I agree with opposing genocide, I really do. But you have not opposed genocide at all; you have opened the door to even more genocide just to keep your own moral purity. Genocide is still going in Palestine, it’s going on in Ukraine, it’s going on in tons of places all around the world right now. And if NATO falters, it is going to happen in other places in Europe too since that’s what Russian imperialism causes, in Taiwan if China attacks there, and probably somewhere close India too, if they use the chance to get at it with Pakistan again.
In an ideal world there’s always the golden perfect moral choice, where nobody suffers, but we don’t have that. You seem think you’ve had that perfect choice, but it has not affected the world in a positive way at all, it has just allowed the evil to cause more harm. That is not a morally good choice
I don’t have the power to fix every problem in the world. What I do have the power to do is to ensure that I do not become a problem that needs to be fixed, myself.
I genuinely can’t comprehend your perspective at all. You said you were “baffled” that people didn’t agree with your position, when your position is that supporting genocide is not merely morally permissible, but morally obligatory. I struggle to even imagine a contrived hypothetical scenario where that would be a defensible position, much less one where it would be obvious that genocide is morally obligatory. It’s absurd.
What you are failing to understand is, that this was the most realistic version of the trolley problem you could encounter; there was no option you could take, that wouldn’t have supported real world genocide; someone would have always died under the trolley. The three basic options available all lead to genocide; by choosing democrats you supported some real world genocide and ideologically genocide, by choosing republicans you supported even worse genocide in the real world and ideologically. By choosing neither, you didn’t ideologically support genocide, but you supported the actual worse genocide option in the real world.
You chose what you perceived as morally righteous by deciding not to ideologically support genocide, but by choosing that, you enabled real world consequences resulting in more actual genocide than what would have happened if you chose otherwise.
Also, quite ironically, philosophy was my second major in university, so maybe you should take that class instead. Lol
If you have a major in philosophy, then surely you’re aware that there are plenty of moral systems that argue against pulling the lever in the trolley problem, and the many critiques of it that exist. Surely you couldn’t have spent years studying philosophy and walked away with the conclusion, “Act Utilitarianism is obviously objectively correct, and anyone who disagrees must be too stupid to understand it.”
The thing is; those moral systems and critiques of the problem are all ideological. We can argue about what’s good and what’s evil as much as we want, but in the real world people just suffer and die. We don’t have to and likely even can’t reach some consensus, but we can at least reach an understanding of what we both are trying to say, yes?
You value moral purity, and that is indeed a valid moral stance. But in the real world that has lead to valuing personal moral purity over human lives; that means more people will die, which in turn is what I consider a lot worse both in ideological sense and in the real world. Thus leading to this discussion
The thing is; those moral systems and critiques of the problem are all ideological.
You are making me seriously reconsider my impression of Finland’s educational system.
Every hotshot freshman walks into Philosophy 101 thinking that everybody else’s ideas are “ideological” while theirs are just “common sense” (nevermind that they all believe different things). If the professor does their job properly, and the students aren’t completely obstinate, then they will leave Philosophy 101 understanding that this is not a valid way of understanding anything.
Anyone who claims that everyone else is operating based on ideology and they are not, is simply unaware of their own ideology. And being unaware of it, that ideology has a far greater hold on them than it otherwise might.
The Trolley Problem isn’t even meant to have a definite answer. The thought experiment was developed for the explicit purpose of demonstrating how people’s moral intuitions differ, as do different schools of moral philosophy. To think, “Pulling the level is obviously objectively correct, and this is a non-ideological claim” is completely and utterly absurd and demonstrates total ignorance of moral philosophy.
What do you think the point of philosophy even is if all it’s theories can be dismissed as “ideological” and your own personal “common sense” is a reliable way of determining truth?
Of course even my take is ideological - as I said, they’re all ideological. This whole argument is not stemming from metaphysics, it’s that you clearly value the ideological level, while I care more about the practical results. As I wrote earlier, I don’t even disagree with your takes on genocide or anything, they’re all reasonable and logical moral stances, very ethical even.
The difference is you’re thinking that those ideas are what matters, while I’m valuing them as less than the physical reality of things. Actual, living humans (well, nature in general) are what I think we should consider foremost when making decisions - which, obviously, is a moral stance as well. But it is a moral stance our societies tend to be build on; as when they’re not… we get to the genocides and wars
You’re trying to argue that my position is not empathetic, but that’s nonsense. It is empathetic towards Palestinians, who are, contrary to popular beliefs, “actual living humans.” You want to build societies off of empathetic principles, alright, first step lets all agree that we shouldn’t slaughter innocent people or support anyone who does.
See, your stance may be ethical, moral even, in that you’re trying to follow this abstract principle about minimizing harm. But your problem is that you think that those ideas are what matters, while you ignore the real human suffering that’s resulting from those ideas.
See, I can play that game too! Almost as if you’re still trying to assign special status to your own “common sense” beliefs and refusing to place them on the same level of other people’s ideas and allowing them to be subject to critical examination.
