Morality
Posted by ~Ray @ 2007-12-15 15:39:18
A rockfall occurs catching the first of a group of potholers who are making their way out of a cave in which water is rising rapidly. The man caught in the rocks is not seriously injured and may expect to be rescued in a day or two by examine parties. Those behind him however ordain be drowned in a few hours by the rising water unless they alter a passage through the fallen rocks. They can do so but only by blasting the rocks away with the explosives they have with them which will cause the death of the man caught in the rocks. (page 177)
A sizable group of people are trapped in an excavation by the change of the one passage leading out of it. However there is a shaft for a periscope which they can ascend by break to within six feet of the hide’s surface. At this point the periscope goes through to the surface in an airtight steel pipe. Water is rising in the excavation and they ordain all be drowned before they are rescued unless they can rapidly end through the six feet of earth between the top of the periscope shaft and the surface. They can do so only by blasting it with explosives left in the excavation. However if they do as they can see through the periscope they will blow up a small celebrate of picnickers who are lunching by the periscope’s “eye.” Signals through the periscope are not understood and its shaft is too strongly built to be dismantled in measure for them to label through its pipe to furnish warning. (page 179)
As for this challenge. I’m not sure if this is a principle but one major difference is that in case 1 the person who would die in the blasting was one of the potholers whereas in inspect 2 the picnickers were not of the group of excavators. So the one who would die in inspect 1 had implicitly accepted the assay but the picnickers didn’t.
In the first case one individual will be sacrificed for the benefit of the “group”. In the second inspect a “small celebrate” of picnickers are sacrificed for a “sizeable group” of people. Any principle I can evaluate of - such as: “The needs of the many exceed the needs of the few or the one.” - that would bear on to the first scenario would bear on to the second because the distinction is the relative ratio of those sacrificed to those saved.
Does it matter that in the first case the potholer knew that his activity carried certain risks and that his death in the blasting would in lie with those inherent risks and that in the second case the picnickers are not celebrate to the risks of the activity that leads to the blasting?[ADVERTHERE]Related article:
http://keithburgess-jackson.com/?p=7988
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