See that's the problem: there aren't any congregations for people who think deeply but don't subscribe to a mainstream religion...or at least none that I know of. Where's the aristotelian club??? (;

A means is something that facilitates or enables the performance of some action.

Killing one person to save the five is what enables the person to save the five. Without being able to kill the one person, they cannot save the five.

The biggest problem with consequentialism I have is that it rests on a false assumption of how moral responsibility works. Not sure how deep you want to get into that debate though.

This is the point I was trying to get to. For you, if the case of human agency is a non-factor, you'll pull to save the greatest number. But you favor human agency over the the greatest number. I also don't disagree with this.

For me, it is that I cannot intentionally kill an innocent person (where it is implied it is against their will) period.

I don't see the need to come up with a fixed solution to this problem if there is no fully satisfactory choice.

That’s fine. If you aren’t convinced, then suspend judgment. For me, I am convinced.

It seems very straightforward to me that in a scenario where either everyone was going to die or only two people, it is better to choose two.

Hmmm. Ok. Imagine a serial killer has 12 people in their basement and are torturing them. Imagine the serial killer tells you that they will let 11 people go if you personally go kill 1 of them: would you do it?

If so, then you do not think it is immoral to, per se, to kill an innocent person; which is incredible to me.

By black-and-white I mean it seems implied that once someone gives up their right to something like life then it removes the badness of killing them, which isn't intuitive to me

An easy example is self-defense: a person is morally permitted to kill another person if that person is an aggressor and their response is proportional. This only works with this kind of “counter-intuitive” thinking your profess here.

Well, firstly, you can't decide questions in moral philosophy by appealing to courts of law. The most a study of legal systems can tell you is what the people who drafted the laws thought was morally right; it won't tell you if they were correct.

It was an analogy, and perfectly sound.

Secondly, I agree that the operator intentionally sacrifices 1 person to save 5. Since either 1 or 5 people must die, and he can't prevent that, and since 5 lives are more valuable than 1, sacrificing 1 to save 5 is the morally right thing to do. The fact that he may be punished for doing it is irrelevant.

This rests on a false understanding of moral responsibility; that most consequentialists have.

Thirdly, you did not answer my point, which was that the 1 person who is killed is not the means of saving the other 5

It absolutely is, if you intentionally kill one person to save five. No way around that.

AI girlfriends are wholly inadequate substitutes for real girlfriends.

:up:

I would still like to strive towards finding my soulmate, although I agree it is very unlikely, while maintaining an open-mind to those who may not fit the exact description.

Fair enough.

In the trolley example, the situation is thrust upon me from nowhere and I am shown how to direct the trolley - left or right. I am sitting there, and then I have to make a decision with innocent lives about to be killed.

In the plane example, I am the pilot.

This is, indeed, a difference; but I don’t think it is a relevant difference. Let’s amend the trolley problem: imagine you are the train operator...does that change your response? It wouldn’t for me, because, as the driver, I still cannot intentionally sacrifice the one to save the five. The principle remains the same.

And if I know the plane is going down, I already have to take responsibility for innocent death, so I have killed innocent people. It’s done for me the minute I see my plane is going down. I know this before the plane lands because I am the pilot, the intentions and some of the reasons the plane is in the air at all.

This is false. Just because the plane goes down and kills people, DOES NOT mean you are responsible for those deaths—same as the train running over those people. You are not morally responsible if you abstain from saving those people because your only other option was to sacrifice other innocent people. It doesn’t matter (to me) if you are the driver or a passenger.

Your argument rests on the same false assumption as the consequentialist in the 1 vs. 5 problem: they think that they are responsible for the deaths either way, and so it becomes a simple calculation of saving the most. This is false, and misunderstands the nature of moral responsibility.

But their duty as pilot allows them to stop flying the plane, even though they know that by doing so innocent people will die?

Let me clarify, as I may have said differently before: the pilot wouldn’t let go of the steering wheel but, rather, would keep flying as best they can to avoid any collisions. My point is that they are not permitted to sacrifice other innocent people to avoid an otherwise inevitable collision with another set of innocent people. That’s no different than the trolley problem (in my eyes).

