Ourph said:
I don't make that claim. There are lots of situations where killing someone is definitely a good act. However, killing an innocent person (one for whom death isn't a consequence of their own informed actions) is, IMO, always an evil act - even if its necessary to perform some greater good and all parties agree that the act should be performed.
Steve's death is a consequence of his informed act of instructing a willing participant to kill him. Besides, based on your definition of relativism below ("Moral relativism argues that intentions define the action. I disagree. Actions have value irrespective of the intentions that spawned them."), it is relativistic to consider whether the actor is acting based on an informed position. That implies that the moral status of his action would change if he were uninformed...which you want to deny.
a merciful, kind, compassionate act of evil
You don't find anything to be...contradictory...in this phrase?
Ask yourself this, if someone burst into the room at the last minute and declared there was a way to end Ms. Rodriguez' suffering without killing her or hurting anyone else, would ANYONE want the euthanasia to proceed? For every good person, I'm pretty sure the answer would be no.
Ah, but here again you've changed the parameters of the hypothetical situation. By adding a complicating factor, you change the moral status of the act. If there were another, simple way to save the world, the sacrificial hero is no longer a hero--merely suicidal, or perhaps kind of dumb. But this illustrates that it is not the act itself, but the circumstances, that are important. In the case of Ms. Rodriguez, if there were some way to magically fix her that appears at the last minute, she now has an additional factor to consider when deciding how and when to die: she can now choose not to. But before that moment, she had no such choice.
Adding this extra factor obscures the analysis of the moral status of the situation. We want to eliminate complications, render the hypothetical situation as simple as possible, so that we can examine what's going on clearly.
Hopefully the same thing would go for poorl old Steve
. So, ask yourself WHY we would be happy to pursue another alternative, if one presented itself.
I'd say that it's because, should we discover that Steve doesn't have to die, that he might want to reconsider dying unnecessarily, and extend him the opportunity to continue living. Not because killing Steve is evil in itself, but because killing Steve when we don't have to would be. Before it was good, but now it would be evil. When you change the premises of the hypothetical situation, you wind up with a different ethical conclusion. Isn't ethics fun?
I think you're mistaking me for a moral absolutist.
And you, if I'm to judge by your comments above, mistake me for a relativist.
I'm not claiming that good and evil are concrete values that can be measured or proven. I'm arguing for a position that accepts the basic thesis that there are no moral absolutes, but doesn't accept the thesis that moral values only depend upon the intentions of the actors. You're taking two separate acts 1) ending someone's suffering, and 2) ending someone's life and mushing them together, claiming that the values attached to one cancel out the values attached to another (i.e. if #1 is a +50 on the "good" scale and #2 is -25 on the "evil" scale, then the overall act is a +25 "good").
Nope. No calculus of hedons and dolors here. The act is simply good, even if it might also be undesirable. Simply because we do not desire an act or event doesn't make it evil. It might suck that it is necessary for someone to die in order to save everyone else, but that doesn't make it evil to carry out the act. What would be evil is going ahead with the sacrifice with a lack of consent on the part of the sacrificee.
You're doing so because both actions in your specific example are inextricably linked through circumstance. However, constructing a specific example in which the two actions cannot take place separately doesn't necessarily mean we can't place value judgements on them separately, especially if we can construct situations where they are separate and the value judgements become clear.
Perhaps, but I don't see how that's incompatible with my analysis. I claim that the moral status of the event is determined by the combination of the act of the sacrificer, and the act of the sacrificee. This means that the acts are indeed linked. If they were not linked, there would be no moral situation, because it would mean that each of these two was alone. If the sacrificee intends to be sacrificed, but cannot carry it out himself, no moral act occurs. If the sacrificer intends to sacrifice someone, and can't sacrifice himself, no moral act occurs. It is only when the two agents come together in the act of sacrificing that we can begin to ask moral questions. The relevent questions here are, I claim, do both parties involved agree that the act is good?
You seem to refer to a kind of axiomatic insistence that the act must be evil, no matter what. I don't see any reason to think that the act is at all evil, since the only two people involved in it (aside from the multitudes being saved, who we will presume for simplicity are ignorant of their impending doom) consider it to be a good act. Who else is to judge but those two? On what basis could we make a judgement in contradiction to them? Only by reference to some immutable, absolutist moral code, which is completely incoherent and parochial.
Because humans are thinking, reasoning creatures we are able to look at a situation where two actions with separate value judgements are inextricably linked and make a determination (as in this case) whether the good of a good action can justify the evil of an evil action.
Again, this makes sense only if you enter the situation with a preconceived judgement as to what is going to be good and what is going to be evil. You look at the act and say, "okay that's good and that's evil," before you start asking questions about what's going on and why. If you have made a judgement before you hear the evidence, that shows that you are unwilling to consider the situation rationally. It's simple absolutism.
For example, if - while Steve is on the altar - a scientist discovered that Steve (and only Steve) could instead save the earth by reciting the words Klatu Verata Nikto, would Steve choose NOT to die and say the words or would he still choose to die? If Steve WANTS to die; if dying is not only the means to an end but an end desired by Steve in and of itself, then I can accept the idea that helping Steve to die would not be an evil act.
Steve wants to die in order to help others. Helping Steve to do this is a good act. If it turns out that Steve no longer wants to die--even if there's no magic words to save the world--then making him die is no longer a good act, even if it would have been a good act during the period of time in which he wanted to die. This means that the morally significant issue in this situation is Steve's will. If we agree with Steve's will, then nothing we do to Steve that is in accordance with that will is evil. We can harm him without doing evil, but only if he wills that we harm him and we agree that harming Steve is the best course of action.
Again, you're mushing together two separate acts with separate value attachments.
I claim that there are no value attachments without there being two actors, and therefore two actions.
I think that the act of being a Paladin definitely implies a resolution to act in certain circumstances. I suppose a Paladin's code of conduct could contain only negative statements (i.e. Thou shalt not.....), but then you're basically end up with a class of Paladins who were more "do nothings" than "do gooders". The archetype of the Paladin implies that Paladins are not only compelled to avoid certain behaviors but to engage in certain, inherently "good", behaviors. So, I would argue that being a Paladin inherently requires "good samaritanism" and avoiding cowardice. YMMV.
Well, of course. As I said above, you are only called to "good samaritanism" if you have sworn to do good whenever possible. Paladins have sworn to do so, regardless of the cost to themselves it might incur. Therefore if they attempt to avoid doing this duty, they are acting against their oaths, and lose their paladinhood. However, not everyone is a paladin, and we cannot declare it evil to abstain from doing good at every opportunity. It is merely a sign of poor character. It is certainly better if everyone were to try to do good acts whenever the circumstances arise, but all we can reasonably demand is that they refrain from doing evil.
