An ethical question: Do you shoot the little girl?

Ofcourse im an amoral determinist, so I dont believe in ethics, but its more of a personal question. I think my interest in philosphy originated from questions like this, I remember disscussing question such as the following with my family for hours on end. Great fun!

Scenario: You are a sniper for the police. A man is holding 50 people hostage and is threatening to blow them up. He seems very volatile and unwilling to even negotiate. He aproaches a window, but is holding the sweetest little girl youve ever seen in his arms, and a kitty cat (for all you animal lovers out there). You can take the guy out, but you must shoot through the girl and the kitty cat… There is currently no other way to get to the guy, he has the building wired and any intrusion attempt will set his bombs off. You are in charge of the situation. You are not taking orders from anybody. You have to decide for yourself, to shoot, or not to shoot. What do you do? Please provide reasoning for your decision.

(I’m glad I’m not in that position.)

OK, let’s reason.

  1. If I shoot, there is a certainty that two innocents will die.

  2. If I do not shoot, there is a chance that something will happen that turns out better. For example, I may be able to shoot him later, more easily. Or he may change his mind.

Option 1 is a certainty. Option 2 is not.

I’ll go for option 2. I do not shoot.

However, if the situation changes (he has already killed a hostage, or time is running out), I may go for option 1.

Assuming the girl is still inside the building and he’s not actually holding her out of the window. And that I’m a terrific shot. Oh - and that there’s no dead-man’s switch in his mitt.

I’d shoot the elbow, or whatever part of the supporting arm I could see. Then (literally in a split second) flip to full-auto and spray the rest of his body with slugs. Hoping hydrostatic shock would kill him before he hits the detonator.

Why not take the Spockian “Needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few” approach…?

Well - it’s just my job. I have no real connection to the people in the building save a generalized ‘it’s good to save people’ drive. In sacrificing the little girl for the good of the others, I’d be sacrificing myself as well - to the media/disgust of my superiors etc. Perhaps secretly they would say “Tab - you made a tough call - and did the right thing in killing that little girl” But publicly and very probably privately my life would be over. Plus the self torture of “what if”…
My way is riskier sure - he might get away etc. But it’s better than killing the girl pre-meditatively outright (for my own sanity) and equally better than doing nothing (again for my own sanity) assuming that this moment was my only real chance to terminate the situation positively, and he later blew everybody sky-high.

If there was my whole family in the building, then the answer’s different. The girl dies, he dies, and very probably I’d end up eating the end of a rifle myself. :cry:

Life’s all about emotional linkage in my view.

Nah, you cant shoot the damn girl out of his arm. Your only choices are to shoot the girl and take the huge risk of killing her, (pretty much have to shoot her through the head) or dont shoot at all and take your chances with a maniac holding his finger off of the detonator. I didnt quite understand how your family changes things. If you take the spockian aproach, shouldnt you shoot the girl regardless of your family being there or not? So why would you kill yourself if your family was inside?

In reality, I would NOT shoot… because in a real situation, there’d always be people questioning whether you could have waited for the girl to move… or the police to try another tactic etc. You would always be blamed and there would always be doubt. In this situation, the easiest option is to let the murderer get all the blame and you (the police) get the let off the hook and possibly commended for trying.

Hypothetically…. if everyone knew it was absolutely certain that every hostage was about to die, then I would take one life to save others.

For me, this equation is a relative one – depending on age and number of lives saved. I’d find it easier to shoot the girl to save dozens of other kids, then progressively more difficult as the ages of the hostages increased and the number of hostages decreased. For instance, I would not shoot the young girl if it was merely to save the life of 99 year old man dying of cancer.

One thing is for sure, regardless of lives saved or lost, I’d shoot the cat anyway. :smiley:

I’d shoot the trip wire and blow the whole place up…

-Imp

Dear RussianTank.

Why not take the Spockian “Needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few” approach…?

Sorry - not being careful with the emphasis there.

And I was opining that the remorse of killing the little girl to save my family would probably drive me to suicide in the end.

İmp - what…? Oh - you couldn’t be sure the bomb would explode - lest you commit the falacy of beliveing the future will resemble the past…?
Or am I straining to see the humanity of your action too hard…?

Your attacks on absolute moral truth come from a logical fallacy:

If there is absolute moral truth, human beings need to be accountable for their actions. In a knee-jerk moment, a human being does not have the time required to deliberate the factors of absolute moral truth, and is thus not completely accountable if an error occurs.

