Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
The Natural Philosopher wrote:
You also should consider the difference between setting out to kill
someone and the possible result of a simple theft. But it's probably
too hard for you.

That of course depends on whether you judge things according to motive
and responsibility, or results....

Quite. But it seems too hard for some here. They prefer the lynch
mentality.


Dead thieves don't steal.

If at some point the threat to society and the cost to society of live
ones exceeds any possible benefit to the race of preserving them..well
yes, its third Reich pragmatism. But it exists as a definite possibility.


A friend of mine had a child who became ill..ws taken to A & E where he
had a coughing fit, choked on his on vomit and died, but was (just)
resuscitated enough to be a screaming mental 2 year old until finally he
died at age 10 or so.

Her marriage collapsed, and her whole life became dominated by a court
case against the hospital for failing to come sooner and the exigencies
of bringing up a child that everyone knew would have been better off
dead for everybody bar the child, and no one ever managed to ask him
that question because he never learnt to talk.

So, what was the greatest good for the greatest number? Would his simple
death have not in fact been a whole lot better? In the end you are
always skating on thin ice when you enter the moral maze. There are no
clear answers at an intellectual level.

Moral Philosophy abounds with awkward questions like this. E.g. ten sick
people each need a different organ transplant that one healthy person
could provide..

The greatest good for the greatest number implies that one should kill
and organ strip the one healthy person in order to save the lives of the
other nine. On paper this is the optimal solution.

Discuss....

IF you have Faith of course, its GodsWill that the 9 die, and the one
survives. Atheism gives you no such guideline...