JC, that’s not consistent with your other views (and I agree with those). If we’re to believe that taxes are non-coercive, we’re not libertarians.
You are wrong that the two are analogous. I have a post on this at my blog http://richardgarnerlib.blogspot.com/2008/04/terrorism-collateral-damage-and-double.html
Let me be clear; I am not saying that paying your taxes makes you a hypocrite holding my positions, which state that one is not morally culpable for actions taken under duress. Rather, I mean that paying taxes makes you a hypocrite while holding the opposing positions, which state that you should not act in self-preservation if that act might harm another.
But it doesn’t address ownership of the trolley, or the tracks, or anything.
Am I the owner of the trolley? Or am I hijacking the trolley?
I think I’m right. The difference only arrises because you are applying the doctrine of double effect. I don’t see how this doctine is justified.
I don’t see any other animals creating sophisticated machines, inventing complex languages or systems of knowledge which represent the world, or creating ethical systems or arguing over ethics. I don’t think you have to be a biologist or zoologist to observe that animals just go about their business blindly following their instincts. They don’t consider anything except for the immediate moment. Anytime that they do plan ahead, such as when a squirrel saves nuts for winter, it’s not the result of conscious thinking. It’s still just instinctive behaviour. Ants and bees form societies which have a high degree of specialization and division of labour, but this is also just instinctive. Some animals have property norms, like a dog willing to defend it’s masters property. But, they have nothing as elaborate as humans. Some monkey’s can be taught sign language. Dolphins I believe can be taught a few words. But, the ability of monkeys and dolphins to make abstractions is very limited.
In respect to ethics, if you come into conflict with an animal, you can’t argue with it. It doesn’t have rationality. It won’t be persuaded that maybe you and it should coexist peacefully. And this is why uncivilized people belong in the same category. They don’t care about anything other than immediate gratification of their wants. They are unable or unwilling to make any immediate sacrifice for a greater mediate gain.
That’s right. A man’s human rights are his own to hold against the whole world. If he’s being held hostage by a crazed gunman that might hurt you, that’s your problem. If you shoot him to save yourself, or to save anyone else, you’re guilty of murder. And if his family wants your blood afterward, they’re entitled to it. The law doesn’t change because of special circumstances, or for people under duress. Everyone is liable for their own personal actions.
You apply your system of ethics to the moral dilemma and see if the resulting judgments are non-contradictory. This is the same way you test the validity of any axiomatic-deductive body of knowledge. A person cannot coherently hold two opposing judgements. Therefore they cannot coherently hold a system of ethics which arrives at opposing judgements.
So not only do you believe a woman should be held responsible for her actions while under brutal torture, you believe a mass-murder should not be stopped if she is using human shields?
edit: grammar
Not quite. Rather, all I merely meant to imply by my statement is that it would not be immoral to do nothing. And that it would in fact be immoral to enforce an unchosen positive obligation onto someone to intervene in the situation on the behalf of others.
It’s sort of like the strange application of the NAP to pacifists. The pacifist has a right to defend themselves but they may choose not to do so, at their own risk of course. They do not have a positive obligation to defend themself, and hence noone can force them to defend themself. And the proponent of self-defense may defend themself and noone may force them not to.
Likewise, I don’t think anyone has an unchosen positive obligation to defend someone else. It may indeed seem heartless for them not to, but it is their perogative. To force them to defend someone else would violate their rights. On the other hand, neither do I think anyone has an abstract right to defend someone else against that person’s consent. But then again, would anyone in their right mind really complain at being defended in a dire situation? Probably not.
I realize that most of this conversation has revolved around the question of “what should you do in situation X?”, but I wanted to stress the degree to which there really are no unchosen positive obligations or “shoulds” in these situations. Some of these situations seem unresolvable without implicating the resolver in some kind of immorality themselves. Damned if you do, damned if you dont. Except if you don’t do anything, at least you are not implicated in the situation in terms of any direct action. Which is why I’m compelled towards inaction as an answer.
Whether or not the doctrine of double effect is justified, killing people to save more by terrorism is not analogous to killing people to save more as collateral damage. The question is whether it is disanalogous in morally relavent ways. I certainly think that whether a death is intended or not is morally relavent, and I certainly willing a bad thing in order to achieve a good thing is relavent.
Self-Ownership loses none of its power in political philosophy by suggesting that it only prohibits intentionally using people as means, for isntance. In fact, it becomes more intuitively attractive.
