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Common decency and Bayes' postulate says save the five. It's the response most likely to find favor with the jury.
It's outside the strict realm of morality because you stated that you don't know any of the potential victims, so you can't apply my tests. However you could adopt a variant: what is the probability that your nearest and dearest is one of five unknowns, or one of one? Then morality says you would choose the a priori moral stance of saving the larger group.
Ethics talks about equipoise: essentially, parity of probable outcomes. So we resort to the numerical probability of causing or not preventing avoidable death, and the answer is obvious.
Law (at least the civilised law of pre-EU Britain) considers the opinion of "the man on the Clapham omnibus" (i.e. Joe Public, if you don't live in south London) as definitive. I think Joe or Jo would prefer you to save five lives.
Quote from: alancalverd on 26/11/2021 11:03:29It's outside the strict realm of morality because you stated that you don't know any of the potential victims, so you can't apply my tests. However you could adopt a variant: what is the probability that your nearest and dearest is one of five unknowns, or one of one? Then morality says you would choose the a priori moral stance of saving the larger group.If you already know that all of them are strangers, then your morality asks you to choose option 1. You'll save your stopping device, and efforts to use it.
Quote from: alancalverd on 26/11/2021 11:03:29Law (at least the civilised law of pre-EU Britain) considers the opinion of "the man on the Clapham omnibus" (i.e. Joe Public, if you don't live in south London) as definitive. I think Joe or Jo would prefer you to save five lives.Average Joe, as well as the judge, think that Kyle Rittenhouse is innocent.
Ridiculous. If you can't apply a moral judgement, common sense and decency says you should save the larger group.
You might review the ethics of war.How many civilian bystanders is it reasonable to kill in order to remove one bad guy hiding in the group? And if the Emperor or Fuhrer is not likely to be in the city, how many civilians should you kill to disable his war effort?
Quote from: alancalverd on 26/11/2021 14:17:14Ridiculous. If you can't apply a moral judgement, common sense and decency says you should save the larger group.Then you are using more assumptions or principles than you like to admit. If you expect someone else to agree with you, as well with one another, you need to state all of those assumptions explicitly and unambiguously.
It all comes back to a civilised society, where the law states what the majority of the citizens consider to be unacceptable behavior. I think there is reasonable precedent to prefer saving the larger group.
Quote from: alancalverd on 27/11/2021 14:04:02It all comes back to a civilised society, where the law states what the majority of the citizens consider to be unacceptable behavior. I think there is reasonable precedent to prefer saving the larger group.How would you define civilised society?
Exactly what I said! It is one where the state serves the citizen, not the other way around, by consultation and representation.
The law of a civilised country is based primarily on "wrongs". Pity about the USA.
We have such lists, from general heath and safety requirements not to create hazardous working conditions, speed limits, and environmental pollution laws.
AFAIK the Aztecs were a theocracy. Asking people what they want (bread and circuses, usually) is not the same as asking what they consider unacceptable (being sacrificed by an old pervert).
Some of them even discarded worldly desires such as sexuality
Quote from: hamdani yusuf on 30/11/2021 09:07:11Some of them even discarded worldly desires such as sexuality Doesn't that denote someone with a perverted attitude to sex? If it wasn't a primary drive and fun, the species would have died out long ago!
adjectiveDeviating from what is considered right and correct.Of, relating to, or practicing sexual perversion.Marked by misinterpretation or distortion.