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I'm saying that a person taking the same risk to save just 2 people is more heroic, even though peoples' intuition is the opposite. Risking yourself to save 2 p
by spiffage 15y ago
I'm saying that a person taking the same risk to save just 2 people is more heroic, even though peoples' intuition is the opposite. Risking yourself to save 2 people takes guts and a serious commitment to the greater good. Doing the same for 100 people takes guts, but is kind of a no-brainer.
- CWuestefeld 15y agoI think you're on the verge of discovering that a utilitarian philosophy isn't the only way to look at the world. It's just so ingrained in us that it's hard to look beyond it.
- aidenn0 15y agoReally? I find that utilitarianism is not at all the common way of looking at the world. It is trivial to come up with ethical examples that utilitarianism disagrees with the gut-instinct version.
- CWuestefeld 15y agoIt is trivial to come up with ethical examples that utilitarianism disagrees with the gut-instinct version. That's true. But the typical formulation for utilitarianism -- "if a trolley is hurtling down the track, certain to kill 5 people ahead of it, is it OK to divert it onto a different track if that will result in killing a single person?" -- is very difficult to talk someone out of. The idea that minimizing the number of deaths overrides any absolute prohibition on taking a person's life is pretty much impossible to overcome. Hence my conclusion that utilitarianism is, or has become, the default mode of reasoning.