Is it OK to steal/kill to save the life of your child?

Ethics
41

Reality doesn’t talk to people: it doesn’t order anyone to bear misery and defeat merely because he happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Existence exists: at times a person might find himself in situations where there are literally no options — the boulder is rolling toward him, for example, and he just can’t leap out of the way in time — but these are not moral issues. Morality is only relevant where man faces alternatives: Should I choose X, or should I choose Y? If “X” stands for continued existence, and “Y” means lights out for you, an egoistic ethical system can never require man to choose the latter.

My morality most definitely is a tool to make my life better; it is the means by which I am able to enjoy myself and live.

What fundamental principle is your morality based on?

Egoistic ethics doesn’t “provide” you with options, either. You’re using anthropomorphic language and then dismissing my replies because I echo your anthropomorphic language.

The fundamental principal my morality is based on is, like Kevin said, “that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine”. This is because I recognize the reality that if I disregard another’s rights and initiate force on him, I am undermining my own existence and inviting retaliation. There is no situation where violating another’s rights is going to improve my life - even if such an action extends it.

If you don’t agree with that then what do you think the point is in living rationally in any situation?

42

You are ignoring the fact that when a spouse, child or pet dies or is injured, you do not die. You are allowing the existence of others to dictate your actions; but that is the moral code of altruism, not egoism.

I don’t make too many important distinctions between the value I place on my own life, and the lives of those who are irreplaceably precious to me. Do you? (Forget pets; animals have to be regarded as expendable in any crisis involving people.)

If a man risks his life — or gives it up — to rescue the woman he loves, is that altruism? Is such a man “allowing the existence of others to dictate his actions” — or is he is driven by an intense love for values?

You have no right to command anyone to permit himself to die, even when to do so would mean sparing the lives of 5,000 innocent children. Altruism is the creed of self-sacrifice: the view that a man may not exist for his own sake; that he has no moral right to take the actions necessary to further his own life. Under normal circumstances, the interests of rational men do not clash: the attainment of one person’s life does not entail the violation of the rights of another — but this can change drastically when somebody’s life becomes threatened. Just as you may not prescribe that a man must sacrifice himself in a crisis, so I (or anyone) may likewise not order him to sacrifice others to himself in order to remain alive. My formal position, to state it one final time: “Lifeboat” scenarios, such as those under discussion in this thread, are outside of the province of morality. Whatever a man chooses to do in such a situation is, in effect, moral.

43

I don’t make too many important distinctions between the value I place on my own life, and the lives of those who are irreplaceably precious to me. Do you? (Forget pets; animals have to be regarded as expendable in any crisis involving people.)

I don’t make exceptions for pets either. I may have to make a tough decision in a crisis between my spouse and my son, my daughter-in-law, my graddaughter, my brother, my aunt, my uncle, my dog or my cat, but you can rest assured that these are all values to me none of which are “dispensable” or replaceable.

You have failed to justify your “Forget” statement. Why? Your position reduces to the conclusion that the life of any human is of such special intrinsic value that concepts of morality can be discarded, if you wish, when the life of a person who you feel special about is threatened? Do you limit this dispensability of morality to just life, or would that include the health and well-being of the person?

“Lifeboat” scenarios are not under discussion here, and your repeated attempt to claim that sickness of another person constitutes a “lifeboat” scenario shows a serious misunderstanding of what such scenarios are and why they are special.

44

The sense of moral righteousness that you’d get from just letting your wife die because you didnt want to steal something isnt going to keep you warm when youre alone in bed at night, nor will it prevent you from feeling any worse when you think about what youve lost and how you could have prevented it, so the argument that its ‘in your best interest’ to do so sounds like rationalization. I’d say beyond any shadow of a doubt that the person who relaxed his moral code to save the life of someone he loved is going to be a lot happier afterwards than the person who didnt. If you want to argue that ‘not stealing’ should have priority over personal happiness thats one thing, but to claim in this case that ‘not stealing’ would increase happiness is just wrong.