Where I come from, morality and ethics refer to what you should and shouldn’t do. To say, “You acted in a way that was morally correct and kept yourself morally pure, but you shouldn’t have” is self-contradictory nonsense.
What you ought to be saying is that you believe my theory of ethics is incorrect and that yours is correct. But to say that would mean that you would have to admit that you have a specific theory of ethics (such as Act Utilitarianism) which would then be open to critique. And returning to the original point, if you accept that you are operating on a specific theory of ethics with a specific set of assumptions, then there’s not really any reason to be “baffled” that other people don’t follow it, maybe they simply don’t subscribe to the same assumptions about ethics that you do.
But what you’re doing instead is ceding to me that my ethical positions are correct, but then asserting that there is some sort of, idk, “Superethics” that supercedes all ethical theories, and which is somehow, not an ethical theory like the other ones are despite the fact that it’s a theory of what you should and shouldn’t do. And this “Superethics” is apparently supposed to be so obvious and objective that everyone in the world should automatically understand and accept it, regardless of their other beliefs or experiences.
It’s kind of incredible that countless philosophers have wasted so much time studying ethics, which is for scrubs and rubes, but hardly anyone seems to have touched on the far more important concept of Superethics.
Meanwhile, my ethical theories are utterly divorced from what I think produces good results for society or what my sense of empathy or my conscience tells me. I just wrote a bunch of random principles on scraps of paper, pinned them to a dartboard, put on a blindfold and spun around three times, and now I have to completely ignore everything I’m inclined to do in slavish devotion to these abstract principles. Personally, I think you should just be relieved that the dart hit, “No Genocide” instead of “Always Genocide.”
This is again likely the key to our disagreement; you value the thought of empathy, but not the results of actions based on that thought. Not a single palestinian is any better now than they would have been, they’re just even worse off as fascist orange shitstain has only been approving what Netanyahu does and telling him, great, go on instead of at least not giving him everything. You have not chosen to help them, you have just chosen to doom them too and a lot more of the world to suffer even more, to seemingly satisfy your need to feel morally pure.
If you want to just critique different moral theories, then fine; mine’s clearly somewhere closer to Mill’s utilitarianism, though not exactly. What are you supporting here? Some form of deontology I assume, since not Hobbesian or Lockean take on social philosophy, and it doesn’t really sound like some modern take on virtue ethics either. Maybe we can save time then, and just go by what the smarter philosophers have already critiqued on each theory, so we can argue about the exactly same things but with more elongated language.
I agree with opposing genocide, I really do. But you have not opposed genocide at all; you have opened the door to even more genocide just to keep your own moral purity. Genocide is still going in Palestine, it’s going on in Ukraine, it’s going on in tons of places all around the world right now. And if NATO falters, it is going to happen in other places in Europe too since that’s what Russian imperialism causes, in Taiwan if China attacks there, and probably somewhere close India too, if they use the chance to get at it with Pakistan again.
In an ideal world there’s always the golden perfect moral choice, where nobody suffers, but we don’t have that. You seem think you’ve had that perfect choice, but it has not affected the world in a positive way at all, it has just allowed the evil to cause more harm. That is not a morally good choice
I don’t have the power to fix every problem in the world. What I do have the power to do is to ensure that I do not become a problem that needs to be fixed, myself.
I genuinely can’t comprehend your perspective at all. You said you were “baffled” that people didn’t agree with your position, when your position is that supporting genocide is not merely morally permissible, but morally obligatory. I struggle to even imagine a contrived hypothetical scenario where that would be a defensible position, much less one where it would be obvious that genocide is morally obligatory. It’s absurd.
Maybe take a philosophy class sometime.
What you are failing to understand is, that this was the most realistic version of the trolley problem you could encounter; there was no option you could take, that wouldn’t have supported real world genocide; someone would have always died under the trolley. The three basic options available all lead to genocide; by choosing democrats you supported some real world genocide and ideologically genocide, by choosing republicans you supported even worse genocide in the real world and ideologically. By choosing neither, you didn’t ideologically support genocide, but you supported the actual worse genocide option in the real world.
You chose what you perceived as morally righteous by deciding not to ideologically support genocide, but by choosing that, you enabled real world consequences resulting in more actual genocide than what would have happened if you chose otherwise.
Also, quite ironically, philosophy was my second major in university, so maybe you should take that class instead. Lol
If you have a major in philosophy, then surely you’re aware that there are plenty of moral systems that argue against pulling the lever in the trolley problem, and the many critiques of it that exist. Surely you couldn’t have spent years studying philosophy and walked away with the conclusion, “Act Utilitarianism is obviously objectively correct, and anyone who disagrees must be too stupid to understand it.”
The thing is; those moral systems and critiques of the problem are all ideological. We can argue about what’s good and what’s evil as much as we want, but in the real world people just suffer and die. We don’t have to and likely even can’t reach some consensus, but we can at least reach an understanding of what we both are trying to say, yes?
