Is inaction morally wrong?
- Marin
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Is inaction morally wrong?
"There is a runaway trolley barreling down the railway tracks. Ahead, on the tracks, there are five people tied up and unable to move. The trolley is headed straight for them. You are standing some distance off in the train yard, next to a lever. If you pull this lever, the trolley will switch to a different set of tracks. However, you notice that there is one person on the side track. You have two options:
Do nothing and allow the trolley to kill the five people on the main track.
Pull the lever, diverting the trolley onto the side track where it will kill one person."
And of course, the obvious question of the dilemma: "What is the right thing to do?"
I decided to create this thread not to talk wheter is is morally bette to save 5 lives over 1, as that has been discussed plenty of times, but whether inaction is morally permisable
Is there any way you could prove that inaction (do nothing and "allow" the five people to die) is morally wrong in this situation? Is it wrong to wash one's hands of the responsability, of the burden to choose between 1 life and 5? I am in favor of choosing to kill 1 over the 5 but I couldn't condemn someone for not choosing at all, for they do not hold any responsibility for what is happening and I you can't obligate someone, without violating his rights to freedom, to involve himself in the situation. No matter what you choose, someone is still going to die in the end. If I have to choose between 1 death and 5 deaths, I rather not be given the power to choose at all.
I would like to hear everyone's thoughts about this. Thank you for your time
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Re: Is inaction morally wrong?
Can you prove conclusively that those five people were going to be killed? What if you were wrong? What if no one else was aware of the issues? Chances are that, if you acted, you would be locked up for murder.
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Re: Is inaction morally wrong?
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Re: Is inaction morally wrong?
In the context of your post, inaction actually means "the action that should have been done, but wasn't". In other words, you introduced a word that is already charged with a negative judgement, and then asks how it should be judged. A better term would be "remaining passive". It is obvious that it is only when one has made up his mind of what is the appropriate choice, that one can judge whether one acted correctly or not. In that case, not acting can actually become an action, similar to what is called passive resistance. It is not the same, for example, when one knows exactly what must be done, but irresponsibly fails to do it.Marin wrote: ↑May 27th, 2020, 8:11 am And of course, the obvious question of the dilemma: "What is the right thing to do?"
I decided to create this thread not to talk wheter is is morally bette to save 5 lives over 1, as that has been discussed plenty of times, but whether inaction is morally permisable
Is there any way you could prove that inaction (do nothing and "allow" the five people to die) is morally wrong in this situation? Is it wrong to wash one's hands of the responsability, of the burden to choose between 1 life and 5? I am in favor of choosing to kill 1 over the 5 but I couldn't condemn someone for not choosing at all, for they do not hold any responsibility for what is happening and I you can't obligate someone, without violating his rights to freedom, to involve himself in the situation. No matter what you choose, someone is still going to die in the end. If I have to choose between 1 death and 5 deaths, I rather not be given the power to choose at all.
There are other similar implications in the post, as when you assume that it was one's responsibility to choose. Who says it was that person's responsibility and in what moment this person was given the choice of accepting or rejecting the responsibility? Why isn't the responsibility on whoever made the whole atrocious setup?
― Marcus Tullius Cicero
- Marvin_Edwards
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Re: Is inaction morally wrong?
Now, if the guy on the other track is the one who tied up the five people then, yeah, we should throw the switch to take out the villain and protect the innocent.
But we don't know enough about what is going on. For example, perhaps there are ten other people farther down the one-person track that we're not aware of. Or, perhaps the train going down the wrong track will crash and kill everyone on the train.
In any case, we cannot choose to murder one man to save five others. The guy who tied the five people to the track is responsible for their deaths. But we would be responsible for deliberately killing the single person on the other track.
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Re: Is inaction morally wrong?
The obvious general point first: No, you can't prove that any moral decision is either right or wrong. The only way you can objectively judge moral decisions is to establish whether they purport to be individual instances of some declared, general ethical principle and then decide whether they seem to adhere to that principle. i.e. look for consistencies and inconsistencies. If there is no such identifiable underlying ethical principle, then the decisions can be classed as personal tastes, or perhaps "gut" feelings, and they therefore can't really be objectively analyzed at all. Although, of course, we can still simply state whether we agree with them (i.e. whether they coincide with our own gut feelings.)Marin wrote:Is there any way you could prove that inaction (do nothing and "allow" the five people to die) is morally wrong in this situation?
On the difference between action and inaction: It seems clear that most people regard harm as a result of inaction to be more morally acceptable than harm as a result of action, even if the nature of the harm is the same. Every day, we all "wash our hands" of numerous bad things happening to numerous people all over the world, in the sense that we don't attempt to prevent them. Most of us don't feel particularly bad about that. As Count Lucanor points out, there is a difference between passive inaction and inaction as a choice - "the action that should have been done, but wasn't".
