Comment by tc | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tc | Hacker News Reader

Aaron, I believe you're getting confused because you haven't established for yourself a clear notion of basic morality or ethics. Many philosophers have covered what it means to act morally -- Aristotle, Socrates, Kant, and even Jefferson and Franklin. There's even a word for the effects-based moralizing you went through: consequentialism, which most people associate with Mill and Bentham. This usually leads to various forms of utilitarianism.

Being firmly in the deontological camp (rationalist ethics) myself, though, I would recommend you check out Kant, Nagel, and the many advocates of the non-aggression principle (pick your author). I believe our intrinsic notions of morality are mostly deontological, which makes some sense as non-aggression and other subforms of the school allow a person to act morally with local information, rather than requiring global knowledge for every act, as much of utilitarianism requires in the final analysis.

If you would kill one innocent person because you thought that action might save five innocent people, though, then you are probably (and unfortunately) a utilitarian. Do consider both sides though.

Please also consider the role of mutual consent in your world view -- it's important! The servers and cooks work in that restaurant because they want to as compared to their other options for using their time. We could speculate about how great it would be if they could do whatever they wanted without any concern for serving others, but that isn't the nature of the resource-constrained world in which we live.

And, believe it or not, those people working in foreign sweatshops want you to buy their products. They work there because that factory job provides higher pay and a generally safer work environment than the rice-paddy (or wherever) they otherwise would have been working. I think they would find it a bit patronizing and naïve if you were to tell them they should leave those jobs behind. To people in poor countries, a job at a factory is part of the path to a better life. For the country itself, it is part of the path to industrialization and prosperity.

Also remember that just because you could make something better, it doesn't necessarily follow that you must to act morally. Much of a rational notion of morality involves avoiding acts that cause harm to others or that violate the person or the free will of other individuals. All acts are not only moral or immoral. Some actions are supererogatory -- morally praiseworthy but not morally necessary.

Actually there are three main schools of thought in ethics: consequentialist, deontolological, and virtue based. (Before someone asks me to summarise, I'll note that I'm not expert on any of them).

One place where the distinction can become vital is in ER rooms. The following case was described (in another, closed, forum) by the chief on an actual ER: Suppose your ER is full, but you get a call about a patent in critical condition who needs an ER slot, and your ER is nearest. You have one slot occupied by a patient in a relatively stable condition, who could, with low risk, be moved to another ER, clearing the slot for the more critical case.

The utilitarian response is to accept the new patient, as the certainty of helping them outweighs the low risk in moving the existing one.

The deontological response is to refuse; you have accepted duty of care to the current patient, but not yet to the new one.

I don't know what a Virtue ethicist would do.

Actual ERs in the UK have different policies, depending on whether their ethics policy was written by a utilitarian or a deontologist. My interlocutor said that he would usually respond by the deontological rules, but in a crisis would (and in fact, had) act in a utilitarian way.

I don't believe that is necessarily the deontological response. Remember that morality is mostly a tool for exclusion; more than one moral choice often remains.

A deontological person can still practice triage. Without more information (such as published policies, prior agreements, patient consent, etc.) it is hard to say if the question is even really a moral dilemma. If you are standing on the street and two people get hit by a bus, deciding which one to help is not a question of morality. By helping either, or both, you are acting morally, and perhaps even supererogatorily. Deciding whether or not you should go kick them while they're down, though, is a moral question. It would be moral (though not particularly praiseworthy) to refrain from doing so, and it would be clearly immoral to kick them.

Interestingly, Catholics actually believe in the idea of a moral safe harbor. That is, if you've given serious and reasonable consideration to a moral question, and act in accordance with your earnest conclusion, then you will be held blameless regardless of the ultimate righteousness of the action.

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