. You can choose between 1) letting millions of people die, or 2) killing a baby. The problem with the scenario is that its premises contain an implicit contradiction, i.e. it is internally inconsistent. For option (1) to play out, it must be impossible for the baby to do anything other than grow up to be a mass-murdering dictator. This means that the baby has no choice with regard to his future actions, i.e. that he does not possess free will. Now let's look at option (2). Why would it be wrong to kill the baby? Because it allegedly has rights. But where do rights come from? They are a necessary condition for the exercise of reason, man's tool of survival, in a social context. But reason is the conceptual faculty, and presupposes free will -- which, per the requirements of option (1), the baby does not possess.

In short, the reason option (1) seems unacceptable requires that the baby have no free will. The reason option (2) seems unacceptable requires that the baby does have free will. So which is it? Accepting the premises and trying to reason from them is futile, because you can demonstrate anything from a contradiction. It's literally no different from "Suppose two and two made five -- would you kill Hitler?" The only rational response is to point out the contradiction and then refuse to reason from it.

I also can't help but ask why, if it isn't a question of ends justifying means, the original poster started his question by asking "Can anyone tell me the objectivist position on the ends justifying the means?"

Edited by khaight
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Mr. Odden, I find your literalness amazing. I don't see much point myself in ethics of emergencies, but you do realise surely that one temporarily has to suspend one's disbelief at these hypotheses, in order to apply oneself to the ethical question at hand.

As such, they can be useful tools to discuss, and possibly establish, moral principles, and resultant actions. I don't like them, but I'm willing to go along for the ride, sometimes - despite their underlying unreality - if they interest me.

It's called poetic licence; and that's the way I chose to approach this subject.

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If you answered 'yes' to this, then, being a consistent O'ist, you will do exactly the same to the infant Hitler. Not so?

One further thought -- being a consistent Objectivist (or at least aspiring to same), one of the things I will absolutely *not* do is knowingly allow a contradiction into my premises. Setting up a hypothetical situation is one thing. Accepting premises which are internally inconsistent even on their own terms is quite another.

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Lets make this question more fun for Objectivist's who think they should answer. God tells you that a baby will kill millions in current times and that you should murder this infant. Do you?

That's about what these scenarios amount to. They have no value because they have no place in reality.

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Let's make it simpler. It is now 1942, and you find yourself in Berlin with a sniper rifle, and a clear and risk-free shot at the Fuhrer himself. You are what you are now, a moral and judgemental man who knows everything that Hitler has perpetrated, and is horrified. Do you take the shot ?

You think that makes it simpler?

By 1942 Hitler had blundered do badly it's likely the worst thing that could happen to Nazi Germany was to leave him in charge of it. On the other hand it's uncertain whether other Nazi party bigwigs would have been able to retain power in the face of opposition from the German army (remember highly placed officers conspired to kill Hitler late in the war; they were aware of his many expensive blunders, having had to pay the butcher's bill with their own troops). It's even less certain whether or not Germany might have descended into a bloody internal struggle for control. Now, if the army wins, would they surrender with conditions before 1945? Wouldn't that leave a Nazi state still standing?

Of course, I'm not supposed to consider any of this, right? Just to consider whether or not I'd kill someone if that death would magically prevent the death of millions somehow. Because like it or not the question still requires omniscience or precognition, and that's simply not possible. The question is meaningless. And once you introduce one ludicrous element, why not a dozen more? So I ask: why not render Hitler's mother sterile in her teens?

Sorry, I wouldn't decide where to go on vacation with such little thought, much less whether or not to kill someone.

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khaight, I am not arguing with the Objectivist position on free will and individual rights.

The original premise is that 'somehow' one knows the outcome of Hitler's life beyond any doubt. So this, to be taken seriously (poetic licence again), totally removes the 'free will' element. So in this case, Hitler can only become what the world knew him to be.

What is left is the individual rights of the baby, or adult.

Given, once more, that the adult Hitler was morally deserving of execution,( I hope you agree,) I am merely extrapolating that same verdict on to the baby itself. THIS part could have led to an interesting discussion, if others had gone along with it.