Firstly, I would like to disclaim that this is different than the airplane example because you are stipulating that the people being sacrificed are actually already victims — Bob Ross

Did I? Not that I know of...?

Maybe I misunderstood, then. Were you positing that I could either (1) continue and run over 4 people or (2) swerve and hit 2 of those 4 instead of all 4? Or were you positing that I could either (1) continue and hit 4 people or (2) swerve and hit 2 separate (to the 4) people?

Either way, I would say that I must continue driving and hit the 4 (given those options).

It seems to me that you have given two different scenarios, one to which you have given a theoretical answer and a different one to which you have given a practical answer.

Correct. The practical one was just an additional FYI; and not an intended answer to your question. The theoretical one is my answer.

We must go back to the single problem, the single scenario.

Like I said, my answer is that I would hit the original 4; because I cannot intentionally sacrifice 2 people to save those 4.

According to the standard Catholic version of double effect, one can swerve with the intention of avoiding pedestrians even though they know with certainty that they will hit pedestrians on the left or the right.

See, this is where it gets interesting; because, to me, this is a cop-out: it is a consequentialism-denier coming up with a way to be a consequentialist on some issues. If one swerves to the left to hit 2 people to avoid hitting 4, then they have absolutely intended to sacrifice those 2 people to save the 4 and, consequently, used those 2 as a mere means toward a good end. Am I missing something?

They are permitted to do this only on two conditions: 1) that the evil effect is not a means to the good effect, and 2) that there is a sufficient proportion between good and bad outcomes to justify acting thusly

This seems to sidestep the issue: to justify this “Double Effect”, you would have to sufficiently demonstrate that swerving to hit 2 people instead of 4 is not an intention to hit those 2 people to save the 4...what say you? Your analysis in the above quote just assumes it is merely an evil effect, without commenting on the intention.

In my analysis I claimed that the pilot has two duties, not just one:

A duty towards something cannot excuse a person from their other duties. A pilot’s duty to fly cannot excuse them from their duty to not intentionally kill innocent people.

... if the pilot takes your recommendation then he would apparently be without moral fault according to his first duty, but not according to his second duty.

The pilot would be without moral fault in both; because one cannot blame a person for not fulfilling their duty to A because the only way to do so would have been to violate a more important duty to B.

In the first place I would want to stress that the two effects are intended in wholly different ways.

I don’t see how…

Lol. Maybe.

I do agree that not mentioning philosophy is better at attracting women. I am pretty sure philosophizing is a turn-off for the vast majority of humans (to my shock and dismay).

Yes, this is the point I was conveying. Sometimes these kinds of paradoxes just exist.

That’s fine. I just think this indicates that your ethical view isn’t fully fleshed out; and you will have to hierarchically adjust your moral principles to fix this paradox/antinomy. I have my solution, which you already have heard, but if you don’t like it then you will have to come up with your own.

I don't even know what it really means to be obligated to do something unless this obligation is being enforced by some kind of legislative body or something like that.

I would say obligation is a duty towards something; and duty arises out of commitment to what is (actually) good (viz., commitment to being moral).

but morally it seems a bit too dispassionate for me and sometimes a bit too absolute in how you can suddenly just lose a "right".

Well, I don’t mean forever. I mean that in a given circumstance a person may be morally obligated or permitted to do something to another person which is normally impermissible as a proportionate reaction to what that other person is immorally doing. E.g., the axemen doesn’t deserve to be lied to their entire lives because of that one incident.

My thought then was that even if the man had refused to obey the rules of being on the track we wouldn't normally think he deserved to be killed by the train or that it would br acceptable for the train driver to acknowledge that there was a man on the tracks and plow him down anyway without any intent in trying to stop.

Assuming there aren’t innocent people on the current track, then I agree.

Its not clear to me either, that if we have a variation of the regular trolley problem where the 1 person on the tracks could have got off but didn't or knew they shouldn't be there but chose to, that it would be vastly more acceptable to pull the lever and run him over than in the regular scenario. I am not entirely sure.

