Beyond the problem of evil: Dilemma, an approach ...
I remember the time my father asked me the following:
If your mother and I were in a lake about to drown, and you had the option to save just one, who would you save?
The heartbreak-filled knee-jerk response was that he would try to save them both. My father smiled and said, you can only save one. I was silent as I watched him, and he answered categorically, to your mother, son.
Many years have passed since that lesson, or should I say prescription. My father has been dead for more than nine years, the dilemma is now solved, I am no longer forced to choose if the hypothetical event were to occur, the solution is obvious, or perhaps it is not as simple as it seems.
Neither my father nor I, we think about my mother's judgment before such an approach, I understand my father's attitude of sacrifice based on reason, protecting the weakest and also guided by the feeling towards those who love. But is there a corrective action?
I believe that reason and feelings are intrinsically intertwined, or perhaps, it is just an instrumental abstraction to explain and prescribe individual and collective behavior in a given situation, and what to do when the situation is not determined? A philosophical problem tangled in morals and ethics.
I confess that the terms of morals and ethics tend to confuse me these days, by the predominance of the sociocultural relativist in the world, the product of an ancient debate.
At the moment I have more questions than answers. Throughout the years I have acquired some books that address the moral and ethical binomial, as well as some classic texts that develop it. I think that the subject has never gone out of style, although in the last two centuries the critical theory of society has also occupied the attention. And how could it not be that way, considering the Greco-Latin origin of the words? The word moral comes from the Latin "Moralis" to indicate custom, and ethics, from the Greek word "Ethos" which means conduct or way of being. Undoubtedly we are gregarious beings who exercise consciousness. Starting from the etymology, I deduce that morality influences the individual from the outside and ethics starts from the evaluation that the individual makes from the inside of what the social environment expects.
So far, I see clearly, but when I review some relevant contemporary texts on the subject, more concerns and fewer certainties arise. At present, theorists maintain the existence of as many morals as societies and cultures are deployed on the planet, and to top it all, they vary or adapt over time. Concerning ethics, the problem is complicated, when placed from the individual, group, inter-group, organizational and societal perspective.
I also see in questions, albeit lawful and honest, a deliberate intention to detach oneself from ancestral beliefs in divinity:
How is morality to be understood when all religious and traditional instances of its justification are suppressed?
I wonder why? for what? Is it a strategy of the ancestral conspiracy framed in the problem of evil?
Likewise, uprooting morality from the absolute to bring it to the relative raises dangerous repercussions when the relevance of the ethical interpretation is doubted, by questioning its effectiveness based on the power relations in society.
Imagen de Mary Pahlke en Pixabay
I realize the importance of the word as a vehicle of thought, and that it allows the possibility of making rational judgments and expressing feelings and irrefutable evidence of self-awareness and the moral dimension of man.
If you evaluate everyday situations, you will notice that at the intersubjective level, people both within the family and in work environments do not stop making moral judgments where they express resentment and indignation, as well as feelings of guilt or shame when they err. In this way, they moderately resolve ethical dilemmas or evade them based on the relative morality in which they believe or predominate in the environment.
I believe that the influence of the fray between contemporary moral and ethical philosophers has brought more harm than good, I have just made a moral judgment, some will correct me and say, you have made a value judgment. Perhaps so, but this does not contradict the reality of current problems such based on a moral substratum:
- The deterioration of democracy and human rights.
- The lack of social justice in the states and the world.
- The lack of consensus in the handling of immigration (restricted or unlimited).
- The disrespect for the rights of foreigners.
- The controversy over abortion and euthanasia.
- Respect for minorities to the detriment of majorities (lack of equity when segregating).
- The threat to fauna and the deterioration of the ecology.
- Irresponsibility towards future generations.
- The danger of genetic technologies.
- The abuse of information technology.
- The danger of transhumanism.
- Poverty and famine.
I think the evidence speaks for itself. Perhaps, the solution is to achieve a universally shared morality with an ethical interpretation according to morality without relative terms, in which everyone is committed, a utopia of justice and well-being.
How to achieve utopia? It is part of the resolution of the philosophical dilemma. Until now, man has utterly failed in every age attempt to achieve. In my opinion, it walks in the opposite direction, abandoning the absolute and immutable to engage in the relative and changing. Perhaps it's doomed from the start.
Thoughts by @janaveda
If your mother and I were in a lake about to drown, and you had the option to save just one, who would you save?
Ah, the classic (psychopath) "trolley problem".
One can ONLY be (morally) "responsible" for the (active) actions they freely choose.
One CANNOT be (morally) "responsible" for "non-action".
AND,
The only "universal (human) morality" is,
(1) PROTECT YOURSELF
(2) PROTECT YOUR FAMILY
(3) PROTECT YOUR PROPERTY
Hello @logiczombie,
'll never know if my father handled the buggy problem, but his prescription was clear blunt.
Although to be honest, I see a little difference in the restrictions on the problem that my father raised me and the problem of the cart.
In the problem of the cart, the condition of the quantity of people determines the decision as well as the type of ethics of the decision-maker (utilitarian-teleological or axiological-deontological).
However, I am among those who presuppose that this approach and its variants are quite questionable. An example of the cinema we see in the titan Thanos in Endgame. He was a utilitarian when he chose to eliminate half the universe under the justification of a greater good.
On the other hand, in the problem that my father raised, it does not presuppose the achievement of a greater good. It tests the reason and feeling, whatever the choice will cause emotional damage unless the decision-maker is a psychopath. He could choose to let both of them die and not suffer from remorse or moral pain.
It does however presuppose the achievement of a "personal good".
It presupposes that the future with ONLY your mother (or father) will be either "less-painful" and or "more-joyful" than the alternative "choice" (consequentialism).
In the exact same way, "the trolley problem" presupposes that the individual "decision maker" will either feel "less-guilt (pain)" or "more-guilt (pain)" as the result of their "choice" (consequentialism).
The concept of "the greater good" is merely a fabricated intellectual crutch, carefully crafted to assuage personal feelings of guilt an individual might feel as a result of their psychopathic "choice".
It's the same brainwashing technique used to persuade countless individuals to "turn-off" their personal "moral compass" and simply "follow orders" (because "the boss" always "knows what's best for everyone").