Re:Kill Whitey- It’s the right thing to do.
by Periodic on Thursday September 16, 2010 @01:16PM
(#1698414)
Most people will claim to have absolutist morals. They will say that it is wrong to kill someone and that ends do just justify means. What becomes interesting is that almost anyone will display circumstantial morals if confronted with a trade-off like this. The interesting question is at what point do their morals change and why.
Re:Kill Whitey- It’s the right thing to do.
by lhorie on Thursday September 16, 2010 @02:33PM
(#1698677)
My theory is that "killing = bad" is a default canned answer that society says is "correct" and people don't really think about what-if-I-am-faced-with-a-tricky-life-or-death-situation scenarios since these scenarios are not realistic to begin with.
I'm not very convinced that the assumption that people have a fixed moral system is correct. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense (evolutionarily speaking) to optimize for some abstract ideal consistency rather than fitting into a group. As far as living in a society goes, telling your social circle that you shun all forms of human killing is one thing, actually making a life-or-death decision when there are tricky caveats is completely different.
What if it's pushing a philanthropist onto the rails to save 5 serial killers?
I'm not entirely sure what's the goal of this exercise. I'd imagine that in real life, regardless of who's getting killed, most people would simply let things run their courses since inaction is generally less risky than action.
Then, if confronted, I'd guess most people would probably come up with a justification that was favorable to them (i.e. thay would get them out of trouble's way), not follow some strict ethic model.