I agree, of course I agree! that I am accepting premises flawed by irrationality here, but that is the ridiculous nature of these hypotheses; and you either consider the given details, or you don't.

Thanks guys,

Tony

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What interesting discussion. Hell, you extrapolated the entire argument. If we accept illogical premises we kill baby Hitler. The end.

Again why defend a pointless idea and discussion. Also I enjoy how you ignore half of the criticisms on here that have beaten your shaky points to death.

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So this, to be taken seriously...

What does it mean to take a premise or an idea seriously? I would submit that it means to identify the presuppositions and implications of the idea, with an eye to determining its relationship both to reality and to other ideas. Pretending to think about an idea while deliberately ignoring its presuppositions and implications isn't taking it seriously, it's playing a game -- and usually a pointless game at that.

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I don't see much point myself in ethics of emergencies, but you do realise surely that one temporarily has to suspend one's disbelief at these hypotheses, in order to apply oneself to the ethical question at hand.
There is a difference between "suspending disbelief" and embracing a contradiction. You, and Bond, are asking us to embrace a contradiction. Moral theory is not supposed to work even in a contradictory universe. This is not at all poetic license, it is egregiously sloppy thinking. You ought to be able to see why the premises contradict the facts upon which moral theory is founded. You are not taking philosophical ideas seriously, if you are willing to accept those contradictions as "poetic license".
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Here’s an answer nobody seems to have contemplated: how about don’t kill the baby?

Can an Objectivist, from a future where WW2 has happened, a future that, in fact, depends on the fact, justify, by eliminating the cause of the conditions of his life, and the lives of all he holds dear, saving a few anonymous millions through a basely immoral act? You can’t answer this question honestly until you consider the fact that it isn’t simply the lives of 50 million (or whatever) Europeans between the years of 1937 (not 1942) and 1945 that are at stake.

Another point: if you remove Hitler from the original question, and just have it be some random kid, then the question of killing one versus, through inaction, killing millions becomes meaningless: there’s no evidence, hypothetical or otherwise except some phantom ‘certainty’, that the kid will do what the situation insists he will. The fact remains that this is Hitler: you have appeared, through unrealistic methods, in one instant in his life, and you face the choice to let him live his life, which historical evidence indicates will yield a certain outcome without your intervention, or intervene, in the provided case through force, to destroy his life, and the history on which you base your ‘certain knowledge’.

If you choose not to intervene, you are objectively moral, because whatever his future actions, Hitler is still a child, innocent of crime, and still has every opportunity to choose not to do the things he did. Determinism is a contradiction I will not entertain in my response.

If you choose to intervene, you are objectively immoral, because you have overridden an innocent child’s ability to choose for himself whether to grow up to be a mass-murdering lunatic, or not. Not only that, you have violated the necessary historical conditions that led to your own life, and everything involved in it: by killing Hitler, you’ve essentially proven you have no regard to yourself, your life, or any sort of values you held in the twenty-first century, and have decided that sacrificing yourself is worth preventing World War 2. It is precisely these types of situations that Objectivism condemns as wrong.

*phew* How’s that for a first post?

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If time travel was possible, and one were to go back to when Hitler was an infant, there are two major possibilities that could happen.

1. The past is unchangeable, and whatever happened happened. This renders the morality of extinguishing Hitler's life irrelevent, since the outcome (our modern timeline) would inevitably happen.

2. The past is changeable. In this senario, since the Holocaust and Hitler's reign is not inevitable, he is simply an infant with a potential to be a painter or the ultimate representaion of humanity's potential for boundless cruelty. Therefore, you would be killing him for deeds he might not commit, rendering the act, in my opinion, just as immoral as killing any other infant. (Also, it might be more practical to simply have him raised in a more loving, tolerant environment.)

Apart from the morality question, it is interesting to note, however, that Hitler and WWII halted Stalin in his own bid for world domination, and when the war did end, he was forced to contend with the enormous armies assembled by the rest of the Allies, as well as the threat of retailiaton via atom bomb should he attempted a conquest. It would be interesting to find out how history would have unfolded differently.

