The thousand dollars only represents the possibility of saving a life.

The child you hold in your arms is there.

There are all kinds of possibilities.

What if the child you save grows up to be a killer?

What if you lose the money before it gets donated?

I think as humans, in crisis situations, we abandon the intangibles and go for the tangible.

That is why your instinct says "no."

Just wondering...

That child is worth more than the 1000 dollars no matter what you rationalize you can do with it.

first example who makes the wrong choice?

That may well be correct, but it's a fairly bleak reflection on humanity if so (which is not an argument against its accuracy, of course).

Last edited Thu Apr 10, 2014, 02:19 PM - Edit history (1)

Were it not for that economic activity (sending bags of cash to far away places doesn't count) that money wouldn't exist and the kids here would be in as much crisis as those elsewhere.

Here's a follow on question, what do you anticipate the far away child will purchase with the rescued $1000? Medicine? Food? Equipment to provide clean water?

Absent the economic activity in the industrialized world, none of those things would be available at any price.

The cash circulating in the economy that isn't directly sent to the starving world isn't entirely latent and without benefit.

When they point the tv cameras at you for rescuing the kid (they won't do it... at least not in a positive way... for rescuing the cash) make a fundraising appeal for Unicef.

If you aren't actually facing the dilemma, then possessing the money isn't a problem. But I think it's fairly contemptible to save 1000 over a child, even if there is potential to use that money for good. As others have said, the money is only potential at that point. The child, however, is not.

given that thousands of kids die every day from starvation, lack of clean water and preventable diseases. Just because you don't see them doesn't mean they aren't dying.

Because giving up every single penny I have isn't going to save those kids. The world will keep spinning just as it is only my own children will now join them. You assume I don't see them. You're wrong.

We're in hypothetical mental masturbation la la land, here, with trolllies on tracks, kids and sacks of money in the water. . I think there were pets involved in another thread. Possession of 1000 dollars does not make a person morally contemptible.

You may not have $1000 to donate to save a child, but you might well be able to save some money and send it along. And certainly any time you spend money on a nice meal, or go to the movies, or buy an album of music, or a book, in theory you could forgo that pleasure to send money to a child in the third world.

Bryant

Dawkins relates a classic study in The God Delusion:

Imagine if you're in the subway, and you see a runaway train about to barrel down on a family of five people sitting on the track. You can hit a switch to move the points, and the train will go down another track instead. Do you hit the switch? Of course you do.

Now what if there were another person already sitting on that alternate track? Do you still hit the switch, even though you will kill a person to save the lives of five? Most people will still say yes.

What if you were on a bridge above the tracks, and the only possible way for you to stop the runaway train would be for you to push an huge obese person off the bridge, killing him, but stopping the train and saving five lives? This is more complicated, even though the killing of one person to save five is no different than in the previous scenario. Fewer people would say yes in this instance.

What if you're a transplant doctor, and you have five patients, each dying with a different organ failing. Heart, liver, lungs, etc. A perfectly healthy person walks in, whose organs are perfectly compatible with all five patients. Do you kill the healthy person, harvest the organs and save the five people dying of organ failure? Almost nobody would say yes, even though the situation is again no different: killing one person to save five.

The interesting thing is that this holds true universally, in every culture and religion on earth the answers are virtually the same. It's not our education, culture, or religion that really informs our ethics. It's something else.

An interesting thought experiment, I thought.

hypothetical ethical dilemmas. The more you explore the boundaries of ethics the better prepared you are to face real dilemmas.

In the case of killing the few to save the many, one of the more interesting choices is to do nothing at all. If you redirect the train, the blood is on your hands for making that decision. But, isn't blood on your hands for watching and doing nothing. Not really-- if you could stop death, fine, but since you can't you don't have the right to choose who dies.

(Brings up the inevitable "What if you saw Hitler hanging off a cliff in 1922..." questions)

My conclusion was, given the impossible circumstances, and ignoring things that ruin the thought experiment (like one person having a higher chance of seeing the train and jumping out of the way), I would not alter the train's course because then I would become the killer, not fate.

'One death is better than 5,' essentially. Luckily, the professor told us on the first day that there "is no right answer" for our papers. The thought experiments were fun (including some bashing some of our society's sacred cows, like religion).

of each person's life is equal, or something like that. And that never works.

