Utilitarian Ethics or Individual Rights?

modgirl-3 on Tue Jun 3 2008 17:34:28

Individual rights. Without them we are nothing.

In this movie as en example, there are enough paralyzed people who would gladly volunteer for such a trial. To do it on purpose to unwitting victims is just wrong.

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People will not volunteer for a procedure that will most likely kill them. Even if they would they couldn’t. You heard the doctor, it would be decades before they could move to human subjects and at 68 he didn’t have that time.

Those people were no benefit and basically waiting to die. There is a moral dilemma that is sure but just like Grant chose to work on the policeman instead of the shooter it is waging the comparative value of human life. Would a person save some shooter would go to prison and then do the crime again or a police officer dedicated to serving people at the risk of his own life. The choice is obvious, however it is the same choice just a different situation.

A life for a life or a couple lives for thousands of lives.

Don’t say the shooter lived, that was just luck he could have just as easily died.

It was utilitarian ethics that ruled Naziism and is the primary force of communism.

Speaking of "higher purposes" , there can be no higher purpose than honoring the right of every individual to live for their own sake.

No one, nor any "ruling" body, has the right to decide for another what is best for the one, or the many.

Yet, our own "righteous" government does this daily with military excursions into places where they were not invited, incurring deaths of civilians not involved in any perceived wrongdoings, but justifying it as inevitable outcomes of war and labeling it "collateral damage".

When Tim McVea did it, he was a terrorist. When his government does it, it's sadly "unavoidable".

When several hundred thousand Iraqi children were documented by the Red Cross as having perished as a result of sanctions, Madeleine Albright said, "We think the price was worth it."

You see a movie like this that frames the issue in bright lights and makes a statement few would argue with. You hear a quote like that, and most people just yawn and could not care less.

Speaking of Russian authors who adress this issue in classic literature, The Brothers Karamazov, by Dostoyevsky, has this as it's central theme. The main character is asked if he could eliminate all worldly suffering by torturing to death one innocent child, would he do it?

I know some who wouldn't give it a second thought.