Except that you’re not killing innocent people. All the people who would die if you push the button would also die if nobody pushes any buttons. In fact you would save all the innocent people on your boat.
You are; the tendency to justify the act, as in this:
…is precisely what Nolan was examining.
Or to put it another way, either choice condemns a boatload of people to death.
But that is a totally fair justification. It’s definitely not immoral, and I can’t imagine many people thinking it is, if they give it a moments thought.
I would posit that you are the immoral one, since by not pushing the button you run the risk of twice as many innocents being killed. (If there is also a Sherrerd on the other boat.) Perhaps the joker wanted to examine this, the tendency for humans to let themselves die for misunderstood “principles”.
Bull. The Joker wanted to spread suffering and misery, not engage in philosophical or psychological research. He delighted in killing for its own sake.
I agree. I was just trying to mimic what Sherrerd said, but I now notice that he said Nolan not the Joker.
Well, this is all a matter of opinion, of course (and one of the great strengths of Nolan’s movie is that it IS thought-provoking. Try to get a discussion like this going about Ouija, for instance!)
My take is that what’s immoral is to justify pushing the button by saying 'I had to do it; I had no choice’. The moral thing is to say 'I had the choice–and I chose to let the other people die because I wanted to live.’
In other words, pushing or not pushing the button isn’t so much the issue, as is whether you take responsibility for having pushed it, or try to avoid responsibility by saying 'the Joker made me do it; it wasn’t me; I didn’t do this.’
That’s the dividing line, in my view.
In ‘Mother Night’, Vonnegut explores a similar thesis: that whatever you do, you’re morally accountable for, even if you did it for a higher reason. In that case, it was a writer who wrote propaganda for Germany in order to send important coded messages to Allies. In the end, he does not absolve himself of culpability for the propaganda. I have to respect that, even though I would exculpate him for it. I don’t know whether I’d exculpate myself. I’d like to think I hold myself to a higher standard than I do others.
By Vonnegut’s standard, pushing the button is an act of violence.
Or at least, ONE of them making a run for it and pushing the button. IMHO that’s the flaw here.
I hope that most people would hesitate to push the button, even if they assumed the Joker was telling the whole truth. It’s definitely a moral dilemma in the minds of many people, even though from a game-theoretic standpoint, the simple answer is to push the goddamn button as fast as possible, no question.
Another example from literature: The Magus by John Fowles. The title character relates a story from the past where he as mayor is protecting a young man that the Nazis demand. The Nazis say “Turn him over or we’ll kill everyone in the village” (except for the Magus and the young man, who are in a safe place). What does the Magus do?
These are valid moral dilemmas, even though we think we can do the math and give simple answers. But as it turns out, ethics and morality aren’t quite that simple.
Great points about the Vonnegut (which I read many years ago) and the John Fowles novel (which I haven’t read, but will check out).
There’s The Choice–and then there’s how one lives with The Choice. There’s an argument to be made that the self-justification/self-deception route is the more perilous.
Nobody on either of the boats had the power to save anyone. If you don’t pull the trigger, then everyone lives or dies at the whim of the Joker. If he kills people, it’s his responsibility. If you do pull the trigger, then everyone on your boat lives or dies at the whim of the Joker, and that’s still his responsibility… but the people on the other boat all die regardless of the Joker’s whims. That’s now your responsibility. Saying “but someone else would have just done it anyway if I didn’t” never excuses any moral wrong.
Not only do I think it was ridiculous as written, if, for some reason, it had been clearly stated that the passenger ship had no button to blow up the prisoners’ ship, it’s almost a certainty that the prisoners would **still **have blown up the passenger ship because they’re amoral scum who don’t value human life and an opportunity for ‘revenge’ against society in general like that would be a no-brainer to most of them. It’s just the way it is in the real world.
Just because you’re a prisoner doesn’t mean your amoral inhuman scum. That’s ridiculous.
Most people in prison aren’t there for murder, and even of the fraction that are in prison for murder only a small fraction of those are thrill killers with no regard for human life who want revenge against society in general.
Wow. You sound exactly like the asshole in the film who wanted to blow the other ship up. Was that intentional?
Yeah, when he had the button, he couldn’t press it. I guess when push came to shove, he decided he didn’t want the blood on his hands.
For the Joker, this was a battle for soul of Gotham. Batman believed there was good in these people. The Joker though the pretense of humanity would fall away as soon as it was tested. He wanted to show Batman that.
Yeah, and like I said it was ridiculous. Watch any documentary series about life in prison and see how altruistic & empathetic hardcore career felons are…
The Joker: Do I really look like a guy with a plan? You know what I am? I’m a dog chasing cars. I wouldn’t know what to do with one if I caught it! You know, I just… do things.