Well you don't want to make the details too complex.
What about a standard 'dirty hands' case, like working in a chemical weapons factory (with a sick kid at home, if you like)?
Can there be thousands of rodents or insects whose happiness would be marginally increased by taking some action horribly detrimental to a much smaller number of humans? Perhaps the humans could additionally be suffering from a terminal illness and have only a short time to live even if the action were not taken.
Or what about some version of this one:
A PLATOON is on a rescue mission. Two members
of the platoon are trapped on a hill and under fire. Both soldiers are seriously wounded; within a few hours, they will be dead. Between the platoon and the two soldiers is a minefield, which the platoon must breach or go around if they are to get to the trapped soldiers in time. As the platoon leader ponders his options, he notices a civilian picking his way through the minefield. Obviously, he knows where the mines are. The lieutenant detains the civilian, but the man refuses to lead the platoon through the minefield. The lieutenant offers several enticements to get the man to cooperate, but the man continues to refuse. There is no way he is going back through that minefield. The lieutenant must make a decision that he had hoped to avoid.
Or!!! -- Perhaps the humans follow a no-relationship policy so their expectations of future happiness will be strictly limited regardless of the actor's interventions.
Why not just use the story in the post below this one?
Everyone knows virtues can't conflict, Labs.
Jim finds himself in the central square of a small South American town.
Aren't you asking this question two months too early? Shouldn't you be asking this the night before the exam?
Suppose you have two terrorist groups and have captured a member of each group. You know that one group has plans to bomb a daycare center with 200 innocent 4 year olds, whereas the other one plans to bomb an alternative middle school with 200 very annoying 13 year olds. One terrorist is an animal rightser who promises to inform on his co-conspirators if you promise to jerk off 100,000 rats (or one rat 100,000 times). The other terrorist is a voyeur who wants to watch you having sex with an Unfogged poster to be named later, perhaps even Bob. But you also know that either terrorist will quickly break under torture, but you can only torture the terrorists if you agree to listen to two one-hour talks, one by Charles Krauthammer and one by Christopher Hitchens.
what was the original questions?
Bonus points if you can work Ann Coulter, space aliens, and/or Jessica Biels' ass into the problem somehow.
I don't see why jerking off 100,000 rats would be that upsetting. Li'l furry mitt, provocative hand gestures, there you go.
Jim finds himself in the central square of a small South American town.
An abalone lies dead at his feet. Why?
>>Pick up abalone.
It's just a dead abalone.
The maid screamed. A door slammed.
You hear a faint pattering of feet along the corridor above.
There is a horny little rat in the room with you!
>>inventory
You have the virtue of justice. You have the category imperative. You have a spreadsheet of consequences.
>>Throw categorical imperative.
The categorical imperative can't be used like that, silly.
>>furry mitt
I see no furry mitt here.
You have the category imperative.
You have the category indicative. You have the category subjunctive.
>>Throw category subjunctive at rat.
Were it possible to use the category subjunctive that way, I'm sure your blow would have been mighty.
Your brother rebels against the polis and is slain outside the city walls. The king orders that he be left there to rot, even though your religion teaches you that his soul will never know peace unless he's buried. What do your 3 theories indicate?
What do your 3 theories indicate?
For ten bonus points, locate your situation in the development of Spirit.
Your roommate is a pre-med major at FLU. You know she works hard and wants to be a surgeon more than anything else. And everyone expects she'll make a great doctor, which is why you are startled to notice a cheat sheet peeking out of her backpack the morning of the big intro to biology exam.
You know the TA for your roommate's biology class pretty well. It would be no trouble at all, and no risk to yourself or your friendship, to tip off the TA as to your roommate's plan. You know, however, that FLUs cheating policy is very strict, and that if caught, her chances of getting into medical school are probably nil.
Should you tell on your roommate? Evaluate your answer with respect to utilitarianism, Kantian ethics, and virtue ethics. Would your answer change if she were planning to join the circus instead of pursue a medical career? Why or why not?
This thread is definitely convincing me that I'm really glad I never took a philosophy course.
Would it be unethical to hijack this thread to ask for recommendations of books/articles on virtue ethics for non-philosophers?
Yes, 14-24 are good reasons to never take a philosophy class.
