Submitted by ADefiniteDescription t3_zy84tz in philosophy
InTheEndEntropyWins t1_j24waw6 wrote
>If I have to choose between one evil and another, then I prefer not to choose at all.”
Isn't this essentially the Trolly problem, If a trolly was going to kill a thousand people then Geralt wouldn't pull the switch to kill one person instead.
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Also I hate the use of torture. It kind of suggest through the backdoor that torture works. It's a framing where it makes it look like torture could be morally good, but in fact it's an impossible hypothetical.
>should a political leader order the torture of a terrorist in order to find out the location of a series of bombs that will harm innocent citizens?
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>For utilitarians (the specific targets of Williams’s critique), it doesn’t matter that Jim has to kill someone—what matters is that either twenty people will die, or one will die, and it is far better that only one dies. Williams’s point was that it clearly does matter, especially to Jim, that to secure this optimal state of affairs Jim has to kill somebody.
I'm not sure it's a valid criticism of utilitarianism. If no-one would want to live in a world where they had to kill someone then that would be taken into account into any utilitarian calculations. Although I think most people would rather someone live with the guilt of killing than having more dead people.
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>Even if there is something noble about Geralt’s desire to avoid getting his hands dirty,
I don't think there is anything Nobel about Geralt’s position, it's just small minded and selfish.
Bennito_bh t1_j278gx0 wrote
How familiar are you with The Witcher source material? Because the article’s author missed a lot.
XiphosAletheria t1_j29a68h wrote
>Isn't this essentially the Trolly problem, If a trolly was going to kill a thousand people then Geralt wouldn't pull the switch to kill one person instead.
No. That is being forced to choose between bad outcomes, not two moral evils. Choosing between two evils would be, say, choosing between supporting a trolley conductor who wanted to run over one specific person he hated and one that wanted to run through a crowd to rack up a high kill count. The correct choice would be to support neither, since both are evil people.
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