You think that the five innocent people should die because the one person was being extremely negligent?

The 1 who dies is not the means, but merely someone who unfortunately happens to be on the other track. In this way the trolley problem differs from the transplant problem, where the healthy patient actually IS the means of saving the 5 unhealthy patients.

If one diverts a track to save 5 people knowing 1 person will die as a result of it (that wouldn’t have otherwise), then they are intending to sacrifice that 1 person to save the 5. They cannot validly say “the 1 person was merely a bad side-effect of saving the 5”. That doesn’t cut it, nor has anything remotely similar cut it in the court of law.

Does a pilot have a duty to fly his plane?

Yes, but this does not permit them to sacrifice innocent people to fulfill such duty.

Suppose you are driving your car. Four people appear on the road, two on each side. If you keep going in the same direction you will hit all four. If you swerve left you will only hit the two on the left. If you swerve right you will only hit the two on the right. You don't have time to stop. What do you do?

This is a really good example, that tripped me up a bit (:

Firstly, I would like to disclaim that this is different than the airplane example because you are stipulating that the people being sacrificed are actually already victims—which spices things up significantly (;

Secondly, I would say that one must continue to go straight, assuming they cannot try to veer away to avoid all 4 altogether (and have to choose between intending to kill the two to save the other two and letting all 4 die), because, otherwise, they would be intending to kill two people as a means toward the good end of saving two people.

A person that says otherwise, would be acting like a consequentialist full-stop: they would be allowing a person to intend to kill an innocent person for the sole sake of the greater good. I don’t see how the principle of Double Effect gets one out of this without it becoming inherently consequentialist.

Now, in practical life, since such stipulations are not in place, I would veer away intending to miss all 4 and would not ever intend to kill two to save the other two. If I happen to kill two instead of four because I didn’t manage to swerve far enough away; than that is a bad outcome but I had good intentions and thusly didn’t do anything immoral (unless, of course, there is reason to blame me for reckless driving or something).

I would highlight two things that I said earlier:
given that the pilot literally has no choice but to cause the death of innocents, the consequent death of innocents cannot be imputed to his free actions. — Leontiskos
Some might reasonably argue that this falls short of an authentic case of double effect insofar as the act with the double effect (or side effect) is involuntary (i.e. the act of landing the plane, which is not strictly speaking a choice at all).

The bolded is the important mistake you are making, that consequentialists make in the trolley problem: letting something bad happen is not the same thing as doing something bad. The pilot is not, in your example, in a situation where they are morally responsible for the deaths of innocent lives. If they keep flying because there are no ways to crash land without intentionally killing innocent people and the plane eventually just crash lands itself (by slowing falling to the ground) and it kills innocent people, then the pilot would be without moral fault. Just like how the person who doesn’t pull the lever would be without moral fault.

In the airplane or car scenario it is not at all clear that the evil effect is a means to the good effect.

You don’t think that that pilot, by intentionally veering into an area of innocent people to crash land to avoid crashing into more innocent people in a different area, is intentionally killing innocent people? I don’t see the reasoning there. It isn’t merely an evil effect: the pilot has an evil intention (to sacrifice innocent people for the greater good).

Okay, interesting. I suppose the question is whether someone can forfeit their right to life vis-a-vis a private party. A criminal forfeits their rights and then the community or state punishes them accordingly, but it's not clear that this sort of forfeiture and punishment is applicable to private citizens

I think so; but only proportionally to whatever they are doing to forfeit it. For example, the axeman should be lied to (even though one should normally tell people the truth) because one knows the axeman is using that information to actively hunt and kill an innocent person—this causes the axeman to forfeit their right to be told the truth (in this instance).

Well the pilot is flying the plane, but the person in the trolley problem is not driving the trolley. Therefore to "do nothing" would seem to be quite different in the two cases. In the case of the pilot he would not be doing nothing, but would instead (or also) need to stop flying the plane.

This is a difference, no doubt; but not a relevant difference (to me).

