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Ruin an expensive suit to save a drowning child?

Would you ruin an expensive suit to save a drowning child?

  • Yes

    Votes: 210 90.5%

  • No

    Votes: 22 9.5%
  • Total voters
    232
medicine cabinet said:
A pint of blood is worth more than a pint of gold.
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That depends how much you sell it for.

To the person trading the blood for gold, the gold was worth more. To the person trading the gold for blood, the blood was worth more.

qwe said:
are you going to surprise us with an article where someone justified not jumping in a lake to save a child because of their expensive suit?

and then talk about the differences between ethical decision making "on the spot" and "pre-thought out" referencing some very interesting social science studies?
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Bystander Effect perhaps?
 
alasdairm said:
agreed. it's hard for me to imagine any other answer but, if there are people who, given that choice, would choose to preserve the suit, i would love to hear the reasoning?
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well you guys know where i stand, but i will play devil's advocate, and answer this

the hidden question behind this poll question is the philosophical/ethical question: "Do I have an obligation to help people if standing by and doing nothing leads to harm? Or am I morally OK* if I don't go out of my way to help others, as long as I don't harm anyone?"

* (less than morally great, but at least not morally bad)

So, if you voted yes, to be logically consistent you would also have to support our war (AKA we cannot stand by while a dictator kills his own people*) among many other uncomfortable stances

* (Of course, the war still would not make sense because there are a hundred other countries where military intervention might decrease the number of innocent deaths over the long term, and it might not even do so in the Iraq case. So the war was not a definitive example for this case.)

So even though those two cases are so far removed from each other on the surface, there is the logical connection due to that fundamental question i raised
Bystander Effect perhaps?
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indeed!
 
I would, but only because I would probably get charged with negligence or some other crap if I ignored the little bastard. I'd be saving myself first (from jail, or a bad reputation, etc.) and the dumbass in the water second.
 
Slightly off topic, but one of the most intriguing things my boyfriend has done for me was at my sisters 18th. Basically we were drunk and on concrete, when he decided to lift me up and twirl me around. Well... as I said.. we were pretty hammered, and he misplaced his step while he had me in the air, which caused us to go crashing into the concrete.

I guess I find this interesting because when most people fall, it's a natural reflex for them to put out their arms to protect themselves. However my boyfriend didn't put his arms out to save himself - instead, in the fear of the moment, his most natural reflex was to put his arms around me to minimize the impact, even though it was going to hurt him much more. He copped the weight of both of our bodies on the one elbow. Needless to say he was pretty sore...

Anyhow, I guess when I read this thread it reminded me of that experience, just because I find it interesting that some people will think about the consequences any given action will have on themselves. Whereas others, like my boyfriend, just naturally do whatever it takes, at any cost, and putting themselves, or the value of their suits first would hardly come into the equation. They would seriously not think about something like that until they were out of the water with a breathing, healthy child in their arms being handed over to its parents.
 
The problem with so many other scenarios that this question is linked to once you've answered is that this one depends on the action of you, and you alone. The scenarios that are linked to a 'yes' answer for this one are often *not* dependable on the action of one person alone, rather a group (as was stated in deleted posts: a stranger's life saving surgery, wars, etc.). Furthermore, they are situations that you don't find yourself standing face to face with. This changes things, whether it should or not. If you found a starving child on your front doorstep surely you'd bring him/her inside and provide a meal until the proper authorities were able to retrieve the child. Again, when this child is in another country it changes things.

The situation in the question posed causes the person to assume that it is up to them, and them alone, to decide whether the child lives or not. We are told clearly that nobody else is around so without our action the child will surely die from drowning. When you try to relate this to more broad situations you lose that effect.

Then, as has already been touched on, we can change the value of the item ruined in saving a life and see where the line is drawn, if it is at all.
 
lazydullard said:
I would, but only because I would probably get charged with negligence or some other crap if I ignored the little bastard. I'd be saving myself first (from jail, or a bad reputation, etc.) and the dumbass in the water second.
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Interesting answer. How would anybody know if you're the only person there?
 
L. Ron Hubbard technology should be applied to the immortal being by an auditor the next time he/she shows up in a mest body.
Mens wharehouse is running a 2fer 1 sale on suits on the east coast. Pretty exciting.
 
This sounds like Unger's thought experiment.

Q: Would you ruin an expensive suit to save a drowning child?
A: Of course! Only a moral monster wouldn't!

Q: Is there any moral difference between the case of the drowning child and the case of our not giving very small amounts of money that would (with similar probability) save starving and diseased children in Africa?
A: Of course there's a relevant moral difference! I just can't think of a single one...
 
qwe said:
the hidden question behind this poll question is the philosophical/ethical question: "Do I have an obligation to help people if standing by and doing nothing leads to harm? Or am I morally OK* if I don't go out of my way to help others, as long as I don't harm anyone?"

* (less than morally great, but at least not morally bad)
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Well, it's important that in the thought experiment that the person to be saved is a child and that s/he will die if you do nothing. So, all that saying, "Yes, of course I am morally obligated to save the child at the expense of ruining my suit" commits one to is that there is a moral obligation to help children if standing by and doing nothing leads to their death. If you change the experiment to, "A grown man will scrape his knee unless you ruin your brand new thousand dollar suit to save him from this harm" many people will not think they have an obligation to save the man from scraping his knee.