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Re: Is inaction morally wrong?
If I had to guess, I would say that this declaration of what we cannot do is based on a general ethical principle which is a Kantian notion that people should always be treated as ends in themselves, and not as the means to an end, which leads to the idea that people have the right not to be killed, even if killing them was an effective means to save the lives of many others. As opposed to, for example, a Utilitarian view.Marvin_Edwards wrote:In any case, we cannot choose to murder one man to save five others. The guy who tied the five people to the track is responsible for their deaths. But we would be responsible for deliberately killing the single person on the other track.
If it is based on that principle, then it is consistent with it.
(That was me doing what I described in the first paragraph of my previous post.)
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Re: Is inaction morally wrong?
How many times have you walked past a homeless person and done nothing to help, knowing full well that there is room on your floor for them to sleep on?
How many times have you not bothered to vote, or not bothered to become involved in the political process?
Since we all know that there are starving people all over the world, what is our excuse for sitting still and typing nonsense onto PDF.
And since we all know that, since I started typing more than one child has died from lack of nothing more simple than clean water.
So- do you really want to ask for a moral justification for inaction; or are you just the best example of it we could find?
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Re: Is inaction morally wrong?
Yes, I am aware of the legal implications that may arise in the trolley case. If you pulled the lever, chances are you are going to be punishment. If you don't act, you probably won't. I was looking more for a philosophical discussion that a legal oneGreta wrote: ↑May 27th, 2020, 6:29 pm These days, people might consider and update to the problem, given the legal implications in the modern world.
Can you prove conclusively that those five people were going to be killed? What if you were wrong? What if no one else was aware of the issues? Chances are that, if you acted, you would be locked up for murder.
Perhaps I should have written what I meant by inaction when making the post. By inaction I mean "absence of action". It is an action that doesn't exist. If there is no action then there no effect. I think that inaction is neither moral nor immoral as you cannot define moral or immoral something that cannot exibit characteristics.Count Lucanor wrote: ↑May 27th, 2020, 10:50 pm In the context of your post, inaction actually means "the action that should have been done, but wasn't". In other words, you introduced a word that is already charged with a negative judgement, and then asks how it should be judged. A better term would be "remaining passive". It is obvious that it is only when one has made up his mind of what is the appropriate choice, that one can judge whether one acted correctly or not. In that case, not acting can actually become an action, similar to what is called passive resistance. It is not the same, for example, when one knows exactly what must be done, but irresponsibly fails to do it.
There are other similar implications in the post, as when you assume that it was one's responsibility to choose. Who says it was that person's responsibility and in what moment this person was given the choice of accepting or rejecting the responsibility? Why isn't the responsibility on whoever made the whole atrocious setup?
In my post I'm not assuming that it was one's responsability to choose. I am in favor of saving 5 over 1 but I'm also saying that I think that you have no responsability whatsoever. In my experience, inaction is almost always viewed as immoral. They think it is wrong to wash your hands of your responsibility to others. You do have an obligation to protect others and reduce suffering; and, seeing as the person pulling the lever is in no immediate danger, it is morally wrong for them to shirk their responsibility to others because the situation isn’t strictly their own doing and that most situations where we are faced with a decisions that affect others’ well-being are not, strictly, our own doing. I think that preventing any loss of life is good, but only a supererogatory good; nobody can be obliged to prevent everything bad that happens, or even everything bad that they could possible prevent. it is permissible to let bad things go unfixed (even though it's supererogatorily good to fix them), it's only impermissible to cause new bad things yourself.
In the trolley case, I don't view inaction as resulting in harm. Harm is going to happen anyway, choose we to pull the lever or not. By doing nothing in the case of the trolley problem, I'm not thinking that I am doing the correct thing, but that I am just not doing wrong.Steve3007 wrote: ↑May 28th, 2020, 5:14 am
On the difference between action and inaction: It seems clear that most people regard harm as a result of inaction to be more morally acceptable than harm as a result of action, even if the nature of the harm is the same. Every day, we all "wash our hands" of numerous bad things happening to numerous people all over the world, in the sense that we don't attempt to prevent them. Most of us don't feel particularly bad about that. As Count Lucanor points out, there is a difference between passive inaction and inaction as a choice - "the action that should have been done, but wasn't".
These examples are different from the trolley case. In the trolley case you have to choose between 1 death and 5. In your case, with inaction, you aren't going to cause any harm. As I said in my other reply, nobody is obliged to prevent everything bad that happens. By helping a homeless person you are doing good; by not helping a homeless person you are just not doing wrongSculptor1 wrote: ↑May 28th, 2020, 5:27 am Since the trolley problem is not ever going to be confronted by us, we'd really have to take some more likely scenarios.