You can stop the mass-murderer if you are in the position to do so, as long as you’re willing to face the conseqences of murder.
I think one can only be considered an accomplice and held responsible for a criminal’s action if they have entered into a contract with them which supports and sanctions their action. Taxpayers haven’t entered into a contract with government agents. They in no way sanction the actions of government agents.
I deny that there are no unchosen positive obligations, and I find it counterintuitive to say there are none. Are you really saying that if your mother was sick and couldn’t tend for herself, it would not be immoral for you to refuse to help her?
In other words, you would have to rely on someone acting immorally (in your eyes) to stop the mass murderer? And then you would prosecute that person?
How about this: A few hundred evil people form an organization and come up with a devious plot. One member of the organization will kidnap someone and hold them captive in an undisclosed location. Another member will go to a crowded place and announce that he is going to go on a mass-murdering-shooting spree, and if anyone kills him, the captive gets killed, too.
Let’s say that this happens several times in a row, each time with the mass-murder getting killed, and each time with the captive being killed as a result. It becomes clear that if you kill the mass-murderer, the captive will die.
Would you consider it murder to kill the mass-murderer, knowing that it would result in the death of an innocent person?
edit: grammar
I don’t see how it’s different than the bomb-throwing scenario. You are taking an action (sending in that check) to save yourself from the violence of an aggressor (the government) which you know will result in the harm of many others who are innocent in this situation. Your alternatives may be ugly, but it is still, as it has been said, by your free will that you do your work and pay your taxes. So, are you or are you not justified in taking an action that harms another to save yourself? If you answer no, and you pay taxes, you are a hypocrite.
Indeed, just to clarify the situation, perhaps the mass-murderer is wearing a life monitor that will kill the kidnapped victim in some autonomous way if the murderer dies. That removes the second moral agent from the situation, and the complications that would introduce.
Yes. In my understanding, libertarianism is incompatible with unchosen positive obligations. The key qualifier is the word unchosen. You may choose to fulfill such obligations and you may choose to abide by them through voluntary contracts, but in the absence of any actual debt you may have incurred or contract you signed, you truly have no positive obligations to anyone else. In short, I deny that positive rights claims are legitimate. And to touch on your particular example a little bit deeper, I don’t believe that familial ties in and of itself creates unchosen positive obligations either (in holding this view, I merely echo Stefan Molyneux, who has done a lot of interesting work on what he calls “the cult of the family”).
“Need” in and of itself does not generate legitimate obligations for other people to appease “need”. Even if someone else is starving or poor, I do not have an unchosen positive obligation to give them some food or some of my money. This may seem cold hearted, but it does not equate to the idea that you have an obligation not to. You can help other people all you want. It’s just not obligatory if you didn’t actually choose the obligations. Most people probably would try to help out their mother anyways. I would. All I state is that you cannot legitimately force/coerce them into doing so, I.E. that it truly is not obligatory for them to do so without consent.
As I’ve argued to anarcho-syndicalists before (not that I’m insinuating that you are one), there is a fundamental contradiction between ownership over the products of one’s labor and the idea of an unchosen positive obligation to appease people’s “needs” (I.E. positive rights and altruism). If you truly own the products of you labor then you may freely exclude them from others. If you have an unchosen positive obligation to fulfill “need”, then you cannot consistantly have individual sovereignty. These obligations would become coercive and those claiming such positive rights would effectively become thieves.
Again, someone quotes my post pre-edit! I agree, that’s probably a good modification.
“That’s why I tried to change the original trolley case to remove the evil philosopher tying the guys to the tracks, but that the people just happened to be on the tracks (we don’t know why).”
Maybe they all just decided to take a nap on the comfortable railroad tracks.
What if the murderer traps a person to a device that kills them based on the amount of hits a website gets and then posts the video on that website? Morally can we kill anyone with a computer?
When it comes to personal ethics, I think intent matters. When it comes to interpersonal ethics I don’t think it does. If someone is driving drunk, and they accidentally kill somebody, they should be just as liable as if they intentionally killed them. The result of their action is the effect of someone else dying, whether they intended it or not. They are no less responsible for the other person’s death because it was accidental. The family of the victim should be entitled to the same proportional restitution and retribution. This is the proper assumption of risk for not taking precautions to avoid killing someone. And even if the driver were sober, the same would hold. He is still responsible for his choice to drive that day, and just as culpable.