The first one comes from Rene Descartes and is used as one of his premises in his famous writing Meditations (remember “I think, therefore I am”).
The Evil Demon:
Is anything so self-evident that it cannot be doubted? Are our lives real or are we just dreaming? Is everything just a figment of our imaginations? These questions may sound foolish to some, but it is conceivable that we can have doubt even about our physical world around us.
Some ideas, we may argue, are self-evident. For example, two plus two equals four, or all triangles have three sides. However, what if it was all just a big trick? Descartes imagined what he referred to as an evil genius that controlled all that happens in our world. This evil demon has the power to make us think and see and experience whatever he wants us to in any situation. If such a demon existed, is there anything which is beyond doubt?
Philosophers are always trying to provide reasons for us to doubt things we take for granted every day - God, goodness, the physical world, time, etc. In order for them to do this, they need to use the one thing they can’t afford to doubt: the capacity to think rationally. Using rational thought, we can recognize the logical contradictions and therefore we can justify our doubts.
However, if we were under the influence of an evil, all-powerful, deceiving demon, then could we still assume the truth of these basic logical principles? They may seem obvious and self-evident, but that is not a strong enough argument to accept them as absolute truths.
If the evil demon hypothesis is too much to handle, the same doubts can still be introduced by other means. For example, we could just be mad or insane and that blinds us to the fact that others see the world differently than us. Maybe evolution provided us with a false set of principles and all our minds are flawed. Furthermore, maybe we are better adapted to survive if we are to assume the truth about certain falsehoods. Maybe the demon is encoded in our DNA.
What makes this thought experiment so interesting is that in order to judge its plausibility, we have to rely on the one thing it is pulling into question and testing: our capacity to think reasonably. That is, we have to reason whether we think well by thinking as well as we can. It is like using a questionable scale to weigh itself to test its own accuracy.
So where does this leave us? Well, we must assume our basic capacity to reason for any serious thought to be undertaken at all. Particular pieces of reasoning can be doubted after we think hard about it, but we cannot doubt our general capacity for reason. Now ask yourself, is that enough to vindicate rationality, or is the capacity to achieve truth weakened?
(i can't stop reading this book even though it's short and i don't want to finish it too quickly.)
Living in a vat:
Imagine the following situation:
Brian was the victim of an unfortunate accident. His body was crushed in a car accident, but with new scientific procedures and discoveries, surgeons managed to salvage his brain. It was now possible to keep his brain alive until a suitable donor body could be found. Although the wait for a new donor body was long, it was considered immoral to destroy the still functioning brain. However, scientists soon made another new discovery. Using a supercomputer, it was possible to attach electrodes to Brian’s brain that would feed it stimuli giving it the illusion that it was a living body inhabiting the real world. As far as Brian was concerned, all he knew was that he woke up in a hospital bed and told that he had had a successful body transplant. He then went on to think that he was living a normal life. However, technically he was nothing more than his old brain in a vat hooked up to electrodes. Brian had no more (or less) reason to think that he was living in the real world than any of us.
The brain in a vat concept has been around for a while. It has been popularized by movies such as The Matrix, but the doubt that we might be victims of some illusion is much older. Plato’s allegory of the cave outlined such doubts as well as Descartes’ evil demon.
What makes this thought experiment interesting is its plausibility. It seems to be scientifically possible as well in certain regards. Consider a recent argument that we are living in a virtual reality environment as artificially created intelligences. Given time, we (or other civilizations) will almost certainly be able to create artificial intelligences and virtual-reality environments for them to live in (we are on the brink of such discoveries already). These simulated realities do not require huge amounts of natural resources to keep them going like biological organisms do, so therefore there is almost no limit to how many such environments could be created. There could be the equivalent of an entire planet Earth “living” in one desktop computer, for example. If all of this is possible, the math seems to suggest that it is probable we are living in one such simulation right now.
Most people immediately doubt this argument, but maybe that is because it seems foolish and it is quite startling. Whether it sounds incredible or not though is not the question we should be asking. The question we should be asking is whether or not there is anything wrong with its logic.
Private Sacks was ordered to do a terrible thing. He was ordered to rape and then murder a prisoner whom he knows to be an innocent civilian. He feels that this is a horrible injustice and even a war crime. However, he has no alternative because if he doesn’t follow the order, he will be executed and someone else will then violate and murder the innocent civilian. At least if he does it, he can try and not make her suffer more than is necessary, whereas if he doesn’t do it, her torture and death will most likely be worse. How could it be that he was trying to do the best he could under the circumstances but he still felt it was terribly wrong?
Generally speaking, the argument “if I don’t do it somebody else will” is a weak justification for wrongdoing. One is responsible for the wrongs they do regardless whether or not someone else would have done it anyway. For example, if you saw a convertible with the keys in the ignition, you don’t have to steal it, nor are you cleared of wrong doing, simply because someone else would have come by later and stolen it anyway.
In the case in the scenario outlined above, the justification is slightly different. Sacks is saying that “if I don’t do it, someone else will, and it’ll be much worse”. Therefore, Sacks is trying to make the best possible outcome - or at least the least worst.
It would seem that it is perfectly moral to do what you can to prevent as much harm as possible. In the case of Sacks, he can save his own life and make the death of the prisoner as painless as possible. Yet this requires him to take part in a rape and murder - surely that can never be morally right.
We can imagine alternative possibilities - maybe shooting himself and the prisoner - but we must attempt to resist that because the point of thought experiments like this is to focus on the one moral decision in order to properly assess it (since in thought experiments, we control the variables for a reason).
Some may argue that there are situations where it is impossible to do the right thing - a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” circumstance. Therefore, immorality is unavoidable. In these situations, we should pursue the least bad option. That would suggest that Sacks does the best he can yet he still does something wrong. However, this leads to a different problem. If Sacks did the best he can, how can we blame him for what he did? If he doesn’t deserve blame, then surely he did nothing wrong.
Is it possible that the action can be wrong but the person doing it is blameless? The logic seems to hold, but it does suggest a complexity in morality. Or perhaps it is just a contortion of understanding to justify the unjustifiable?
The alternative is to say that the end doesn’t justify the means and Sacks should refuse. He will die and the prisoner will suffer more. However, this would be the only moral choice available to him. This would preserve Sack’s moral integrity, but is that a nobler goal than saving lives and/or relieving another's suffering?