If one amends the trolley example such that the person who decides whether to pull the lever is actually, instead, the train operator and can choose to divert the train to the track with the 1 or stay on the track with the 5; then I would say it is immoral for the operator to divert the track. They cannot intentionally sacrifice one person to save five: they are still using that sacrificed person as a means towards an end.

Same with the airplane.

By “doing nothing” I mean that they let the train run over the five: it is stipulated that them stopping steering will do nothing to help save the five, but nevertheless they should stop steering. In normal circumstances, where this stipulation would not exist, one would be obligated to try to do everything they can besides sacrificing someone else to get the train to stop before it runs the five over.

I accept a relatively uncontroversial form of double effect whereby the unintended effect must only be possible and not certain.

Isn’t one certain, in your airplane example, that they are going to kill innocent people to save more innocent people?

With respect to self-defense, I would say that the aggressor has forfeited their rights proportionately to their assault; and this principle of forfeiture is doing the leg-work here, and not a principle of double effect.

I wasn't suggesting general in that sense. My point is that killing an innocent person could be wrong. But saving the human race could be right. At the same time. Irreconcilably.

Are you saying it is absolutely right to save the human race, and absolutely right not to sacrifice an innocent person; and that sometimes they are in conflict?

If so, then I would say that one has to trump the other; or some other principle has to supersede them both. This is a half-baked ethical system (otherwise).

I haven't been assuming anything about obligations but I struggle to see how someone who refusing to save the world wouldn't have any moral significance

You are saying that one is obligated to save humanity and not to sacrifice a person to do it. Without further elaboration, you just have a moral antinomy in your view.

I personally think that saving humanity is only obligatory if it can be done in a reasonable and permissible manner.

I am just not necessarily sold on this conceptualization or language in terms of forfeiting life.

It helps avoid morally counter-intuitive (and immoral) conclusions; like in the axeman example where someone may say “it is wrong to lie, so I must tell the axeman the truth even though it will help them find and kill an innocent person”.

The meaningful difference between lying in general being wrong and these sort of cases where it is right to lie; resides in the fact that when one should lie to a person that person is actively doing something which causes them to forfeit their right to be told the truth (for that instance). The axeman is trying to violate someone else’s rights, and so they have forfeited the right to be told the truth about where that person is.

Same with self-defense: an attacker has forfeited their right to be unharmed or killed by the fact that they are actively trying to illegitimately harm or kill another person.

Oh, so what he is guilty of in this scenario is not saving lives ans thats why he deserves to die? Yup, its a tough one for me.

I was agreeing with you: I would not pull the lever because he is presumed innocent. I would have to know, without a reasonable doubt, that he is on the tracks due to some sort of severe negligence or stupidity to find it permissible to sacrifice him to save the innocent five people.

Probably, but I am conservative.

I see, so while innocence is a factor, the an important ingredient here is self-agency.

I would say both are important. Not everything one does to themselves is morally permissible (in virtue of ‘self-agency’).

So I assume in the case of the one person on the track yelling, "Do it!" dramatically like out of a movie, you would be ok with throwing the track to hit them instead of the five who yelled, "No, please don't!".

Not necessarily. I would have to be certain that they really mean it: otherwise, I would error on the side of assuming they don’t consent.

For example, a person that would scream out for me to divert the track could quite plausibly be mentally ill; and not doing it as a heroic deed.

What if both sides plead with you to kill them and save the other side?

Assuming both parties really mean it and are in their right minds to mean it genuinely (e.g., they aren’t mentally ill, impaired, etc.), then I would pull the lever. If a person has the choice to limit the amount of human deaths in a morally permissible manner, then they should.

The five plead with you to kill them instead of save the one, while the one is pleading with you not kill them, but kill the other five?

This is just the same thing, unless I am misunderstanding, as the five, who are already going to die, telling me (assumingly genuinely and validly) that they don’t want me to pull the lever to avoid sacrificing the one person who is innocent and has not volunteered to be sacrificed: so this scenario doesn’t amend it in any way that would change the morally relevant factors. I can’t sacrifice an innocent person, absent their consent (and even then sometimes I still can’t), to save the five. Did I miss something about this scenario?

