Would you kill your family to save 6 billion?

[Ðanisty]

I'm not killing my family. Sorry, but I got loyalties.

 

[kiwimac]

My love for the other whom I do not know is rooted and grounded, inevitably, in my love for those who are dear to me. I could not kill them to save the others. Moreover, there is the problem of encouraging evil by giving into the demand to kill those nearest and dearest to me.

What good is it to save 6 billion lives if somehow there is more evil, less good about AFTER I have killed my family than before?

 

[Ozzie]

Utilitarianism might condone sacrifice of the family as a consequence for the 6 billion being better off. But this would have to be an unintended consequence of taking action to save the majority. Directly killing the family is never going to save the rest, most of whom couldn't give a stuff about the family anyway. Confucius taught that becoming skilled in cultivating family ties would benefit society as a whole. Killing the family hardly seems an exercise in skillful cultivation of family ties.

 

[gnomon]

If family only includes immediate family then single people should think this question over very carefully. It could well mean that saving the family results in the end of the human race...

unless.

 

[azumi]

i dont like people anyway so why would i kill the people i love

 

[rojse]

I'd refuse to choose. I've no right to make such a decision and if that means that everyone else is going to die, then so be it.

That is a fallacious argument - making no choice is the same as making the choice.

 

[lilithu]

That is a fallacious argument - making no choice is the same as making the choice.

In this case I would disagree.

In general I agree that if I could act to save someone and do not act, then I have made the choice to not save the person and am morally responsible for that inaction.

But in the case where the action requires killing another, I do not buy that argument. I would not kill even 1 stranger in order to save six billion. As Djamila said, who am I to make such a decision. Who is to say that one life is worth less than many lives?

There is a famous American short story called "The Lottery," about an idyllic small town that holds a lottery and the "winners" are sacrificed in order to assure the safety and prosperity of the rest of the town. It is horrific, which is the point.

There is part of me that does believe that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. I believe in sacrifice for the common good. But not to the point of murder. never.

 

[eudaimonia]

I object to these lifeboat ethics examples on principle, this being that they are designed to be ineluctably tragic, and some are so horrific (such as the OP example) that they are soul-destroying no matter which option one selects. My family or six billion people? I would be shattered either way.

Perhaps these lifeboat questions would be interesting to a military officer (who may be expected to make life and death decisions of this sort), but to the average person living a peaceful life, it is likely that this sort of situation will never be encountered in one's whole life. I don't see much profit in these questions.


eudaimonia,

Mark

 

[lilithu]

I object to these lifeboat ethics examples on principle, this being that they are designed to be ineluctably tragic, and some are so horrific (such as the OP example) that they are soul-destroying no matter which option one selects. My family or six billion people? I would be shattered either way.

Perhaps these lifeboat questions would be interesting to a military officer (who may be expected to make life and death decisions of this sort), but to the average person living a peaceful life, it is likely that this sort of situation will never be encountered in one's whole life. I don't see much profit in these questions.


eudaimonia,

Mark

Even a military officer would never be in the position to have to choose between family and most of the world's population. The only people who spend a lot of time with these kinds of questions are philosophers of Ethics. We were inundated with these kinds of questions in my Ethics class and I really resented them for the reason that you describe. Utilitarian ethics? Kantian ethics? To think that there is some "rational" way to make such a decision is so heartless to the point of being irrational.

 

[kadzbiz]

Imagine this is a realistic scenario: you can either spare your family from doom, resulting in the death of 6 billion people, or you can kill your family and spare the human race. If you refuse to kill, everyone will be killed, excluding you.

Which would you chose?

The world is much better off without all of us people. It needs time to heal. I ain't going to kill anybody plus I save the Earth. Anyway, what can kill 6 billion people and spare your family and yourself?

 

[McBell]

Imagine this is a realistic scenario: you can either spare your family from doom, resulting in the death of 6 billion people, or you can kill your family and spare the human race. If you refuse to kill, everyone will be killed, excluding you.

Which would you chose?

screw it.
I choose not to choose.
Then I have the whole world to myself.
100% pure uncontested domination of the whole planet.
At least until i get et by a lion.

 

[eudaimonia]

To think that there is some "rational" way to make such a decision is so heartless to the point of being irrational.

Good point. Such examples are contrived in such a way as to nearly force people into using a bean-counter style of ethics that reduces the value of individual lives to mere numbers (e.g. utilitarianism), and to see this as "rational"! But lifeboat examples don't establish that everyday non-lifeboat ethical decisions require us to reduce the value of human life in this way, or that we should view decisions that involve our own feelings as "irrational".


eudaimonia,

Mark