45

You have failed to justify your “Forget” statement.

What is my “Forget” statement?

“Lifeboat” scenarios are not under discussion here, and your repeated attempt to claim that sickness of another person constitutes a “lifeboat” scenario shows a serious misunderstanding of what such scenarios are and why they are special.

A lifeboat scenario, as SkyTrooper has indicated, is a life-or-death crisis in which the survival of one person comes only at the price of violating the rights of another. “You and another man are in a lifeboat which can hold only one person. One of you must go overboard; will it be him, or you?”

Put all of the actors in the child-sickness scenario into a rubber raft and float them on the high seas — then maybe you’ll get the idea.

46

The sense of moral righteousness that you’d get from just letting your wife die because you didnt want to steal something isnt going to keep you warm when youre alone in bed at night, nor will it prevent you from feeling any worse when you think about what youve lost and how you could have prevented it, so the argument that its ‘in your best interest’ to do so sounds like rationalization. I’d say beyond any shadow of a doubt that the person who relaxed his moral code to save the life of someone he loved is going to be a lot happier afterwards than the person who didnt. If you want to argue that morality should have priority over personal happiness thats one thing (although dubious from an Objectivist standpoint), but to claim that in this case acting morally would increase happiness is just wrong.

I’d say that when I’m sitting in jail for stealing medicine, and possibly murder if someone dies as a result of my stealing, and my wife is dead anyway because I stole the medicine too late or just because illnesses work like that and you can’t always fix them (or even if she didn’t die, and I’m now sitting in jail counting the years until I’m free to be with her), then beyond a shadow of a doubt I’d be a heck of a lot less happy than if I had acted rationally (in my own long-term self interest!) and buried my wife knowing that I am free to pick up the pieces and carry on with my life.

You’re operating on the assumption that you’re living in a moral bubble where as long as your wife or child or whoever lives, that will be the end of the story and you will both go back to life as always. On the other hand I’m saying that violating someone’s rights to get what you want instead of earning it will not be in your best interests, because of the fact that irrational actions have consequences. I’m not saying you should blindly do whatever some system tells you to do, even when you think there is another option that would end up better for you. I’m saying that rational action is rational on the basis that it furthers your ability to live the kind of life you want to live by recognizing the facts and acting accordingly. If your child is sick and you steal medicine from another sick kid and your kid gets better, that won’t ever actually BE the end of the story and you won’t just go back to life as you intended with your child. In this case - because you will be caught and either go to jail or be made to pay or will have to continually look over your shoulder for an extremely angry father whose kid died because you stole his medicine.

If you think you could ever find yourself in a situation where:

  1. you or a loved one is fatally ill

  2. a single medicine exists that could cure the disease, but you don’t have insurance/don’t have savings/don’t have a house to mortgage/don’t have family or friends to help you/can’t find a charity to help and therefore can’t afford the medicine - you or your loved one will certainly die

  3. you happen to know of someone else whose loved one is also fatally ill with the same disease, but they do have the medicine

  4. you are able to steal it AND know, somehow, with 100% certainty, that you will not ever be caught , your wife won’t get better and then leave you because she doesn’t agree with your judgment (I’m thinking I would have a hard time coming to terms with the fact that someone who should rightfully have been alive is now dead because I am alive) or your child won’t grow up and resent you for the same reason, causing you to lose your highest value in the end anyway, and that doing something so unjust will be no sweat off your back for the rest of your life

Then maybe - maybe! - you could justify the action by saying that this is how to make sure the situation ends up best for you in the long term. I am extremely skeptical that such a situation could arise.

I wouldn’t accept the premise that your loved one could be such a high value to you that you would sacrifice your freedom or even life if it meant that loved one living. That’s altruism, as I’m sure you will recognize, because you’re putting a higher value on someone else than on your own life. So given that the consequence for murder (which is surely how the courts would see it when someone dies because you think you need and therefore deserve the medicine more than them, rights be damned) is a loss of freedom, there’s no justification.

