DTRT is doing that which causes the least harm to the most people.
ETA: upon reflection I feel my answer is incomplete. But my thinking box is tired.
Doing the Right Thing always turns out wrong for me.
It’s even less than a hypothetical example. It is the foundation on which I’d base the approach to resolving the hypothetical dilemma.
If I knew that someone divulged a secret with a presumption of confidence, I would need a persuasive argument to dislodge that confidence from primary importance… It’s a question of where honor lies in one’s priorities, and honor is really at the center of doing the right thing.
Very often it will be a matter of principles before personalities. Sometimes it is a matter of law and for some reason I don’t give that one the highest priority in all cases. If I had an acquaintance who was a criminal and he chose to share with me his crimes I would not lie on the stand for him. If I knew someone who made a bad decision but I felt certain was a good person I am not sure what I would do if called to the stand. I think the right thing to do would be testify honestly but I am not so sure I could do it.
It’s a euphemistic way to tell someone to commit suicide (as used in an episode of Hill Street Blues).
That is the same as Utilitarianism, which essentially says to act in such a way as to do the greatest amount of good for the most people.
Spike Lee’s best movie…that’s my immediate thought
For me it is to do that which most increases your state of mind. But I find that being in a higher state of mind tends to naturally lend itself to many of the same sorts of kindness and beauty that other ways of defining good do. It just for me really gets to the heart of things and covers the most bases.
You put it much better than I was going to. Thank you.
Doing the right thing means doing that which is most consistent with ones morals, as defined by one’s moral goal and reasonable expectations.
Doing what is lawful for some is a moral standard, it’s better than some other options, but it’s not ideal. In my estimation, sometimes what is legal and what is right by one’s own moral standards are not the same. There’s obviously the classic “steal a loaf of bread to feed your starving family”, which isn’t very real-world. But there’s some other examples I could give. Like, for instance, it is illegal to speed, but if everyone is going 10mph over, it can actually be more dangerous to go the speed limit (to oneself, but even moreso to others) so I’d argue it’s moral (though maybe not necessarily in one’s own interest depending on the estimation of one’s personal risk) to go with traffic.
What benefits one in the long run could be decent as well, that’s along the lines of rational self-interest or objectivism, and it seems to me that that’s how many people do operate, but there’s obviously some limitations to that that seem to go against most people’s intuitive moral sense. Really, if one cannot reasonably estimate that a particular consequence of an action will have meaningful consequences to oneself, then this sort of approach means one should be mostly indifferent to that consequence. Worse, this can end up in a situation like tragedy of the commons, where it’s always in one’s best interest to cheat, but when everyone cheats, everyone is worse off than if no one or only a few cheat.
And then, along the last few options you mention, there’s the oft quoted “needs of the many” type of moral argument, and I’d agree with it in general, but it breaks down under scrutiny. How can one person reasonably decide what is best for so many other people when we cannot even agree on what is in the best interest of the most people? Sure, there’s some obvious contrived situations, but usually it ends up in tough balancing situations where reasonable people can disagree on which outcome is better. That is, it’s easy to say a choice between one person dying and five, the vast majority of people will pick the one. But what if that one person is a doctor who could potentially save far more lives, or maybe that one person is a child and those five are all older people, or what if that one person will die a horrible painful death and the other five will die peacefully? There’s tons of twists we could come up with where I don’t think we could get the majority to consistently agree on all of the possibilities.
Really, a lot of people will have nice wonderful platitudes about how they make moral decisions, and they often sound nice, but they’re not really very useful in everyday moral decision making, especially when most lesser moral decisions are often made with minimal involvement of the higher brain functions, and the difficult ones are often too complicated to be solved with a simple motto. Ultimately, it seems to me that morality is often something that’s so deeply ingrained in us that most people’s moral reasoning is ultimately some sort of post hoc justification, but such that we often don’t even realize that that’s what we’ve done, and these deeply held moral beliefs are extremely difficult to change. In order to change it, we have to actually create that moral construct and them, for lack of a better term, self-incept it into our gut level.
Personally, this has been a big part of my own philosophizing and self-improvement cycle, and when I’m honest in post evaluation of my actions, I can see where what I had hoped I’d done doesn’t quite match up with my moral goal and rework it a bit.
So, TLDR, I go with “none of the above”; it’s a process, not a simple motto.
No, this is completely wrong-headed. Say you find yourself among a group of gossips. Do you morally support the group by making a cutting remark about somebody who isn’t even there, and will never be affected by or even know about your remark? You have just done the least amount of harm to the most people, but will you sleep well knowing you have done the right thing?.
Going along with the crowd is, for many of us, among the most immoral and shameful things we have done. Yet, it often appears at the time to be doing the most good for the most people. Crowds are often led or influenced by the most self-serving, from whose minds the right thing lies the furthest.
For this reason, Mark Twain said, “If I find myself agreeing with the majority, I rethink my position.”
As a kid, I got dragged to my grandfather’s rotary meetings all the time. Most of what I remember is a bunch of old white guys making speeches.
But one thing that did stick with me was the Four Way Test.
Maybe it doesn’t cover all eventualities, but it is a good starting point.
Laws are a very imperfect attempt to codify ethics, along with some poorly considered and poorly implemented attempts at legislating morality. Sometimes, laws are a good thing. Most times, in fact, as we do better in a more ordered society where the unethical do not prey upon the ethical, but laws can also be counterproductive when they attempt to make the immoral act in moral fashion. They become even more counterproductive when the unethical find their way into writing laws.
I feel disinclined to lend credence to a moral code promulgated by an organization disproportionately populated by people with a self-servoing economic relationship to the general public, from whom they have extracted a handsome personal share of the wealth. Whether that be the legislature, the priesthood, or Rotarians.
Dude that is not causing the least harm. NOT making any cutting remark would be.
Don’t actually know all that much about them, like I said, my experience was getting dragged to meetings as a kid with my grandfather.
I have no idea really what exactly they do, or how well they follow their code.
But regardless, I still think that it is a good start to an evaluation of the “right thing”.
The average Roman Catholic priest is not wealthy personally in today’s world.
Seems to me that none of the thread respondents have are or ever been a line soldier, police, pvt. security, etc… To all appearances they will not kill a 14 year old to save their own family members much less the greater good.
I really doubt their ability to take death for the good of (pick one) if it suddenly or slowly moves to the next thing that needs to happen.
The instinct for survival is good for mankind I am told but the necessity to give up your life in a conscious choice for (pick one) is far better when that is necessary.
I like to tell myself that I am like you but in reality, I know I am not.
Are you saying that not joining in on gossip when amongst a group of gossipers is somehow causing someone harm? If so, that is silly.
Lawful does not work per say because it can be subjective.
In Nazi Germany, it was lawful to exterminate Jews.
but genocide of course is not the right thing.
Refusing to go along with this and trying to save them, does not benefit you, and may well condemn you to death, but it is the right thing.
Whether it benefits the most is matter of opinion i suppose, depends on who you are asking, so that does not bear on it being the right thing or not.
It does not benefit the majority of the world population per say, though it would benefit the Jews in the affected area.
Aside from who you are asking for opinion, it is still the right thing.
For clarification, I’m not say DTRT is that which benefits the most people. I’m saying it’s doing that which harms the least. (And I still don’t think im exactly right here either) .