Should you ask if the one person is Jimmy Carter and the five are convicted murderers, they babble.

Bashing religion is always fun, but it's still a good idea to know just what Augustine was about.

(or even your cat or dog, to some people, I hear).

I think that would make a difference.

(The train question is easier than the organ transplant question, so that's why I mentioned that one. I remember a Law & Order episode where a wealthy person was having healthy people's organs stolen in order to save his daughter's life. Would people really do that? Yikes.)

I used to torture my mother with those sorts of ethical dilemmas all the time when I was a kid:

"Those 20 people who died in that natural disaster on the other side of the world today, if you would have the power to sacrifice our dog to save them, would you do it?"

"Yes, of course I would." (I certainly wouldn't have)

"But if you would have to sacrifice me to save them?"

"Well, no, that would be different."

"What if it were a hundred total strangers?", I'd ask, hoping to eventually zoom in on the exact valuation of my life's worth to her.

"You go play outside, you're driving me mental!"

You know the drowning child will drown without your intervention.

You do not know much about the fate of the hypothetical/distant child. Perhaps someone else will save them. Perhaps you will find another $1000. Maybe you will get a second job and give more money to distant children.

Perhaps an asteroid of delicious and nourishing hydrocarbons will fall from the sky... you don't know.

And the distant child will, if nothing else, have whatever additional life it has between your action and her death—unlike the drowning child.

Now, if you want to really get into a quandary, substitute spending money on food for a pet versus donating the money to some aid charity (and letting your pet starve.)

Or money to save ten children.

win-win.

The first is something within your power to do.
The second is just a statement of fact.

you've got a lot of stuff floating around in your river ...

In the first, there is an immediate need to rescue a particular child and you will directly accomplish it. Also, you seem to be the only one there, or at least, the closest.

In the second, you can donate the $1,000 but you have to depend on a string of other people to save some child's life at some point in the future. You can't have complete confidence, in the real world, that this will happen. Also, someone else could probably donate the $1,000 if you didn't.

donating any spare money to help the sick and the starving, is ethically compromised to some extent. And that includes me. How many lives would be saved if nobody (for example) went on a cruise, and donated the money they saved to charities that save lives?

Unpleasant to face up to, but true. And of course this is what Jesus was getting at when he told the rich dude to give up all of his possessions.

I'd prefer looking for the sack.

I would rather look for the sack of money at the bottom of the river than the body of the dead child.

I'm trying to figure out how anyone could think that offensive.

zero concern for the child and are only concerned with the money. It's called a "tell."

My clarification, as if it were necessary, has eliminated whatever ambiguity might have existed.

The problem exists between your keyboard and chair.

My solution is to rescue the kid now then drag the river for the money later, as opposed to the reverse.

One should read more than just the author name before finding a post offensive.

[hr][font color="blue"][center]Treat your body like a machine. Your mind like a castle.[/center][/font][hr]

Or, if you're Les Stroud, assemble a makeshift raft out of deer skulls and bear pelts.

you save the child without even thinking about it.

A choice between saving a sack of pretty much anything or a child is not a choice.

Now, if two children were drowning and you could only save one...

It's not like it can't be dried LOL

I would do whatever I could to save the child, and try to find the money later. I could possibly get a win-win here.

By donating, I lose direct control of the situation. Someone along the chain of custody of the cash could divert the funds in some way other than benefiting a child.

"What would Donald Ian Rankin do?"

Now, you've gone and put me in a dilemma.

That's some tripped-out philosophizing, no question.

state or a blue state? In a red state I would be more apt to go for the money as there are way to many nut jobs running around as it is.

I'd like to imagine I'd go for absolute life rather than the imaginary value system in which nothing is guaranteed.

This is a spin off of the classic train scenario of people on both train tracks, and 'who do you let the train hit?'

By directly allowing one child to sink into the water, you are allowing him to die. One might argue there is an implied moral obligation to help in this instance.

In the other situation, the boy's situation has no relation to you. You would be indirectly saving him when you are not in a situation that morally obligates you to do so. While his situation might be just as urgent, there is a higher degree of separation between you and the second boy vs. the first boy.