Correct. I cannot commit an immoral act to avoid a morally bad outcome. Letting them die, is morally ommissible because I cannot save them without doing something immoral.

(CC: @@Fire Ologist

To me, the principle of Double Effect rests on a vague and (typically) biased distinction between intending to do something and intending to do something which also has bad side-effects. It seems like, in every example I have gotten my hands on, a person could equally reasonably tie the known bad “side-effect” as a part of the person’s intentions.

For example, in the terror vs. tactical bomber example it is not clear at all (to me) how the tactical bomber knowing they are going to kill an innocent person as collateral damage is not intentionally sacrificing them for the greater good. What proponents of the principle seem to say, is that the tactical bomber is intending to bomb the military building and not killing any innocent bystanders: their deaths are just unfortunate “side-effects” of the good deed.

I also think that this principle Double Effect would equally justify consequentialist thinking on the 1 vs. 5 trolley problem; because a person could just say that they are intending to save the 5, and killing the 1 is a mere bad ‘side-effect’ of it.

Suppose a pilot runs out of fuel over a large music festival and his airplane will crash somewhere in the festival no matter what he does. The pilot has a duty not to kill, but he also has a separate but related duty to cause as few deaths as possible in the event where he cannot avoid causing deaths (whether or not we decide to call this "causing of death" killing). So the good pilot will land in the area with fewest people to minimize injury and death.

To me, this is no different than the trolley problem, and you are here affirming, analogously, to sacrifice the one to save the many. You are saying that the pilot’s lack of action will result in innocent deaths (just like not pulling the lever) and their actions to avoid it would result in innocent deaths (just like pulling the lever); so I am having a hard time seeing how you agree with me on the trolley problem, but don’t agree that the pilot should, in your case you have here, do nothing.

It is an easier case on account of the necessity involved: given that the pilot literally has no choice but to cause the death of innocents, the consequent death of innocents cannot be imputed to his free actions

If the plane is out of fuel, and it is not the pilot’s fault that it is out of fuel, then he has the choice not to perform any action that would kill an innocent person; instead, he can let innocent people die.

You have setup the same trolley problem with an airplane: what if the fuel runs out in an airplane and the plane is about to crash into 5 innocent people, but the pilot could divert the plane to kill one innocent person instead—is that permissible? It is the same dilemma.

The question arises: did the pilot intentionally kill (or injure) the people in that area? I think not.

If the pilot diverts the plane to kill less people, then they have intentionally sacrificed those people for the sake of other people; just like how a person who pulls the lever intentionally sacrifices the one to save the five. Am I missing something?

In this case, would you have a duty to save more lives, and that’s why you would pull the lever, or does it matter that the people tied to the tracks are innocent?

For me, it was that the five are innocent. If you are amending it such that no one is innocent; then I would have a duty to save more lives.

Good question! Voluntarily choosing to die is morally permissible because it is voluntary. In the case of myself, I cannot involuntarily force myself to do something: that's paradoxical (at best). Therefore, it is morally permissible for me to sacrifice myself to save other people.

However, it would be immoral for someone else to try to force me to voluntarily sacrifice myself to save other people because it is no longer voluntary if I do it.

When I say it is wrong to kill an innocent person, I am assuming that they are getting killed against their will. This does bring up an interesting topic of euthanasia and assisted suicide; but I will refrain for now (;

I think the same reasoning may apply in the inverse with the trolley. Whether you pull or do not pull the lever, you aren’t responsible for any of the deaths. You are not responsible for the death of the person alone on the tracks if what you were doing was trying save as many lives as possible to address a situation that was otherwise beyond your control.

But you are. If you pull the lever, you have killed an innocent person, and, worse yet, you intended to.

That is fair. Although I am not a Christian.

That's fair. I guess I just value it strongly. I don't like people that are just regurgitations of their society's norms, like a leaf getting blown in the wind.

I think a question is whether someone can be justified in doing something they think is generally morally impermissible because there is a benefit which is morally right.

Perhaps: if the instance is not applicable to the general principle, then that would work. I am saying that killing an innocent person is always—not generally—wrong.

