schmendeler said:

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Martin Q. Blank said:

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Human life possibly having no value to the universe as a whole doesn't really matter for this to be something worthwhile to consider.

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Well we should really figure this out before considering what the right answer to the trolley problem is.

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I prayed about it and it was revealed to me that my thoughts on it are correct.

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How can you be correct about a "possibility"?

Martin Q. Blank said:

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schmendeler said:

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Martin Q. Blank said:

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Human life possibly having no value to the universe as a whole doesn't really matter for this to be something worthwhile to consider.

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Well we should really figure this out before considering what the right answer to the trolley problem is.

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I prayed about it and it was revealed to me that my thoughts on it are correct.

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How can you be correct about a "possibility"?

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my suspicion was confirmed.

schmendeler said:

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Martin Q. Blank said:

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schmendeler said:

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Martin Q. Blank said:

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Quote:

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Human life possibly having no value to the universe as a whole doesn't really matter for this to be something worthwhile to consider.

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Well we should really figure this out before considering what the right answer to the trolley problem is.

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I prayed about it and it was revealed to me that my thoughts on it are correct.

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How can you be correct about a "possibility"?

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my suspicion was confirmed.

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If human life has no value, how is this matter something worthwhile to consider? We don't do the same for pebbles on railroad tracks.

Martin Q. Blank said:

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schmendeler said:

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Martin Q. Blank said:

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schmendeler said:

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Martin Q. Blank said:

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Quote:

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Human life possibly having no value to the universe as a whole doesn't really matter for this to be something worthwhile to consider.

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Well we should really figure this out before considering what the right answer to the trolley problem is.

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I prayed about it and it was revealed to me that my thoughts on it are correct.

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How can you be correct about a "possibility"?

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my suspicion was confirmed.

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If human life has no value, how is this matter something worthwhile to consider? We don't do the same for pebbles on railroad tracks.

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I only care about pennies. they have a face.

Nobody here is saying that human life doesn't have value.

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Nobody here is saying that human life doesn't have value.

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But does human life have objective value vs subjective?

Why is this not a moral dliemma if a dead leaf fallen from a tree above the tracks in on track A and a person is on track B?
Consider roaches on Track A vs people on track B?
Consider one person in your family on track A vs ten babies on track B, or ten friends on track B?

If there is no God and evolution is true (big bang), we are all the result of an accident. No purpose, no objective value, no cause. Just matter and energy reacting in space. You and I have no more value than a dead leaf. However we can pull just about anyone off of the street for this experiment no matter what their religious beliefs are and we have a moral dilemma when humanity is on the tracks.

Wouldn't it be strange if we all lived our lives as if humanity has objective value when no such value exists?

Do you think we can measure the moral decline of humanity by selecting non-human options on one of the tracks?

A train is coming, God is at the controls, all of humanity is on Track A and Jesus is on Track B. God chooses track B and humanity instead of offering gratitude curses God.

I think an atheist would have to consider the utility of the humans on the track. What do they do for a living? How much do they contribute to society? etc.

DirtDiver said:

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Why is this not a moral dliemma if a dead leaf fallen from a tree above the tracks in on track A and a person is on track B?
Consider roaches on Track A vs people on track B?

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The answer to this is pretty simple from my perspective: most people subjectively value other people a lot more than they value leafs and roaches. This is true whether or not an objective morality exists.

Nobody makes a decision here based on objective value even if it exists. They can only make the decision based on how they value people, and that value is subjective. The existence or lack of objective value is irrelevant to this debate.

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The answer to this is pretty simple from my perspective: most people subjectively value other people a lot more than they value leafs and roaches. This is true whether or not an objective morality exists.

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Do you find it odd that this 'subjective' value system aligns with God's that human life is more valuable than animal life? Are we fools as humans to ascribe subjective value to people if no objective value exists?

If my subjective opinion is that African Americans are 3/5's of a human, why would that be wrong for me to live that view out?

I think this experiment works because:

• God has given humanity a conscience
• humanity has objective value, (no matter what my subjective opinions are)

Does objective morality exist experiments?

• human track A, spider track B
• human track A, your dog track B
• human track A, operator is offered 10 millions dollars to run over the person on track A

Notice how the degree of temptation can differ.

Ulrich said:

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Nobody makes a decision here based on objective value even if it exists. They can only make the decision based on how they value people, and that value is subjective. The existence or lack of objective value is irrelevant to this debate.

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"Objective" does not mean everyone thinks the same. Of course if a Nazi sees 5 Jews and one Aryan, he's going to throw the switch to hit the Jews.

