The Moral Side Of Murder

Hey guys I just want to hear your views on this, Explanations on what would you do in this scenario.

If you had to choose between (1) killing one person to save the lives of five others and (2) doing nothing even though you knew that five people would die right before your eyes if you did nothing—what would you do? What would be the right thing to do? Thats the hypothetical scenario Professor Michael Sandel uses to launch his course on moral reasoning. After the majority of students votes for killing the one person in order to save the lives of five others, Sandel presents three similar moral conundrums—each one artfully designed to make the decision more difficult.

 

Well this is very difficult to answer, but unless one person volunteered to sacrifice them self I would do nothing, because those 5 people are not worth any more than the one chosen to die. So why should they have the right to live over the other?

 

Either 5 die, or one.

Obviously I'd kill the person -- Hopefully that guy would understand.

 

You can't place more value on one human's life over another human's.
So, should they all be adults, unless one of them volunteers, I would not kill the one human. They all more than likely all want to live.

However, once there is a child, different things must be considered. I would consider killing the eldest, hell, I'd consider killing myself.

Another thing that would need to be considered on what tools you have access to in order to commit the murder.

Edit: You more than likely wouldn't be able to think rationally in a situation like that anyway and would just be worried about your own survival.

 

Thats such a hard question to answer. You think the obvious answer would be to sacrafice one person's life in order to save 5 others, but who gets to decide which individual must die, and for what reason? By killing somebody to save other people, you may "save" 5 people's lives, yes. But you are also destroying the life of somebody else, and deciding their fate for them. That person may also have a family, a job, hobbies and enjoyments and probably does not want to die.

The only circumstances that would make the decision relatively "easy" would be if the person you killed was already sick and dying, or was suicidal and preferred death over living anyways, or something alone those lines. This is a very interesting debate though!

What were the three similar moral conundrums? I want to hear those too.

 

I got another one for you guys, Is Cannibalism right in this situation True story about a man called Jeremy Bentham, 3 men on a ship traveling as far as they could get. A wave crashes directly into the front of the boat causing the boat to smash into pieces they quickly decide to hop into the life boat and come up to a little island, No food nor no water was to be seen on this island, The 17 year old traveler gets sick by drinking the sea water so now he is die-in slowly. The men have had no food or water in the past 8 days, So the they decide to eat the 17 year old male in order to survive, They went to court for this and what James Bentham said to the judge was and I quote "We
where all having breakfast when we where rescued" ( The 17 year old boy body and blood ). Now the question is. Is this right? If you where the jury what would you decide?. Alot of question could be asked right now so feel free.

 

You cannot survive without water for more than a few days. The human body can, however, survive without food for weeks at a time, possibly even longer than a month. I would need to see more details about this particular story, but it sounds like the men who resorted to cannabalism were messed in the head before the incident even occured. It sounds like the one man in particular had no remorse or trauma after resorting to eating the young kid, which is especially apparant in his choice of words when describing to the Judge how their breakfast was interrupted by the rescue effort. Also, 8 days is not THAT long without food (compared to how long your body can actually survive without it) and the time period was way too short to even consider killing and eating another human being. If the man had died already and his body was literally just lying around collecting dust, I could understand why maybe they had to resort to cannabalism in order to surve, not knowing if they would be rescued within a few days or a few months. But after doing such a thing you would probably be pretty mentally scarred and shaken up knowing that you had to eat another human being to survive. To me, this case sounds more like a murder, and like the man was already very mentally disturbed before the incident took place.

Like I said though, I would have to get way more details about the story to really make a decision, because until we get the facts we can only guess the circumstances and make a decision based on a sequence of events that may or may not have happened the way it sounds like.

 

This is such a cliched question...most people would kill the person to save five others.

 

What if you had to kill 5 others (strangers), to save a person who you dearly loved? (like a mother, a brother, your husband/wife, girlfriend/boyfriend). Could you do it? Could you commit murder 5 tmes just so that the one person you love more than anything could live and walk away unscathed? What a sick concept lol.

 

If it was my family member that I would be saving, I would do it in a heartbeat.

 

lol, In fact that depends on which moral you are up to, if you are to defend your thoughts I know it's cruel but either anybody dies or everyone dies, (including the speaker) so if you got to kill someone everyone has the same value so kill everyone and get killed yourself for the reason you were not capable of save them all, if we are getting to the particular case of the 17 year old guy, which I heard before, I would say, in the case I'm the jury, that you have to be mentally ill for eating a young male in those conditions and just call it a "breakfast", your body can survive 1 month without solid food but, just a few days 7-10 without water, and by these you could desalt the sea water by heating it to the sun, and prevent drinking the guys blood which is kinda odd.
in any case these "moral" is twisted because if you had moral basis you wouldn't do that ever

 

Nothing sick about that at all, This is my point though if it was a family member you would do it! Disagree if you want to this btw. But a normal hard working civilian you would not? Debate away

 

lol I won't kill 5 random strangers to save a a family member! that's horrid, let's say it's your mom or your dad, how do you think she/he would feel about the fact you were capable of murdering 5 innocent lives just for keeping her/he suffering in this world, you might be thinking "suffering?" yes, it's the law of action/reaction every action ("good or bad") has a repercussion on other lives and murdering 5 random strangers is not a remarkable achievement

 

When it was happening your bodies survival mode would kick in. Adrenaline pumping, you would probably instinctively do it to protect your own.

As someone who doesn't believe in after life, I would want to protect my family.

If it was my dad or mom, if they said not to, I wouldn't. In honesty, I'm not sure if they would want me to or not.

If it was my brother, I would do it for sure. If it was my 3 year old sister, I would also do it for sure.

 

I'm not even sure I could kill several people just to save a loved one...I mean, yes a loved ones mean the world to me, but...I wouldn't have it in me to take another person, or even a living being's life 'on purpose'.

I'm not sure I could even take my own life for that matter but, if it came down to it, that probably would be my choice.

 

You have to watch the question being asked in its context to get the full effect of the point being made.