We were taking with some friends about ethics last evening.
To make it as synthetic as possible, the issue was as follows; would you sacrifice a life to save other people? Yes? No? How many could you sacrifice in order to save... how many? Is there a "rank" that you would rather save? What does it determine it? The same goes toward the sacrificed ones...
So these questions opened more ethical questionings.
It all started by something I remember someone said once; "Even though to torture is illegal and ethically incorrect, it would be justified in order to safe hundreds of people". Think about the Twin Towers for example. If torturing someone would have lead you to the information to avoid it. Would have been justified?
Then I brought the subject of the Nazi experiments. It is well known that these experiments performed over human lives, "helped" safe people suffering from hypothermia when victims of the freezing waters of the Northern Sea. And what about "Sulfanamides", how many lives were saved due to the implementation of these antibiotics? And whether the "data" -hate to use that expression when it comes to this particular issue- obtained in that way could be still be considered "scientifically valuable"? I realized that when analysing these kind of issues, one has to look at it as on a dissection table, leaving all emotional context outside, just keep facts. And WHATEVER CONCLUSION YOU DRAW OUT OF IT HAS TO FALL INTO THE CATEGORY OF "UNIVERSAL", OTHERWISE IT IS NOT CONSIDERED ETHICS BUT MORALS WHICH RUN LOCALLY . -Refresh your knowledge of the difference between them both-.
So I started this morning looking into the net to see what I could find about this fascinating, never clean cut ethical dilemmas. I found this; from the Jewish Virtual Library. I had no idea of my source when I was reading, it was a very interesting surprise.
2 comments:
Ethics is a very interesting topic. My Modern logic professor also teaches ethics and would often come to my class still mulling over the discusion he had in his ethics class and then bring it up to us. We at one point discussed the very scenario you bring up. He presented this problem to us... what if you were with a group of people and you decided to explore a coastal cave, while you were exploring, the tide started coming in and filling the cave. this being an obvious sign for your group to leave, you head back to the entrance, but one member of you group, leading the way, is a little larger and become stuck in the small opening you had all managed perfectly before. the tide is coming in quickly and filling the cave. you have two choices, blow up the stuck memeber of your group with old dinamite you found during your exploration and save the rest of the group or everyone drowns in the cave at high tide. this caused quite a stir in the class (side tracking the actual topic of that days class). what do u think?
Hi, thanks for your comment! Indeed it is a dilema. Did your professor have an answer to that? Would be very intresting to find out what is his position too!
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