Well, i think we have already established that it is a complete stranger we are talking about. And i dont get how it matters whether the other guy may work out a universal cancer cure?
Becasue your wife’s dying of cancer and his continued existence is your only hope. That’s the trouble with these scenarios. Once you’ve accepted an impossible situation, why not pile other impossibilities on top?
And yes, this has ZERO to do with objectivism, as KendallJ said. Still, i find it baffling why you would rather see the other person live, than yourself.
It has nothing to do with anything. Supose you’re the guy about to cure cancer. Wouldn’t it be selfish of you to give your life for the other guy, seeing it through an altruistic perspective?
I have a real problem with this line of thinking as it perpetuates the idea that value, and ethics still exists in situations where the meta-ethical basis, i.e. the founding need for ethics has been removed. If the problem is so impossibly constrained that reason is out the window, then so is ethics. There is no “should” in these situations. Anything goes.
While it is true that you cannot construct a code of ethics based upon emergency situations, why cant an existing code of ethics guide your behavior if you are confronted with an emergency? Maybe its just me, but I would expect a man who lives his life guided by certian principles, particularly Objectivist principles, to behave differently in an emergency situation than someone who has lived his life as an unprincipled creep. I would expect if it were an Objectivist trapped in the sub, he would say something to the effect of: “We have an hour and a half to fix this damn thing or we’re both dead. Now lets get to work.” I would not have imagined an Objectivist looking for the nearest blunt instrument to use to bash in the skull of the other person trapped with him, or booting a woman and her child off of one of Titanic’s lifeboats to make room for himself.
I dont agree with the idea that “anything goes” when it comes to emergencies, How one behaves in an emergency tells you alot about that person. For example, if you learned that someone had survived the sub scenario by murdering the man trapped with him, would you view him as some sort of hero? Some sort of villain? Or would you withhold judgement? I would view him for exacly what he was–a murderer. How grim the situation may have been is no excuse in my mind. People do get confronted with unexpected emergencies. Some people emerge from those ordeals as heroic figures. I suspect that most of those who do so, simply adhered to the same set of principles during the emergency that they adhered to beforehand.
While it is true that you cannot construct a code of ethics based upon emergency situations, why cant an existing code of ethics guide your behavior if you are confronted with an emergency? Maybe its just me, but I would expect a man who lives his life guided by certian principles, particularly Objectivist principles, to behave differently in an emergency situation than someone who has lived his life as an unprincipled creep. I would expect if it were an Objectivist trapped in the sub, he would say something to the effect of: “We have an hour and a half to fix this damn thing or we’re both dead. Now lets get to work.” I would not have imagined an Objectivist looking for the nearest blunt instrument to use to bash in the skull of the other person trapped with him, or booting a woman and her child off of one of Titanic’s lifeboats to make room for himself.
I dont agree with the idea that “anything goes” when it comes to emergencies, How one behaves in an emergency tells you alot about that person. For example, if you learned that someone had survived the sub scenario by murdering the man trapped with him, would you view him as some sort of hero? Some sort of villain? Or would you withhold judgement? I would view him for exacly what he was–a murderer. How grim the situation may have been is no excuse in my mind. People do get confronted with unexpected emergencies. Some people emerge from those ordeals as heroic figures. I suspect that most of those who do so, simply adhered to the same set of principles during the emergency that they adhered to beforehand.
The entire line of reasoning begs the question. You want there to be an ethical standard in such situations and so you imply it in your reasoning.
I too think how a man behaves in an emergency tells you a lot about his character, but mostly it tells you if he really believed his ethics all the rest of the time. It is because we operate in the regular world 99.999% of the time that our moral evaluation has a difficult time understanding the difference in context. That is part of the trap of the hypothetical. You want desperately to use your moral judgement for the rest of the time to evaluate this situation, you naturally gravitate toward it. The person posing this hypothetical to you is banking on that. What one would do tells me something, but not as an ethical evalaution of that situation. This is exactly what Rand said. Please see Snerd’s link.
