the first option equates choosing whether someone lives or dies with a maximization problem, like an equation to be solved by cold robot calculations
the second option makes it my decision, and one that i have to make as much on impulse as on philosophical and moral justifications
i would feel dishonest switching the trains like i wasn't 'really' killing someone
pushing someone directly into a train to save lives, and then like in U-571 sending some young submariner to drown while fixing to sub to save the rest of the crew's lives, you have to take responsibility for that. that's a part of your character.
in the first option you can say 'well anyone would have done it'. that is why i am ambivalent about it, it doesn't say anything about who i actually am, just how i would appear to other people.
i don't know why i'm going at it in this manner, it might be because i've heard the first problem in the context of 'some ethics professor once said to me' or in a book. it's like the 'quintessential problem' or something, and i guess talking about it feels ingenuine to me, dishonest, like for all the talking we can do about it to figure out why we might feel a certain way, why we might want to appear to others in a certain way, it is too removed from emotion to be an accurate depiction of behavior.
no subject
the second option makes it my decision, and one that i have to make as much on impulse as on philosophical and moral justifications
i would feel dishonest switching the trains like i wasn't 'really' killing someone
pushing someone directly into a train to save lives, and then like in U-571 sending some young submariner to drown while fixing to sub to save the rest of the crew's lives, you have to take responsibility for that. that's a part of your character.
in the first option you can say 'well anyone would have done it'. that is why i am ambivalent about it, it doesn't say anything about who i actually am, just how i would appear to other people.
i don't know why i'm going at it in this manner, it might be because i've heard the first problem in the context of 'some ethics professor once said to me' or in a book. it's like the 'quintessential problem' or something, and i guess talking about it feels ingenuine to me, dishonest, like for all the talking we can do about it to figure out why we might feel a certain way, why we might want to appear to others in a certain way, it is too removed from emotion to be an accurate depiction of behavior.
wow it's late and i'm running on