Theres a doomsday device, its about to blow up in 10 minutes. Without a deactivation code, it WILL blow up, ending the world. The creator of the bomb is in your grips, she refuses to tell you the code. She is the only one that knows the code, and having the code is the ONLY way to deactivate the bomb.
The only possible way she would give up the code is to torture her. Do you torture her?
DO NOT QUESTION THE STIPULATIONS OF THE HYPOTHETICAL. Either assume that torture is the only way to possibly stop the bomb, or don’t post a reply.
Sure, I would torture her. If that was the situation. Hopefully this cliche will not be yet another justification for real world torture which is never like that situation.
No, I would torture this one woman if I felt like I could save the world and I knew all this was the case. The hypothetical presumes I know all this to be the case. I know she knows. I know there is a bomb, etc.
I doubt anything could get me to rape a child. And I certainly could not do it to prevent 5 other children being raped.
I am not a consequentialist. Though I am not a pure deontologist either.
By the way, given your OPs so far, I would guess you are a Sam Harris fan or, if you haven’t read him, would be if you did.
I will also never be in the OP situation. And no one ever has been. But amazingly such scenarios end up justifying, for some, real down to earth torture, where no one knows the results of the torture, where immediate concrete gains are not clearly present, where the torture itself will have negative consequences for a whole lot of people, most innocent, and these consequences are very hard to track, so the greater good for the greatest number is near impossible to calculate…etc.
Let me rephrase then
Would you rape a child in the eye socket, to death. To save the world?
So you would’nt rape a child to save the earth? So somehow in your mind, letting billions of children get evaporated and destroyed, is not as bad you raping one kid? Yeah… that doesn’t make any sense.
If that was obviously the only means to save the world (in a reasonable condition) then certainly.
I would also run over the baby with the “train”… and for very similar reasons.
To a pure consequentialist it isn’t moral or sensible. But 1 I am not a pure consequentialist. 2 Let me know when someone faces that situation. 3) in real life there are all sorts of effects of such actions that are very hard to track and consequentialists tend not to bother thinking about them much. Imagine the hard to track consequences of a CIA person raping a child to death via the childs eye socket, because this might make the father of the child reveal where a bomb is. Sure, perhaps if you focus on only the factors you want to - raping one kid as torture of one terrorist - well you can add things up and feel good about the mission. But if that act gets out, the consequences slide into billions of lives in all sorts of ways that are hard to track.
Now lets look at your unreal scenario. Here I am not simply relating to the kid, I am also relating to the whole universe, God perhaps. If thats really what the universe is
‘asking’
me to do. If that is how justice comes about. If that is what is the most moral act. Then I am just delaying the inevitable. Sure, short term the world survives and a kid is raped to death and I feel like shit. However long term, nothing matters in that universe. Nothing.
What might be more interesting is that I would also do it even if that baby was my own son.
But you better believe that whoever brought that situation about WILL change his ways… or follow the same angel out that he followed in.
Hypothetical questioning. I said no hypothetical questioning. What the fuck is a point of a hyptohetical, if the person being asked is just going to change it. You either rape the eye socket or the world dies, no other options exist.
What? So you only want justice if you can get it nicely and with flowers, is that it? In your mind, its better that life, billions of life get destroyed, because you selfishly don’t want to do something which hurts your tummy. Christ, if only the world was as easy as you liked. Your a moral coward. At the end of the day, your going to let BILLIONS perish, lovers die, children explode, mothers swept away, all because you don’t want to do something which is nasty.
You know James, I am disappointed. I don’t believe in the God of Abraham. I think Abraham was hearing incorrectly, incorrectly, incorrectly, and then finally he heard from God in the nick of time. Do you really think your God would make that your right choice, to rape a child to death through the eye socket? Fuck that God. There’s no hope with a God like that.
First a “God” (not before mentioned in this scenario) is not something that can be denied, regardless of how heartless or seemingly evil. Any actual God gets whatever God wants… period; worship, no worship, hate, love… whatever.
But my response had nothing to do with Abraham. I already know that Abram didn’t have his story entirely straight.
My reasoning is very similar to yours. I take into account all of the full after effects, consequences.
The difference is merely which of us sees more clearly on the issue.
I never questioned the scenario. Not once. And I answered your question. I am raising issues around, for example, relevence. I never tried to change your hypothetical.
No. You are putting words in my mouth. Reread what I wrote.
I didn’t say that either and it’s not an implication of what I wrote.
And you don’t even understand your own scenario. I died. I put my life on the line in that scenario. Frankly I don’t think I could even do it if I thought it was the right thing to do. I don’t know how you know you would be able to.
They will all be swept away shortly anyway. It’s interesting that you view someone who would die rather than raping a child as a coward. Let me know if you run for office. And at the end of the day such a scenario cannot happen. Because we cannot know the consequences and the situation is not contained like you have it and perfect. And really, you have no idea if you could, in fact, stick your dick in the eye of a child. You just think that’s the logical decision. And yet you can insult me based on a completely unreal scenario where you fantasize you could do something you have no idea if you could or not.
By the way. Strawman arguements. Insults. Lack of concrete responses.
You are not worth responding to or reading. I’ll ignore you from here on out.
Thats a very psychopathic thing to say. “They are going to die anyway, so who cares if I genocide them now”
Your trying to say its a principled stand, using some fluffy prose like “If I do this evil, its as if the world dies” or some other non-sequitar, but you have already admitted your willing to torture somebody. Clearly you don’t have any qualms about doing inhumane things to help the greater good, so it appears your only willing to help the greater good, if your stomach can deal with it.
And really, what is that nonsense you were talking about, where doing
What does this even mean? What is the inevitable? Why does doing a distinguishing cruel things to benefit other people, suddenly mean there is no good in the world? Are we to belive that after your penis goes into her eye, SUDDENLY, my dreams and desires stop mattering? No, its sophistry nonsense; sounds good, but means nothing.
Whats good in this world will exist, independent of which girl gets her eyefucked or not.
Off course its going to cause the individual to suffer for the rest of their lives. But its going to take a world of suffering, to outweigh the destruction of the whole human race.