Yes, but you can know it's the right thing to do, but not be able to physically do it.
The president's ability to physically cut someone open is not relevant to whether it's a good idea to use nuclear weapons or not. Him being unable to do it tells you nothing about whether they should be launching the weapons.
If the president fails the test that tells you nothing about whether the launch is the right thing to do. Doesn't that fundamentally make the test bad?
Right, but can you understand that 'the President being able to look somebody in the eye before they killing them' is not a requisite for 'the employment of nuclear weapons being justified'?
We require the president to be able to do B before they can do A. But what if A is the right thing to do but the President is not able to do B? Being not able to do B does not mean A is wrong.
See the logical disconnect?
If you cannot kill your friend to kill a few hundreds of thousands more, how can it possibly be justified? I just struggle to come up with a scenario where that is the case.
Of course I’m of the school that thinks firing nuclear weapons is never a good idea.
I kind of feel like we’re going in circles though, so maybe better to just stop here :)
Our emotional systems are the product of millions of years of evolution and often (not always, but often) show better judgement than our "higher" faculties. Bringing that part of our capabilities into the decision-making loop is a very good idea.
I'm sure if the president was physically incapable of wielding a knife, she would have someone on hand to do that for her.
Regardless of the exact details, I think the point of this thought experiment is that for a head of state, the decision to launch a massive attack that will cause hundreds of thousands of casualties can feel a little abstract. "Bombing a city" can seem abstract, even if the president understands this means killing children. Understanding is quite different from feeling. However, if the act of ordering a bombing raid on a city involved physically murdering a child, it would definitely feel more immediate and less abstract.
Your point stands, of course. But the part about removing the abstractness of the act seems relevant when ordering people killed.
But really I meant being able to 'bring yourself' to cut someone.
In this specific case the "thing to do" is literally to harm hundreds of thousands of people.
The reasoning behind this proposed interlock is that any logic which concludes that it is moral and rational to harm hundreds of thousands of people must also conclude that it is moral and rational to harm the "interlock" individual. Otherwise, it is likely that dropping the bomb would be a mistake.