Moral outrage at any course of action in unwarranted here. Certainly it is our first response and since it is us positing a different context onto the situation, I would be worried if an Objectivists first response wasn’t outrage. However, that does not make it a correct analysis of the situation.
It does not. The twist it attempts to add is that there is an environmental condition that changes man’s fundamental nature and the identity of murder. This fails because no external condition (that isn’t force or fraud) can deny you the use of your mind or change the facts of reality.
I stopped reading your post right there. I had just pointed out to you that an airplane accident can make it impossible for you to survive by using your rational faculty.
Roland, I have re-read your posts on this thread in an effort to see if I missed anything, as at first I didn’t remember you bringing up an airplane accident. I assume you referred to 9/11 when you mentioned one.
The events on that day were an example of the initiation of force and not an accident. Additionally, the example doesn’t address whether or not it is moral to murder somebody during an emergency. Your posts on this thread are an attempt to prove that morality gets thrown out the window during an emergency, thus shielding all actions from moral judgment. Had you read my last post and followed the link at the end of it, you would have seen a very short entry written by Rand that explains emergencies. Here is a brief part:
It is important to differentiate between the rules of conduct in an emergency situation and the rules of conduct in the normal conditions of human existence. 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.
I have no idea whether or not you followed my earlier suggestion to re-read The Ethics of Emergencies. If you haven’t I’ll again suggest you re-read it. The essay never hints that there is a situation where morality withdraws, murder stops being murder or that it is ok to murder. On the contrary, the essay showed that only in emergency situations should one go out of one’s way to help others, and that afterward things revert to normal. Rand specifically states that there are rules of conduct in an emergency.
If you are going to continue to approach the thread with a dismissive attitude, please drop me a PM so I can act in kind.
I have no idea whether or not you followed my earlier suggestion to re-read The Ethics of Emergencies. If you haven’t I’ll again suggest you re-read it. The essay never hints that there is a situation where morality withdraws, murder stops being murder or that it is ok to murder. On the contrary, the essay showed that only in emergency situations should one go out of one’s way to help others, and that afterward things revert to normal. Rand specifically states that there are rules of conduct in an emergency.
Actually FF, I find the Ethics of Emergencies essay incomplete in this case because it specifically addresses emergencies as they relate to the concept of altruism. That is, it only discusses when it might be proper to extend help to someone in an emergency. It does not discuss more broadly how someone is to be treated in an emergency. To that end, the reference Snerd provided is more complete and comes closer to addressing this particular issue. AND it directly contradicts what you are trying to say. In fact, it says that actions under this condition are morally neutral.
I continue to argue that this entire line of discussion is a non-sequitir, and an attempt to validate an ethical standard beyond those 2 sets of questions I’ve already given simply plays into the trap of the question.
Pay close attention to this statement. Your answer (that a rational man would continue to search for a solution tot he problem) is contained in my answer. And NO ONE who has said they’d commit “murder” contradicts it. David has a way of stating things to bait people sometimes. The whole key to realizing this is a non-sequitir is the phrase everyone has used, “when I was certain every option had been exhausted,…”. The fact is in such cases, it never is the case. Again to argue past that point in time is ridiculous. We are all saying very similar things up until that point. Beyond it, even Rand states that morality is subjective, and it is no longer dealing iwth any aspect of reality but a fantastic hypothetical.
If you are going to continue to approach the thread with a dismissive attitude, please drop me a PM so I can act in kind.
I prefer public replies when what I am saying is of no private character. And I would like to ask you not to continue approaching the thread with a dismissive attitude, and please read all my posts attentively before you respond to them. I could re-quote here what I wrote about airplanes but I don’t think there’s a need to do so since my original post is still there. All you have to do is read it.
Kendall, thanks for the response. The topics Inspector references are indeed more to the point of this discussion, but they don’t answer all of my questions. This will likely be my last post on the matter until I read the source of the quotes he presents on that thread. I would still like to see anything you have to say.