WE EACH EXIST FOR BUT A SHORT TIME, and in that time explore but a small part of the whole universe. But humans are a curious species. We wonder, we seek answers. Living in this vast world that is by turns kind and cruel, and gazing at the immense heavens above, people have always asked a multitude of questions: How can we understand the world in which we find ourselves? How does the universe behave? What is the nature of reality? Where did all this come from? Did the universe need a creator? Most of us do not spend most of our time worrying about these questions, but almost all of us worry about them some of the time.
Traditionally these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead. So says Stephen Hawking in his book The Grand Design Ch. 1
Being the philosophical guy, How would you respond to Dr. Hawking’s? In reality, aren't Dr. Hawking’s writings philosophical in nature not purely scientific, yet people flock to him like he is the absolute final authority in the realm of the scientific community?
WE EACH EXIST FOR BUT A SHORT TIME, and in that time explore but a small part of the whole universe. But humans are a curious species. We wonder, we seek answers. Living in this vast world that is by turns kind and cruel, and gazing at the immense heavens above, people have always asked a multitude of questions: How can we understand the world in which we find ourselves? How does the universe behave? What is the nature of reality? Where did all this come from? Did the universe need a creator? Most of us do not spend most of our time worrying about these questions, but almost all of us worry about them some of the time.
Traditionally these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead. So says Stephen Hawking in his book The Grand Design Ch. 1
Being the philosophical guy, How would you respond to Dr. Hawking’s? In reality, aren't Dr. Hawking’s writings philosophical in nature not purely scientific, yet people flock to him like he is the absolute final authority in the realm of the scientific community?
(I, more or less, wrote a whole blog article on this topic before.)
It’s true that philosophy is a “dying” discipline nowadays in a sense. It is being offered less and less in schools and more and more people are questioning its importance. There are some school boards and some countries that are trying to revive it though from what I’ve read recently. Bertrand Russell wrote a good rationale for the usefulness of philosophy which I agree with whole-heartedly.
First we must consider how philosophy started. The first schools were pretty much philosophy and math classes to begin with. As content was developed and expanded upon, it was able to separate from philosophy to spread out to its own discipline. So for example, the study of the cosmos became astronomy, the study of the mind because psychology, and so on. As this continued to happen philosophy had more and more “parts” of it taken away. So philosophy today differs greatly from original philosophy. Therefore, I can somewhat understand why people think of philosophy as “dead” because it’s pretty much all the stuff left over after all the other disciplines were extrapolated from it. On top of that, it is also difficult for people to see any value in philosophy as obviously it is not like science that can result in products and inventions that we literally use. That is, it is difficult to give an example of a direct influence of philosophy on a person who doesn’t read it on their own. Normally, it is more of an indirect influence.
So what does that leave us with then? According to Russell, there are still many questions and concerns that full under the umbrella of philosophy. Further still, he acknowledges that many of these questions cannot be answered and may never be answered. That does not mean that philosophy is pointless or about nothing though or that we should not care about it. Quite the opposite in fact!
Russell argues that even if science was able to make all humans well off and disease and poverty were reduced to their lowest possible points, there would still be a lot to do to create a valuable society. One of philosophy’s main goals is knowledge as a result of critically analyzing ourselves, our convictions, our beliefs, our prejudices, etc. Perhaps we cannot find absolute truth in asking these questions, but the continued questioning itself helps us to remember the importance of such questions and self analysis, it helps us examine the possible approaches to the questions, and (most importantly for Russell) it “keeps alive that interest in the universe which...would be destroyed if we were to confine ourselves to only the definitely ascertainable knowledge.” Therefore, the uncertainty that is inherent in philosophy is where its value can be found.
I love the way Russell phrases it: “The man who has no tincture of philosophy goes through life imprisoned in the prejudices derived from common sense, from habitual beliefs of his age or nation, and from convictions which have grown up in his mind without the co-operations of consent of his deliberate reason”. In other words, philosophy helps us avoid dogmatism and what Russell calls “tyranny of custom”.
With respect to Hawking and science specifically, yes I think that there is a connection with philosophy but that is mostly because there is an overarching connection between philosophy and pretty much everything - it’s practically impossible to separate it from anything that has to do with humans.
There are many aspects of science and scientific concepts that lead to philosophical debate. Hawking definitely does not relegate himself to just the scientific sphere; he makes philosophical comments and arguments all the time from what I’ve read (for example, I do recall him making comments on the existence of aliens and what they would be like and how they would interact with us - all of which comes from his philosophical view point).
However, that’s how I feel it should be. Science should be formed from within a philosophical perspective, same with political decisions, moral decisions, and the like. It’s silly in my opinion to try and separate them or think of them as separate ideas. Not to mention, they both (science and philosophy) follow a very similar format and they both have the same ultimate goals. Religion can also be thrown into the same category in this manner as well.
I always enjoyed this thought experiment and I actually use a form of it in the philosophy class I teach at work.
Consider the following situation:
Brad, a well known villain who is now in captivity, has planted a huge bomb that promises to kill hundreds, perhaps thousands, of innocent people. Only he knows where the bomb is hidden and he is refusing to tell police. The officers in charge of questioning him are beginning to run out of time. In desperation, one of them suggests torture as an option. Despite its illegality, some officers feel that they have no choice if they want to save thousands of innocent people from death and possible mutilation. Others are strongly against such an immoral action. Should Brad be tortured? If yes, could you do the torturing if necessary? Does you having to do the torturing change your opinion on whether it should be done or not? Is being squeamish and lacking moral courage worth the death of possibly thousands?
Scenarios like this were, for the most part, considered hypothetical until the more recent “war and terror” and the atrocities that took place at Abu Ghraib and made the rest of the world aware of such actions. This situation is surely possible in our day and age.
Defenders of torture under certain circumstances would say that despite the action being terrible, we would still have to go through with it. Why would we want to risk hundreds or thousands of deaths by refusing to torture one single person? That seems to be a kind of moral self-indulgence - an attempt to keep yourself pure by not doing the “dirty deeds" necessary at the cost of innocent lives.
The defenders of human rights are in a tough position. They have two strategies they can adopt. First, they can argue that torture in principle is always wrong even if it will save hundreds of people. It still crosses a moral line that we cannot cross. It is an arguable position, but it is difficult to deal with the indifference towards those left to die.
