Justifying atrocities in the name of saving lives

[UDS]

@RivkahChaya

I definitely think it’s moral to choose the lesser of two evils when it is absolutely inevitable that one must come to pass, such as steering your car into another car, to avoid hitting a child who has run out into the street. You will probably cause a lot of damage to both cars, but it is likely that neither driver will be hurt, your passenger will not be hurt, and you cannot see a passenger in the other car; meanwhile, there is a good chance you would kill the child.

However, sometimes there is a third choice, which is “do nothing,” or something similar. I am not in a position to reasonably judge whether there was a third choice in the bombing situation. If it truly saved lives, then maybe it was the right thing to do; however, it did make permanent changes to the global environment, and perhaps those were not worth the lives saves.

Well, when it comes to real-world ethical questions, there’s frequently not only a third choice (“do nothing”) but a fourth and a fifth and a sixth, being various other things that could be done. (E.g. steer your car the other way, not towards the oncoming car but towards the tree. Perhaps that will save the child at no risk to the driver of the other car, but a greater risk to you and your passenger.)

And, of course, the outcome of the choices we don’t take can never be absolutely known. And when we are contemplating them as possibilities or options, we’ll frequently have very poor information about what the outcomes of each would be. (Is the driver of the other car wearing their seatbelt? Is there an unrestrained infant in the back seat? These are not things I can necessarily see and/or take account of in the split-second that I have to make my decision.)

@RivkahChaya

The bombing situation has too many variables. I don’t personally feel in a position to judge.

This will be true of many real-world ethical dilemmas that have been faced by people other than ourselves, won’t it?

So I’m not sure that the primary value of discussions like this is to enable us, in a particular historical event, to judge a particular person to have acted morally or immorally. Rather, it’s to allow us to discuss the principles that we believe ought to govern a dilemma of this kind. Once we have identified the principles actually applying them might be very difficult because of poor information, limited time or external constraints, but that’s not really the point. We can’t even attempt to apply sound principles to such a dilemma if we haven’t worked out what principles would be sound.

@RivkahChaya

I would love to know what a team of Japanese ethicists and physicists thinks, though, based on the given that Japan will lose the war, what is the most moral way to end the war? is the answer from a Japanese perspective different from that of a global perspective?

The very fact that you’re fighting a war at all means that you are willing to accept that, in some circumstances, some killing is justified. So I don’t think you can say that avoiding killing people is an absolute and overriding moral principle which eclipses all others.

On the other hand, I think most people’s moral instinct would be to say that killing is, by default, not justified. If you seek to justify a particular instance of killing you have to point to particular circumstances that justify it. So then you have to ask yourself awkward questions about the circumstances in which killing is justified.

Some insight can be gained here, maybe, by asking ourselves why, in post #1, did Velocity offer the bombing of Hiroshima as an instance of an atrocity? I agree, characterising it as an atrocity may have poisoned the well, but we can still ask ourselves why anybody might be tempted to call it an atrocity And a couple of features immediately suggest themselves - this was an indiscriminate weapon (a “weapon of mass destruction”, as Dubya use to say); it was targeted at a largely noncombatant population; its deployment was allegedly motivated by a desire to enhance American prestige and influence, and not merely by a desire to save lives; to the extent that its deployment was motivated by a desire to save lives, it allegedly prioritised American (combatant) lives over Japanese (noncombatant) lives. And so forth.

The question worth discussing is not whether these claims are true in relation to the Hiroshima bombing, but rather whether they point to the kind of considerations that we think would or might be morally relevant. Do we agree, in other words, that it’s harder (or impossible) to justify attacks on noncombatants? Do we agree that each protagonist can (or even should) prioritise the lives of its own over the lives of the other? If we agree that some lives enjoy a greater moral “protection” than others, does it follow that the use of weapons which don’t distinguish must be unjustified? Is the sheer scale of the loss of life a morally relevant consideration? Is it acceptable to kill people in order to enhance your power or status? Interrogating questions like that - ideally, without identifying with either side in the particular historical example chosen to illuminate the questions - is the kind of exercise that enables us to grope our way towards identifying the principles we need.

[T.M]

@doorhinge

But who’s side would you be on?

Pess the knife and fork

[T.M]

@Trinopus

Tricky. In every conceivable case? Suppose 100 babies are born with a really rare heart valve, that could be made into a medicine to save 500 cancer patients. The babies must die to save the cancer patients?

i.e., what if you don’t have a formal legal power over the 100? Just make one up and apply it?

Lives could be saved, in the U.S., if we had a mandatory organ donation law. This doesn’t require anyone’s death: the donors are already dead! But we don’t do this, because we hold that heirs and estates have an overriding property right in the deceased’s body. So if we don’t yank hearts and lungs from cadavers, how are you possibly going to justify seizing them from living people?

A mandatory organ donation law could include an opt out clause so that you could stop your organs being used. It will also stop heirs from going against the wishes of the deceased who wishes his organs to be donated.

[Shodan]

@Czarcasm

Q. Which dog is bigger-a Dalmatian or a Pekinese?
A. They are both considered dogs.
???

Which is more of a dog?

Regards,
Shodan

[andros]

A dalmatian, surely. Pekes are at least a third cat.

[Trinopus]

@T.M

A mandatory organ donation law could include an opt out clause so that you could stop your organs being used. It will also stop heirs from going against the wishes of the deceased who wishes his organs to be donated.

True…but this supports RikvahChaya and UDS in their observation that there are often other alternatives. I proposed a “third way” and you’re refining it (and I agree with the proposal) into a “fourth way.”

If we do try to reason ourselves into supporting an atrocity, because it’s the lesser of only two choices, we need to be damn sure there are only two choices.

