Pitting Max_S

[Max_S]

@Max_S

Whatever you think I’m saying doesn’t hold up, or I’m contradicting myself somehow, because morally speaking I think dumping a kitten onto a busy freeway would be about the same as running it over with my own vehicle.

@steronz

But it’s entirely different if you’re just turning the kittens over to the Department of Dumping Kittens onto Freeways.

@Max_S

That’s also pretty much the same as dumping the kitten myself. Unless someone down the line, other than me, makes a meaningful decision then it is essentially my decision.

@steronz

But it’s entirely different if you turn the kitten over to your local sheriff, knowing full well that he’s going to turn the kitten over to the Department of Dumping Kittens onto Freeways.

I think there might be something here that was lost along the way. It’s 1858 in Vermont and I hear noises coming from the barn. I grab my gun to find out what’s going on, and after a warning shot the fugitive slave reveals himself. I set down my gun and listen to his story, etc. To my knowledge the law doesn’t require me to turn in the fugitive, and is satisfied with my not sheltering him. So by default I won’t turn him in, but rather just tell him to get off my property.

Under what circumstances would I turn him over to law enforcement? Let’s say the neighbors or even a member of my own household, roused by the gunshot, overheard some chatter and left to inform the sheriff. The fugitive is telling me his story and suddenly a sheriff’s posse is knocking on my door asking me to turn him over or face the consequences. As they have both the law and the threat of force on their side, I have to consider whether I should violate the law and risk self harm or legal peril, or to comply with the law and turn the fugitive over to the authorities. In this situation I could see myself deciding I don’t owe it to this runaway slave to put myself at such a risk, and turn him in.

Now, in post #605 I wrote that my general duty to follow the law ends when the law requires me to violate my conscience to the extreme. But in the moral analysis above, turning him in involved not only violating the law but also risking the significant consequences of doing so. After the sheriff has hold of the runaway it could be a sure thing that he gets remitted to slavery, and although there is supposed to be a hearing I could be compelled to recount the story I’d heard proving his slave status. Still, all that isn’t necessarily more wrong than me getting shot by an angry mob.

And this is really where the kitty analogy fails. Even if there were a Department of Dumping Kittens onto Freeways, if I’m not facing substantial consequences I wouldn’t follow that law. Just like if turning over fugitive slaves was the law, where being put back into slavery was a sure-fire thing, and I wasn’t facing substantial consequences for violating it, I wouldn’t follow that law.

(To my knowledge, I haven’t contradicted myself in this thread.)

~Max