The second strategy is that although in theory torture may sometimes be morally acceptable in rare cases, we need to maintain absolute prohibition against it in order to keep our morals intact. If torture was rarely allowed, it will inevitably go on when it should not. Therefore, it is better to sometimes fail to torture when it is the best thing to do as opposed to sometimes torturing when it is the wrong thing to do.
In the scenario above, we know there is a good reason to torture, but the dilemma is not whether torture should be permitted or not, but whether torture on this occasion should be allowed by breaking the rules in order to save lives.
Consider a further addition to the original scenario. Since Brad is a well known villain, the police know that even under torture he will not give up the location of the bomb. Brad’s son, who is innocent, was also detained while police were trying to stop the bomb from going off. Officers know that Brad’s son is very important to Brad. Therefore, officers know that the best way to get the location of the bomb would be to torture Brad’s son in front of him. Again, we are weighing the many against only one person, but this time, the person is innocent. Does this change your opinion? Does this change the situation?
I'm sticking my head in the sand on this one...Is this what they really talk about in philosophy class?
yeah we talk about stuff like this all the time. there are a lot of discussions on thought experiments like this one especially in philosophy of morality classes (which is just one of the sections of the philosophy course offered at my school). morality tends to be the big one though that can expand to practically all jobs, situations, human interactions, etc. so there is a decent amount of focus on it in the overall philosophy discipline.
normally, you don't have to necessarily come up with a solution or final conclusion on your own though. usually you just have to discuss it from various moral perspectives (such as kantian ethics, virtue ethics, consequentialism, utilitarianism, etc.).
Hi trigs, enjoyed reading a number of your posts in this section but when it comes
to issues on morality, isn't it so individual.
If you always thought it was immoral to torture anyone under any circumstances,
and then someone said, if we don't get the information by torturing him it means
your mother, father, sisters, brothers, family and friends will be totally annihilated.
I bet 99.9 % would say torture the bugger and the hell with morality.
Hi trigs, enjoyed reading a number of your posts in this section but when it comes
to issues on morality, isn't it so individual.
If you always thought it was immoral to torture anyone under any circumstances,
and then someone said, if we don't get the information by torturing him it means
your mother, father, sisters, brothers, family and friends will be totally annihilated.
I bet 99.9 % would say torture the bugger and the hell with morality.
Circumstances dictate individual moral standards.
thanks for joining the conversation bill!
to answer your question, yes i do think that morality is a very individual decision. i have found myself saying to others that after learning a lot about morality in university, it seems that there is no such thing as morality! what i mean by that is that there is no one single moral system that can stand up to and respond to all various kinds of moral situations. there's always an example that seems to bring each moral system crashing down.
that being said, and in reference to "morality being an individual decision", i strongly disagree with people who simply do what "feels right" in making a moral decision. simply because you feel one way or the other doesn't make your feeling rational or morally correct. thinking along those lines is like equating moral decisions to whether you prefer chocolate or vanilla ice cream, and i think we can both agree that there is a big difference between those two types of decisions.
thought experiments like the one i wrote above just work to help those analyze their own morality more. hopefully, it helps them consider possible situations and further considerations which can help form a basis for future moral decisions. again, and like your example points out, there may not be a final perfect moral decision, but the process of deliberating is incredibly important and many people don't think about the minute details. (some of us think about them too often though lol.)
Trigs, does society really have a moral standard ?
Is there a world moral standard ?
Maybe like a ten commandments thing, Thou shalt not kill .....
Then again, unless your country declares war on someone, demonizes them
and forces you to kill ....
Just a thought.
this was kind of touched upon before in this thread. i've read a lot about individual morality (with some focus on specific relationships such as doctor-patient, for example), a little about societal morality and probably even less about nation vs nation morality.
it's very difficult to set up a moral standard as soon as we start to cross into different cultures. for example, i think it's safe to say that if my gf and i had a baby and then i killed it because we didn't want it, most people would be just a little upset with me and consider my action to be greatly immoral.
well, there have been cultures that that is the case. there have been cultures that killing newborns is their form of birth control. if the group had too many mouths to feed and raising more children was a detriment to the overall group, the newborns would be killed right after being born. they saw nothing immoral about that decision, whereas our culture in this day and age would see that as abhorrent.
depending on who you ask, some philosophers have argued from the individual to the nation with respect to morality. plato, for example, does this. he extrapolates from individual morality (with our three basic desires) and uses the same categories for the structure of a nation. (i won't get into the details unless you really want me to).
imho, there should be a world wide moral standard that should be discussed and decided on. technically i guess the united nations does something like that, but it's not complete and definitely not thorough enough. also, it would probably be constantly debated on, but that's probably a good thing.
again though, i don't think i have enough experience to answer your question fully. my best attempt was post #15 in this thread where i talk about the gay/lesbian debate with respect to the olympics in russia.
Just read the next section of my book and came across this. Seems like it was just for you Bill!
The lifeboat:
Consider the following situation:
Roger, the self-appointed captain of the lifeboat said, “There are 12 of us on this boat which is great because this boat holds 20 people. We have plenty of rations to last us until someone comes to rescue us. So, let’s all have an extra biscuit while we wait.”
Bob disagreed however. “Shouldn’t our main priority be to go over there and save that drowning woman who has been shouting for the last half an hour?”
“I thought we had agreed,” said Roger. “It’s not our fault she’s drowning. If we pick her up we’ll have fewer rations to enjoy. Why should we disrupt our cozy set up here?”
“Because we could save her life! Isn’t that reason enough?” Bob inquired.
“Life’s a bitch,” replied Roger. “Another biscuit everyone?”
The above thought experiment is used to compare situations in our present world. The people on the boat are affluent Western countries and the woman drowning represents those dying of malnutrition and preventable diseases in developing countries. We in the West have enough food and medicine for many more than just us, but we’d rather enjoy our luxuries and let others die than forfeit our “extra biscuit”.
The immorality is even more striking if we consider another version of this analogy - that he lifeboat is the world as a whole and some people refuse to distribute the food to others already in the boat!
Some might say that this analogy neglects the importance of property rights. For example, the goods on the lifeboat were placed there for everyone and no one has a greater claim to them than anyone else. In the real world, however, goods are not just sitting there waiting to be distributed. Wealth is created and earned, more or less. So refusing to give some of my surplus to others, I am not unfairly appropriating what is due to them, I’m simply keeping what is mine.
