A Better Ethical Dillema

[Unesh52]

This is a response to another thread I was on earlier about the ethical implications of benefiting from the incidental suffering of others. Despite the title, I'm not saying that the other poster was doing something wrong or asking a stupid question; I just thought that it was a bit of an easy one that most people decided firmly on on right off the bat, and in the same way. But it reminded me of another question I heard in a Nat Geo documentary about the neurological basis of evil. It goes something like this:

Soldiers from a neighboring village have attacked your home village. They murder, burn, rape, and pillage relentlessly. Before the fighting reaches you, you, your infant, and around 10 of the other villagers hide out in a run down shack nearby. Your baby is crying, so you cover its mouth. If you let go, the crying will alert the soldiers who will then kill everyone inside, including your baby. To save yourself and the other villagers, you must smother your baby.

We assume there are only two options and two corresponding outcomes:

1) Kill your own child and everyone else survives
2) Refuse to smother your baby, at the cost of his and everyone else's life

I can see the futility in keeping the kid alive, but I've seen how people, especially mothers, can get about their children. I don't have a kid, so I kind of have to supplant the infant with some other person who is very important to me. When I think about ending that person's life with my own hands... it's like it's not worth it. That doesn't seem to make sense, but I couldn't kill her. She's too important to me. I'd rather die. And at that point, who cares about the rest of the villagers?

 

[w@rew0lf]

Baby dies. I mean sure It'd be a heart-wrenching, emotional time, that would haunt me for the rest of my life. But if it's a choice between the lives of the group and a few more minutes with my child, then what needs to be done needs to be done. I cannot call upon that much selfishness and forfeit the lives of those people. Hopefully, I'll be able to convince one of the group to commit the deed in my stead. If not...

Count to seven and you'll be in heaven...

 

[Irridium]

This was actually done in Metal Gear Solid 4. Well not really, but one of the 4 Beauties(each is a beautiful girl, but have horrifying back-stories) had a back-story just like this. She hid in a basement with her baby-brother when people attacked her village. The baby started crying, so she put her hand over its mouth. Eventually time passed, and they were safe again. But when she took her hand off the baby's mouth, she realized that she actually killed it.

Granted the situation is a little different, but not by much.

As for me, well tough choice. Really is. I want to say that I would end the baby's life, but I know for a fact that if it was my baby, things may be different.

 

[Unesh52]

This was actually done in Metal Gear Solid 4. Well not really, but one of the 4 Beauties(each is a beautiful girl, but have horrifying back-stories) had a back-story just like this. She hid in a basement with her baby-brother when people attacked her village. The baby started crying, so she put her hand over its mouth. Eventually time passed, and they were safe again. But when she took her hand off the baby's mouth, she realized that she actually killed it.

Granted the situation is a little different, but not by much.

As for me, well tough choice. Really is. I want to say that I would end the baby's life, but I know for a fact that if it was my baby, things may be different.

Oh yeah, I remember that now... you know, I would have liked the Beauties had they been a little more... well, human. They all came off as ridiculous exaggerations (I mean, not that the rest of the cannon is above that, but it's usually not so heavy handed with its characters). I know Kojima can make me cry; he did it in 3. What happened with the Beauties? The needlessly rigid framework and unbelievable characterizations all back-loaded with gigantic text blocks (speaking of, Drebin didn't really help with this) made any emotion I had feel artificial. It's the difference between hearing a news report on the radio about the disaster in Japan and actually being there.

...wait, what was I talking about?

 

[theonlyblaze2]

This actually happend in real life. A woman's village was attacked by pirates or bandits and she grabbed her young boy and her baby girl. The family took refuge in a nearby cave. Well, the baby started to cry and the mother, in fear of being heard, smothered her daughter to save her son. Sadly, the attackers had heard the baby and rushed in to get the woman. They captured her and her son. When being lead away to wherever, the woman grabbed her son and drowned him in the nearby ocean. The attackers then killed her on the sand. Pretty sad story. Read it in a book about caves, of all places.

OT: Yes, I would give up my child for the lives of others. It would be hard, but I think I could do it.

 

[Souplex]

Both scenarios end in baby death. The second one ends in significantly less death.
Easy choice.
Even if they didn't shoot the kid, it would starve to death which is much worse.

