Other Prepare to hurt your brain

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7739493.stm

There is another 3 but this ones more interesting i think. Read the whole point before commenting.

 

No, because the other 5 people are defective.

With regards to the people tied to the train track, it depends as to which route will cause the least delay. If you've got to kill one person, then you may as well go in for all 5, right?

 

I like your thinking maybe you should get a job at network rail

 

in law, by taking action to prevent the deaths of five people, you have caused the death of one, which makes you guilty of manslaughter.
ethically, neither counter-argument is entirely analogous to the initial case. in the case of the tram, you have no control over who the tram is going to kill. in the case of the kidnapper, you are under _severe_ emotional duress by an antagonist. these cases will drastically affect your judgement. to coolly take someone's life by cold, rational choice as in the first case, is entirely unjustifiable.

question four is stupid. in order to fully predict the events in the universe one would have to take into account the effects of those predictions, and the effects of the effects of the predictions, and so on and so forth. it's basically an absurdity, and hence a flawed argument.

2 and 3 are just plain stupid, and don't really merit further discussion.

 

lol, i used to study philosophy, but i didn't know this

Anyway, the above arguement has been one of the best example cases of how one can construct arguements. Being the smartass that i am, i decided to take a very clinical appraoch that carefully avoids the word "ethics".
I built it up like this:

• First, to answer this question we have to define the options, being OK and NOT OK. For OK, we postulate that it means "having a positive effect on those involved". For NOT ok, we define the opposite. (i used two sheets of paper to justify both, but i will not bore you).
• Now we need to define this further. Who are "those involved"?
  In the "small picture we only regard the consequences of the "social murder" (this was also the title of my essay) to those that would be losing their life and those gaining their life, possibly slightly expanded to their direct surroundings. Doing this would be valid if the issue at hand was candy redistibution, but we are discussing taking a man's life. Such actions are so fundamental that they affect all those who hear about it. Should such an action like this be taken, one can safely assume that it will be the talk of the town, so this group will be an entire nation, so this is also the scale of our investigation.
• A last thing we need to define is the "positive effect" from our definition above. This will simply be "increasing the happyness". (another page of yaddayaddayadda here)
• We have decided our sample space, our unit of measurement and outcome domains. Now we need to figure out our method of measurement. Since our group of affected contains 15 million people, of which only 6 are directly affected, it is safe to assume those 6 have no impact on the average. Instead, to determine the average effect that a social murder has on a society, we have to look at the effect it will have on a single individual within society, one that is in no way linked to those directly involved. What does the social murder mean to him?
• Determining this is not simple. But we can safely saf that the entire effect on a person not directly involved constitutes of feelings and safety. Now we can balance the added sense of safety that this man experiences from the possibility of getting an organdonation when he needs it to the sense of insafety that he experiences from from the possibility of being murdered when other people need his organs. Since one murder saves 5 people, the first factor can be multiplied by 5, and concidered greater than the latter. This is false reasoning though, so where did we go wrong?
• Our average Joe is healthy! He will identify with the healthy person getting killed, not with the sick people recovering. He will think it far more likely for himself to be killed then to be saved by a social murder (even though this is not true, since 5 people are saved by every social murder, most of whom were healthy at some point). Joe the Plumber Average Joe will therefor be left with a decreased sense of safety, and an increased feeling of fear.
• Conclusion, the net effect on society is negative, therefore poor friendless Bill should be set free to live his sad lonely life, so we can all feel slightly better. What a depressing world this is...

In an addendum, I started extrapolating the fear and general paranoia that would cause people to purposefully ruin their organs by chainsmoking and heavy alcohol abuse to prevent being chosen for a social murder, thus actually increasing the need for fresh organs. I originally wanted to include it in my main arguement, but without proper psychological research it would be based on guesswork, so i left it out. Our tutor did read it aloud in class though

 

philosophy is dumb, basically. thinking too much in this way cripples you into inaction.

 

I think the comparison for point one is flawed, based on the fact that if a hostage taker is willing to kill all six people if one person won't kill the other, why would they bother letting the five go, and potentially get arrested? I doubt that any of them would live. So, with that in mind, no, you should not kill.. Well, Bill.

2 and 3 sound like bad theories derived from movies such as 6th Day and the Matrix :/

I'm having trouble seeing the point of 4.. Is it trying to say that there is a God, or isn't?

 

My philosophy on philosophy: Philosophy sucks. The entire field consists of goons who sit on their arse all day and refuse to define any terms in their universal truth-seeking arguments because if they did, they would have an empirical statement, and then they wouldn't be able to talk all day long about meaningless crap.

 

I am never philsosophical, unless it includes alcohol. I can philosophise really well after a few bevvies! Lol. Anything where i hve to really think, and make judgement calls I tend to avoid, let middle management sort it out!

Joe

 

I know the truth when I hear (read) it.
Philosophy is for blowhards who want to appear intelligent.

 

It depends. Which one will give me the best chance of getting laid?

-monkey

 

Neither, no one has been tied and left on a track for long enough to consider it a non-issue

 

Why don't these trams have brakes?

 

If we have to think too long about the answers to these questions, the philosohers are kept in work!
If you could pay philosophers, they'd be the first to lose their jobs in this climate.

 

bull. Since day 1 society has moved forward because of people willing to question "fundamental" truths. You can be an arse and say you don't see who will stand to gain. Knowledge is knowledge, and it ALWAYS pays off, history has proven that by now.

 

I wouldn't kill one person to save 5 others. Either way someone is dying and I'm not gonna be the one killing them.

Now if someone said they would kill me and let the other 5 free, I'd let myself be killed so they go free.

 

Personally, I don't have enough good organs to be a donor. Terminal patients are somewhat exempt.

So, if you don't have any organs for salvage sign up your siblings. Probably best if you don't tell them though.
I wonder when we get to 'organ legging'

john

 

why not just have 5 kids?

 

Id like to let the tram kill all five, they are tied up for a reason and thats 5 less people in this crowded planet.

But in reality id put the break on or slow down to stop.

 

I'm with Fod on this one, everything he has said +over9000.