How many times have you walked past a homeless person and done nothing to help, knowing full well that there is room on your floor for them to sleep on?
How many times have you not bothered to vote, or not bothered to become involved in the political process?
Since we all know that there are starving people all over the world, what is our excuse for sitting still and typing nonsense onto PDF.
And since we all know that, since I started typing more than one child has died from lack of nothing more simple than clean water.
So- do you really want to ask for a moral justification for inaction; or are you just the best example of it we could find?
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Re: Is inaction morally wrong?
I think that morally neither option is better than the other. They are both bad. The result is still death and so I wouldn't want to choose in the trolley problem to begin with. I don't think this situation is a type of negligence as that it could result in negligent homicide. In this situation, by not doing anything, we are simply an onlooker. The runaway trolley killed the five people, not I. You could of course say that I have the moral duty to try to save the majority, but when does a moral duty to act create a legal duty of care and therefore give rise to potential criminal liability for breach of that duty? There are several things that must be proven, and one of them is that you have to prove that I have a duty of care towards either that 1 person or those 5. I don't. I have never seen them in my life and even if I had some degree of responsability for, say, those 5 people on the main track, I can't be prosecuted for "Didn't kill A to save B" as I can't be prosecuted under the law for not killing an innocent person.Alpha1 wrote: ↑May 27th, 2020, 8:18 pm I think you're still making a conscious decision on whether or not you're allowing the 5 live or die, so even you didn't take an action you still made the decision that inaction was the best move, morally speaking you're still at fault. I think your opinion for this example is a type of negligence, this situation is tricky because whether you want or not you have the duty to pull the lever and if you point out that you don't want any responsibility then you're neglecting your duty leading in a "Negligent homicide" case. Although for me pulling the lever can also lead in another murder case because you made a conscious decision that it's better for that one guy to die to save the others. This case is an example of lose-lose situation.
I don't think that in this situation you have any moral duty to pull the lever. I didn't want to be put into the situation where I had the power to either save 1 or 5 to begin with. I didn't choose that I want to have the power to choose. Forcing me into choosing would basically violate my right to liberty
- h_k_s
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Re: Is inaction morally wrong?
This analogy comes up a lot.Marin wrote: ↑May 27th, 2020, 8:11 am Hello, I've been thinking about the general form of trolley problem lately. I think the majority of you would know what it is, but I'll add a description of what the general form of the trolley problem involves in case someone doesn't:
"There is a runaway trolley barreling down the railway tracks. Ahead, on the tracks, there are five people tied up and unable to move. The trolley is headed straight for them. You are standing some distance off in the train yard, next to a lever. If you pull this lever, the trolley will switch to a different set of tracks. However, you notice that there is one person on the side track. You have two options:
Do nothing and allow the trolley to kill the five people on the main track.
Pull the lever, diverting the trolley onto the side track where it will kill one person."
And of course, the obvious question of the dilemma: "What is the right thing to do?"
I decided to create this thread not to talk wheter is is morally bette to save 5 lives over 1, as that has been discussed plenty of times, but whether inaction is morally permisable
Is there any way you could prove that inaction (do nothing and "allow" the five people to die) is morally wrong in this situation? Is it wrong to wash one's hands of the responsability, of the burden to choose between 1 life and 5? I am in favor of choosing to kill 1 over the 5 but I couldn't condemn someone for not choosing at all, for they do not hold any responsibility for what is happening and I you can't obligate someone, without violating his rights to freedom, to involve himself in the situation. No matter what you choose, someone is still going to die in the end. If I have to choose between 1 death and 5 deaths, I rather not be given the power to choose at all.
I would like to hear everyone's thoughts about this. Thank you for your time
The fundamental question is regarding what is the line operator's primary responsibility? And what are the legal repercussions as well as the ethical repercussions of him/her not achieving that responsibility?
Other people often confuse the issue as one of a "greater good" argument. I don't believe that is true however.
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Re: Is inaction morally wrong?
In modern times, democratic (from the Greeks) or republican (from the Romans) governments are popular. These begin with a document called a constitution which regulates what may be legislated, administered, and adjudicated (judged).
Once the constitution is drafted and ratified, then some form of parliamentary procedure is followed to enact statutes. These then require enforcement and adjudication.
Ultimately in this way you end up with a 3-branch government of legislature, administration, and judiciary. Pretty soon everybody has some job to do and duties to perform.
In the case of our 3 original people, one could be elected to be the legislator, another the administrator, and the third as a judge. Voting can always be done by all 3 on any issue that is legislative. And the jobs can be rotated, held for life, or subject to term limits or impeachment.