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Nobody makes a decision here based on objective value even if it exists. They can only make the decision based on how they value people, and that value is subjective. The existence or lack of objective value is irrelevant to this debate

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Again - I think humanity having objective value is the foundation of this experiment. If humanity only has subjective value there's no longer a moral dilemma. If I subjectively valued spiders over people and killed people to save spiders, that's okay because humanity has zero objective value.

I believe the objective value of humanity is so intertwined with our conscience that we often don't realize we are making decision with that standard.

What do we teach our children?:
Respect grownups and people even thougth you may disagree
don't let people hurt you
use your manners
protect those who are not protecting themselves (tell a teacher, come to the rescue)
if people are being bullies, don't be one too

There's a foundation there beyond our subjective opinions. We often see this when we properly or improperly judge others.

DirtDiver said:

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Do you find it odd that this 'subjective' value system aligns with God's that human life is more valuable than animal life?

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Personally, I think that man made God in his image, so no, not really.

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Are we fools as humans to ascribe subjective value to people if no objective value exists?

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Fools in what regard? We ascribe value to plenty of things that have no objective value. Gems, pieces of paper with pictures of dead presidents, chewing with our mouths closed, etc., etc. I don't think any of these things are foolish, but I don't think they have any objective value beyond what society assigns to them. So why should valuing human beings be foolish, even if it isn't objective?

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If my subjective opinion is that African Americans are 3/5's of a human, why would that be wrong for me to live that view out?

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Other people will view treating a black man as 3/5 of a human as wrong. You will suffer the consequences for that view if you hold it and act on it or make it publicly known because you live in a society. My guess is many people hold that view or something similar to it (I doubt we'd have to look much further than the politics board) and only don't act on it or make it publicly known for fear of those consequences. So would it be wrong to live out that view? According to my subjective morality, absolutely. According to someone who holds that view, apparently not. But, given the society we live in, it would probably still be against their best interest to express that view because they will be ostracized, or possibly worse.

I don't find your argument persuasive. I'm not sure objective value is even a comprehensible concept; at best it's a description of the median of subjective values. If you think that objective value is somehow attracting that median, I'd like to know the mechanism by which it does so. I'd also like to know the unit of measure.

In any case, I still don't see the point of this digression. Regardless of how the valuation is determined, the person standing at the switch is choosing to do nothing and let 5x die or act and kill 1x. How the value of x is determined is irrelevant. Introducing spurious non-x comparisons like dead leaves or spiders is another attempt to wriggle out of answering the question posed. The only relevant facts are the ratio (5:1) and the difference between acting and choosing not to act.

EDIT: to expand a little. We set the value of human life pretty high, whereas dead leaves and spiders are worthless, in fact probably have a negative value; I literally pay someone to haul away leaves and kill spiders with chemicals. But take a nonhuman item of very high yet clearly subjective value: maybe there are 5 Van Goghs on one track and 1 on the other. Does the dilemma return?

I have a very difficult time knowing because the trolley problem as originally proposed has always seemed pretty open and shut to me, but maybe someone else can answer.

I think the implication is something like - if x is not a number, or infinity, then there is no real meaning to the question "is 5x > x".

Edit: I misread your post.

The next step is that all human lives are perhaps not equally valuable. So abcde > f may not be correct.

And then you arrive back at the person assigning a value to each person's life. Which is why it is utilitarianism.

But utilitarianism is uncomfortable for us. In normal circumstances we kind of operate under anoresumed framework of objective morality. We don't have to take complete responsibility for it because society does that for us...or religion, or whatever. In this case there is no socially acceptable answer, so the utility is only per our judgment. We become the source of morality, and responsible for it, which is frightening.

Why should human beings talking responsibility for their own morality be something that is frightening?

Taking responsibility for anything is more frightening than allowing someone else.

Consider, for example, the trolley problem expanded to a vote.

Everyone in society votes to save the five. You are manning the switch. Is it harder or easier to save the five?

I personally don't save the five either way.

I was under the impression that in surveys something like 90% save the five...

I feel like not acting is different than taking an action that directly results in a person's death. Even if the balance is out of whack.

I wonder why that is? Why are people comfortable pulling the lever but not pushing the fat man when they are ostensibly the same thing. There must be something about them that separates them. I wonder if there is some truth about human nature buried in that. The fact that this discrepancy exists suggests to me that this thought experiment does not really answer any questions about how we view utilitarianism, tthough

I think a lot of it has to do with a mental degree of separation from an action. With the trolley, you aren't physically touching or harming any individual. The trolley itself is doing that, you are merely directing the trolley. With the fat man, there is no separation. You are directly responsible for the act that kills the fat man.

What if instead of pushing the fat man, you could pull a lever that would sort of catapult the fat man off the bridge to his demise on the train tracks? I suspect there would be comparable revulsion to this action as there would be to physically pushing the fat man.

The answer is obviously you do nothing.

#ItWasAllPreordained