 

[Kpt._Rob]

To be honest, I don't think I'd smother the child. This is one of those places where, for me, utilitarian logic just doesn't hold water anymore and I have to give in to a deontological system of morals. The idea of killing anyone is just beyond me, and in some ways I feel that it would be just as bad to kill the child. Even if those people lived, which of them could ever recover from having their lives spared at the cost of a child's life? I'd rather be dead, as, I hope, would any mature adult.

Sometimes there are no good answers. Sometimes no matter what you do, it's not going to be okay. When we find those places, sometimes all we can do is let go of the ego self, recognize the unity of all things in the universe, and give in to the ever changing forms of the story we live in. We all die sometime, such is the nature of life. But we don't all kill, and while I can certainly understand if others disagree, I think that the immorality of killing the child in this instance outweighs the immorality of not killing the child even if that results in his death from a force outside one's control.

 

[BonsaiK]

This is a response to another thread I was on earlier about the ethical implications of benefiting from the incidental suffering of others. Despite the title, I'm not saying that the other poster was doing something wrong or asking a stupid question; I just thought that it was a bit of an easy one that most people decided firmly on on right off the bat, and in the same way. But it reminded me of another question I heard in a Nat Geo documentary about the neurological basis of evil. It goes something like this:

Soldiers from a neighboring village have attacked your home village. They murder, burn, rape, and pillage relentlessly. Before the fighting reaches you, you, your infant, and around 10 of the other villagers hide out in a run down shack nearby. Your baby is crying, so you cover its mouth. If you let go, the crying will alert the soldiers who will then kill everyone inside, including your baby. To save yourself and the other villagers, you must smother your baby.

We assume there are only two options and two corresponding outcomes:

1) Kill your own child and everyone else survives
2) Refuse to smother your baby, at the cost of his and everyone else's life

I can see the futility in keeping the kid alive, but I've seen how people, especially mothers, can get about their children. I don't have a kid, so I kind of have to supplant the infant with some other person who is very important to me. When I think about ending that person's life with my own hands... it's like it's not worth it. That doesn't seem to make sense, but I couldn't kill her. She's too important to me. I'd rather die. And at that point, who cares about the rest of the villagers?

Not that I'd even have a kid in the first place, but if I did, couldn't I just cover it's mouth and it can breathe through its nose? Don't people breathe through their noses, not their mouths, anyway?

 

[Altorin]

every rational person would hope that they'd have the guts to do something like that if they had to.

but it's not a rational act, when you get down to it. I can't really say I could do it, because I have no idea. Anyone who says for sure one way or the other is probably wrong, at least about the for sure part.

 

[HapexIndustries]

Your example is decent but doesn't give enough information in a couple areas:

How old is this "baby?"
Are the other villagers my friends and family or a bunch of asshole strangers?
Is the mother/father of the child still alive?
Can I offer my own life? Do I have reason to trust these attackers?
(there's some other things I thought of but these are the big ones).

Assuming I cared about the villagers, and assuming it was really a baby, I'd kill it. Also assuming I am still virile and my wife/lover/whatever is still alive (and she doesn't hate me forever) we can have another. I say this with the cold logic of a man without children; a better example may have been to use one's mother/father/grandmother/favorite family member/best friend.

A baby, to me, represents potential but 10 other people is a lot of other people and a lot more potential. Plus, having been fathered by me, the baby has a real chance of being severely messed up.

Now, if the baby was like 6 or 7 and had started to show it's real potential, it might be a different answer. Also, if I hated all the people of my village they could go fuck themselves. Also, if I really loved my wife/gf/whatev and she did or didn't want me to do it I guess that would influence my decision.

 

[Bobbity]

Both scenarios end in baby death. The second one ends in significantly less death.
Easy choice.
Even if they didn't shoot the kid, it would starve to death which is much worse.

But could you put your own hands around its neck, and be the one to kill it? Could you smother it while it looked at you helplessly? Imagine it's your little brother or sister, assuming you have one. Could you do it then?

It's all very well to be cold and logical over the internet, but very different in reality.

As for me, I honestly do not know. If really pushed, I might do it, but it would haunt me the rest of my life.
Ideally, you could make the baby faint or something - by far preferable to killing it - but in a conceptual situation like this, with only two outcomes, it becomes a very difficult choice.

 

[DJDarque]

Maybe it's messed up, but the life of my child would be worth more to me than the life of anyone else in that little safehaven, including my own.

 

[Altorin]

Maybe it's messed up, but the life of my child would be worth more to me than the life of anyone else in that little safehaven, including my own.

the point is, if you don't kill your child, everyone dies including your child. You don't get to save your baby either way.

the point is, could you save your baby, if it meant that everyone could live. If you can't (and presumably noone else will just snatch that baby and break it like a twig to save their own (and your) lives), then everyone including the baby dies.