Everyone must then consider in advance their own actions, and whether these actions fall within the allowable guidelines of the laws that are thus created, whether legislative laws, administrative laws, or judicial laws.
Killing (the taking of another's life, particularly a human life) is always carefully regulated and controlled.
In a normal society, you would have various rules for self defense, defense of others, defense of the group or nation, defense of other animals, and defense of the environment.
Killing is an abhorrent activity although sometimes required. Most obviously, to defend your nation against an invading neighbor state, such as we have seen in the past regarding China, Russia, Argentina, Germany, Japan, and various no longer existent nations such as Austria-Hungary, Ottoman Turkey, etc., it seems justifiable for the invaded people to kill their invaders.
Some laws allow the killing of criminals, in which case this power is limited to state officials.
Self defense is normally allowed as a justification for killing, however a detailed administrative and judicial review of the matter is bound to happen afterwards, with most certainly an arrest, and quite often a trial.
Because killing hurts so many other people, as well as taking the life of the person who is being killed, it must never be taken lightly.
No one is allowed to "play God" and kill willy nilly according to their own whims. Not for any reason.
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Re: Is inaction morally wrong?
So first, we can't "prove" that anything is morally right or wrong, because morality isn't factual, there are no moral truths, you can't get a moral stance accurate or correct, etc. Morality is the way that individuals feel about interpersonal behavior that they consider to be more significant than etiquette. There aren't correct/incorrect, true/false ways to feel.Marin wrote: ↑May 27th, 2020, 8:11 am Hello, I've been thinking about the general form of trolley problem lately. I think the majority of you would know what it is, but I'll add a description of what the general form of the trolley problem involves in case someone doesn't:
"There is a runaway trolley barreling down the railway tracks. Ahead, on the tracks, there are five people tied up and unable to move. The trolley is headed straight for them. You are standing some distance off in the train yard, next to a lever. If you pull this lever, the trolley will switch to a different set of tracks. However, you notice that there is one person on the side track. You have two options:
Do nothing and allow the trolley to kill the five people on the main track.
Pull the lever, diverting the trolley onto the side track where it will kill one person."
And of course, the obvious question of the dilemma: "What is the right thing to do?"
I decided to create this thread not to talk wheter is is morally bette to save 5 lives over 1, as that has been discussed plenty of times, but whether inaction is morally permisable
Is there any way you could prove that inaction (do nothing and "allow" the five people to die) is morally wrong in this situation? Is it wrong to wash one's hands of the responsability, of the burden to choose between 1 life and 5? I am in favor of choosing to kill 1 over the 5 but I couldn't condemn someone for not choosing at all, for they do not hold any responsibility for what is happening and I you can't obligate someone, without violating his rights to freedom, to involve himself in the situation. No matter what you choose, someone is still going to die in the end. If I have to choose between 1 death and 5 deaths, I rather not be given the power to choose at all.
I would like to hear everyone's thoughts about this. Thank you for your time
I tend to feel that if something is immoral, there should be laws prohibiting it. In other words, I tend to feel that we're only dealing with morality if it's something significant enough that I'd want there to be laws enforcing the behavior. That's not the case 100% of the time, but I tend to feel that way.
At that, I don't want there to be laws against inaction. Do I think that it's cool to refrain from action when you can help someone in a dire situation?--Like say that you encounter someone being raped and you could take some action to try to stop it--if only via calling the police or whatever. No, I don't think it's cool to not take any action in that situation (barring good reasons not to), but I wouldn't want inaction to be illegal, and I don't think that inaction is quite significant enough for me to consider it immoral.
Re the trolley problem, in most situations, I'd think that pulling the lever to only kill one person is the right thing to do (there are situations where I wouldn't think that--for example, if I knew or learned that the five people (or even just a few of them) were serial killers, or if I knew or learned that the one person was just about to cure cancer, etc.). But there are too many justifiable reasons for inaction that I wouldn't want to make that illegal and I don't really consider it immoral.
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Re: Is inaction morally wrong?
But this is the world we live in, not a world where one can pull a level to kill someone and have one's story believed. Even then, as per euthanasia (where the trolley problem can apply), it's not unusual for people who are doing the greatest good possible being sent to prison for doing so.Marin wrote: ↑May 28th, 2020, 7:25 amYes, I am aware of the legal implications that may arise in the trolley case. If you pulled the lever, chances are you are going to be punishment. If you don't act, you probably won't. I was looking more for a philosophical discussion that a legal oneGreta wrote: ↑May 27th, 2020, 6:29 pm These days, people might consider and update to the problem, given the legal implications in the modern world.
Can you prove conclusively that those five people were going to be killed? What if you were wrong? What if no one else was aware of the issues? Chances are that, if you acted, you would be locked up for murder.
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