. . . you have no way of knowing whether it will, in fact, be used as promised. Under scenario (1) if you rescue child (1), you know at least that this child's life will be saved, but the possibility remains open that some other means may be found to rescue child (2) (or possibility that another source can be found for the $1,000). And as someone else upthread has pointed out, the mere fact that the sack of cash is sinking doesn't necessarily mean it is permanently lost, either. So, in choosing to rescue the drowning child, you have one definite, positive outcome, bit you have not negated the possibility of a positive outcome for the other child. the So,'rescuing' the sack of money may or may not have the ultimate result of 'saving a child's life,' and besides, there is nothing precluding the possibility that the $1,000 could be raised from other sources. So, under the first scenario, we have one definite positive outcome, and the theoretical possibility of either a positive or negative outcome concerning the second child.

Under scenario (2), since we cannot know if, in fact, the money, once rescued and donated, will be applied as promised, there is no definite positive outcome for the second child, but merely the theoretical possibility of either a possible or negative outcome for that child. What we DO know, however, is that under scenario 2, the one definite outcome will be the loss of the first child.

Viewed mathematically, if we assign an ethical value of 1 on a positive outcome for either child, a neutral value of 0 to the situations where there is a theoretical possibility of two outcomes, and a value of -1 for a loss of either child, then. we cam see ot as follows:

Scenario 1 is either

= 1 + 0 -1 (or an ethical sum of 0, where one child is saved and the other is not)

or (theoretically)

= 1 + 0 +1 (an ethical sum of 2)

= -1 + 0 + 1 (for an ethically neutral score of 0, assuming the second child is saved by the donation of the money)

or

= -1 +0 -1 (for an ethical value of -2).

If you grab the $1000, you are guaranteeing a child dies.

If you grab the child, you are NOT guaranteeing a child dies. A child might die (if the aid project doesn't get more money) but it's not guaranteed.

[hr][font color="blue"][center]A ton of bricks, a ton of feathers. It's still gonna hurt.[/center][/font][hr]

Save him, raise him right so that he has love in his heart, and then you've saved the world from WWII.

It's a no brainer. Go for what's in front of you.

my money and I am giving something of mine up to save the child. So they aren't morally equivalent.

The "unethical" action here is that someone's survival is depending on money. An ethical political and economic system would be arranged so that nobody died for lack of money. Money would be "printed" as needed, and inflation would be prevented by skimming money off the "scum at the top," in other words with a steeply progressive tax system and the sorts of inheritance taxes that prevent the formation of family "dynasties," "foundations," and other stagnant pools of toxic wealth.

The uber wealthy class ought to be taxed into extinction. Piss on them and their money, and laugh at the hells they build for themselves. I never worry much about people stealing my stuff, it's all crap. Ding my car in a parking lot, I'll probably not notice; if I do notice I won't give a damn. The money cards in my wallet are worthless toward the end of the month and sometimes won't even be accepted for self-serve gasoline. (Ask me how I know...)

If somebody gave me a million or billion dollars I'd pay off my debts and give the rest away before the bank closed that day. Hell, if somebody gave me a new car, I'd give that away too.

Money is bullshit. It's a bloody shame that anyone is homeless, hungry, or lacks appropriate medical care because the people who control the actual wealth of this world are greedy controlling assholes, racists, nationalists, narcissistic royalists, and/or religious fundamentalists.

I need money for me and my family to exist comfortably, and a bit more for such pleasures as good food and drink, movies, and some traveling, but beyond that I find "happiness" in many ways that cannot be bought.

There have been happy times in my life when I've had zero "disposable" income, my health was good, I wasn't hungry or malnourished, and I had a safe comfortable place to sleep.

Everyone deserves that sort of happiness (or as close as we can achieve in this imperfect world) for the simple reason we are all human beings, and not a single one of us chose our parents or the place and circumstances of our birth.

in the second instance IF your money does save a child, you just donate and hope that it is true.

So the first one is direct affect, while the second one is indirect affect...so both are not even close to being equivalent.

There are variables.

but others could give the 1000 dollars.

The child, how do I know what will happen to the cash? And they may cure cancer later.
Not even close. f the money.

Save the drowning child, and when you get home scratch out a check...

Nevermind the fact that once that money goes through the charity "filter", you're lucky if even half of that is actually used to help the child...

EDIT: I'm an idiot -- Snooper2 has it right...Save the child, and once it's safe go fish out the money

child's need is immediate.

raise money for the third world project.

It's that simple and I'm saving the baby or the awful adult over my favorite pet.

Ethics are situational, win/win all around.