Immiment Death Question

[Kilroy_x]

Originally Posted by GuidoHunter

It's the consideration of who they are that's the issue. If you think, "Oh, well, they're bad people, so they should go," you're taking the law into your own hands and executing them because of their past.

I wouldn't be able to think this because I wouldn't know anything about the people in the issue outlined.

If you throw the switch and doom the one guy, it's because you think, "I'm sorry, but I'm trying to save five people, here," you're weighing the consequences and trying to do the most good.

Human beings aren't capital to be exchanged in commerce, whatever your pretensions are.

Vigilante justice is illegal. Killing a guy just because he was really bad and the law hadn't yet gotten him is still murder.

Killing a guy by legal means or by vigilante justice are essentially the same thing. There is no such thing as legitimate murder, and since pretensions to such are driven by the kind of cost benefit analysis made use of in this thread it doesn't really matter whether they're done by someone in a suit or someone in a mask. This is just a summary execution done by an individual who didn't need to make sure his ignorance was in step with the ignorance of society before acting on his instincts.

The issue here is with saving lives. If you're only consideration is doing the most good, your actions aren't morally reprehensible. If, however, you consider who those people are, personally deem them worthy to die, and then let that happen, you're no longer trying to do the most good; you're trying to do the least evil. You're taking it upon yourself to kill someone instead of save them, and that's committing an evil act.

You still don't get it. It doesn't matter what my thought process is, it isn't until I take an action and commit myself to effecting reality in some way that I can be held accountable by that measure. I'm not killing anyone, I'm just letting the natural state of things persist. I'm letting them die.

The question is do I let some poeple die and another person live, or by taking action do I make one person die to buy the lives of a few others? The type of question that has been asked in this thread is in and of itself morally repugnant because it assumes first of all that human beings can be weighed in terms of value and secondly it suggests both in error and in extreme arrogance that you or I or anyone who is being asked the question is capable of making such calculations.

So why did you suggest that you'd entertain doing just that were you given the choice?

--Guido

http://andy.mikee385.com

I didn't. Reread what I said.