BluffThis and Chezlaw's Weird Philosophical Contortions

David Sklansky · #1 09-12-2007, 02:37 PM

In order to justify his anti embryonic stem cell research stance, as consistent with other stances of his, BluffThis has invoked some hi falootin hairsplitting. I came up with a hypothetical scenario which I thought would expose the silliness of that hairsplitting and was surprised to see that chezlaw seemed to take Bluff's side. I want to hear what logical arguments can be made for their side.

Unlike most of my other hypotheticals, I ask that we restrict the discussion to the specific situation.

Assume that you are the commander in chief. You are told that an extremely "high value target" is definitely inside a certain house in Iraq and will remain there for a few hours. So you are asked to bomb it by officials who will guarantee he is killed. So far a slam dunk. But then you are told that there will definitely be five children in there, who will be killed as well. You are tormented by that fact but you decide that ultimately far more children will be saved by your act. So you go along with the bombing.

As the bombers near the target, a general mentions to you in passing that the target has a shelter under the house that would save him but he never uses it when the children are in the house. Thus the children being there is actually NECESSARY for his killing. The question is should that make you abort the mission? (In my original formulation of the question I postulated that somehow the children's death was actually responsible for the target's death, they fall on him or something like that. In this new formulation it is only their presence, [which results in their death,] that is needed to kill the target. For those who think this distinction matters assume my original formulation is the case.)

BluffThis and chezlaw think that you, the president, upon hearing this new information (at least in its original formulation) should order the attack to be stopped. Even though you were originally willing to cause these six deaths for the sake of the greater good.

To accentuate how strange this stance seems to me, let us hypothesize further that you are apprised at this time that there is an equally high valued target a few miles further down the road who has no shelter. Again there are kids in the house who are certain to be killed, but this time there is no connection between their death and the target's death. Except there are eight of them. You plane has one bomb. It appears that chezlaw and Bluffthis are forced to say that they would divert that bomb to the second target.

Someone is going to have to explain to me how anyone could agree with that. Even God.

wtfsvi · #2 09-12-2007, 03:10 PM

I love the addition of the 8 kids house. That really shows what a hopeless position it is. Go sklansky [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

edit: There is one argument that might work. In one case the described behaviour (bombing even if the kids die) is "necessary" to not encourage the use of children as human shields. In the other, it's not.

David Sklansky · #3 09-12-2007, 03:24 PM

It is important to understand that we are stipulating that it would be OK to bomb the eight kid house if the five kid option was not available.

Phil153 · #4 09-12-2007, 03:37 PM

Sklansky ownage at its finest.

tpir · #5 09-12-2007, 03:42 PM

Can I take an agnostic position on this? i.e. I don't feel qualified to make this judgment and I am not sure that anyone else is qualified either.

Is killing 5 kids better than killing 8? What if the 5 kids were clones of Einstein, Ghandi, MLK, etc? 20 kittens versus 10 babies? 50 babies versus 200 blind adults?

Phil153 · #6 09-12-2007, 03:47 PM

The things is that in real life, people do have to make choices. Like stem cells or no stem cells. Or even scenarios not that far removed from Sklansky's above. You don't get to waver, and inaction can be the same as consent.

Besides, these questions have already been answered. It has been decided that five kids is acceptable for a high priority target. The logic starts from there. And you're on crack if you don't think that killing 8 kids is a lot worse than 5.

wtfsvi · #7 09-12-2007, 03:48 PM

[ QUOTE ]
It is important to understand that we are stipulating that it would be OK to bomb the eight kid house if the five kid option was not available.

[/ QUOTE ] I don't see how that affects the argument about disencouraging the use of human shields. If you replied to me on purpose.

tpir · #8 09-12-2007, 03:51 PM

[ QUOTE ]
The things is that in real life, people do have to make choices. Like stem cells or no stem cells. Or even scenarios not that far removed from Sklansky's above. You don't get to waver, and inaction can be the same as consent.

Besides, these questions have already been answered. It has been decided that five kids is acceptable for a high priority target. The logic starts from there. And you're on crack if you don't think that killing 8 kids is a lot worse than 5.

[/ QUOTE ]
1) For the record, I def. was not saying that killing 5 is better than killing 8. Just pointing out there might be a little continuum fallacy going on here.

2) If we are being forced to make these decisions, there could be a time when we have to pick something we are morally/philosophically opposed to. You can't force BluffThis and Chezlaw to pick something and then yell at them for making a contortion. You asked them to contort!

luckyme · #9 09-12-2007, 03:54 PM

The replies will be interesting.
Ommission-Commission may rear it ludicrous head.

luckyme

wtfsvi · #10 09-12-2007, 03:57 PM

[ QUOTE ]
Can I take an agnostic position on this? i.e. I don't feel qualified to make this judgment and I am not sure that anyone else is qualified either.

Is killing 5 kids better than killing 8?

[/ QUOTE ] I don't think you are allowed to take the agnostic position on this, but this has some clear similarities to the huge coinflipping discussion. So some expert mathematicians on this forum might disagree with me.