But my original question wasn't about whether we should look down on people who behave inconsistently. It was whether they have a winning argument. And while all consistent arguments are not winning, all inconsistent arguments are losing (though their conclusion might be right by mistake.)

Yes a broken arm heals so I would save the 5 at the cost of breaking an arm, so what? We have established there is a sliding scale where I dont judge all of my actions against other people as equal to murdering them, does this make some sort of point for you?

I assume that rather than being the driver you mean to ask if we are the director of the hospitals or whoever it is that makes the decision to reroute the medicine. As the driver you are not resposible for the decision and there is an argument that you should be doing your job and driving rather than second guessing (you dont have to agree with the decision of course but its not your decision to make).

I suspect I would in this instance redirect the medicine. Again you are not responsible for the predicament these people are in and thus have the choice to save 1 or 5 assuming all other things being equal I would save the 5. This isnt analogous to the previous problem though as you are not responsible for any of the deaths that would be involved. This one can be boiled down to simple numbers of 1 v 5, no one has been assigned the medicine or promised it and thus it is logical to send it where it will provide the most benefit and least waste.

Again does this have some point or are you just desperately trying to stumble upon some scenario that lets you say "Ha! everyone is really a closet theist and athiests can't have any morals without appealing to god"?

That last sentence is just wrong. Especially since saving five is probably more moral.

But I am trying to find scenarios where people are being inconsistent. If you would break an arm it invalidates some of the arguments against not saving five. And I was directing the question only to those arguers.

Meanwhile why do you say that you are not responsible for the one death if you decided to take away his medicine? And would you re change your mind if that first patient had already been told it was coming?

I don't think the stance that you do not want to kill someone against their will to save others is inconsistent. The exception here is self defence, but aside from that, I'm simply not comfortable deciding someone should die, when they do not wish to. If someone wants to sacrifice himself for the greater good, that's fine, but I am not going to make up their mind for them, even if it means saving more lives than just the one.

With that said, I'm sure that are some scenarios that are more likely to persuade me to sacrifice someone for the sake of others, than other scenarios.

As for your hospital scenario, this is slightly different in that if you fail to act, everyone dies. While it may not necessarily be immoral to not act, although arguable, most people would agree that an action should be taken. Presumably you don't want me to give you some sort of cop-out answer and say to bring all six people and have them draw lots as to who does not qualify for the medication. The answer here would depend on the amount of responsibility I have in making decisions. If I am in charge and it is my duty to make the decision, then I would save more lives (if I somehow wasn't able to randomly select which of the five), but this is only because I am in a position of authority and I am obligated to make a decision. This scenario is different in that presumably it is my duty to save lives, so I am simply acting according to that duty.

I'd probably be inconsistent if you asked me to do something immoral for the sake of saving ives, that didn't involve hurting or killing anyone.

Your arm-breaking scenario is tough for me. I would likely not break someone's arm in an intentional way, like if someone said to me - "break this guys arm or I shoot five people", unless the participant was willing, I wouldn't do it.

I responded to David Sklansky before I read this, and I see we are still on the same page here.

I would like you to say that its a ridiculous argument that you cant support or explain why you have brought it up multiple times in the thread and what exactly are its redeeming elements.

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I'm pretty sure that I could come up with a sequence of questions that would force the non diverting non believers in the fungible human case to give up on one of their axioms. But not enough people are reading this thread to justify the work.

I do believe that this subject is one of the best ones for demonstrating how most people start with their gut reactions and then try to come up with reasons to justify it rather than the other way around. Which of course is a recipe for holding to ideas that are contradictory if you dig down through a chain of reasoning.

People have a right to hold opinions that can be shown to contradict with each other. What they don't have a right to do is to try to change the minds of others with reasons that they have not double checked for contradictions

I doubt I will have anything further to say about this.

You seem rather agitated by this, and I'm not exactly sure why. It is not my argument, I do not condone it, all I said was that some people adhere to this, and it is perhaps a viewpoint that the OP was alluding to.

If you don't agree with moral nihilism, that's cool, no need to get upset.

Fair enough, I'm inclined to agree with you that if you hit the right scenario, I may contradict myself, but my personal starting point is that I don't want to kill people who don't want to die, even if the result is "greater".

