Favorite Philosophers?

[Edwardo Piet]

I've always failed to understand how I am responsible for the intentions of some other person.  The woman in the hypothetical above had no possible way of knowing that her assailant wasn't going to kill her.  I can't understand how she wouldn't be justified in shooting him. 

Yeah in real life we can't know the intentions.

It kind of depends if it is incredibly obvious he is just trying to grab her handbag or not.

If he clearly wants more than that then it's safe to assume the worst and shoot him dead, IMO.

But Vulcanlogician gave it to me on a silver platter because he straight out said in this hypothetical scenario that the person was intending to rape her.

He says he is 'only' intending to rape her, not murder her. She shoots him dead and is that justified. The short answer is: YES. And I don't know why he says 'only'. In many cases I think I'd rather be murdered.

Maybe not legally justified, but we're talking morally here. Not talking about what the law thinks. I don't think my answer is 'cold'. Or if it is I don't care. There's been a whole book out about how in many case empathy gets the morally wrong answer. *

I may lack empathy but I don't lack compassion. And perhaps my lack of empathy might make it more easy for me to clearly see who is suffering the most, in some cases, than if I relied on feeling the suffering that my emotions think the other person is feeling? I struggle to feel my own emotions let alone anyone else's (I'm very likely on the autistic spectrum and going to have my final testing soon). But I'm well aware that rape is a worse suffering than dying instantly from a handgun.

* https://www.amazon.co.uk/Against-Empathy...0062339338





I certainly don't agree with this guy completely though. Because I think there are morally rationally reasons for supporting people's intuition that helping the one rather than the many is better at least in some cases. I don't aggregate people together and treat them as one super being suffering tremendously, 1000 people suffering is just 1 person suffering from 1000 different perspectives. Perhaps a person begging on the streets is suffering more than ANYONE who gets killed by a typhoon will suffer no matter how large the group? Notice I say "anyone" rather than "everyone". Because only persons suffer, there is no super person known as "people". If 1000 people suffer identical amounts that's morally identical to me than if one of those people suffered that amount . . . but in reality no one suffers the same amount so the larger the group the greater the chance of greater suffering qualitatively. That's why quantity matters IMO. For probabilistic reasons. It doesn't matter in and of itself. 1000 people suffering is worse than 1 person suffering because the more people suffer the greater the likelihood that one of those people will suffer more [i]qualitatively[i]. So, quantity only matters indirectly.