However, even with this alteration, it does not seem that immorality disappears. Consider that all the goods in the boat belong to individuals, and the needs of the drowning woman are recognized, isn’t it still immoral to say “Let her die. These biscuits are mine!”? As long as there is enough surplus, the fact that she’s dying should make us give up some of our privately owned provisions.
The UN has set a target for developed countries to give 0.7% of their GDP to foreign aid. Few countries have met that mark. For the majority of people, giving even 1% of their income to help the impoverished would have a negligible effect on their quality of life. The lifeboat analogy suggests that it is not so much that we would be good people if we did help, but that we are terribly wrong not to.
Trigs, the tragedy of this example is, it took Bob 30 minutes to react.
Is morality not instinctive ?
bill, i wish it was that simple. consider what you eat tonight for dinner and how much gets thrown away. consider when you throw your clothes into the hamper on the piles of others already there and the full closets and drawers in your house. consider driving home in your car and filling it with gas. consider parking it on your property. consider the size of your home and all its rooms. consider turning on your tv and selecting from all the channels. consider turning your air conditioner on so you can sleep comfortably. etc. etc.
if the example was so tragic, why has it taken you 30+ years (i'm assuming you're older than thirty) let alone 30 minutes to react? in fact, i'm assuming you're still not reacting. (nothing personal, i'm not either.)
morality may seem to be instinctive in some regards, but not everyone agrees in all situations (as we can easily see from the torture example above). and again, just because something "feels" right or wrong doesn't make it so. moral decisions are usually not easy to make. if you still don't believe me, consider the following situation:
there is a little boy who has fallen into a raging river. you are the only one around who is close enough to save him before he drowns. however, you cannot swim and if you try to save him you will both die. are you morally obligated to kill yourself in an attempt to save him? wouldn't you staying alive and helping others for the rest of your life be better than killing yourself now in this feeble attempt?
again, my point is there are many ways to gauge the level of morality in a given situation or decision, but it's the process of analysis that is important, and not as much the final decision chosen, especially in circumstances that either decision is difficult. i mean, if a psychopath jumped in and saved the drowning boy because he wanted to kidnap him and keep him as a torture toy, does that make his choice to save the boy a morally correct one? intention matters and how you choose your moral decision matters.
Ya, Trigs, you may be right in all the things you're saying but let's stick to one
topic at a time. You can probably come up with 1001 different variables to refute
whatever I'm saying. That's because you're a learned person trained to do such.
No more stories. In your opinion, Why did Bob take 30 minutes to ask the question ?
Why didn't he react right away ? Why didn't the other passengers ?
Ya, Trigs, you may be right in all the things you're saying but let's stick to one
topic at a time. You can probably come up with 1001 different variables to refute
whatever I'm saying. That's because you're a learned person trained to do such.
No more stories. In your opinion, Why did Bob take 30 minutes to ask the question ?
Why didn't he react right away ? Why didn't the other passengers ?
Is our society doomed ?
it's the nature of a thought experiment bill. the fact that it took bob 30 minutes, 5 minutes, or 3 days is irrelevant. in thought experiments, you have to accept the facts and only focus on the specific notion that is being discussed - in this case the moral obligation of the privileged West refusing to help the rest of the developing countries.
also, i am paraphrasing these examples from a book i'm reading. in the original writing, the other passengers did speak up. some agreed and some didn't (maybe they didn't speak up as much as they nodded in agreement or put their heads down in disagreement, etc.). that was also irrelevant to the focus of the thought experiment though (at least i thought it was because i don't see how it alters the overall focus - if it does please tell me how. also, i try to shorten these as much as i can because i know people hate reading large blocks of text).
and yes, our society is doomed. hopefully later rather than sooner because there's still some stuff i wouldn't mind doing before the end, but doomed nonetheless imho. humans won't make a change unless the worst case scenario is banging down their door, and even then they might not.
There, you're doing it again. I really am not interested if it took Bob 30 minutes
or 3 days but what I am interested in, is your opinion.
I don't want to know book theory. I want to know Trigs.
Why do you think it takes Bob 30 minutes ?
you're really missing my point, but i'll still give you my opinion.
bob took 30 minutes because he's just like every other selfish, lazy, self-centered consumer in every affluent nation. he might have considered saving the woman earlier (i.e. sacrificing some of his hoard of luxuries to help the less fortunate) but during his lifeboat goods distribution (i.e. his regular routine of shopping, eating too much, and sitting on his lazy ass watching tv), he forgot about it.
once he heard her screams again (i.e. he saw one of those commercials with starving little children with flies on their face) he thought he'd mention that maybe they should do something because, after all, this woman is dying (i.e. hundreds of thousands of poor people are starving to death and dying of preventable diseases).
when he brought it up again to the other people in the lifeboat (i.e. when he wrote a letter to the government explaining how we need to increase foreign aid), he was told to STFU and sit down because hells no are we giving away what we worked so hard for, that is, we swam to this lifeboat and fucking drowned three people on the way to get here so fuck that drowning bitch (i.e. we created the means to extract the resources here, we came and established a country here, we built it up by suppressing those who disagreed with us, we destroyed the environment faster and better than other countries, etc - oh yeah, and we were arbitrarily born here also). so again, we didn't kill her. the boat going down did that. why should we help her now when we can have extra food and goods for ourselves?
i think i'm answering your question now (but again, this is neither here nor there).
Bill, to be fair, the experiment could be rewritten to eliminate the time frame completely, and the purpose of it would still be valid. You are looking at a variable that is, as Trigs said, irrelevant. It's like the colour of the wall behind the Mona Lisa. It is definitely painted, but the colour is irrelevant to our appreciation of Da Vinci's work.
Trigs and Milo, I think you're missing the point. I don't give a shit about the time line,
but what I do appreciate is Trigs personal response and Trigs this is more than
( but then, this is neither here nor there ).
See guys, it all boils down to communication. I don't want to know book theory.
I want to know your opinions. I want to know you. I want to know Milo. I want
to know Trigs.
As for Bob, in my opinion, why did it take 30 minutes for his reaction or anyones.
A person is drowning and you have the means to save them. You do it right away.
But then again a person is drowning and you can't swim and have no means of
saving them it's illogical to jump in to save them because in all likelihood you'll
drown. Morality has to be tied up with logic somehow.
People learn morality from their families. But that's another discussion.
Trigs and Milo, I think you're missing the point. I don't give a shit about the time line,
but what I do appreciate is Trigs personal response and Trigs this is more than
( but then, this is neither here nor there ).