I recognize a contradiction in myself that I may still do other immoral things for the "greater" good, to save lives, and it strikes me as arbitrary to say that killing is more immoral than such and such acts. Something about sacrificing someone that does not want to be sacrificed does not settle well with me.

The believe the argument ds is trying to make is just for moral nihilism. I am offended by you linking moral nihilism as a natural consequence of atheism. Its highly offensive to suggest lacking beleif in god means an individual will not have a moral code. So retract that link youve made multiple times or explain the redeeming elements of that view.


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It doesn't mean that an individual won't have a moral code, it means that there is no good, or bad.

Moral nihilism is difficult to live by, but I believe it has some points, that without meaning, purpose, design, or intelligence, things just are. There are only facts, and the rest is opinion.

I'm sorry that you're offended, it wasn't my intent, you're taking it personally for no reason. I'll leave it at that.

It is not that difficult to develop a consistent moral theory for not diverting the train. For instance, as you've agreed, if you claim that it is better for more people to die. Alternatively, if you think causing someone to die is immoral, but letting people die is not--or at least not enough so to overrule the first part.

Now, it is true that these premises have implications that most people either reject outright or by their actions indicate that they reject. But, that is a problem that afflicts all answers to the trolley problem--including diverting. For instance, most people who think you should divert don't think you should harvest the organs of the healthy to save the five who need them. Alternatively, they don't think they should give all of their money to save starving children around the world.

Maybe you disagree, maybe you think that those who divert should do or agree with these things. Fine. But the defender of not diverting can say the same thing about the counterintuitive results of her premises as well. Maybe you really don't have a moral obligation to throw a rope to the drowning man.

But this is why philosophers find the trolley problem interesting. Moral philosophers (at least, some of them) use the trolley problem (and other thought experiments) to develop moral theories with the least counterintuitive implications--usually by making their premises increasingly complicated. But that is constructive work. These more complicated premises are not supposed to be what people actually think, but what they should think.

I don't see why you even need to concern yourself with what's "better" or not. As an atheist, I don't subscribe to any objective morality based system. Therefore, nothing is inherently better or worse. Although I do prefer to remain consistent.

It was an incredibly poor "gotcha!" to bring up whether I'd save a drowning man. Obviously, this has nothing to do with choosing between the worst of two evils so of course I'd save the drowning man. Would I save a stranger who was drowning if it meant another stranger would lose a limb? No. What if the other stranger would skin a knee? Yes.

I don't think it's inconsistent to say that you would not make life altering decisions or actions involving strangers that don't concern you.

I wouldn't divert the train to save 10,000 lives unless I had some vested interest in the outcome. I do not find that at all inconsistent with my atheism.

If it is, someone please explain.

Sklansky's bringing in atheism is just a red herring, and has nothing to do with the actual issue. He thinks that theists have a get out of jail free card (God told me to do it) that can potentially justify any set of moral rules and so is just focusing on non-theistic moral theories. He confuses this by suggesting that atheists with inconsistent moral beliefs are somehow not being truly atheistic, when it seems to me much more likely that they are just being inconsistent (I don't see why atheists are any less likely than theists to be inconsistent in their moral beliefs).

That being said, if all you mean to say is: I don't think people have moral obligations, then of course you're not being inconsistent. However, then you haven't developed a consistent moral theory for not diverting the train as you are just rejecting morality.

Rejecting morality? Or rejecting objective morality?

I don't think I reject morality. I just don't think there is any one universal right or wrong when it comes to moral decisions. That doesn't mean I don't think we can have productive conversations or enact laws regarding what is collectively in the best interest for the majority.

I do think it's important to be consistent regarding one's own morality and this is sometimes hard for emotional people to do. I've definitely been guilty of being inconsistent, but I always try and correct it once it's been pointed out to me.

My moral theory for not diverting the train is really very simple. I do not believe it's my decision to make who lives and who dies in a cause void of my own making or personal interest.

Put a loved one, a friend, or even a close acquaintance in the crowd and I'd divert the train. It gets complicated when I consider situations in which I'd have to actively kill...