Maybe one factor is that we tend to talk about moral claims in terms of absolutes which are context-independent - "killing is wrong" - but realistically, everything happens in a context and some contexts really test the limits of those principles. I'm inclined to the view that maybe we create these rules as a way of simplifying the moral process even though realistically, things aren't so simple in some contexts.

That is fair; but I am saying killing an innocent person is always wrong; just like rape. Those aren’t general principles...unless that’s what you are advocating? Do you think rape is sometimes morally permissible?

"If Killing an innocent person is wrong you can't do it". But then on the otherhand, can you not easily make a claim something like "Saving the human race is right and you should do it."

You would be right if I was claiming that saving the human race was always morally obligatory; it’s not.

But a question is whether if it was more normal for these contexts to overlap, we would find it more permissible to kill an innocent life to save humanity

Saving humanity is morally permissible but not obligatory: it is not wrong, per se, to not save humanity. You are forgetting about moral omissibility.

. Do we not already do this with regard to animals? Other innocent living things we kill to survive?

I happen to think that only beings of rational kinds have the right to not be killed if they are innocent.

Actually seems pretty brutal. Now obviously I completely get this reasoning and it is very pragmatic, but it seems that this pragmatic pull doesn't seem to be something that was already in place in the scenario. What does no good reason even mean here? If they believe the track is a sacred religious site is that a good reason?

I was keeping it generic on purpose: one doesn’t need to know what exactly counts as a morally relevant factor or reason to understand that what obviously isn’t is stubbornly sitting on a track just for the fun of it (or whatever).

What if they just feel extremely passionate that they have to sit on this track for no good reason through no fault of their own, is that any different?

How is that no fault of their own? You just said they are standing on the tracks because they desired it. Are we not held accountable for our actions, even if they spring from our desires?

What does innocent mean here?

It means that the person, in the event which is being analyzed, has not done anything which would cause them to forfeit certain rights.

Surely, if this was just a man on a regular rail track you would not run him over and you would say he had not necessarily forfeits his life... or would you?

No, because he is innocent until proven or reasonably demonstrated to be guilty.

Could you say the person standing on the track has forfeited his life? I mean, we all know to stay off the trolley tracks. Does that person have any duty to the trolley driver to stay off the tracks and avoid being killed?

That’s a great question. Firstly, the trolley problem stipulates all else is equal; so we cannot consider that in the original hypothetical. However, it is worth exploring as an addendum.

Secondly, yes, I think we can blame people for obvious negligence; so if you are stipulating that a person was informed clearly that they should not be on the tracks, that they have the freedom to easily move off of the tracks, they refuse with no good reason to be on the tracks, and the other five people (on the other tracks) do not have the freedom to move nor are they being negligent; then, yes, I would pull the lever because I am no longer killing an innocent person.

But if we were stuck on that train and knew there was no trick, no murderer behind the scenario, this was just a horrible accident about to happen, then are you killing anyone or is the trolley killing the people?

I guess I am not following this one: whether or not someone orchestrated the trolley dilemma, has no bearing on if you are about to kill an innocent person to try to save five other innocent people.

Since the pilot has to essentially pull the lever to land on the baseball field, is he wrong because it is wrong to intentionally kill innocent people? Should he just chug past and see what happens, or does he have any duty now thrust in his lap to kill as few people as he can?

He should never intentionally kill innocent people: even to avoid a bad outcome. He should keep flying, and try to find a place to land where he is not intentionally sacrificing innocent people.

Now, there is an interesting discussion, from Anscombe, about the difference between intentionally killing someone and doing something which has a statistically likelihood or certainty of killing an innocent person. I am still chewing over that part, so I can’t comment too much; but I am guessing @Leontiskos can probably inform us better on that.

It is an avenue worth exploring, but I simply disagree with it. Usually, they will agree that in-itself killing an innocent person is wrong, but there may be contexts where it is right. What they don't realize, is they are committed by my view if they even admit just the former.

To admit that killing an innocent person is morally permissible, is to lack a proper moral compass; just as much as a person who thinks rape is morally permissible. The nature of the act dictates, quite obviously, that it is wrong.