Edited by Peripeteia
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What does it mean to take a premise or an idea seriously? I would submit that it means to identify the presuppositions and implications of the idea, with an eye to determining its relationship both to reality and to other ideas. Pretending to think about an idea while deliberately ignoring its presuppositions and implications isn't taking it seriously, it's playing a game -- and usually a pointless game at that.

But that's it ! Don't you see that it is just a game? These 'Emergency Ethics' scenarios are all about moral exercises, mental drills, and flights of fancy, even.

They mean taking a leap of imagination, in order to apply Reason to a fictional situation, based upon unreasonable, unreal, premises.

So someone sets a scene, and the rest of us turn it around in our minds and thrash out all the rational and ethical consequences and ramifications.

It may be viewed as a 'What if' game. Must I remind you that many of the worlds best advances were made by explorers and inventors saying "what if...?" to themselves. Every great novel has this at its core. ['What if, instead of the workers, this time it's the industrialists who go on strike?!']

Guys, imagination is not the enemy of Reason. If you are firmly rooted in reality you can safely play a mind game of this sort - because you know you will immediately return to reality when it's over. Of course it means having confidence in your mind; and if you don't test it, you might never know.

So I decided to play the game out to its 'logical' conclusion - and my conclusion was that KNOWING WHAT I KNOW, (beyond a shadow of doubt) IT WOULD BE IMMORAL to allow young Adolf to live out his life. As I said earlier this would involve a massive sacrifice, of my own life, and those of millions; of higher values, to a far, far, lesser one; i.o.w., Altruism to the ultimate degree.

To have made the game more topical, it would have been interesting to swap Hitler, for a certain Saudi terrorist - now there's someone I would like to put the cross-hairs on - but I suppose the responses would have been no different.

I assumed that my position was obvious on the seriousness of Objectivist philosophy - just goes to show that one shouldn't take it for granted on a forum - but I chose to play the game, albeit, alone. A pity, but that's your choice, and it is has been a useful exercise for me in checking my own premises. :thumbsup:

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If time travel was possible, and one were to go back to when Hitler was an infant, there are two major possibilities that could happen.

If time travel were possible, I'd gather a lot (say a few hundred) people with a thorough grounding in Objectivism and we'd all go to Ancient Greece to teach propper philosophy. THat would not only prevent WWII, but just about every other atrocity in history. So there :thumbsup:

Apart from the morality question, it is interesting to note, however, that Hitler and WWII halted Stalin in his own bid for world domination, and when the war did end, he was forced to contend with the enormous armies assembled by the rest of the Allies, as well as the threat of retailiaton via atom bomb should he attempted a conquest. It would be interesting to find out how history would have unfolded differently.

Oh, Alternative History scenarios are a lot of fun, but they are only informed speculation. Nothing posed in them can ever be proven one way or the other. So what if the South had won independence in the USCW? What if the Spanish Armada had been victoriuos? What if the Roman Empire had never decayed and collapsed? What if Mohammed had converted to Christianity?

So let's play, what if you had prevented Hitler from attaining power in Germany? Well, one possibility is that the Communists take Germany over and ally themselves firmly with the USSR in order to 1) Get revenge on the Entente powers that defeated them in WWI and 2) spread Communism throughout the world. Conceivably such a scenario might have been worse, Holocaust or no (and a Holocaust is still a distinct possibility; Jews were the go to scapegoats in Europe whenever things went wrong). As it was, the Soviet-Nazi partnership was bad enough. Imagine if they don't turn on each other. I said Hitler blundered many times. His one fatal blunder was to invade the USSR. He compounded that error by delaying the invasion, which stretched into winter for which German troops were unprepared. He sealed it by not evacuating the troops at Leningrad.

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Apart from the morality question, it is interesting to note, however, that Hitler and WWII halted Stalin in his own bid for world domination, and when the war did end, he was forced to contend with the enormous armies assembled by the rest of the Allies, as well as the threat of retailiaton via atom bomb should he attempted a conquest. It would be interesting to find out how history would have unfolded differently.

C&C Red Alert was a good game :thumbsup:

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