I'd certainly kill a lone gunman who was about to shoot 10 hostages even if everyone (including the gunman) were strangers to me. The key difference here I feel is that I do know something about the gunman. Namely, that he's willing to kill or put 20 people's lives in danger. There's no end to the scenarios you can create:

Would I be willing to push 5 people to their deaths from a crippled hot air balloon in order to save the life of my child? Offhand, I'd say the answer is yes, but I'd need to know the probabilities that a). The balloon would definitely otherwise crash killing all on board, and b). That the balloon would not crash if it were 5 people lighter.

I can go on and on trying to stump myself, but I'm not smart enough to do so. So please feel free to point out any inconsistencies with my positions so that I might correct them. I'm personally not able to see them.

Edit: I agree that this is not an atheist/theist issue save for theists who are convinced they are unable to think for themselves regarding moral issues.

Describe what a moral code is without using the terms good or bad or synonyms of them.

Again what I am interested in is your linkage of atheism and nihilism.


In response to linking atheism and and nihilism you again state the point of view has redeeming features

and again

So let me try again why do you keep linking nihilism with atheism? You have twice stated the argument to link them has redeeming features/arguments.

Nihilism is more than just saying things do not have meaning, nihilism states that life has no meaning.

Saying nihilism is difficult to live by as a moral standard is irrelevant, since noone actually does that. At best they might labyrinthally convince themselves into thinking all their moral standards are their own.

I had this conversation with someone a while back, and I was pretty shocked at their answers concerning loved ones in the trolley problem, I think their desire to be consistent made them give worse answers than they would have otherwise.

I'm interested in where and if you draw a line in the trolley problem with a loved one on the track, given what you say here.

If there is a loved one included in the 5, presumably you divert the train and kill the 1, as you've stated. What if your loved one was the 1, do you let the 5 die? What do you think the number of people on the track would have to be where you finally decide to let your loved one die? 10 strangers vs your loved one, 100 vs 1, etc.?

I had my friend killing his mom in the trolley problem in a two vs one scenario, which I thought was just bizarre.

I focused on morality, cause it's what mickb is questioning me about.

To be fair, I think moral nihilism inherently fails in that it is obvious we do have morals. It is irrelevant if they are evolved, from God, or simply adopted as existential or Uberman-like. It is easier to admit they exist, than to rationalize them away because you believe they shouldn't exist.

I still believe the fact that "they shouldn't exist" do make some points that are interesting to examine, though, so I don't think we can just throw the whole thing away, but that's no reason to take this as some attack on your own philosophy as mickb has done, especially in a conversation about killing people on a train track. It's unnecessary.

For the 4th and final time I promise because I can't take any more I am tilted by the linkage you make between atheism and nihilism.

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Of course.

The demarcation point for me is when the number becomes counter productive to self serving interests. For instance, I wouldn't kill the entire world population, because the quality of life for my loved one (and myself?) would be at an all time low without farming, clean water, electricity, medical care, etc. It could be as low as 1,000, but only because of the potential hardship caused by my loved one being a lone survivor at all of their expense.

I realize this makes me sound incredibly calloused and inhumane, but I feel it's consistent. It's also true. I would wipe out an entire country of strangers to save a loved one if there were no other ramifications.

A better question is, would I do this to save my dog? Here is where I become inconsistent: Given everything I've stated so far, I should probably be willing to do so. I just don't think I can a value a dog's life (even one I love) over that many humans. But I probably would save my dog's life over that of one human stranger. However, my gut/emotional reaction would having me saving one child I didn't know before my dog. So yeah...I detect inconsistency here.

I'd appreciate some help with this. Why can't we have a sliding scale of moving morality? Why must it be fixed. Why aren't we allowed to assign different values as we see fit?

My atheism is no more a "philosophy" than than my disbelief that superman is real is a "philosophy".

OK I thought of two more examples. (And I agree that bringing in atheism vs theism is muddying the waters.)

For those who would divert the train if the switch presently is in the middle and would kill all six but would NOT divert to kill one if it was set to kill five:

You see the switch in the middle, kill all, position and run to move it to the kill one position. A second rescuer gets there two seconds before you and in his haste sets it to kill five. So I guess you just turn away instead of adjusting it? Really?

For those who won't kill no matter what but would divert if the other track is empty:

Thinking the other track is empty you divert the train to save five. You leave the scene but when 200 yards away you are told there actually was one person on the other track. So according to your principles you run back to reset it to kill five. Really?

When I use the word "argument" I mean "consistent persuasive argument". Saying it that way would have eliminated your point.