I also agree with David Odden that this does not constitute a lifeboat situation, so my answer above should not be construed to apply to lifeboat situations. HOWEVER, I strongly disagree with this statement:

“Lifeboat” scenarios, such as those under discussion in this thread, are outside of the province of morality. Whatever a man chooses to do in such a situation is, in effect, moral.

Of course morality still applies in lifeboat situations. Emergencies don’t just give everyone the right to stop thinking. However since they are so out of the context of regular life it’s impossible to judge the morality of any course of action from outside of that specific lifeboat situation. If I found myself in a lifeboat-type situation, assuming the situation does not leave me unable to think clearly, there could still be courses of action that would be immoral and better courses of action that would be moral - or possibly only a number of irrational options, and I would have to try to choose the best one - not just act randomly or erratically. However, because of the singularity of such situations and also because of the state of mind of people in them who are often really not able to think clearly (due to extreme hunger or thirst, for example), there is no way to evaluate the situation hypothetically or in hindsight to say what should have been done differently. There is also really no advantage in evaluating such situations morally, for the same reasons.

In fact the “moral loophole” in emergency situations is NOT that you can just use other people however you want: Rand’s view was that only in lifeboat situations is it appropriate to try to help other people.

David - if my understanding of a lifeboat situation is incorrect, could you please explain how? The only Rand I have read on it is the entry under “Emergencies” in the lexicon, but the above is how I understand this:

“Emergencies” - Ayn Rand Lexicon]

This does not mean a double standard of morality: the standard and the basic principles remain the same, but their application to either case requires precise definitions.

And as for this:

Put all of the actors in the child-sickness scenario into a rubber raft and float them on the high seas — then maybe you’ll get the idea.

I counter with this:

“Emergencies” - Ayn Rand Lexicon]

The principle that one should help men in an emergency cannot be extended to regard all human suffering as an emergency and to turn the misfortune of some into a first mortgage on the lives of others.

47

I wouldn’t accept the premise that your loved one could be such a high value to you that you would sacrifice your freedom or even life if it meant that loved one living. That’s altruism, as I’m sure you will recognize, because you’re putting a higher value on someone else than on your own life. So given that the consequence for murder (which is surely how the courts would see it when someone dies because you think you need and therefore deserve the medicine more than them, rights be damned) is a loss of freedom, there’s no justification.

Well I doubt that most juries are going to give you a long sentence for stealing medicine to save a dying family member; youd probably get a couple of years in prison max and maybe not even that much if it was your first offence.

But the deeper problem is that the same logic could be used to argue that its ‘wrong’ to break laws even if those laws are immoral. For example, suppose you lived in a non-free country where it was illegal to buy drug X, yet that drug was necessary to save the life of a family member. You find someone willing to sell you it, but you know that buying it will cause you to incur a long jail sentence if youre caught. Would you say that buying the drug is immoral, purely because the risk of jail is so great? If not, then I dont think you can argue that its wrong to steal on the grounds that you risk a prison sentence.

Realistically, what happens (in both the stealing example, and the non-free country example) is that the person has to weigh up the benefits of saving the life of a family member against the risk of being caught and going to jail. But this has nothing at all to do with the morality of stealing - the theft is just as ‘justified’ as buying the illegal drug and the situations are basically identical from the point of view of the person who needs the drug.

I wouldn’t accept the premise that your loved one could be such a high value to you that you would sacrifice your freedom or even life if it meant that loved one living.

Well I’m not sure I agree with that but it doesnt matter because youre not sacrificing your life, youre risking it. Are you saying that its always irrational for a person to risk their life to save someone that they loved?

48

I wouldn’t accept the premise that your loved one could be such a high value to you that you would sacrifice your freedom or even life if it meant that loved one living. That’s altruism, as I’m sure you will recognize, because you’re putting a higher value on someone else than on your own life.

