Why would you look at a moral question dispassionately? There is nothing dispassionate about morals. It would be like trying to appreciate art while setting aside your sense of beauty. [/qupte]
I think that in general, ethical decisions are best done when we mentally step back from the situation and try to examine things objectively. That could mean recognizing an ethical problem that doesn't cause me discomfort, or it could mean recognizing that a "gut feeling" that there's a difference between two things isn't based on anything of real consequence.
That's a good criticism of that particular example.
I should have picked one in which I knew a particular poor outcome might result. You claimed that I should be held responsible if I knew that torture would have resulted from my vote. But do you really hold that I would be held exactly as responsible as the people who are performing it?
This seems no different than the terrorist argument that there are no innocent civilians. All should be held accountable for the actions of their government or military.
I never said anything about "exactly" as responsible. In the case of a traffic engineering measure, I still think that the driver who disobeys the rules of the road and ends up in a collision is the person
most responsible for what happened. Other people would have varying levels of responsibility depending on all sorts of factors.
I see nothing unethical about installing red light cameras if the data supports that they will prevent a greater number of accidents and fatalities, despite the fact that they may also cause a smaller number of accidents that normally wouldn't have occurred.
Either way accidents will occur. The only difference is that now there will be less of them.
Me too, but I've seen moral arguments that imply that it wouldn't be okay... for instance, the one behind
Catholic "double effect" doctrine: it's not permissible to end an ectopic pregnancy with abortifacient drugs, but it's permissible to remove the fallopian tube and leave the embryo to die.
Moreover, there really is no "sub group" targeted since all drivers at some point will be in a position to be rear ended and t-boned. It's not like there is a separate group of drivers that are the only ones at risk to be rear-ended. And it's not like you are preferentially protecting a specific group of drivers at risk to be t-boned. You benefit all drivers and target none.
Yeah... the red light camera might not be the best example for that. Unfortunately, it's late and I can't think of a better example right now.
I think the much more interesting majority vs minority moral dilemma is the train switch, where you do directly choose a group of people to die by throwing the switch.
And as I said before, while it might be interesting to arm-chair philosophize about what we ought to do, I don't think there you can really say that in all situations it is more ethical to serve the needs of the majority over that of the minority (or the opposite: that it is more ethical to abstain from harming a minority).
Right. In fact, at that same hypothetical intersection, when trying to decide the traffic signal timings, the normal objective is to minimize average delay... but while keeping the delay for each movement below a certain threshold. For instance, even if giving more green time to the north-south phases will decrease average delay, if that would mean that the east-west movements will experience level of service "F", then you don't assign that green time to the east-west phases.