During the second World War, Allied cryptographers cracked the infamous ENIGMA machine, used to encode Nazi strategic messages. The Allies were then able to read the Nazi communications, and plan attacks and counterattacks. They had to be careful with the information they used, because they didn't want to let the Nazis know that their information had been compromised.
One day the Allies learned that the Nazis planned to bomb a civilian town of little strategic importance. If the Allies evacuated the city, many lives would be saved. But such an evacuation order surely would have tipped off the Nazis that their code had been broken; they would then change their codes, and the Allies would be without the ability to track the enemy's movements and fight the war more successfully.
Should you evacuate the town? Evaluate, &c.
Would it be unethical to hijack this thread to ask for recommendations of books/articles on virtue ethics for non-philosophers?
I've heard good things about the Nicomachean Ethics.
inventory
-
You have a set of common shopowner's scales, a lantern, and 10,000 mouse orgasms.
The Critique of Being Such a Little Bitch.
Looks like w-lfs-n just used one in #34.
I think Spankerman's inevitable book-length work of gonzo-style warzone reportage should be called The Critique of Pure Evil.
"Warzone reportage" is hott. Five mouse orgasms.
>>Put thumb on scales.
Your thumb is tilting the scales slightly towards one side.
>>Put lantern on scales.
When you put the lantern on the left side, and press down on the right side, the scales even out! Your scales are balanced!
>>Throw 10,000 mouse orgasms at rat.
The rat's eyes take on a gleam of pleasure. It moves towards you with lusty intent, but the sheer quantity of orgasmic material overwhelms it. The rat succumbs to statistical spasms in a corner to the south east.
This isn't a scenario that lends itself to easy distinctions, but, having recently linked to The Gift, I am reminded of this passage that I find very evocative of a difficult moral choice.
Carol Stack in her book All Our Kin, presents an instructive description of the commerce of good in the Flats, an urban ghetto south of Chicago. The Flats is a black neighborhood characterized by networks of cooperating kin. "Kin" in thi context are not just blood relations, they are "those you count on," related or not. Each kinship network in the Flats is composed of as many as a hundred individuals, all of whom belong in one way or another to one of several interlocking households.
Stack tells a sad but instructive story about an influx of capital into on of the families she knew. One day Calvin and Magnolia Waters inherited some money. One of Magnolia's uncles in Mississippi had died and left them $1,500. It was the first time they'd ever had a cash reserve, and their immediate hope was to use the money as a down payment on a house.
Within a few days word of their good fortune had spread throughout the kin network. One of Magnolia's neices soon came to ask if she could borrow $25 to pay a bill so the phone would not be turned off. Magnolia gave her the money. The welfare office heard about the inheritance and cut off medical coverage and food stamps for Magnolia's children, telling her she would get no more until the money was gone. The Magnolia's uncle in the South became seriously ill, and she and her older sister Augusta were called to sit by his side. Magnolia bough round trip train tickets for herself, her sister, and three of her children. After they had returned, the uncle died, and she and her sister had to go south again. Soon thereafter Augusta's first "old man" died, leaving no one to pay for his burial. Augusta asked Magnolia if she would help pay for the digging of the grave, and she did. Another sister's rent was two months overdue; the woman was ill and had no source of income. Magnolia paid the rent. It was winter and the children and grandchildren (fifteen in all) were staying home from school because they had neither winter coats nor adequate shoes. Magnolia and Calvin bought all of them coats, hats, and shoes. Magnolia bought herself a winter coat and Calvin bought a pair of work shoes.
The money was gone in six weeks.
The only way this couple could have capitalized on their good fortune would have been to cut themselves off from the group* [* A third alternative, besides sharing and separation, is deceit. In Mexican peasant communities, which are marked by similar networks of mutual aid, one finds the opposite of "conspicious consumption": a family that has become rich will maintain the shabbiest of adobe walls around the house so their wealth will not be apparent. Magnolia and Calvin could have squirreled away the money, leaving the rent unpaid, the dead unburried, and the children unclothed.] To make a down payment on a hour, they would have had to cease participating in the sharing and mutual aid of their kin. One of Magnolia's sisters, Lydia, had done just that at one time. She and the man she married both had steady jobs. They bought a house and furniture. Then, for ten years, the cut themselves off from the network of kin cooperation, effectively preventing their friends and relations from draining their resources. In the modern symbology they "moved to the suburbs." Then the marriage began to break up. Lydia started giving clothes to her sisters and nieces. She gave a couch to her brother, and a TV to her niece. By the time her marriage had fallen apart, she had reincorporated herself into the network.
