In the other thread started by me regarding hurting innocent parties who were keeping you unjustly imprisoned John 21 asserted that it was ethical if the harm you caused was less than the harm you were enduring.

But what if they are not innocent? Assume that the harm you are threatened with is completely capped. You can't say that you weren't sure how much danger you were in.

Obviously its wrong to kill to stop a slap in the face. On the other hand John21's is clearly too strong in the other direction. If someone who hates me threatens to put naked pictures of my daughter out on the internet and I know it will devastate her and the only way to stop him is to break his legs, is there a logical/ethical reason not to do it if I know I won't be caught?

You have to know what your daughter has done to that person to take him to such cruel action. That is material too. At face value if one wants to behave so rudely without regard for the other person in something intimate they are probably terrible and could deserve some non life altering injury (if it were so easy to stop someone and not actually make them even more determined as it is in effect the reality typically) but it all depends also on what from the other person is causing such choice of action.

Probably a wiser choice after investigating all parties involved is to engage the other threatening party in a game theoretically devastating situation for them if they move forward with the cruel choice.

A higher intelligence will win without destroying the other side. Hopefully even by making friends with the other side and creating positive alliances.


Also on another note there is no such thing as utilitarians and non utilitarians. All people embrace some kind of utility theory. The difference is how selfish, narrow minded, irrational, conflicted, idiotic or naive or well thought and still vulnerable the utility theory is.

There is such thing as a better choice of action locally in a crude generally understood as obvious statistically immediately clear way.

But the better scientist will not be so happy with this even if they agree that locally one can often make meaningful choices that are better than other alternatives when forced to act.

You see the chaos theory and complexity that surrounds us indicates that it is not always that simple. One can argue that suffering locally at a larger scale for a while may lead to greater prosperity and happiness later because it forces certain problems to be finally solved for good or because in essence there is unpredictability in future utility that is hard to quantify due to exploding complexity.

So there may seem to be a better choice locally often but how do you follow its consequences to their full entirety? How do you sum up properly the infinite series of branching complexity?

You choose for an old looking (unknown to you) scientist to die instead of a family with 5 kids only to discover later the 5 kids are now adult idiots and the scientist could have prevented a virus, defending millions with their prior research that was uncovered well after the fact. Where do you draw the line in the absence of proper information?

You choose to behave statistically wisely knowing full well that it may not be the best choice and only locally can be statistically vindicated as leading to higher utility.

Force war on people and then finally they discover the weapons that will make all future global wars very hard to initiate and maintain to the end. You get ww2 with its millions of victims and then nothing like that again since then. You open the door maybe to neutralizing war and leading to ultimate unification of the planet against the common enemy of terrorism say and irrational conflicts. You force humanity to look into itself and take the path that ends war after first having witnessed a terrible war. So the terrible war proves useful. Contrast with developing weapons before the big war and then having the major war involve nuclear weapons for the first time directly before their consequences could have been studied well.

You have to be some kind of utilitarian using some concept of greater good as this is understood from some value ethical system. To not be that means you are not properly using wisdom. All intelligence is based on values. But at the same time you cannot afford to be arrogant to think your value ordering of things is correct and safe from future discoveries invalidating them.

Given your set up; Breaking his fingers makes more sense than breaking his legs.

I still believe most traditional ethical/moral philosophy would say it was a no go. You can only control yourself, and spreading naked pictures is not an act that will kill her. I'm pretty sure they'd advise you to teach her about moral philosophy and have her survive it through that and by having a high spirit and not letting what is ULTIMATELY a not-dangerous act, not by stopping it. Whether it's punch or pinch, I believe the principle in hurting one person to help another would still be considered wrong by most. Philosophers would say her values are wrong and that crying about stuff like that is a sign of a lowly spirit I reckon. She would have to be in direct, physicsal danger before it warranted intervention, and I'm not sure the chance she'll inflict self harm even counts.

Again the utilitarian way would just say screw that and do it.