See guys, it all boils down to communication. I don't want to know book theory.
I want to know your opinions. I want to know you. I want to know Milo. I want
to know Trigs.
As for Bob, in my opinion, why did it take 30 minutes for his reaction or anyones.
A person is drowning and you have the means to save them. You do it right away.
But then again a person is drowning and you can't swim and have no means of
saving them it's illogical to jump in to save them because in all likelihood you'll
drown. Morality has to be tied up with logic somehow.
People learn morality from their families. But that's another discussion.
in any case, i still am appreciative that you are taking an interest in this thread.
bill-leveling: taking a level to the umpteenth degree to the point where the person being leveled is starting to doubt being leveled in the first place.
The Prime Minister considers himself to be a genuinely good guy who despises corruption and wants to run a clean and honest administration. However, during a recent reception, a rich business man known for his lack of scruples, but does not have a criminal or civil conviction against him, took the PM aside and whispered into his ear.
“I’m annoyed that my reputation means I’ll never be honoured by my country,” he said. “I’m sure you can do something about that. I’ll give $10 million to help provide clean water for hundreds of thousands of people in Africa if you can guarantee me that I’ll be knighted in the New Year’s honours list. If not, I’ll spend it all on myself. Think it over.”
The PM knew it was a bribe. However, could it be wrong to sell one of the country’s highest honours when the reward would be so great?
Many of us like our morality to be clear-cut. There are two ways to consider this position. From a narrow utilitarian view where the desired moral outcome is that which benefits the largest amount of people, the PM should obviously accept the bribe. Hundreds of thousands would get clean water, a rich man would be called “sir”, and the only price would be the irritation of those who see a greedy quasi-criminal being honoured by the Queen.
From the perspective of principles of integrity and due process, however, it is obvious the PM should refuse the bribe. Affairs of state must be governed by due process. To allow titles to be bought even if the money goes to a good cause, corrupts the principle that the state grants its favours in terms of merit and not ability to pay.
The difficulty of this dilemma is apparent. Due process and the rule of law are important for any democracy and society, but if bending the rules has overwhelming beneficial consequences and only minor bad ones, isn’t it foolish or even immoral to stick rigidly to them?
This problem is known as moral self-indulgence. The PM is looking to run a clean government and that means keeping himself free from corruption. However, in this case his desire to keep his hands clean might require sacrificing the welfare of thousands of Africans who would otherwise get clean water. The accusation is that the PM is more interested in keeping himself pure than making the world a better place. His desire to be moral is therefore actually immoral. Others will pay in disease and walking miles to get clean water.
The PM may be aware of this but still hold reservations. For example, what other corruptions will follow? Why not lie to the electorate to win their support for a just war they would have otherwise opposed? Why not support oppressive regimes if in the long run it will help regional stability and prevent even worse regimes coming into power? If the net consequences are all that matter for politicians, how can the PM maintain his desire to be straight and honest? Or is that idea simply a naïve dream?
Comments
as someone who was alive during the beginning of philosophy, i'd think you'd have more of an appreciation for it >:D:D
Yes.
Living in a vat:
Imagine the following situation:
Brian was the victim of an unfortunate accident. His body was crushed in a car accident, but with new scientific procedures and discoveries, surgeons managed to salvage his brain. It was now possible to keep his brain alive until a suitable donor body could be found. Although the wait for a new donor body was long, it was considered immoral to destroy the still functioning brain. However, scientists soon made another new discovery. Using a supercomputer, it was possible to attach electrodes to Brian’s brain that would feed it stimuli giving it the illusion that it was a living body inhabiting the real world. As far as Brian was concerned, all he knew was that he woke up in a hospital bed and told that he had had a successful body transplant. He then went on to think that he was living a normal life. However, technically he was nothing more than his old brain in a vat hooked up to electrodes. Brian had no more (or less) reason to think that he was living in the real world than any of us.
The brain in a vat concept has been around for a while. It has been popularized by movies such as The Matrix, but the doubt that we might be victims of some illusion is much older. Plato’s allegory of the cave outlined such doubts as well as Descartes’ evil demon.
What makes this thought experiment interesting is its plausibility. It seems to be scientifically possible as well in certain regards. Consider a recent argument that we are living in a virtual reality environment as artificially created intelligences. Given time, we (or other civilizations) will almost certainly be able to create artificial intelligences and virtual-reality environments for them to live in (we are on the brink of such discoveries already). These simulated realities do not require huge amounts of natural resources to keep them going like biological organisms do, so therefore there is almost no limit to how many such environments could be created. There could be the equivalent of an entire planet Earth “living” in one desktop computer, for example. If all of this is possible, the math seems to suggest that it is probable we are living in one such simulation right now.
Most people immediately doubt this argument, but maybe that is because it seems foolish and it is quite startling. Whether it sounds incredible or not though is not the question we should be asking. The question we should be asking is whether or not there is anything wrong with its logic.
What I want to know, am I plugged into a UPS?
let's hope so. i don't even want to think what happens if someone trips over the cord.
Imagine the following scenario:
Private Sacks was ordered to do a terrible thing. He was ordered to rape and then murder a prisoner whom he knows to be an innocent civilian. He feels that this is a horrible injustice and even a war crime. However, he has no alternative because if he doesn’t follow the order, he will be executed and someone else will then violate and murder the innocent civilian. At least if he does it, he can try and not make her suffer more than is necessary, whereas if he doesn’t do it, her torture and death will most likely be worse. How could it be that he was trying to do the best he could under the circumstances but he still felt it was terribly wrong?
Generally speaking, the argument “if I don’t do it somebody else will” is a weak justification for wrongdoing. One is responsible for the wrongs they do regardless whether or not someone else would have done it anyway. For example, if you saw a convertible with the keys in the ignition, you don’t have to steal it, nor are you cleared of wrong doing, simply because someone else would have come by later and stolen it anyway.
In the case in the scenario outlined above, the justification is slightly different. Sacks is saying that “if I don’t do it, someone else will, and it’ll be much worse”. Therefore, Sacks is trying to make the best possible outcome - or at least the least worst.
It would seem that it is perfectly moral to do what you can to prevent as much harm as possible. In the case of Sacks, he can save his own life and make the death of the prisoner as painless as possible. Yet this requires him to take part in a rape and murder - surely that can never be morally right.