So, if you voted yes, to be logically consistent you would also have to support our war (AKA we cannot stand by while a dictator kills his own people*) among many other uncomfortable stances

* (Of course, the war still would not make sense because there are a hundred other countries where military intervention might decrease the number of innocent deaths over the long term, and it might not even do so in the Iraq case. So the war was not a definitive example for this case.)
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Support of our war is definitely not required to be logically consistent with typical intuitions regarding the drowning child case. You mentioned one reason. Another is that you might not think a war in Iraq is the most efficient means to resolving this suffering. Maybe you're Gandhi and you think non-violence is a better way to go. Maybe you think diplomatic pressure would work better. Maybe you think a covert operation would work better than a war. The options are plenty.

All that is required for consistency is that you think it's wrong to stand by an do nothing so long as you could save a child for less than the cost of an expensive suit. Cases of starving or diseased children whose lives can be saved for very little money are much more analogous (there are differences like physical distance, but they don't seem to be morally relevant). The logical connection in the case of war in Iraq is tenuous at best.
 
I posted on this thread earlier but I guess it got erased when BL went back in time. Oh well.

QuestionEverything said:
The problem with so many other scenarios that this question is linked to once you've answered is that this one depends on the action of you, and you alone. The scenarios that are linked to a 'yes' answer for this one are often *not* dependable on the action of one person alone, rather a group (as was stated in deleted posts: a stranger's life saving surgery, wars, etc.). Furthermore, they are situations that you don't find yourself standing face to face with. This changes things, whether it should or not. If you found a starving child on your front doorstep surely you'd bring him/her inside and provide a meal until the proper authorities were able to retrieve the child. Again, when this child is in another country it changes things.

The situation in the question posed causes the person to assume that it is up to them, and them alone, to decide whether the child lives or not. We are told clearly that nobody else is around so without our action the child will surely die from drowning. When you try to relate this to more broad situations you lose that effect.
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This.

The traditional application of the drowning analogy to rescuing starving children in foreign countries contains numerous contingencies that the thought experiment neatly eliminates. The main one, as QuestionEverything points out, is that in real life you are not the only person present and capable of saving the child. You can always try to defer responsibility to the person next to you, especially if that person is nearer to the drowning child, or is not wearing an expensive suit.

When the responsibility belongs to a group, it is a question of whether every member is just as responsible as you would be if it was just you. It could still be argued (and it was, by philosopher Peter Singer) that your responsibility is just the same whether or not there are people beside you who are just as capable of rescuing the kid.

Another difference between the example and real life is that there are many more drowning children than you are able to save (as is the case in analogous real-life situations). Although this shouldn't be a deterrent from trying, it's often used as an excuse.
 
Kore said:
When the responsibility belongs to a group, it is a question of whether every member is just as responsible as you would be if it was just you. It could still be argued (and it was, by philosopher Peter Singer) that your responsibility is just the same whether or not there are people beside you who are just as capable of rescuing the kid.

Another difference between the example and real life is that there are many more drowning children than you are able to save (as is the case in analogous real-life situations). Although this shouldn't be a deterrent from trying, it's often used as an excuse.
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I just want to expand on these points a bit. As you mention, two disanalogies between the drowning child case and dying children in foreign countries are 1) Many other people can help in the foreign aid case, but only you can help in the thought experiment and 2) There are many more dying children than one person can save in real life, but in the thought experiment there is only one.

As you hinted, it still can be argued that the first difference is not a moral difference. If we imagine a drowning child case where there are a lot of people standing around in expensive suits, all of whom choose not to save the child, does the fact that their are a lot of them make any one of their individual failure's to act morally permissible? It seems obvious that it does not. They've all acted atrociously, and if anyone of them answered this charge by saying, "Well, all these other people didn't ruin their suits either" we would hardly take this as anything but a lame excuse.

With regard to 2), the fact that an individual cannot save all dying children does not plausibly excuse him morally from saving the ones whom he can save. We can change the thought experiment so that there are millions of children drowning in lakes at the same time you walk by one of them in your expensive suit. If you excused yourself from saving the one child whom you could save by saying, "Well, there were lots of kids just like him in lakes all over the world whom I couldn't save", it seems clear that we would still take you to be acting in a morally impermissible manner.

P.S. If you thought Singer's paper was good you should check out Unger's book which develops Singer's thought experiment and arguments enormously.
 
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I'll repost my opinion briefly.

I won't argue against the semantic problems of the situation.

I will simply argue against the fundamental problem of why saving children from death is supposedly a Good Thing™.

A child has not suffered as much as an adult. Dying young is a blessing. Saving a child is not an act of kindness toward the child itself, but rather an act of kindness toward whoever loves it.

That said, it is only my mind that argues such. My heart would immediately jump for it and save it. Why, I have no idea.
 
^I think I'd act in accordance with your heart here. There's no way of refuting the (rather cynical) problem you bring up, apart from appeals to sentiment and intuition. Thankfully we are more than our minds.
 
no i wouldnt ruin my suit to save a drowning child, the video of the drowning child could actually make me a profit, ruining my suit can only give me a loss.
 
Without a doubt. There is no comparison. The only limitation on doing so would be the size of the child. If the child were too large and thrashing I would not even try because of the probability of being dragged down with him/her. Well, maybe if I had a big enough stick to knock them out.


Sounds like a joke but I am absolutely sincere.
 
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