This isn't, as set up, a purely two agent problem. You have to consider how hot your daughter is and the resultant joy/horror the posting would cause the world.

It’s wrong because our present culture doesn’t value honor or the defense of it as highly as other or past cultures. In other places or times it would be your duty as a father to defend your daughter’s honor and hence you’d be in the wrong if you didn't break his legs.

A matter of parity among physical,emotional, and social harm?
IDK the old axiom “two wrongs don’t make a right” comes to mind.

Two wrongs don't make a platitude

If you are going to be wrong; be wrong all the way, with gusto. Don't be shy and hide behind mommy's dress.

It’s just math:
1 Harm + 1 Harm= 2 Harms.

Does this mean that you agree with the present culture?

Nah. 1-1=0; .9-1=-.1; 1.1-1=blood feud.

Changing formula is doable.

Suppose rather than do harm to stop a certain harm.

One can redirect the certain harm back to the abuser. That’s not doing a harm. That’s changing a harms direction.

1 Harm plus 0 Harm is 1 Harm.

It’s matter of the parity of a emotional harm and a social harm with a broken leg.

Can you qualify present culture in a way that everyone in the culture presently can recognize?

https://www.amazon.com/Goya-Foods-Al...dp/B008BZTB42/


The above link is no longer needed but will remain to stand as a historical marker in reference to the deleted post above.


Good work.

But the justification for doing so doesn’t entail doing so. Suppose if A insults/dishonors B, 50% of the time B will challenge A to a duel (A must accept) and the outcome of the duel is 50/50. Assuming rational actors, it seems to me that society would be much more civil when the potential punishment exceeds the crime.

Preventing hypothetical harm is a different formula than applying enough hypothetical deterrent that hypothetical deterrence occurs.

The pain of breaking legs is way worse than the pain of humiliation of naked pics David, so in that case you should just follow the rules of society and document his extortion attempts and then press criminal charges against him if he ever does so.

That said, there is a time force can be ethically used and is necessary, especially to use against repeat blackmailers who cannot be disciplined properly by law enforcement and in time of war, or when someone threatens or uses force against you or someone you love.

Parity of physical traumas and psychological traumas diagnostically is culturally ethically relevant. Setting aside a competition for the greatest trauma ( not a reasonable course).

Preventing the revenge porn must have more options available then break a leg. But in the hypothetical proposed, while no revenge porn has yet happened, certain foresight it will is trauma factoring information.

So to prevent the trauma of revenge porn certainly happening with a broken leg is self defense to stop certainly preventable trauma within the parameters of the OP. That leg will heal. That person was stopped from being a felonious creep in a memorable way. That’s uncertainly preventive of further trauma.

If we could predict abusing adults and break fast healing bones to prevent abuse, we’d have a piece of fiction making a misery of behavioral notions. Breaking their bones is a waste of physical labor while they can make choices like don’t do revenge porn while we drink beer and debate cordially about nothing. That’s the fast answer to an ethical interest to simply stop trauma- factors by humans that make any of it stop.

A belief that the rule of law is better. Call the police. Also contact the internet company and have the pictures blocked/taken down and his account blocked

If you line in some lawless hell hole then move or work to get the law changed.

The rule of law versus ethical considerations sounds like a fun roll in the mud.

911: 911 what's your emergency?
DS: Hypothetically....

The ethics change once society develops enough. Not taking it into our own hands was an advance.

It comes broadly under 'revenge porn'. Here's how (and no need to be hypothetical)

https://rightsofwomen.org.uk/get-inf...e-and-the-law/

If this far better approach wasn't available then threatening violence would be more ethical.

I’m okay entering a social pact if another member could legally break my legs to prevent me from doing something like that. In fact I’d be leery of letting anyone join the group who wouldn’t accept those terms. Of course there are good reasons not to cut off someone’s hand for stealing. But as long as two parties agree on the terms, doing so isn’t strictly unethical since they’re essentially following the Golden Rule.