Your life is the standard of value, that doesnt mean it will be your highest value. I value nothing higher than the lives of my children. If it was necessary to surrender my life or my freedom so that they might live, I would do it without hesitation. I dont think that makes me an altruist.

49

Inalienability

When we say that we hold individual rights to be inalienable, we must mean just that. Inalienable means that which we may not take away, suspend, infringe, restrict or violate—not ever, not at any time, not for any purpose whatsoever.

You cannot say that “man has inalienable rights except in cold weather and on every second Tuesday,” just as you cannot say that “man has inalienable rights except in an emergency,” or “man’s rights cannot be violated except for a good purpose.”

Either man’s rights are inalienable, or they are not. You cannot say a thing such as “semi-inalienable” and consider yourself either honest or sane. When you begin making conditions, reservations and exceptions, you admit that there is something or someone above man’s rights, who may violate them at his discretion. Who? Why, society—that is, the Collective. For what reason? For the good of the Collective. Who decides when rights should be violated? The Collective. If this is what you believe, move over to the side where you belong and admit that you are a Collectivist.

50

The paragraphs Grames has quoted come from Miss Rand’s essay “Textbook of Americanism,” in which she discusses the basic political principles necessary to establish and maintain a free society. They appear under the section titled: “Does The Motive Change The Nature Of A Dictatorship?”

Clearly, Miss Rand is writing about governments and their policies, not the choices individual men might face in times of extreme crisis. (At the risk of sounding presumptuous, even my strongest critics would probably not accuse me of being a collectivist.)

One idea, though, is essential to the discussion at hand: Man always retains his fundamental right to life. This means the right to defend, protect, and work to sustain one’s own existence: Man can never be required to regard himself (or turn himself into) an object of sacrifice — no matter how dire the straits, no matter what other values might be involved — “not ever, not at any time, not for any purpose whatsoever.”

Once again, morality and its principles are a matter of context.

51

The paragraphs Grames has quoted come from Miss Rand’s essay “Textbook of Americanism,” in which she discusses the basic political principles necessary to establish and maintain a free society. They appear under the section titled: “Does The Motive Change The Nature Of A Dictatorship?”

Clearly, Miss Rand is writing about governments and their policies, not the choices individual men might face in times of extreme crisis. (At the risk of sounding presumptuous, even my strongest critics would probably not accuse me of being a collectivist.)

One idea, though, is essential to the discussion at hand: Man always retains his fundamental right to life. This means the right to defend, protect, and work to sustain one’s own existence: Man can never be required to regard himself (or turn himself into) an object of sacrifice — no matter how dire the straits, no matter what other values might be involved — “not ever, not at any time, not for any purpose whatsoever.”

Once again, morality and its principles are a matter of context.

  1. Even if you could never be expected to relinquish your own right to life, you would still not be justified in stealing or killing to save the life of your child. Not even if you think they mean more to you than your own life. What would stop someone from valuing, say, every child’s life over her own life? Nothing but force? Taking a value from person A and giving it to person B, to your own detriment, and defending yourself by saying that you’re doing it for yourself (ie because you want to see your child alive) despite the fact that, if caught, you won’t be alive or free to do any valuing at all, is altrusim, pure and simple.

