If something is "necessary", it implies there are no other options. This is intended to account for situations (for instance) where mutual survival/safety is impossible due to environmental circumstances (I call this a break-down of morality). — VagabondSpectre
The "justifiable" part is highly ambiguous though, and purposefully so. Different people will have different standards of justification (which can change with the environment), and so to keep the razor simple I would rather not provide an omni-answer for all moral question by trying to give a formula for any and all "moral justifications". — VagabondSpectre
With utilitarian calculus you can indeed justify some horrendous actions, but I would reject them as unjustified and unnecessary. Killing one person to become an organ donor to save five people for instance is a hypothetical which fractures or breaks-down morality in general because when it comes down to it the five people or the mad doctor might be willing to use force to carry it out. Without mutual agreement and consent, (on the part of the victim in this case) all we have is the arbitrary use of force in a survival situation.
To live in this society with it's given laws, we give tacit consent to be incarcerated if we do crime. If we don't then the onus is on us to remove ourselves from the midst of society. If it was permissible to arbitrarily sacrifice the few to save the many in any positive exchange (per utilitarian calculus) then we would all probably decide to separate ourselves from that society lest our own lives be dispensed as the currency of another.
The answer is that the sanctity of an innocent life is high on the hierarchy of values. — VagabondSpectre
Please provide an example. As it currently stands, I can argue that, for example, it is immoral to wear certain colors because the majority of people might not like those colors. Because these colors are unnecessary, I am causing unnecessary harm by wearing them and, therefore, am doing something immoral. — Chany
But at this point, the razor is effectively useless. Unless you ascribe to some sort of divine command theory that is completely devoid of any human welfare connection whatsoever, everyone agrees causing harm for no good reason is immoral. A razor allows one to divide something into two categories. For example, Occam's Razor allows one to divide competing theories- ideas that are simpler are more likely to be true because unnecessary parts are superfluous at best and dead wrong at worst. However, as you admit, the qualifiers for this razor are vague, thus making it not a razor, but really just the groundwork notion behind morality. — Chany
I guess I'll start with the glaring issue, as I have some many nitpicks with the above passage. A runaway trolley is going down a track towards five people who cannot get out of the way in time. You can flip a switch and case the trolley to veer down a different path, but on this path is one person. You can either let the five people die or kill the one person. What is the moral option? If you pick to kill one person, please explain why this logic does not apply to the doctor case. If you pick to let the five people die, explain your reasoning and how it does not prevent us from every taking any consequentialist stance, no matter the cost. — Chany
t seems that you want to call difficult, uncertain decisions "amoral".
All decisions, to the extent that they are non-random, are ultimately predicated on some value judgments. I don't really see a point in differentiating between "moral" and "amoral" values for the purpose of decision-making. Either way, when we deliberate on a decision, it all comes down to pitting conflicting value-laden imperatives against each other. — SophistiCat
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