this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2024
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I didn't put any of them in that position, and I'll be damned if I murder anyone.
You didn't put any of them in that position. And you didn't put that other person in a position where scarifying them is the only way to save the five people. You are not responsible for the situation, and yet you ended up with the power to pick the outcome. Out of several bad outcomes, yes - but you still have the the opportunity to pick the lesser evil.
You wish you didn't get that opportunity. You wish you weren't in this position. The six people tied to the track also wish they weren't in this position. But this is not real life, where complaining about the unfairness and wishing the misfortune didn't happen to you can solve everything and make everyone happy. This is a moral dilemma, engineered to root out the smart solutions and leave you with the hard choice - four human lives weighted against your personal moral status.
And you decided that four lives is an acceptable price to pay so that you can keep basking in your innocence.
your characterization is bad faith. my degree is in philosophy. i know what my ethics are, and it's not "Bask in innocence at all costs". it's "do the right thing". the right thing cannot be determined by the outcome since we can't know the future, so it would be impossible to know what the right thing to do is. therefore, the ethics of the action must be in the action itself. murdering people is bad. pulling the lever is bad. qed.
You do know the future though. At least - to some extent. You know that one of two candidates is going to be elected, not matter what. Or, at least, almost no matter what. Maybe a huge asteroid will hit the Earth and the elections won't matter. But the probability for these is so low, that you can effectively "count on" the fact that one of these two candidates is going to get elected.
The only question is which one.
knowledge of the future is impossible since you can only know true things and the future hasn't happened yet, so it has no truth value.
Isn't the entire anti-voting argument based on the knowledge that the candidate you'll vote for will do bad things in the future?
no? it's knowing what they've said and done in the past
What they've said and done in the past serves as an indicator for what they'll do in the future if elected. If you ignore that aspect, then voting becomes a system for rewarding politicians rather than a system for deciding the future of a country.
but the ethics can't be in what they do in the future. the ethics of the action are in the vote itself, and the only information yo uhave is about the past.
So... ^(1)^ voting for bad people is bad, not because they'll do bad things if they'll be put in power, but because ^jump\ to\ (1)^?
the ethics are in the action itself. yes.
So it all boils down to "because I said so" and I can't argue with that because you really did say so...
I'm not over here trying to argue you out of consequentialism. there is absolutely no way you're going to argue a degreed philosopher out of deontology (today. you could learn, maybe)
that's literally not what it is. it helps you understand your own ethical instincts. i'm deontological, and no deontologist, having examined the full trolley problem, pulls the lever. consequentialists do, but i believe consequential ethics is bad. it leads to doing bad things and even internally cannot consistently tell you the right thing to do.
i have a policy against choosing evil.
And the result of that policy is greater evil getting chosen.
I'm not responsible for what others choose.
I'm sure this little fact will provide great comfort during the fascist regime.
this is a thought terminating cliche. it doesn't rebuttal what I said or develop your position.