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I'll show another variation of trolley problem, where the one sacrificed for the five was a relative or romantic partner. Survey data shows that respondents are much less likely to be willing to sacrifice their life.
Let's assume that there are no uncertainty about all of those assumptions. At a glance, it seems to be obvious that the doctor should kill that tourist and provide his healthy organs to those five dying persons and save their lives.
Since universal moral standard concerns about long term results, it would take a lot of factor to calculate, which might not make it practical. Bad results might come before the decision is made due to long duration of the calculation, and the factors influencing the calculation might have change before the calculation is complete. Hence we need to create shortcut, rule of thumb, or hash table to deal with frequently occurring situations. They must be reasonably easy to calculate and work in most cases.
Quote from: hamdani yusuf on 20/11/2018 05:18:34Let's assume that there are no uncertainty about all of those assumptions. At a glance, it seems to be obvious that the doctor should kill that tourist and provide his healthy organs to those five dying persons and save their lives.No it doesn't - it is immediately obvious that one of the ill people can be sacrificed instead. However, you can introduce more information to rule that out - the healthy traveller's organs are compatible with all the others, but none of the others are compatible with each other. We now have a restored dilemma in which killing one person saves more. (This ignores organ rejection and decline - most transplanted hearts will fail within a decade, for example, but let's imagine that there's no such problem.One of the important factors here is that no one wants to live in a world where they could be killed in such a way to save the lives of ill people (who wouldn't want to be saved in such a way either) - it's bad enough that you could die in accidents caused by factors outside of anyone's control, but you don't want to live in fear that you'll be selected for death to mend other people who may be to blame for their own medical problem or who may have bad genes which really shouldn't be passed on. You also don't want the fact that you've been careful to stay as healthy as possible to turn you into a preferred donor either - that could drive people to live unhealthy lives as it might be safer to risk being someone who needs a transplant than to be a good organ donor. However, if people's own morality is taken into account, it would serve someone right if they were used in this way if they've spent their life abusing others. As with all other moral issues, you have to identify as many factors as possible and then weight them appropriately so that the best outcome is more likely to be produced. A lot of the data needed to make ideal decisions isn't available yet though - it would take a lot of studying to find out how people feel in such situations and afterwards so that the total amount of harm can be counted up.
Since universal moral standard concerns about long term results, it would take a lot of factor to calculate, which might not make it practical. Bad results might come before the decision is made due to long duration of the calculation, and the factors influencing the calculation might have change before the calculation is complete. Hence we need to create shortcut, rule of thumb, or hash table to deal with frequently occurring situations. They must be reasonably easy to calculate and work in most cases. Their applications should align with the spirit of universal moral standard. This comparison might be made retrospectively when the decision has already been made before the calculation based on universal moral standard is finished. When they are in conflict, some exception should be made to the application of those shortcut rules.
Biological evolution has provide us with a basic and simple shortcut rule, which is to avoid pain. This can be done through reflex which is very fast since it doesn't involve central nervous system. A little bit more complex rules are our instinct to seek for pleasure and to avoid suffering. I think hedonism and utilitarian are confusing the tool with the goal.
The mathematical resolution of the simplest trlley problem assumes that your universal moral standard is to maximise the number of live humans. Since this will inevitably lead to the starvation of our descendants, it is a questionable basis for ethics.
Quote from: hamdani yusuf on 21/11/2018 12:22:05Biological evolution has provide us with a basic and simple shortcut rule, which is to avoid pain. This can be done through reflex which is very fast since it doesn't involve central nervous system. A little bit more complex rules are our instinct to seek for pleasure and to avoid suffering. I think hedonism and utilitarian are confusing the tool with the goal.I can't follow that. What's the tool there and what's the goal?
No matter what the species or timescale, if maximisation of the number of living organisms is the prime objective and it has the unfettered capacity to maximise, it will eventually run out of food or poison itself with its own excrement. Never mind humans, you can observe the endpoint with lemmings and yeast (which is why wine never exceeds 20% alcohol).
Quote from: David Cooper on 21/11/2018 20:15:17Quote from: hamdani yusuf on 21/11/2018 12:22:05Biological evolution has provide us with a basic and simple shortcut rule, which is to avoid pain. This can be done through reflex which is very fast since it doesn't involve central nervous system. A little bit more complex rules are our instinct to seek for pleasure and to avoid suffering. I think hedonism and utilitarian are confusing the tool with the goal.I can't follow that. What's the tool there and what's the goal?The goal is what is preferred in the long run. The rules used as the shortcut is the tool.
"Do as you would be done by" looks like a more generally applicable motto, but the fact that it can't be applied to the trolley problem suggests that there may not be a single universal moral standard. And here's where my thinking became suddenly heretical and digressive:
In the absence of a universal principle, we often choose an arbitrary standard. "The man on the Clapham omnibus" serves for many legal questions but some people revert to a single figure and ask "what would Jesus do?" Sitting here, my first thought was "well, he wouldn't eat pork" (I've been refereeing a medical experiment that involves eating a standard fatty meal)...and then (apropos lemmings, I suppose) I wondered about the Gadarene swine. Who was herding pigs in Israel?
Quote from: hamdani yusuf on 22/11/2018 08:01:56Quote from: David Cooper on 21/11/2018 20:15:17Quote from: hamdani yusuf on 21/11/2018 12:22:05Biological evolution has provide us with a basic and simple shortcut rule, which is to avoid pain. This can be done through reflex which is very fast since it doesn't involve central nervous system. A little bit more complex rules are our instinct to seek for pleasure and to avoid suffering. I think hedonism and utilitarian are confusing the tool with the goal.I can't follow that. What's the tool there and what's the goal?The goal is what is preferred in the long run. The rules used as the shortcut is the tool.So when you say utilitarianism is is confusing the tool with the goal, how is it confusing a shortcut with what's preferred in the long run? Where's the incompatibility between the two?
unfortunately, I must answer the problem with a simple conclusion:no, there is no "universal moral standard".there can never be a "universal moral standard" until every sentient species in the universe agrees upon the standard of the combined species.
what do you have against eating pussies?