  2. Let’s look at what you just said and how it totally doesn’t apply here. Man always has the right to: a) defend, b ) protect and c) work to sustain one’s own existence. I completely agree. My first argument is that failure to do those three things before an emergency situation arises is NOT a justification for looting someone else when your neck is on the line. However, since I know you want to isolate a moment in time, analyzing the situation without considering events before or after, I’ll do that too and pretend that there’s some perfectly legitimate reason why looting is your only option in this situation (i.e. you haven’t violated any rights up to this point), and that stealing medicine from a sick kid or killing someone to keep your own kid alive isn’t a criminal offence in every jurisdiction anywhere and that you’d clearly end up with a net loss in value. So I’ll argue instead that killing or stealing to save your child’s life is not defending, protecting, or working to sustain your life. Who, in this situation, are you defending your life from? No one is initiating force (except you) and it isn’t even you whose life is in danger. So that right of ours doesn’t justify this action. Protect? Again, protection from illness is mainly something you do before you get sick. You absolutely have the right to take care of yourself and, once sick, to get the best medical attention available to you. Nobody could stop you. Oh - unless you try to kill them, then they’ll stop you, because that’s NOT what “protect” means at all. How about working to sustain one’s life - killing someone to steal their money to buy medicine for your child is pretty honest labour, right? Especially if you do it out of desperation at the last minute because you aren’t able to face reality and/or because you don’t believe in preparing for emergencies? Your statement that "Man _ always _ retains his fundamental right to life. This means the right to defend, protect, and work to sustain one’s own existence" doesn’t mean "Man _ always _ has the right to take whatever he needs from his neighbours, even if he has to kill them for it, but only if it’s really really really serious (to him personally) and he can’t think of any other way to solve his problems or deal with his reality". Sacrifice is exactly what you’re advocating - you’re sacrificing someone’s life or property for your own ends, and sacrificing yourself for someone else (your life, or freedom, or integrity for your child, who is NOT you even if they mean a lot to you).

In the end though, I don’t think you think it’s within your rights at all. I think you’re just saying you would do it anyway, even if it isn’t, ethics be damned, and that you wouldn’t feel any guilt or regret over it afterward. That I can’t argue with, because I can’t argue with an emotion. Let’s just say that if it were me or my kid that you tried to pull one over on for your benefit - believe me, you wouldn’t be better off in the end. And I would not only feel justified in defending myself and my family against your violation of our rights, I also would be right, alive, free, and human.

I can’t make it any more clear than that, and won’t be attempting to.

[edit for messy html]

52

The paragraphs Grames has quoted come from Miss Rand’s essay “Textbook of Americanism,” in which she discusses the basic political principles necessary to establish and maintain a free society. They appear under the section titled: “Does The Motive Change The Nature Of A Dictatorship?”

Clearly, Miss Rand is writing about governments and their policies, not the choices individual men might face in times of extreme crisis. (At the risk of sounding presumptuous, even my strongest critics would probably not accuse me of being a collectivist.)

One idea, though, is essential to the discussion at hand: Man always retains his fundamental right to life. This means the right to defend, protect, and work to sustain one’s own existence: Man can never be required to regard himself (or turn himself into) an object of sacrifice — no matter how dire the straits, no matter what other values might be involved — “not ever, not at any time, not for any purpose whatsoever.”

Once again, morality and its principles are a matter of context.

I do not accuse Kevin Delaney of being a collectivist, but I did not want to engage in out of context quoting. Nevertheless, the concept of the inalienability of individual rights has wider application than the context of government action. This is because individual rights are derived from the metaphysical nature of man, which applies to every man in every context with the exception of a metaphysical emergency.

In the context of a metaphysical emergency the aspects of man that are fundamental to his survival are changed. A temporary change in the evaluation of the metaphysical nature of man renders all derivative ideas moot, including normal ethics and moral rights. Inalienability is an application of the concepts of the hierarchy of knowledge and the fallacy of the stolen concept in that no derivative economic or political idea can change a man’s rights but a logically prior metaphysical change can.

But emergencies can differ in their scope. Emergencies always have a finite scope; there are going to be people uneffected by the emergency. The social context relating people in an emergency to people not in an emergency does not change (this is the major point made by Rand’s essay “The Ethics of Emergencies”). The modification (or disappearance) of ethics and rights is only applicable to people stuck in an emergency together, that is people “on the same lifeboat” relating to each other. Relations “off the lifeboat” are unchanged. Nor do you have the right to “expand the lifeboat” by roping other people into your emergency.