It isn't easy to say which id the "better" sister, the hard-hearted one ("far-hearted," the Bushmen say) who separates herself from a community that would pull her down or the soft-hearted one who dreams of getting ahead but in fact distributes her wealth and stays in the group . . .
Okay, one more:
You are commanding a squadron of bombers during a brutal war; your job is to drop bombs on enemy munitions factories. The enemy's job, however, is to stop you, and they've managed to down two of every five missions you've sent. Your side can't keep this up much longer.
It occurs to you that if you double the payload on two of every five flights, you can destroy your targets more effectively, possibly ending the conflict sooner. Unfortunately, if you double the payload, two of every five flights will be one-way trips: the bomber won't be able to hold enough fuel with the extra weight.
You'd be condemning 40% of your pilots to certain death, but on the other hand, 40% of them will die anyway.
What do you do? Evaluate, &c.
45 chooses the least ethical of all human activities as a type case for clarifying ethical choices.
Military men have to be willing to kill anyone, including their own men, if necessary for the military purpose. There is no ethical dilemma at all.
Oh, sorry, in all of that, I forgot to put in the link. The book is The Gift by Lewis Hyde.
45 chooses the least ethical of all human activities as a type case for clarifying ethical choices.
That is what I like about the dilemma in the long passage I quoted -- I can easily identify with both of the impulses and it's a conflict that I see, in small ways, throughout my life.
45 reminds me that Freeman Dyson worked in WWII doing calculations about the tradeoffs of having bombers fly closer together which resulted in more deaths from mid-air collisions, or farther apart which gave them less protection against German fighters.
Based on his calculations he had to try to convince the pilots that they should fly closer together and run into each other more frequently. This has always struck me as a horrific conversation to have.
No, it couldn't be a horrific conversation, because there is no ethical difficulty.
What if private citizenz, rather than military men, were flying the bombers? Would that make it a horrific conversation?
No, it couldn't be a horrific conversation, because there is no ethical difficulty.
Looked at another way it's an exercise in practical philosophy. You need to convince the pilots that their naive intuition that they should avoid killing their fellow pilots by running into them is overstated.
It's like they're living the trolly experiment, they can reduce overall casualties by taking a greater risk that they will kill their friends.
You could start by asking them to imagine that the other pilots were fat.
It would be a horrific conversation for a non-military person. A military officer wouldn't necessarily explain anything; he might just give the order. However, my guess is that military pilots clued in to the situation might enjoy the challenge of flying in close formation if there was a good military reason.
I may have misremembered the scenario, or it may just be another episode, but wikipedia has this:
At the British Bomber Command, Dyson and colleagues proposed ripping out two gun turrets from the RAF Lancaster bombers, to cut the catastrophic losses to German fighters in the Battle of Berlin. A Lancaster without turrets could fly 50 mph faster and be much more maneuverable.
"All our advice to the commander in chief [went] through the chief of our section, who was a career civil servant. His guiding principle was to tell the commander in chief things that the commander in chief liked to hear... To push the idea of ripping out gun turrets, against the official mythology of the gallant gunner defending his crewmates...was not the kind of suggestion the commander in chief liked to hear.["
"Assuming three evenly numbered groups of homosexual cocksuckers, each group adhering to one of the aforementioned schools of ethical thought, please explain: why do all these homosexuals keep sucking my cock?"
It would be a horrific conversation for a non-military person. A military officer wouldn't necessarily explain anything; he might just give the order.
I suspect that was less true in WWII. Certainly commanders didn't hesitate to give orders that would result in deaths, but I feel like there was less emphasis on efficiency in military affairs. Curtis LeMay would have given the order (see, for example, McNamara's description of him in The For of War) but I think he was unusual. See also.
Ok, a half-formed serious answer: I think I'd construct a scenario in which a patient's next of kin had to lie to a doctor in order to procure life-saving care; if you want to complicate it, the patient's wishes about life-saving treatment can be unknown, or known and contrary to those of the next of kin.
The example given by Bernard Williams whose first sentence I purloined in writing 7 would work, I think.
