Pam, any ad hominem attacks in this case are born out of frustration at your failure to respond meaningfully to my question.
I, however, will respond to your question, and I say yes. It would be morally justified, if that were the ONLY way to do things. Protecting my life, and protecting me from pain no matter how extreme are not worth one million lives.
Would you care to explain to me again, because I am just not getting it, how it can be that a million people are not more important than one person’s suffering? Further, will you respond to the question of whether or not you would be willing to use physical persuasion less than torture to get information if there were one million lives at stake?
Diogenes the Cynic please don’t take this badly, but I do find your implication that people who have no children of their own cannot answer questions about or completely care about children to be a little condescending. After all many parents are far from perfect in looking after their children, and many adults without children know a lot about what it means to look after children.
As for the OP, pah! it is possible to create schenarios under which anyone will break the rules they choose to live by, that is because schenarios are not real life, and all people are human. It does not make someones rules any weaker that they could be broken in extremis. Why do you seek to make some one say
‘OK I would rape my Grandmother if the alternative is blah, blah, blah…’
when this in no way makes a differnece to that person saying ‘I would never rape my Grandmother’?
Cheers, Bippy (who has no unusual thoughts about my Grandmother, may she rest in peace)
Let’s put it this way: (I know this will make me seem like a Big Geek here, but meh)
You’re arguing the Vulcan credo “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.” But that is a decision you can make only if you are the few, or the one.
You can decide to sacrifice your life for the good of humanity. I cannot decide to sacrifice your life for the good of humanity. The very fact that I am sacrificing your life means no good is being created.
Another thing: I’m utterly with Aunt Pam and Bippy the Beardless here. These hypotheticals are utterly far removed from the reality of the situation. The only question which has any bearing on what the reality of the situation would actualy be is this: Would you, a citizen of whatever country, vote in a candidate who supported the torture of people suspected of having information which could possibly save some lives.
Given the absence of certainties in this thing we call “The Real World,” any hypotheticals which assume certainties exist are automatically rendered meaningless. A good part of our moral characters are built around how we weigh up the risks and aquit ourselves in the face of uncertainty, not in situations where we know the outcome.
Perhaps I might answer your question another way, Rhum Runner. The fastest way to find a cure for a disease is to run so-called double-blind studies. When we are trying to cure outbreaks of a new disease in, say, dairy cattle, the veterinarians just pick 100 cows and randomly use the treatment on half and a placebo on half, without knowing until after some time has passed, which half got the real trial of the medicine to be tested.
Scientists believe this is the quickest and most accurate way to test new drugs for potency and efficacy.
So why don’t we test new AIDS drugs this way? We take a random group of AIDS sufferers and half get the new antiviral drug and half don’t.
Well, the fact is, we DO test new AIDS drugs this way sort of—but only if EACH PERSON VOLUNTEERS to be part of the study.
What is clearly immoral would be to pick a group of AIDS sufferers and COMPEL half of them to die just to prove through testing that a new drug will save the lives of millions. No drug lab would do this; no doctor would be involved with such a study; most likely if it were discovered, the perpetrators would be charged with murder.
Society (and many religions) have considered your question and decided that justifying a completely immoral act by arguing that it has what I may call “collateral benefits” is not an acceptable solution. It gives power to the individual who wants to play God. Your hypothetical is cleverly constructed to remove the actor, to mask the torturer, to hide what’s really happening. It doesn’t matter how many times you tell me to disregard that little man behind the curtain–the one holding the electric cattle prod. He’s still there. No matter how much you want us to ignore him and what he’s doing (“Just answer my question on its terms”), he won’t go away until we all say “Enough. No more torture in my name!!!”