That said, killing an innocent person isn't really right. Then again, saving humanity is a right thing to do on its own, and benefits people (at least under some opinions, because I think that the belief that humanity is bad and a creator of suffering is also kind of a reasonable view in some ways) so surely its fair to say there is both good and bad in the choice?

If killing an innocent person is wrong, then you can’t do: period. You can’t turnaround and permit yourself to do it in instances where you could avoid a bad outcome or create a better outcome—that would be akin to saying that some immoral acts are morally permissible, which is a manifest contradiction.

I would say it seems to be a similar case in your morality too where people can forfeit their right to life and its okay to kill them in self-defence or if they are not innocent.

The difference is that the trolley problem posits that all victims are innocent.

You permit bad things for an end.

I don’t. I will not permit anyone to kill an innocent human being for any end; because it is wrong.

Sure, you would say they are justified in a special way, but then there are probably some people who are even stricter than you are on when it is permissible to kill.

That’s true: some people believe killing any life form for whatever reason is wrong; but I disagree.

I am not a deontologist: I am a virtue ethicist. I just happen to think that rights are inherently deontological; and consequentialism utterly fails at accounting for them properly.

If the axe murderer comes looking for your friend, you're going to tell him the truth about where he's hiding?
If the Nazi's want to know where the Jews are hiding, we're supposed to tell them them the truth? Because we value the truth so much?

No in both cases, because both people that I would be lying to have forfeited their "right" (although I know there isn't a legal right to it) to be told the truth because they are actively trying to violate someone else's rights.

This is the same with self-defence: I am not advocating that it is always wrong to kill people. I am advocating that it is wrong to kill innocent people; and it is wrong to lie to innocent people. See what I mean?

No. When the chips are down, nobody acts like that.

Some people do and, although I disagree with them if they tell the truth to a Nazi or the axeman, I respect the courage, authenticity, and spine that it takes to stand by what one believes and not coward out.

Lol. I guess we will never know for certain......and I am surely not going to argue with you about what you think are my ethical commitments.

Fair enough. I am not looking for an actual philosopher (in an academic sense) nor do they need to be overly interested in the various branches of philosophy that I am; but I would like to be with someone that I can intellectually resonate with. I value people who have put in the intellectual work, even if I disagree with them, to hash out their worldview and be able to explicate it (adequately); and I value critical, genuine, and creative thinking.

I am not shocked that most people don't study philosophy on their own time; but I am kind of shocked how little these women (I have talked to) know about what they believe (in any substantive sense). Some of them even boast that they are "apolitical"......

:up:

I can appreciate what you are conveying insofar as it is morally counter-intuitive to the untrained mind; but I think one can appreciate my position more, even if they disagree (ultimately), when they have to build out their own consistent normative ethical theory.

I would let the whole world get destroyed; assuming hitler, notwithstanding his past egregious transgressions, is innocent in the actual trolly incident. You can substitute whoever you want in there, it will make no difference to me: it is wrong to kill an innocent human being (and by innocent I mean in the instance which they may be getting killed), no matter who they are.

Would I want to kill Hitler? Would it emotionally feel like a good choice? Yeah. Is it morally right? Absolutely not.

Assuming John Wayne Gacy was not moral responsible for anything bad which was occurring in that trolley situation (which is to say that he has not forfeited his right to not be killed in this situation); then, no I would not.

It is always wrong to kill an innocent person; and by 'innocent' I mean innocent in the specific situation---otherwise, it is irrelevant (even if there is other information that would emotionally move us). I would love to pull the lever in the case of John Wayne Gacy but that would still be immoral.

:up:

Very interesting. Even if it was the whole human race (including your self?)?

Correct.

There then comes the irony and absurdity of committing to your moral standards so strongly that you would allow the human race to die and, arguably in doing so, render your value system meaningless.

Essentially you are saying: “it can be absurd to do what is moral or/and not to do what is immoral”. Do you really believe that?

No: I was commenting on what a consequentialist would have to commit themselves to. They would have to claim that sometimes it is morally right (or at least permissible) to kill an innocent human being.