RE: Religion is a poor source of morality
October 7, 2015 at 5:14 pm
(This post was last modified: October 7, 2015 at 5:57 pm by Angrboda.)
(October 7, 2015 at 4:06 pm)Esquilax Wrote: Take the trolley problem, for example: there is potentially some combination of objective facts that would make one or the other solution morally preferable (perhaps the one person has a nuclear bomb with him that will detonate if he's hit and kill far more than just one person, or perhaps he's a doctor with knowledge of how to cure cancer on his way to tell other people. Maybe the five people in the other tunnel are convicted murderers, or all hosts to a new, particularly virulent strain of Ebola). The fact that the person attempting to solve the problem may or may not know these facts, or may subjectively have values that would lead him to take the morally sub-optimal choice, does not alter the fact that one choice is objectively better than the other, given what we know about human beings. Our choices are influenced by the facts at our disposal, but that doesn't mean that all other facts cease to exist.
You're overlaying a schema of utilitarianism on the trolley problem, that what is most moral is that which is most useful. Besides the fact that this has nothing to do with what makes the trolley problem morally interesting, you're begging the question about what makes something more moral than another thing. It is not objectively true that what is moral is determined by what is likely to produce the greatest good for the most people. That's an assumption and one which is lacking support. You can't just slip utilitarian ethics into the mix and presume you are talking objectively. You've made a subjective choice about what moral goodness consists of. I might just as well say that what is moral is that which produces the greatest happiness for women and women alone. That's equally subjective a view of what makes something 'moral'. You've committed Moore's naturalistic fallacy by identifying a fellow traveler of moral approval, utility, and relabeled it as your criterion of morality.
![[Image: extraordinarywoo-sig.jpg]](https://i.postimg.cc/zf86M5L7/extraordinarywoo-sig.jpg)