Similarly, if I am given a tremendous calculus problem, there IS an absolutely true answer which can be found for it. However, if I am only given 3 seconds to find that answer, I will most likely come up with an incorrect solution.

The situation you place the sniper in is akin to the situations that the Pharisees placed Christ in in order to trick him into contradicting himself. By discounting the absolute truth that “truth can only be found through deliberation”, you’ve justified yourself as ammoral. Also, you deny the existence of absolute moral truth by stating that at least SOME wrong has to occur in this situation. The existence of absolute moral truth does not bestow upon us, as humans, the ability to always find the BEST answer. This does not mean that answer is not there. Your initial mistake occurs in viewing human life as some “intger of value.” There is assuradely value in human life, but asking a human being to determine if one life is worth more than say, fifty, is like asking someone to justify the existence of an “impossible shape.”

In short, you’re taking a situation that does not, in fact, challenge the existence of absolute moral truth, and passing it off as if though it does.

Hahaha, oh ade, you have severely over-analyzed me… I am not nor did I intend to make any point with this question. I was merely curious to learn about other people’s ethical and moral stances on such a situation. I think a question such as the one I proposed is a great method of learning about the ethics and morals of others. That was my only intent. Like I said, I am amoral. It is my belief that any action taken in such a situation is acceptable. More than acceptable, its inevitable, seeing as how im a determinist. So I dont hold any one nor do I believe any one should ever be held responsible for anything… I can and have challenged moral and ethical truth, but this is not one of those challenges. Sorry to disapoint you ade…

I see now Tabula, I misunderstood you.

Imp, thats so WRONG! I cant believe you can be so IMORAL! That is such an UNETHICAL course of action! I hope GOD punishes you for you SINS and you burn in HELL!

Km2_33, what you have said pretty much resembles what I think I would do in this situation. I would stall as long as possible untill I was sure there was nothing else that can be done. But even when it is abundently clear that there is no other choice, I would not so readily decide to shoot. I really couldnt decide wether to shoot or not… Ide be stuck. And about the cat… Read the above response to Imp you savage bastard!

Hmm…

Providing the girl was Christian (which given the likely setting of this fictional moral dilemma is a decent chance) I’d kill her because she’s going to heaven Ditto for the madman who has taken them hostage. Ditto every other person in the room.

However if the girl was not a Christian I’d shoot her. Fact is that wasting bad guys is part of the job and if civilians allow themselves to be taken hostage they deserve everything they get.

In short, I’d shoot her.

:laughing:

ethical egoism is a perfectly ethical course of action…

and god and/or hell have yet to be seen…

-Imp

I shoot myself.

What, you think I want to make that kind of decision?

You’ve lost your marbles.

Russiantank, perhaps you’re misleading me a bit, but it seems like you believe that determinism leads to absolute ammoralism.

Can you show me how this follows?

Ade, moral absolutes have no reason… You are trying to provide a reason for it in your other post, but again, I disagree with your two premises, so I do not accept that reason. Morals and ethics cannot be absolute. It maybe can be shown that living under a specific set of rules, a moral or ethical system is likely to produce more pleasure than any alternative. But this would in no way be absolute. So morals and ethics can be said to be an effective means of living, but never absolute. Determinism has little to do with this belief. Determinism is simply the elimination of a supernatural free will. I do not think that we have souls or some higher function of the mind that works outside the laws of the universe, so we are nothing but nature’s machines. Extremely complex machines, but machines none-the-less. We have set parameters that we operate under. As such, the commonly held sense of responsibility is eliminated. Humans are as responsible for their actions as car is responsible for its actions.

HAHAHA, wow Imp that was some funny shit right there. Thanks for the laugh.

As for what I would do…I would not shoot. As it has already been stated, it is not certain that everyone will die if you do not shoo the girl/cat/man.

Now, if it was a hypothetical situation, where i had to choose between killing the innocent girl/cat in order to save 50 people I would. I do not believe in Kantian ethics, I am a utilitarian.

wouldnt this question have a lot of variables if it was in a real life situation? for example, is it just one madman who is holding a lot of people hostage? or is it a group? these questions lead to how good his surveillance of the area is. if its just one, surelyor a team, or more likely one person can get in take out the threat and save everyone. if its a group of madmen, then that would be slightly harder, but still not impossible. also, what is the ransom here? does he want money? maybe he wants something changed? because if he hasnt killed them (assuming its a he; sorry guys, im just used to using the male gender for stuff like this instead of just neutralizing it) it would mean that theres something he wants, or he is just plain hesitant about taking them out, in which case negotiations are still possible. actually, his motives really should be known here because you MUST know whether he is planning, or a better word would be capable, to take himself out in the explosion or just the hostages. if he’s willing to no kill himself in the process, even higher caution has to be taken to make sure there is absolutely slip up. as for the sniper who has to shoot the little girl, that would be a last resort. i would rely on the one man unit to take out the threat in closer quarters, or at least get him to turn away from the window and allow the sniper to take a good shot. i am simply going to assume that this sniper rifle has the accuracy of a god and would be no more than less than a millimeter off the mark, because anything less should not be used in a situation like this.
all in all, what im saying is that there are other ways to around this problem than just take out an innocent human and/or cat.