Consider this epistemological aside: If one’s private emergency has no outward signs and people don’t know an emergency exists unless one tells them, then according to Kevin Delaney’s emergency ethics they have lost their claim to have rights and don’t even know it. This is absurd. If you are not certain that you have rights, you don’t have them.

Working backward from loss your saying “this must be altruistic thinking because I caused the loss of a greater value by respecting other’s rights, a lesser value” is wrong. The emergency situation caused your loss. It is irrational to assume responsibility for the metaphysical. Sacrifice is trading a greater value for a lesser, or no value. There is no sacrifice involved here because there is no trading with the metaphysical.

53

In his podcast of 2/9/09, Leonard Peikoff commented on a virtually identical question to the one which began this thread.

Do you know what a lifeboat question is? “What do you do when there are more people in the lifeboat than food, and someone has to die. What does Objectivism say?”

[T]hose questions are completely illegitimate, because morality is for circumstances where it’s possible for men to coexist. If they can’t, then you can’t have any morality.

This is a lifeboat question. . . . "My wife is extremely sick. She is my greatest value. She will die in 24 hours if I do not acquire a certain medicine for her.

"I leave the house and go to the pharmacy, and find out that that the last bottle of medicine has been sold to the man in front of me. There is no other place I can get this medicine. By coincidence, the man who purchased the medicine is walking home in front of me. I approach the man and explain to him my situation, and request that he give me the medicine. However, he says no, as his wife is in the same situation as mine.

“He turns around and continues to walk away. I know that if I wanted to, I could easily overpower this man and steal the medicine. Now my question is: What is the moral thing to do?”

I’d like to know some things about the realistic possibility of this example. For instance: She’s only going to live for 24 hours. How long did you know that? Who told you, and why did you wait? How many other pharmacies have you tried? How many websites? Did you try the manufacturer?

This whole thing, point after point, is a completely unreal situation. You’re just setting up two men, for no reason, with no plausibility, [who] want the same thing desperately — should they kill each other?

What you have to do, before you ask moral questions, is figure out are they realistic? And what should the characters in them have done, what could they have done, that would have vitiated and wiped out the very possibility of the situation.

You can hear this podcast at Dr. Peikoff’s website.

54

This is unrealistic, but I’m giving it a shot anyway. One can use one’s imagination.

So apocalipse happens and I’m living in the fallout of civilisation as we know it. There’s only a bit of life saving medicine left and it’s my neighbor’s child who has it. I ask my child what he rather do. If my child was too ill or too young to communicate, I would steal the medicine on his behalf and flee so we wouldn’t be caught.

The morality of the wife situation is different from the child one, because one’s wife doesn’t exist due to one’s choice. One doesn’t owe her life in the same way.

55

This is unrealistic, but I’m giving it a shot anyway. One can use one’s imagination.

So apocalipse happens and I’m living in the fallout of civilisation as we know it. There’s only a bit of life saving medicine left and it’s my neighbor’s child who has it. I ask my child what he rather do. If my child was too ill or too young to communicate, I would steal the medicine on his behalf and flee so we wouldn’t be caught.

The morality of the wife situation is different from the child one, because one’s wife doesn’t exist due to one’s choice. One doesn’t owe her life in the same way.

So it’s okay to steal and/or kill for your child because he (essentially) didn’t choose to be born, making you the steward of his well being?

Let’s take this further: Why can’t this apply to my wife, or even to myself? After all, my wife never choose to be born, and I know I never got to weigh in on whether I wanted to be made alive or not. By that reasoning, since I never chose to exist then I’m justified in taking whatever I can because the universe had thrust existence upon me, and I should do whatever I need to do to stay alive.

Also, more importantly/directly to the point, what if stealing the medicine puts some other child at risk? After all, this is the apocalypse, so other people must be sick as well. Your neighbor’s child didn’t choose to be born anymore than you did, so what gives you the right to take it away from him?