You value moral purity, and that is indeed a valid moral stance. But in the real world that has lead to valuing personal moral purity over human lives; that means more people will die, which in turn is what I consider a lot worse both in ideological sense and in the real world. Thus leading to this discussion
You are making me seriously reconsider my impression of Finland’s educational system.
Every hotshot freshman walks into Philosophy 101 thinking that everybody else’s ideas are “ideological” while theirs are just “common sense” (nevermind that they all believe different things). If the professor does their job properly, and the students aren’t completely obstinate, then they will leave Philosophy 101 understanding that this is not a valid way of understanding anything.
Anyone who claims that everyone else is operating based on ideology and they are not, is simply unaware of their own ideology. And being unaware of it, that ideology has a far greater hold on them than it otherwise might.
The Trolley Problem isn’t even meant to have a definite answer. The thought experiment was developed for the explicit purpose of demonstrating how people’s moral intuitions differ, as do different schools of moral philosophy. To think, “Pulling the level is obviously objectively correct, and this is a non-ideological claim” is completely and utterly absurd and demonstrates total ignorance of moral philosophy.
What do you think the point of philosophy even is if all it’s theories can be dismissed as “ideological” and your own personal “common sense” is a reliable way of determining truth?
Of course even my take is ideological - as I said, they’re all ideological. This whole argument is not stemming from metaphysics, it’s that you clearly value the ideological level, while I care more about the practical results. As I wrote earlier, I don’t even disagree with your takes on genocide or anything, they’re all reasonable and logical moral stances, very ethical even.
The difference is you’re thinking that those ideas are what matters, while I’m valuing them as less than the physical reality of things. Actual, living humans (well, nature in general) are what I think we should consider foremost when making decisions - which, obviously, is a moral stance as well. But it is a moral stance our societies tend to be build on; as when they’re not… we get to the genocides and wars
You’re trying to argue that my position is not empathetic, but that’s nonsense. It is empathetic towards Palestinians, who are, contrary to popular beliefs, “actual living humans.” You want to build societies off of empathetic principles, alright, first step lets all agree that we shouldn’t slaughter innocent people or support anyone who does.
See, your stance may be ethical, moral even, in that you’re trying to follow this abstract principle about minimizing harm. But your problem is that you think that those ideas are what matters, while you ignore the real human suffering that’s resulting from those ideas.
See, I can play that game too! Almost as if you’re still trying to assign special status to your own “common sense” beliefs and refusing to place them on the same level of other people’s ideas and allowing them to be subject to critical examination.
Where I come from, morality and ethics refer to what you should and shouldn’t do. To say, “You acted in a way that was morally correct and kept yourself morally pure, but you shouldn’t have” is self-contradictory nonsense.
What you ought to be saying is that you believe my theory of ethics is incorrect and that yours is correct. But to say that would mean that you would have to admit that you have a specific theory of ethics (such as Act Utilitarianism) which would then be open to critique. And returning to the original point, if you accept that you are operating on a specific theory of ethics with a specific set of assumptions, then there’s not really any reason to be “baffled” that other people don’t follow it, maybe they simply don’t subscribe to the same assumptions about ethics that you do.
But what you’re doing instead is ceding to me that my ethical positions are correct, but then asserting that there is some sort of, idk, “Superethics” that supercedes all ethical theories, and which is somehow, not an ethical theory like the other ones are despite the fact that it’s a theory of what you should and shouldn’t do. And this “Superethics” is apparently supposed to be so obvious and objective that everyone in the world should automatically understand and accept it, regardless of their other beliefs or experiences.
It’s kind of incredible that countless philosophers have wasted so much time studying ethics, which is for scrubs and rubes, but hardly anyone seems to have touched on the far more important concept of Superethics.
Meanwhile, my ethical theories are utterly divorced from what I think produces good results for society or what my sense of empathy or my conscience tells me. I just wrote a bunch of random principles on scraps of paper, pinned them to a dartboard, put on a blindfold and spun around three times, and now I have to completely ignore everything I’m inclined to do in slavish devotion to these abstract principles. Personally, I think you should just be relieved that the dart hit, “No Genocide” instead of “Always Genocide.”
This is again likely the key to our disagreement; you value the thought of empathy, but not the results of actions based on that thought. Not a single palestinian is any better now than they would have been, they’re just even worse off as fascist orange shitstain has only been approving what Netanyahu does and telling him, great, go on instead of at least not giving him everything. You have not chosen to help them, you have just chosen to doom them too and a lot more of the world to suffer even more, to seemingly satisfy your need to feel morally pure.
If you want to just critique different moral theories, then fine; mine’s clearly somewhere closer to Mill’s utilitarianism, though not exactly. What are you supporting here? Some form of deontology I assume, since not Hobbesian or Lockean take on social philosophy, and it doesn’t really sound like some modern take on virtue ethics either. Maybe we can save time then, and just go by what the smarter philosophers have already critiqued on each theory, so we can argue about the exactly same things but with more elongated language.