If I were apart of your family and we were discussing this scenario, I would have argued about your choice of words. I would argue that you’re implying that the replier’s answer would change if the little girl was not cute (you get the point). And then go on to say that it is not ethical to only save cute people and not ugly people…blah blah blah. The topic will be changed and you’ll get your ethical debate for sure.

I guess those video games are good for something. Guess it’s not so bad after all…

Russiantank, don’t you find that your answer comes from the belief that everything in the universe can be scientificially explained through physical means? Such as, our brains are composed of atoms, and since we can’t control the individual atoms, we cannot control our brain at all.

By stating this, you believe that our laws of physics have always been in place, are unchangeable, and that every law of the universe is detectable by human beings. It leaves no room for the mind to exist on something other than a physical plane.

Don’t you find that to be a bit bold, and, might I add, arrogant?

Also, you’re looking at morals how Einstein looks at relativity. If you consider each culture as some “frame of reference”, that doesn’t disqualify the fact that there could be absolute moral truths that work under the umbrella of such frames. Those truths would still exist in all frames, but may be modified to account for the necessity of survival. However, in a frame of reference where all of a person’s physical needs are met, he is naturally drawn to truth. By harming others (as stated in my other thread), he prevents other humans from performing their primary function, which in turn hinders his own primary function.

By viewing the organization of the universe, compared to our tiny brains, I feel you are overstepping your bounds as a student of philosophy by stating that man, as he is right now, has enough knowledge to decide whether or not we are in a universe of determinism. Thus, the wisest choice would be to state, “I honestly don’t know.”

A person who doesn’t do that is obviously doing so for some self-serving reason.

Ade,

I too make the point that environmental variability is not indicative of ethical subjectivity in my paper on Natural-Objective Ethics:

http://dtstrainphilosophy.blogspot.com/2005/04/natural-objective-model.html

Ade, I am also somewhat of a skeptic. I leave the possibility of anything open. But I find it much more probable that the mind does not exist on anything other than the physical plain. We can never know or experience anything other than what is on the physical plain. So all we have ever known and probably ever will know is the natural, physical plain. Thus it is at LEAST more probable that everything works on that level, especially since even if theres stuff outside of it, we can never know about it. You seem to be suggesting we just give up trying to analyze our world because we can never know for sure. But I think we should analyze and try to create theories for everything we can in the only way we can, that being through the laws of physics and other sciences. so not, its not bold or arogent, its simply the only way…

No, I find it highly unlikely that there are these moral truths as just an absolute of the universe, like the laws of physics for instance. The laws of physics are not absolute, seeing as how I am a skeptic and I believe nothing is 100% sure, but science is the closest we can get to 100%. And there is no emperical backing for these moral absolute truths you suggest, so I find them highly unlikely. I see absolutely no reason why not to kill… Why is killing just an absolute no no in the universe? Because we are limiting our potential to obtain truth? This works under the assumption that our prime dirrective is the persuit of truth, and that every being can communicate some form of truth. I completely disagree with this, theres just no evidence to support this claim. From my analysis of the world I see that the prime directive of human behavior is the persuit of pleasure. I will say that I notice that the most potent way to persue pleasure is through a better understanding of the naturalistic principles of the universe. Heres an example: If I understand that jumping off a cliff causes me to die, I will realize that I should not jump off of the cliff because it will significantly limit my potential for pleasure. The better understanding you have of the consequences of interacting with nature, the more efficient you will be at obtaining pleasure. So it would make sense that persuing knowledge accomidates the prime directive of persuing pleasure. BUT, this dos not make killing wrong. I can easily imagine a situation where someone realizes that killing someone else will not cause any negative consequencs, and it will actually cause significant possitive consequence, ie: take their money, their car, they might even obtain pleasure from killing. So I can easily see how in some cases, knowledge of natural consequences will lead someone to murder.