I think I'd construct a scenario in which a patient's next of kin had to lie to a doctor in order to procure life-saving care;
Ooh, that reminds me of a story that Ellen Ullman tells in Close to the Machine about working on a database for non-profit AIDS services and being worried that, as it starts to take shape, the ability that the database provides to track resources precisely will remove discretionary power from care-givers to give individual patients more care than they are entitled to.
What good would it do to find out that this poor, ill person was not quite as poor and ill as he was supposed to be. How would it help if, in the awful and explicit way of computer systems, Reggie made clear what everyone knew -- that there was a little fudging going on around the edges, so that providers could get a little extra and give a little more. In the absence of the machine everyone could wink at these small, rough edges.
She quit working on the project. Was that a moral choice?
And episode 8 of the Decalogue series involves an ethics professor - and at one point references the episode I linked above - but I don't remember the details of the scenario.
I was being a brat. Surely, if sending soldiers on suicide missions isn't an ethical dilemma, then asking them to fly closer together isn't. Because, once it's the military apparently there are no ethical dilemmas?
What about the situation from Gaudy Night -- it's a little early 20th century, but maybe tweakable. You are an academic, and become aware that another academic has deliberately falsified a piece of historical data (concealed a document or something). You could set the record straight without revealing his misconduct, or you could end his career by exposing him. Other than this incident, he's always done excellent work, and he has a family with sympathetic children to support (I suppose you could cripple them if that helped) and no other viable job prospects.
Returning from a bombing raid you are told that the town you just bombed was not a military target in any way, and had been inhabited almost entirely with elderly people, small children, and their caretakers. You have always disliked old people and small children and the information doesn't bother you at all.
What about if you love caretakers?
I once had an interview with Bernard Williams to be an au pair to his son. I'd just finished a Maths & Philosophy degree, but didn't know anything about him, apart from the fact that he'd written a book about Descartes. Probably just as well, I might have been a bit awestruck otherwise. Didn't get the job anyway, he gave it to an Australian bloke.
Utilitarianism is the moral principle that the ends justifies means, when the ends adds to the overall general utility. Put in simple terms, utilitarianism says to do anything that provides greater benefits than costs. Killing one person to save ten other lives would be "right" or "moral" under utilitarianism.
"Utility" is defined as the good to be maximized. Different thinkers have further defined it as happiness, well-being or pleasure. The idea of utilitarianism as a moral code was first thought up by 18th century reformer and philosopher Jeremy Bentham. He believed that, "nature has put man under the governance of two sovereign masters: pleasure and pain." Thus, he concluded that good is whatever it is that brings on the greatest happiness. His belief was passed on by others after him. This is in direct conflict with many ideas of Christianity.
What about if you love caretakers?
Even today's dizzying array of porn contains nothing for that fetish.
Even today's dizzying array of porn contains nothing for that fetish.
I dunno ... babysitters are caretakers, right?
72: Ogged, you wanna post the link?
Fontana Labs, I hope you have found many helpful thoughts here.
67 wouldn't be a good exam question, because students don't give a shit about plagiarism or falsification of data.
72: Ogged, you wanna post the link?
Dude, we'll never live it down.
So does this count as Labs cheating on his midterm?
Okay, here's another one I was thinking about.
Imagine that you are an appellate (but not supreme court) judge. You are hearing a case that concerns an issue on which you have strong personal opinions (be it abortion rights, gay rights, privacy, fill in your own example). After hearing arguments you believe that there is precedent for deciding in either direction, but that the majority of precedent supports the position that you, personally, find undesirable as policy, and that the lawer presenting that position has done a better job of presenting their case.
Do you rule in the direction of your policy preferences anyway, rule against your policy preferences but try to write the opinion to make the most favorable precedent ("Precedent X compells a ruling for Y, but absent factor Z it would not apply . . .") or write a decision that accurately reflects your sense of the strengths of the respective sides.
I may be misunderstanding the process of the law sufficiently so that this is not a good example, but this came up in a conversation with a friend about what compels the legal system to "be fair." The argument that Alec Stone makes (for example, here) is that actors in the legal system know that the authority of the legal system depends, in part, on perceptions of legitimacy and that actors have to balance their own personal opinions against the risk of decision undermining the perception of legitimacy of the legal system.