We can imagine alternative possibilities - maybe shooting himself and the prisoner - but we must attempt to resist that because the point of thought experiments like this is to focus on the one moral decision in order to properly assess it (since in thought experiments, we control the variables for a reason).
Some may argue that there are situations where it is impossible to do the right thing - a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” circumstance. Therefore, immorality is unavoidable. In these situations, we should pursue the least bad option. That would suggest that Sacks does the best he can yet he still does something wrong. However, this leads to a different problem. If Sacks did the best he can, how can we blame him for what he did? If he doesn’t deserve blame, then surely he did nothing wrong.
Is it possible that the action can be wrong but the person doing it is blameless? The logic seems to hold, but it does suggest a complexity in morality. Or perhaps it is just a contortion of understanding to justify the unjustifiable?
The alternative is to say that the end doesn’t justify the means and Sacks should refuse. He will die and the prisoner will suffer more. However, this would be the only moral choice available to him. This would preserve Sack’s moral integrity, but is that a nobler goal than saving lives and/or relieving another's suffering?
Traditionally these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead. So says Stephen Hawking in his book The Grand Design Ch. 1
Being the philosophical guy, How would you respond to Dr. Hawking’s? In reality, aren't Dr. Hawking’s writings philosophical in nature not purely scientific, yet people flock to him like he is the absolute final authority in the realm of the scientific community?
(I, more or less, wrote a whole blog article on this topic before.)
It’s true that philosophy is a “dying” discipline nowadays in a sense. It is being offered less and less in schools and more and more people are questioning its importance. There are some school boards and some countries that are trying to revive it though from what I’ve read recently. Bertrand Russell wrote a good rationale for the usefulness of philosophy which I agree with whole-heartedly.
First we must consider how philosophy started. The first schools were pretty much philosophy and math classes to begin with. As content was developed and expanded upon, it was able to separate from philosophy to spread out to its own discipline. So for example, the study of the cosmos became astronomy, the study of the mind because psychology, and so on. As this continued to happen philosophy had more and more “parts” of it taken away. So philosophy today differs greatly from original philosophy. Therefore, I can somewhat understand why people think of philosophy as “dead” because it’s pretty much all the stuff left over after all the other disciplines were extrapolated from it. On top of that, it is also difficult for people to see any value in philosophy as obviously it is not like science that can result in products and inventions that we literally use. That is, it is difficult to give an example of a direct influence of philosophy on a person who doesn’t read it on their own. Normally, it is more of an indirect influence.
So what does that leave us with then? According to Russell, there are still many questions and concerns that full under the umbrella of philosophy. Further still, he acknowledges that many of these questions cannot be answered and may never be answered. That does not mean that philosophy is pointless or about nothing though or that we should not care about it. Quite the opposite in fact!
Russell argues that even if science was able to make all humans well off and disease and poverty were reduced to their lowest possible points, there would still be a lot to do to create a valuable society. One of philosophy’s main goals is knowledge as a result of critically analyzing ourselves, our convictions, our beliefs, our prejudices, etc. Perhaps we cannot find absolute truth in asking these questions, but the continued questioning itself helps us to remember the importance of such questions and self analysis, it helps us examine the possible approaches to the questions, and (most importantly for Russell) it “keeps alive that interest in the universe which...would be destroyed if we were to confine ourselves to only the definitely ascertainable knowledge.” Therefore, the uncertainty that is inherent in philosophy is where its value can be found.
I love the way Russell phrases it: “The man who has no tincture of philosophy goes through life imprisoned in the prejudices derived from common sense, from habitual beliefs of his age or nation, and from convictions which have grown up in his mind without the co-operations of consent of his deliberate reason”. In other words, philosophy helps us avoid dogmatism and what Russell calls “tyranny of custom”.
With respect to Hawking and science specifically, yes I think that there is a connection with philosophy but that is mostly because there is an overarching connection between philosophy and pretty much everything - it’s practically impossible to separate it from anything that has to do with humans.
There are many aspects of science and scientific concepts that lead to philosophical debate. Hawking definitely does not relegate himself to just the scientific sphere; he makes philosophical comments and arguments all the time from what I’ve read (for example, I do recall him making comments on the existence of aliens and what they would be like and how they would interact with us - all of which comes from his philosophical view point).
However, that’s how I feel it should be. Science should be formed from within a philosophical perspective, same with political decisions, moral decisions, and the like. It’s silly in my opinion to try and separate them or think of them as separate ideas. Not to mention, they both (science and philosophy) follow a very similar format and they both have the same ultimate goals. Religion can also be thrown into the same category in this manner as well.
Thanks for the question Brent!
I always enjoyed this thought experiment and I actually use a form of it in the philosophy class I teach at work.
Consider the following situation:
Brad, a well known villain who is now in captivity, has planted a huge bomb that promises to kill hundreds, perhaps thousands, of innocent people. Only he knows where the bomb is hidden and he is refusing to tell police. The officers in charge of questioning him are beginning to run out of time. In desperation, one of them suggests torture as an option. Despite its illegality, some officers feel that they have no choice if they want to save thousands of innocent people from death and possible mutilation. Others are strongly against such an immoral action. Should Brad be tortured? If yes, could you do the torturing if necessary? Does you having to do the torturing change your opinion on whether it should be done or not? Is being squeamish and lacking moral courage worth the death of possibly thousands?
Scenarios like this were, for the most part, considered hypothetical until the more recent “war and terror” and the atrocities that took place at Abu Ghraib and made the rest of the world aware of such actions. This situation is surely possible in our day and age.
Defenders of torture under certain circumstances would say that despite the action being terrible, we would still have to go through with it. Why would we want to risk hundreds or thousands of deaths by refusing to torture one single person? That seems to be a kind of moral self-indulgence - an attempt to keep yourself pure by not doing the “dirty deeds" necessary at the cost of innocent lives.
The defenders of human rights are in a tough position. They have two strategies they can adopt. First, they can argue that torture in principle is always wrong even if it will save hundreds of people. It still crosses a moral line that we cannot cross. It is an arguable position, but it is difficult to deal with the indifference towards those left to die.
The second strategy is that although in theory torture may sometimes be morally acceptable in rare cases, we need to maintain absolute prohibition against it in order to keep our morals intact. If torture was rarely allowed, it will inevitably go on when it should not. Therefore, it is better to sometimes fail to torture when it is the best thing to do as opposed to sometimes torturing when it is the wrong thing to do.