 

[MorphingDragon]

I would probably kill the baby.

In reality though, Neither.

I keep its trap shut long enough so I can get away with the baby and leave the others "safe" in the shack. Then let it breathe and hope for the best.

 

[PurplePlatypus]

Couldn?t I just muffle the baby or, me being its parent, I suspect I may know a little bit about how to quiet them down.

If needs must though I don?t know if I could do it myself but one of the others maybe more able.

 

[DJDarque]

Maybe it's messed up, but the life of my child would be worth more to me than the life of anyone else in that little safehaven, including my own.

the point is, if you don't kill your child, everyone dies including your child. You don't get to save your baby either way.

the point is, could you save your baby, if it meant that everyone could live. If you can't (and presumably noone else will just snatch that baby and break it like a twig to save their own (and your) lives), then everyone including the baby dies.

I know what the point is. I realize that the baby dies either way. But I wouldn't have the kind of "strength" it took to kill it. Even looking at it as saving the baby from whoever else is going to kill, I just could not do it. I would rather die trying to keep us both alive and gladly burn in Hell for it.

 

[LawlessSquirrel]

It would almost certainly end up the hardest thing I could ever do, but I think smothering would be my solution.

I can feel the evil seeping out of that claim already, but in that circumstance I can't see myself letting a dozen people die because of my own heartbreak. Either that or I'd make a run for it and hope that, worse case, I draw the soldiers away in a suicidal attempt at escape. But that's not one of the options, so that would be cheating...and probably end up the same as the option I chose, but I'd be dead too so I'd feel less guilt.

 

[Batfred]

My head says that I should kill the baby and I want to say that I could do it. When it got to that moment though, could I? I honestly don't think I could. Could I let one of the other villagers do it? That seems a lot more likely.

 

[Frostbyte666]

Impossible to answer unless I was actually in that situation. I really couldn't tell you whether I'd kill my child for the group or not and I hope never to find out.

 

[Jordi]

This is a response to another thread I was on earlier about the ethical implications of benefiting from the incidental suffering of others. Despite the title, I'm not saying that the other poster was doing something wrong or asking a stupid question; I just thought that it was a bit of an easy one that most people decided firmly on on right off the bat, and in the same way. But it reminded me of another question I heard in a Nat Geo documentary about the neurological basis of evil. It goes something like this:

Soldiers from a neighboring village have attacked your home village. They murder, burn, rape, and pillage relentlessly. Before the fighting reaches you, you, your infant, and around 10 of the other villagers hide out in a run down shack nearby. Your baby is crying, so you cover its mouth. If you let go, the crying will alert the soldiers who will then kill everyone inside, including your baby. To save yourself and the other villagers, you must smother your baby.

We assume there are only two options and two corresponding outcomes:

1) Kill your own child and everyone else survives
2) Refuse to smother your baby, at the cost of his and everyone else's life

I can see the futility in keeping the kid alive, but I've seen how people, especially mothers, can get about their children. I don't have a kid, so I kind of have to supplant the infant with some other person who is very important to me. When I think about ending that person's life with my own hands... it's like it's not worth it. That doesn't seem to make sense, but I couldn't kill her. She's too important to me. I'd rather die. And at that point, who cares about the rest of the villagers?

Honestly, I don't think it's a very good scenario. First of all, I doubt you could even call it an ethical dilemma, as from an ethical point of view everybody agrees: the baby needs to die. This is more of a question of "could you do it?".

Which brings me to the details of the scenario. First of all, it's kind of a foreign scenario to most people. Our villages don't generally get invaded by a group of baby-killing soldiers that we apparently stand no change against, and a lot of us probably don't have children. Second, it seems like there'd be other options. For instance, why can't you silence the baby without killing it? If you cover the mouth, it can still breathe through the nose. But let's say the kid absolutely has to die: why should I do it myself? There are apparently 10 others. Can't I say to them: "We all know my kid has to die, but I'm kind of the father, so I can't do it. Anybody else care to save us all?" In this scenario, there are just too many things that are unclear to me.

My main problem is this: If there is nobody else that will die because of the crying, I won't kill my child. I will just die fighting. If there are others that basically force me (at least from an ethical POV), they can do it, because it'd be selfish not to let them. Maybe if for some reason the others would be unable to, I'd do it myself, but I really don't know about that.