Answer the dilemma above you, then post one. Can be personal, fictional, or both. Your choice. It just needs to incite intellectual conversations and ponderings. Alright, first moral dilemma: A madman who has threatened to explode several bombs in crowded areas has been apprehended. Unfortunately, he has already planted the bombs and they are scheduled to go off in a short time. It is possible that hundreds of people may die. The authorities cannot make him divulge the location of the bombs by conventional methods. He refuses to say anything and requests a lawyer to protect his fifth amendment right against self-incrimination. In exasperation, some high level official suggests torture. This would be illegal, of course, but the official thinks that it is nevertheless the right thing to do in this desperate situation. Do you agree? If you do, would it also be morally justifiable to torture the mad bomber’s innocent wife if that is the only way to make him talk? Why?
Were i said madman.... i would endure all lengths of torture in order to see just how far down i could drag the system i was lashing out at to begin with.... No torturing lunatics just makes you into what you are trying to fight.... order mass evacuations...Get the dogs out....find the bombs...
^ Agreed. We do not fight against those we need to by becoming like them. People die in all sorts of ways all the time; life is like that. We have more than 7 billion people here - the world can stand to lose a few.
Well, I'd say torture the lunatic. If you don't, you're indirectly allowing hundreds of people to die. To put it simply, I don't believe in morality. Essentially, it comes down to whether you can live with doing the act or not. That's it. And in my mind, one random lunatic's life and well-being (as well as his "rights") mean less than nothing. But on the other hand, it's hard to say what I'd do without ever having been in such a situation, which leads me to my next point: hypothetical questions are dumb.
As DD said, what makes you think he'll give you the information you need? What makes you think the information he does give you is correct? While you're running around playing his game, everything explodes. But you've taken the slippery slope towards becoming as bad as those you say you must defend us from, so we still lose much more than the few who die.
Are you braking a hypothetical question down into smaller hypothetical questions? Jesus. Well, if torture didn't work than I guess it didn't work. What's there to say? I already explained that the madman's life means nothing to me; I probably wouldn't feel sympathy for a murderer. (After all, there are seven billion people in the world--who's going to miss one crazy bomber?) But let me ask you this--since we're taking this so seriously--what if it did work? What if simply taking a shotgun to this guy's knee caps was enough to get the correct information? A hundred peoples lives in exchange for a madman's knee caps . . . seems pretty fair. And I don't see torturing a murderer qualifies as a "slippery slope". I think allowing large crowds of people to die for no reason other than to uphold a maniac's "rights" is a far worse crime. But I'm something of a fascist.
Torture wouldn't do much... you could lie for the cause, you know. Mass evacuation... also if an EMP would work, use that EMP. There is a crowd of people crowding around a brand new public pool, you're driving a van down a street where you either have to make a left or right turn. The van's brakes go out and the emergency brake won't work. Now there are two options, you can drive into a wall (left or right of the opening towards the pool) thus killing yourself, or you can drive into the people and into the pool, saving yourself. Of course there are kids and families etc there. What would you do?
If you are successful and save them, nobody will think bad of you for the methods you chose to use. This is an extreme example of course. There are many people experiencing torture right now, who aren't 'madmen' only assumed to be terrorists. They've had no trial, no legal representation. The torturers just believe they're guilty and are using torture to extract the 'truth'. Is this right too? It's not that I want to uphold his rights per se, just the rights of a civilised society not to feel they can commit acts of this nature. This man is, after all, mad. But we know there are others who are not 'mad' who undergo such torture, because it is felt that the ends justify the means. Once you start accepting that torture can be justified, even if this is an example where it's easy to do so, it makes it easier to do it again, under less certain situations. That's why it is a slippery slope.
You're braking this down way too much. It was a simple hypothetical: A madman has bombs planted in a city, hundreds of lives are at stake, the madman is apprehended; do you use extreme measures in order to extract vital information to save the lives of your citizens or not? I said if there's a chance to save innocent lives then yes--simple as that. I'm not saying that governments who skip due process and proceed straight to torture is ethical, that was never the point. You're branching off into irrelevant territory and completely muddling the original point. And as for the "slippery slope" dilemma, I don't see it that way at all. I believe desperate measure should be taken at desperate times. I don't see how it's impossible to draw a line somewhere between using extreme techniques in desperate situations on a known terrorist in order to acquire information that would save lives and simply torturing people willy-nilly.
You may be right. Because the line will not stay clear; it will become more and more blurred as we find something else that perhaps wouldn't have made us think that way once, but now does.
Torture has proven very effective over the course of time. People will confess about anything when things heat up The acquired information being unreliable I fail to see the point of torture in the first place. This dilemma makes me think about a movie plot with Morgan Freeman but I have no clue about the title.
Perhaps. But right now, I don't think it's impossible to maintain a clear line between justifiable acts of desperation and mere sadism. I could be wrong, though.
I would like to point out that by denying rights even to the most execrable person you deny rights to every other human being by enabling us to make this kind of decision about just every one we don't approve of.
1) either evacuate the area and wait it out 2) torture him to find the location. Law's are meant as guides , but are not set in stone. Following a Euthyphro dilemma Is what is morally good commanded by God because it is morally good, or is it morally good because it is commanded by God?
Considerations about torturing him or not have nothing to do with good or bad. There is no such thing as good or bad . How does a serial-killer differ from a soldier during war or a politician who decides to bomb a random city in the world. The first will be hated, the others promoted and sometimes revered. There is no good or bad only a set of values which are deemed acceptable withing our frame of reference (mainly culture). When the Romans threw Christians in the arena family's would go watch Christians being eaten by lions. When the show was over kids asked their parents if they could go again next week and their parents would answer " I you behave yourselves". Those people were not bad they were socially adjusted. There is no such thing as human nature everything is culturally induced. And please let God out of the equation, an antropomorphic God is nothing less than an insult to common sense, it's nothing more than a reflection of our self-centered world view.
on another possible earth where everything is exactly the same, water exists. Water has the same exact properties, quenches thirst, hydrates, etc. However, water is not made of H20, it has a different composition. Is it water?
Definitely go for the wall. I'm not killing even one person to save my own life. Besides, if you ran into all of those people, you'd probably get charged with manslaughter anyways and wouldn't be much better off.
Can G-d even be considered moral? He's jealous, megalomaniac, control-freak, vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser, misogynistic, homophbic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, sadomasochistic, capricious, and a bully. If those are characteritics of a moral person, then I have no idea what morality is. And plus, all those characteristics that I've listed are from the first couple of chapters of Genesis and Exodus. I haven't finished reading the whole Bible yet, but those are characteristics of G-d that I've read so far. So, to answer you're question: Biblically (textually), he is not moral. So, neither. Also, one can also make the argument that Satan is more moral than G-d. Satan punishes the evil-doers, so doesn't that make him the good guy? Also, according to body count, Satan has killed only 10 people and God shares at least some responsibility for those 10 ( Job's 3 daughters and 7 sons). And G-d has killed around 2,301,427 people (ex: Sodom and Gomorrah). Satan is also the person that opened our mind (snake at Garden of Eden), so without him we would not be free thinkers. In their view it is water because it is what they drink, but to our viewpoint it is not water. Therefore, the universe does not revolve around us. What maybe used here, does not mean it is used the same way over there. Water does not have to be water like ours, if it quenches their thirst and hydrates their body then it is their type of water, so therefore it is water (to them). But then, linguistically, I would still call it water since it does the same things as water.