In the scenario above, we know there is a good reason to torture, but the dilemma is not whether torture should be permitted or not, but whether torture on this occasion should be allowed by breaking the rules in order to save lives.
Consider a further addition to the original scenario. Since Brad is a well known villain, the police know that even under torture he will not give up the location of the bomb. Brad’s son, who is innocent, was also detained while police were trying to stop the bomb from going off. Officers know that Brad’s son is very important to Brad. Therefore, officers know that the best way to get the location of the bomb would be to torture Brad’s son in front of him. Again, we are weighing the many against only one person, but this time, the person is innocent. Does this change your opinion? Does this change the situation?
yeah we talk about stuff like this all the time. there are a lot of discussions on thought experiments like this one especially in philosophy of morality classes (which is just one of the sections of the philosophy course offered at my school). morality tends to be the big one though that can expand to practically all jobs, situations, human interactions, etc. so there is a decent amount of focus on it in the overall philosophy discipline.
normally, you don't have to necessarily come up with a solution or final conclusion on your own though. usually you just have to discuss it from various moral perspectives (such as kantian ethics, virtue ethics, consequentialism, utilitarianism, etc.).
to issues on morality, isn't it so individual.
If you always thought it was immoral to torture anyone under any circumstances,
and then someone said, if we don't get the information by torturing him it means
your mother, father, sisters, brothers, family and friends will be totally annihilated.
I bet 99.9 % would say torture the bugger and the hell with morality.
Circumstances dictate individual moral standards.
thanks for joining the conversation bill!
to answer your question, yes i do think that morality is a very individual decision. i have found myself saying to others that after learning a lot about morality in university, it seems that there is no such thing as morality! what i mean by that is that there is no one single moral system that can stand up to and respond to all various kinds of moral situations. there's always an example that seems to bring each moral system crashing down.
that being said, and in reference to "morality being an individual decision", i strongly disagree with people who simply do what "feels right" in making a moral decision. simply because you feel one way or the other doesn't make your feeling rational or morally correct. thinking along those lines is like equating moral decisions to whether you prefer chocolate or vanilla ice cream, and i think we can both agree that there is a big difference between those two types of decisions.
thought experiments like the one i wrote above just work to help those analyze their own morality more. hopefully, it helps them consider possible situations and further considerations which can help form a basis for future moral decisions. again, and like your example points out, there may not be a final perfect moral decision, but the process of deliberating is incredibly important and many people don't think about the minute details. (some of us think about them too often though lol.)
Is there a world moral standard ?
Maybe like a ten commandments thing, Thou shalt not kill .....
Then again, unless your country declares war on someone, demonizes them
and forces you to kill ....
Just a thought.
this was kind of touched upon before in this thread. i've read a lot about individual morality (with some focus on specific relationships such as doctor-patient, for example), a little about societal morality and probably even less about nation vs nation morality.
it's very difficult to set up a moral standard as soon as we start to cross into different cultures. for example, i think it's safe to say that if my gf and i had a baby and then i killed it because we didn't want it, most people would be just a little upset with me and consider my action to be greatly immoral.
well, there have been cultures that that is the case. there have been cultures that killing newborns is their form of birth control. if the group had too many mouths to feed and raising more children was a detriment to the overall group, the newborns would be killed right after being born. they saw nothing immoral about that decision, whereas our culture in this day and age would see that as abhorrent.
depending on who you ask, some philosophers have argued from the individual to the nation with respect to morality. plato, for example, does this. he extrapolates from individual morality (with our three basic desires) and uses the same categories for the structure of a nation. (i won't get into the details unless you really want me to).
imho, there should be a world wide moral standard that should be discussed and decided on. technically i guess the united nations does something like that, but it's not complete and definitely not thorough enough. also, it would probably be constantly debated on, but that's probably a good thing.
again though, i don't think i have enough experience to answer your question fully. my best attempt was post #15 in this thread where i talk about the gay/lesbian debate with respect to the olympics in russia.
The lifeboat:
Consider the following situation:
Roger, the self-appointed captain of the lifeboat said, “There are 12 of us on this boat which is great because this boat holds 20 people. We have plenty of rations to last us until someone comes to rescue us. So, let’s all have an extra biscuit while we wait.”
Bob disagreed however. “Shouldn’t our main priority be to go over there and save that drowning woman who has been shouting for the last half an hour?”
“I thought we had agreed,” said Roger. “It’s not our fault she’s drowning. If we pick her up we’ll have fewer rations to enjoy. Why should we disrupt our cozy set up here?”
“Because we could save her life! Isn’t that reason enough?” Bob inquired.
“Life’s a bitch,” replied Roger. “Another biscuit everyone?”
The above thought experiment is used to compare situations in our present world. The people on the boat are affluent Western countries and the woman drowning represents those dying of malnutrition and preventable diseases in developing countries. We in the West have enough food and medicine for many more than just us, but we’d rather enjoy our luxuries and let others die than forfeit our “extra biscuit”.
The immorality is even more striking if we consider another version of this analogy - that he lifeboat is the world as a whole and some people refuse to distribute the food to others already in the boat!
Some might say that this analogy neglects the importance of property rights. For example, the goods on the lifeboat were placed there for everyone and no one has a greater claim to them than anyone else. In the real world, however, goods are not just sitting there waiting to be distributed. Wealth is created and earned, more or less. So refusing to give some of my surplus to others, I am not unfairly appropriating what is due to them, I’m simply keeping what is mine.
However, even with this alteration, it does not seem that immorality disappears. Consider that all the goods in the boat belong to individuals, and the needs of the drowning woman are recognized, isn’t it still immoral to say “Let her die. These biscuits are mine!”? As long as there is enough surplus, the fact that she’s dying should make us give up some of our privately owned provisions.
The UN has set a target for developed countries to give 0.7% of their GDP to foreign aid. Few countries have met that mark. For the majority of people, giving even 1% of their income to help the impoverished would have a negligible effect on their quality of life. The lifeboat analogy suggests that it is not so much that we would be good people if we did help, but that we are terribly wrong not to.