[Lemur866]

@UDS

And, of course, the outcome of the choices we don’t take can never be absolutely known. And when we are contemplating them as possibilities or options, we’ll frequently have very poor information about what the outcomes of each would be. (Is the driver of the other car wearing their seatbelt? Is there an unrestrained infant in the back seat? These are not things I can necessarily see and/or take account of in the split-second that I have to make my decision.)

I think this is why people balk when presented with quantifiable utilitarian hypotheticals. Why won’t they agree to grind up 100 babies to save 500 cancer patients? 500 > 100 ! It’s obvious you should grind up the babies!

Except in the real world, it is almost never obvious. Sure, you can grind up 100 babies. But where’s your guarantee that you can save 500 cancer patients thereby? In the real world there is no such guarantee. And so very few people are going to want to grind up 100 babies.

[octopus]

@Lemur866

I think this is why people balk when presented with quantifiable utilitarian hypotheticals. Why won’t they agree to grind up 100 babies to save 500 cancer patients? 500 > 100 ! It’s obvious you should grind up the babies!

Except in the real world, it is almost never obvious. Sure, you can grind up 100 babies. But where’s your guarantee that you can save 500 cancer patients thereby? In the real world there is no such guarantee. And so very few people are going to want to grind up 100 babies.

Furthermore in large societies with abundant resources the idea that there is an intrinsic sanctity of life and the promotion of that idea may be more valuable than the 500 lives saved.

[UDS]

@Lemur866

I think this is why people balk when presented with quantifiable utilitarian hypotheticals. Why won’t they agree to grind up 100 babies to save 500 cancer patients? 500 > 100 ! It’s obvious you should grind up the babies!

Except in the real world, it is almost never obvious. Sure, you can grind up 100 babies. But where’s your guarantee that you can save 500 cancer patients thereby? In the real world there is no such guarantee. And so very few people are going to want to grind up 100 babies.

My point is that, even in the hypothetical, if we posit that saving the 500 lives is a moral certainty, most people still decline to kill the 100 babies.

And I suggest that what’s behind this is that most people reckon that “killing” and “dying” are not morally equivalent. If somebody dies that may be sad or tragic, but it’s not inherently evil. Whereas if somebody kills . . .

Which in turn leads to a sense that failing to prevent a death is not morally equivalent to killing. And therefore the moral calculus can’t simply be “which course of action leads to fewer deaths?”

[Trinopus]

@UDS

. . . Which in turn leads to a sense that failing to prevent a death is not morally equivalent to killing. And therefore the moral calculus can’t simply be “which course of action leads to fewer deaths?”

Agreed.

Also, we don’t know all the consequences…or all the conditions. We kill the 100 babies, start to grind them up…and a contaminant gets into the mixture, making the whole treatment a failure. Oops.

Or we grind up the 100 babies…and, at the same time, researchers in a lab somewhere else come up with a cure that doesn’t require a life to be sacrificed. (Somewhat akin to the “Doctor McCoy” problem from one of the Star Trek movies.)

Or 402 of the cancer victims say they will refuse to accept the treatment if it means grinding up 100 babies. (Now they, by their action, are condemning 98 people to death!)

It isn’t a game of chess.

[UDS]

@Trinopus

Agreed.

Also, we don’t know all the consequences…or all the conditions. We kill the 100 babies, start to grind them up…and a contaminant gets into the mixture, making the whole treatment a failure. Oops.

Or we grind up the 100 babies…and, at the same time, researchers in a lab somewhere else come up with a cure that doesn’t require a life to be sacrificed. (Somewhat akin to the “Doctor McCoy” problem from one of the Star Trek movies.)

Or 402 of the cancer victims say they will refuse to accept the treatment if it means grinding up 100 babies. (Now they, by their action, are condemning 98 people to death!)

It isn’t a game of chess.

Well, of course, we can frame the hypothesis however we like. We can frame a hypothesis in which there are only two possibilities, and the outcome of each is morally certain.

Not that I think this is remotely realistic, but it’s a useful thought-experiment to focus attention on just one issue. And, I claim, that given this hypothetical simple binary with full information about the outcome of the two possible courses, most people still decline to shred the babies. Which shows us that, for most of us, our sense is that “which course of action leads to fewer deaths?” is not the only question
that needs to be asked.

[Garula]

When people think about whether the ends justify the means, they tend to do a really crappy job of construing exactly what’s included in the “ends”. Okay, so we snatch up 100 babies from the local hospital maternity wing, grind them up, and use the baby juice to miraculously save 500 cancer patients. Hooray, that’s the end, right? No, not at all. You can’t just end the hypothetical at that point and move on to another one. People are not perfectly rational, altruistically utilitarian robots, they’re going to respond to this change in principles. When people think that they or the people they care about aren’t safe at a hospital, they’re going to act accordingly with their self interests in mind. People will stop going to the hospital for anything that isn’t life threatening. Elaborate insurance plans will go into place to reduce the incentive for hospitals to harvest their patients. No one will voluntarily go in for surgery unless they have at least two bodyguards with guns trained on the doctors.

We don’t kill people out of convenience like that because the societal consequences far, far outweigh the short term benefits. Most of these hypothetical moral questions fail to take into account what happens past the immediate aftermath. Most of our moral principles (don’t lie, don’t steal, don’t kill, etc.) are pretty good guidelines because unless you have a good reason to break them, you’ll end up creating much worse consequences.

[clairobscur]

@msmith537

Operation Meetinghouse, the conventional aerial bombing of Tokyo killed more than 100,000 people, making it the deadliest bombing of the war. Including Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

I guess I don’t really understand why some things are considered an “atrocity” more than others in war.

I guess it’s subjective. For my part I consider both atrocities. I can’t think of killing more than 100 000 people, many of them horribly as not being an atrocity. Thinking it was justified doesn’t make inflicting so much death and suffering any less atrocious.