Fear and time constraints can prevent people from taking action based on coherent thoughts. I certainly wouldn’t pass moral judgment on someone who was overwhelmed in this way. But this isn’t what the discussion is about - the discussion is about cases where the rational faculty functions, but the circumstances render it useless for long term survival. There is indeed a moral imperative in this situation (to restore normal conditions). I doubt you take issue with this - the disagreement we have is with a different issue.
Again, it is futile to proscribe actions ahead of time for someone who is overwhelmed by emotion and time constraints. During emergencies where rights will not be violated, I don’t care to proscribe actions. Whether some actions should be prohibited depend on whether or not rights apply.
I understand what an emergency is, but I don’t know where you draw the line. I assume you would not condone murder for an organ. But the only difference I see with this and the submarine hypothetical is a seemingly non-essential difference in time: In the submarine, it’s a few hours for the rest of a life. With the transplant, it’s a lifetime for a lifetime. In both cases there is a short amount of time where the continued existence of one person might only be possible through the death of another. Is it your position that the transplant patient is not in a state of emergency? If so, where do you draw the line? It seems to me that if you would condemn one for murder, you must condemn the other.
Death is an inevitability for everyone; at a point, it is proper for some people to resign themselves to the fact that they will soon die and focus on living the short time they have left or on being done with it. If rights apply to emergency situations - which is still in dispute - this applies to the men on the sub. If they are overcome by their emotions and resort to barbarism none of this matters anyway.
I should also say that I understand Rand made statements that seem to contradict this position. Not all of Rand’s improvised answers during Q&A will be consistent with her philosophy. I’ll wait until I read Ayn Rand Answers before making my final judgment.
I didn’t make it up. Someone’s attempting to use it to disprove the idea of rational self-interest.
Alternatively, you could turn it around on him. I presume he’s advocating altruism and thinks that sacrificing his life for the other man is the right thing to do, so ask him what happens if, after he nobly offers to lay down his own life, the other man says, “Oh good, that saves me the struggle of murdering you! Let’s make it quick: you’re wasting my oxygen.”
Is self-sacrifice still the virtuous choice?
-If he says yes, you get to point out that altruism punishes the good (by its own standards), and rewards the evil (those who violate those standards). How is man to remain good, and what kind of world will result when evil is rewarded and virtue punished, when the noble have died so murderers may live?
-If he says no, then his ethics apparently also lead to a duel to the death, so he cannot criticize rational self-interest for doing the same in this contrived scenario.
-If he says altruism only applies when the other person is altruistic too, then you get to say that rational self-interest only applies in situations that don’t rule out reason (you can’t think your way out of it, you can’t strike a deal, it’s kill or be killed: what do you do?)
I suppose if something like this happened it would be covered under the ethics of emergencies, not normal ethics. But what end does it serve to contemplate such an unlikely scenario? What does it have to do with real life?
However, you have to ask yourself this–what good is having a particular philosophy if it doesn’t have application during an emergency? I think you should answer his question instead of evading it.
However, you have to ask yourself this–what good is having a particular philosophy if it doesn’t have application during an emergency? I think you should answer his question instead of evading it.
In a previous post you claim that you have a deep understanding of the philosophy of Objectivism. In that post, as in this one, you increasingly cast doubt on that claim.
First, the whole of the philosophy is not “thrown out” in an emergency situation, just the moral evaluation of the actions one must take to survive the emergency situation. A deep understanding of Objectivism could (or even would) help a person in an emergency situation long before he gets into such situation by allowing him to recognize the need to be as prepared as possible for such emergency in advance. In an emergency situation, one is looking at the alternatives ‘do X or die’. In such cases, NO philosophy helps you, only X helps you.
But the main idea is that typically one spends the vast majority of their life NOT in emergency situations, and that is where one needs to invest most in a guide on how to live one’s life, how to make decisions on a day to day basis that further and fulfill one’s existence.