Is morality not instinctive ?
bill, i wish it was that simple. consider what you eat tonight for dinner and how much gets thrown away. consider when you throw your clothes into the hamper on the piles of others already there and the full closets and drawers in your house. consider driving home in your car and filling it with gas. consider parking it on your property. consider the size of your home and all its rooms. consider turning on your tv and selecting from all the channels. consider turning your air conditioner on so you can sleep comfortably. etc. etc.
if the example was so tragic, why has it taken you 30+ years (i'm assuming you're older than thirty) let alone 30 minutes to react? in fact, i'm assuming you're still not reacting. (nothing personal, i'm not either.)
morality may seem to be instinctive in some regards, but not everyone agrees in all situations (as we can easily see from the torture example above). and again, just because something "feels" right or wrong doesn't make it so. moral decisions are usually not easy to make. if you still don't believe me, consider the following situation:
there is a little boy who has fallen into a raging river. you are the only one around who is close enough to save him before he drowns. however, you cannot swim and if you try to save him you will both die. are you morally obligated to kill yourself in an attempt to save him? wouldn't you staying alive and helping others for the rest of your life be better than killing yourself now in this feeble attempt?
again, my point is there are many ways to gauge the level of morality in a given situation or decision, but it's the process of analysis that is important, and not as much the final decision chosen, especially in circumstances that either decision is difficult. i mean, if a psychopath jumped in and saved the drowning boy because he wanted to kidnap him and keep him as a torture toy, does that make his choice to save the boy a morally correct one? intention matters and how you choose your moral decision matters.
topic at a time. You can probably come up with 1001 different variables to refute
whatever I'm saying. That's because you're a learned person trained to do such.
No more stories. In your opinion, Why did Bob take 30 minutes to ask the question ?
Why didn't he react right away ? Why didn't the other passengers ?
Is our society doomed ?
it's the nature of a thought experiment bill. the fact that it took bob 30 minutes, 5 minutes, or 3 days is irrelevant. in thought experiments, you have to accept the facts and only focus on the specific notion that is being discussed - in this case the moral obligation of the privileged West refusing to help the rest of the developing countries.
also, i am paraphrasing these examples from a book i'm reading. in the original writing, the other passengers did speak up. some agreed and some didn't (maybe they didn't speak up as much as they nodded in agreement or put their heads down in disagreement, etc.). that was also irrelevant to the focus of the thought experiment though (at least i thought it was because i don't see how it alters the overall focus - if it does please tell me how. also, i try to shorten these as much as i can because i know people hate reading large blocks of text).
and yes, our society is doomed. hopefully later rather than sooner because there's still some stuff i wouldn't mind doing before the end, but doomed nonetheless imho. humans won't make a change unless the worst case scenario is banging down their door, and even then they might not.
or 3 days but what I am interested in, is your opinion.
I don't want to know book theory. I want to know Trigs.
Why do you think it takes Bob 30 minutes ?
you're really missing my point, but i'll still give you my opinion.
bob took 30 minutes because he's just like every other selfish, lazy, self-centered consumer in every affluent nation. he might have considered saving the woman earlier (i.e. sacrificing some of his hoard of luxuries to help the less fortunate) but during his lifeboat goods distribution (i.e. his regular routine of shopping, eating too much, and sitting on his lazy ass watching tv), he forgot about it.
once he heard her screams again (i.e. he saw one of those commercials with starving little children with flies on their face) he thought he'd mention that maybe they should do something because, after all, this woman is dying (i.e. hundreds of thousands of poor people are starving to death and dying of preventable diseases).
when he brought it up again to the other people in the lifeboat (i.e. when he wrote a letter to the government explaining how we need to increase foreign aid), he was told to STFU and sit down because hells no are we giving away what we worked so hard for, that is, we swam to this lifeboat and fucking drowned three people on the way to get here so fuck that drowning bitch (i.e. we created the means to extract the resources here, we came and established a country here, we built it up by suppressing those who disagreed with us, we destroyed the environment faster and better than other countries, etc - oh yeah, and we were arbitrarily born here also). so again, we didn't kill her. the boat going down did that. why should we help her now when we can have extra food and goods for ourselves?
i think i'm answering your question now (but again, this is neither here nor there).
but what I do appreciate is Trigs personal response and Trigs this is more than
( but then, this is neither here nor there ).
See guys, it all boils down to communication. I don't want to know book theory.
I want to know your opinions. I want to know you. I want to know Milo. I want
to know Trigs.
As for Bob, in my opinion, why did it take 30 minutes for his reaction or anyones.
A person is drowning and you have the means to save them. You do it right away.
But then again a person is drowning and you can't swim and have no means of
saving them it's illogical to jump in to save them because in all likelihood you'll
drown. Morality has to be tied up with logic somehow.
People learn morality from their families. But that's another discussion.
in any case, i still am appreciative that you are taking an interest in this thread.
#billleveling
EDIT:
bill-leveling: taking a level to the umpteenth degree to the point where the person being leveled is starting to doubt being leveled in the first place.
EDIT 2: i'm just joking bill
for me at times is confusing.
Consider the following scenario:
Many of us like our morality to be clear-cut. There are two ways to consider this position. From a narrow utilitarian view where the desired moral outcome is that which benefits the largest amount of people, the PM should obviously accept the bribe. Hundreds of thousands would get clean water, a rich man would be called “sir”, and the only price would be the irritation of those who see a greedy quasi-criminal being honoured by the Queen.
From the perspective of principles of integrity and due process, however, it is obvious the PM should refuse the bribe. Affairs of state must be governed by due process. To allow titles to be bought even if the money goes to a good cause, corrupts the principle that the state grants its favours in terms of merit and not ability to pay.
The difficulty of this dilemma is apparent. Due process and the rule of law are important for any democracy and society, but if bending the rules has overwhelming beneficial consequences and only minor bad ones, isn’t it foolish or even immoral to stick rigidly to them?
This problem is known as moral self-indulgence. The PM is looking to run a clean government and that means keeping himself free from corruption. However, in this case his desire to keep his hands clean might require sacrificing the welfare of thousands of Africans who would otherwise get clean water. The accusation is that the PM is more interested in keeping himself pure than making the world a better place. His desire to be moral is therefore actually immoral. Others will pay in disease and walking miles to get clean water.
The PM may be aware of this but still hold reservations. For example, what other corruptions will follow? Why not lie to the electorate to win their support for a just war they would have otherwise opposed? Why not support oppressive regimes if in the long run it will help regional stability and prevent even worse regimes coming into power? If the net consequences are all that matter for politicians, how can the PM maintain his desire to be straight and honest? Or is that idea simply a naïve dream?