I think this supercedes the collaborative chat I was attempting on you-know-what. Although I'd still like to do something on moral reasoning in general, at some point.
There is an un-noted shift from "It’s wrong to kill someone to harvest their organs" to "A perfect being would not kill someone in a way that enabled them to harvest their organs" in that the latter phrasing drops any suggestion of intentionality. Organ harvesting could be an impermissible reason for killing without being an impermissible outcome.
Imagine that in a city with budgetary issues, a very wealthy person is caught breaking the law and incurs a massive fine. It seems perfectly plausible to think that: the city shouldn't just seize one person's money to fund its budget, but the city should impose fines for wrongdoing, and the city can regard it as a fortunate byproduct of the latter that their budget issues are solved. This is like the organ self defense case.
If you're not already a consequentialist, I don't think there will be much tension between thinking that a certain outcome is fortunate (acquiring money/organs) and that whether you can bring it about depends on other factors.
“ Maimer: someone comes at me trying to harm me significantly. The only way I can stop him is by harming him more significantly. He’s gone temporarily insane, so if I don’t harm him, he won’t harm anyone else in the future.”
Two responses:
1) If you’re a utilitarian and the attacker is a regular person, you should prioritize yourself since you will generate more utility in the future (e.g not eating meat)
2) In the real world we’re in a state of information scarcity and we don’t know whether the person has really gone temporarily insane or if they’re just pretending.
You lose me at the step from 1 to 2 in your organ harvesting example. Why would anyone even consider that?
I also don't understand why your 50:50 human shield argument violates the Pareto principle? You don't seem to explain that at all.
And you say that your choice between 2, 1 and inaction violates some supposed principle of irrelevance of things not chosen. But that contradicts the bit where you say "irrelevant to choosing between two things", but you're choosing between 3 things: you only just mentioned changing the assumption from choosing between 2 & 1 to choosing between 2, 1 and inaction. And anyway why are the things not chosen irrelevant? I must have thought I might choose them, I just decided not to.
But if I am forced to chose between self-defense and utilitarianism, why should I choose utilitarianism? Seems like your morality has very little moral force.
I think this supercedes the collaborative chat I was attempting on you-know-what. Although I'd still like to do something on moral reasoning in general, at some point.
There is an un-noted shift from "It’s wrong to kill someone to harvest their organs" to "A perfect being would not kill someone in a way that enabled them to harvest their organs" in that the latter phrasing drops any suggestion of intentionality. Organ harvesting could be an impermissible reason for killing without being an impermissible outcome.
Imagine that in a city with budgetary issues, a very wealthy person is caught breaking the law and incurs a massive fine. It seems perfectly plausible to think that: the city shouldn't just seize one person's money to fund its budget, but the city should impose fines for wrongdoing, and the city can regard it as a fortunate byproduct of the latter that their budget issues are solved. This is like the organ self defense case.
If you're not already a consequentialist, I don't think there will be much tension between thinking that a certain outcome is fortunate (acquiring money/organs) and that whether you can bring it about depends on other factors.
“ Maimer: someone comes at me trying to harm me significantly. The only way I can stop him is by harming him more significantly. He’s gone temporarily insane, so if I don’t harm him, he won’t harm anyone else in the future.”
Two responses:
1) If you’re a utilitarian and the attacker is a regular person, you should prioritize yourself since you will generate more utility in the future (e.g not eating meat)
2) In the real world we’re in a state of information scarcity and we don’t know whether the person has really gone temporarily insane or if they’re just pretending.
You lose me at the step from 1 to 2 in your organ harvesting example. Why would anyone even consider that?
I also don't understand why your 50:50 human shield argument violates the Pareto principle? You don't seem to explain that at all.
And you say that your choice between 2, 1 and inaction violates some supposed principle of irrelevance of things not chosen. But that contradicts the bit where you say "irrelevant to choosing between two things", but you're choosing between 3 things: you only just mentioned changing the assumption from choosing between 2 & 1 to choosing between 2, 1 and inaction. And anyway why are the things not chosen irrelevant? I must have thought I might choose them, I just decided not to.
But if I am forced to chose between self-defense and utilitarianism, why should I choose utilitarianism? Seems like your morality has very little moral force.