quote:

Originally posted by D-res But if you refuse to follow through and your family dies would you not feel guilt and is to be guilty not to be morally responsible?

Unless your family is killed by the person you were supposed to kill, I fail to see a direct link between both actions; and, also, I don't see how moral responsibility and guilt could be intrinsically related.

Here in Brazil, prisoners (who have managed to get hold of mobile phones) phone common citizens, pretending someone in their family was kidnapped and is now being held at gunpoint.
Let's use this in our first thought experiment: Jones⁵ has just received a phone call from one of these despicable fellows, and was told the following:

"Jones, we've just kidnapped your mother, and we're going to kill her if you don't pay us 20,000 dollars. If you call her, we'll kill her right away."

Should Jones⁵ pay the ransom? Prima facie, it seems like the best thing to do. Human life is sacred, and if you need to pay a certain amount of money in order to save someone, why wouldn't you do that?

Firstly, you can't know whether the person was really kidnapped. Also, even if you mother were being held at gunpoint, nothing could assure Jones⁵ that she's going to be freed if he pays the ransom — she could be dead by the time he received the phone call. In a worst case scenario, Jones⁵ could decide not to pay the ransom and, what do you know, her mother got killed by someone who wasn't the caller nor someone the caller hired. Should Jones⁵ be morally responsible in that case? It would be absurd to say he should, even though he might feel guilty because, as he perceived it, he was the one who caused her death (when he clearly had no effect upon it).

It's 12:30 PM now and I've got to go to work, but I hope I've managed to make myself clear

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I wish I could have found the full text of the example I wanted to bring into this discussion, but short of typing it out myself, it doesn't look as though it will happen.

None-the-less, in his critique of Utilitarianism, Bernard Williams discusses this kind of idea of "negative responsibility", and though it's framed in a slightly different light, I think the example can help elucidate this issue more fully.

This is lifted directly from Wikipedia, and is (in my opinion) an adequate summary of Williams objection as it appears in Utilitarianism: For & Against:

quote:

One of Williams' famous arguments against utilitarianism centres on Jim, a scientist doing research in a South American country led by a brutal dictator. Jim finds himself in the central square of a small town facing 20 rebels, who are captured and tied up. The captain who has defeated them says that, if Jim will kill one of the rebels, the others will be released in honour of Jim's status as a guest. But if he does not, they will all be killed.

I want to first make clear that these are the complete details of the situation - there is no room for speculation regarding other possibilities. Either Jim kills one or twenty are killed by the dictator - there's no middle ground here.

For this discussion the problem that seems to arise is one of integrity with respect to one's personal projects. If it were simply a matter of calculated responsibility, it would be a non-issue, and the principle of utility would dictate our course of action. Unfortunately, it seems as though it really becomes an issue of Jim's integrity, and there are two options I see as readily apparent here:

1. Jim understands that killing one saves 20 and chooses to sacrifice his own integral project of "not killing others" for what sees as the morally right choice (saving 20).

2. Jim is so committed to his own project of pacifism that he cannot kill even one, and so it would follow that all the rebels are killed.

It might not seem odd to suggest that Jim would feel some measure of guilt should he choose the first option (he did still, after all, kill a man), but it might seem very odd to suggest that should he have chosen the second option, he may feel no guilt at all. In either situation Jim is making a decision that will end the lives of either one or twenty people, but that initial choice of whether or not anyone will die is something in which he has no agency.

Given this perspective, one may say that in either situation the most base moral act was in the hands of the dictator, and so of the "best of bad choices", should Jim choose to kill the one instead of allowing the twenty to be killed, it seems much more comfortable to say "He made the right choice." This, however, is only a comfortable solution for those who believe that morally right action can be derived entirely from logic/reason. In my experience, this rarely seems to be a plausible expectation - for it seems truly rare to me to encounter individuals who think of/act on moral responsibility based entirely on logical calculation.

Thus the question becomes whether or not you believe the question of moral agency can be resolved entirely to the dictator, or whether Jim can actually make a conclusively and satisfactory "morally right" decision.

And it's specifically because of this idea of integrity to one's own projects that I'm not sure he can. Either choice is going to alienate Jim from himself in some way, shape, or form regardless of the dictators influence.

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A question I would raise is what constitutes a threat worthy of moral abdication? Threat of personal death or injury? Threat of blackmail? Threat of personal injury of a loved one? As Moral Hazard points out, there is always a fundamental choice regardless of whatever personal harm a certain decision risks.

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