You don’t think I am correct. IOW you know better what my reaction would be to the offer than I do. I presume you are not claiming to be a mind reader, given the implicit metaphysics in your positions, so this must mean you think nearly all humans would accept the deal - some very large sum would convince nearly all of them (100 million, 1 billion, something). I think that is very strange. People have refused to kill others, even when they would be killed if they refused. No longer living, according to your ‘everything has a dollar value’ should be right up there in the highest possible values, since ONE CANNOT SPEND MONEY WHEN DEAD. I wish I could claim I would refuse to kill some person I have no reason to kill if it protected my life. (not in a self defense situation where I would, but in told I will die if I do not kill some person I do not know.) But I don’t know that. But killing for money, wouldn’t happen. I won’t even put up with shit for money, good money.
It’s also kinda rude to say you doubt my own self-estimation. Whatever problems I have knowing my motives, yours are greater given the problem of other minds. Perhaps you should consider that you are projecting, not that I can be sure that is a factor in your doubting I am correct.
No, it doesn’t necessarily mean that. However I think some of the large amounts that have been tossed around cover most possible potential satisfactions and comforts. Further it seems to me implicit in your argument that one is ‘therefore being immoral’ in some other aspect of one’s life - IOW hypocritical - if one would not kill for money. Once that judgment is in place then it seems like you should also take a stand and be judged.
It seems hypocritical to use it is as litmus test for what you consider moral, while not allowing it to be a litmus test - in relation to you - for what others might think is moral.
In any case, when you start aiming consequentialist ‘you could save 1000 starving African’ type arguments, it seems implicit if not explicit that you are judging morally.
And there is no view from nowhere. Not in any human.
The thread begins with the question ‘How much money would you need to be paid to kill a random person?’
When I respond with my personal answer (a view from nowhere answer would not have answered that question or been in my repetoire to provide) you tell me you doubt this is the case?
Now you think the thread should not be ‘about us’.
I provide an answer to the question, which was personal. I am told that I am incorrect about what I would - which implies a few possible things, all of them about me personally.
I think it is hypocritical to then not put your assessment of yourself on the line of judgment. I will probably accept your answer. Not because I am sure you can’t be self-deluded, but given your incredulity around my answer, it seems clear that a finite number would be enough for you, and given that you are a smart person, I think that number will not be so high as the gross national product of France. IOW I figure you know that there is a limit to how much good stuff you can get to, and bad stuff avoid, after a certain threshhold has been passed.
So I’ll keep the question in the air.
I don’t think you are evil. I do think there is something anti-life in this way of thinking. I don’t really believe in objective morals.
I would not accept money to somehow enable the rape of anyone. But I would risk my life to stop my wife being raped. I am not sure I would do that in relation to other potential rape victims.
Again, there are categories of value and I don’t think they mix, at least not fully. I may not value some women the way I did before. IOW I don’t travel to see them. Perhaps I would even walk across the street to avoid some of them. I would not take any sum to have them raped. It’s a category error for me. Hell, I don’t like being used by people much around neutral things. Some person or organisation come to me and wants me to rape or kill or enable a rape…no way.
Sure, once I get into the bargaining phase, my dollar amounts could go all over the place and I might not know the factors. Because in the category of things I will bargain around, that category, those factors come into play.
One huge difference is that the idea is that a person will die. No employer can absolutely guarantee the survival of its works, even a librarian can get crushed by a ventilation duct. That’s different from my assenting to the desire of someone else to have me kill or die. That is what they want. I certainly can get angry and hate, from say a labor perspective, the lack of interest of capital in the lives of its workers. IOW indifference can reach levels I consider equivalent to intent. But not caring as much as I or we do is not the same as MY BOSS WANTS ME TO DIE.
I would not want to live near people whose primary reason or only reason for not murdering people for money is incarceration or the death penalty. Now I do suspect that many more people are capable of this than realize. But note this is at the abstract level, not such that I think I can tell person X that they are wrong about themselves. In fact I think many people would refuse any sum of money. Not nearly as many as I would like but many.
I think I said this in a context of either my own sense that there are two kinds of value category or I it was part of trying to get you to take a stand.
I know. And I certainly know it is not explicit. It was an intuitive reaction.