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A Moral Dilemma
Submitted by Joseph on Thu, 03/17/2011 - 09:48.
I have come up with another new game called "A Moral Dilemma." Each week I will come up with a moral dilemma. In the comments I would like you to say what you would do. Don't be afraid to speak up, it's your opinion. Hopefully we can get a good debate going. I have 10 moral dilemmas so this will go on for 10 weeks.
Week 1
Concentration Camp
You are an inmate in a concentration camp. A sadistic guard is about to hang your son who tried to escape and wants you to pull the chair from underneath him. He says that if you don’t he will not only kill your son but some other innocent inmate as well. You don’t have any doubt that he means what he says. What should you do?
I don't think I could kill my son even if it meant some other inmate dying as well. That's just my opinion though. What would you do?
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I wouldn't pull the chair
Submitted by Lothere on Thu, 03/17/2011 - 10:58.I wouldn't pull the chair out, and I don't think "I wouldn't kill my son" is even the accurate way to describe the situation. *I* would not be killing my son, the guard would be, no matter who moved the chair. *I* would not be killing the other prisoner, the guard would be, no matter what his supposed reason.
The simple question to ask is: Who is to blame? When the Good Guys come, and the prisoners are liberated, and there are war crimes trials, nobody is going to try me for murder because I didn't do an atrocious thing the guard told me to do, and he killed a prisoner to punish me, teach us a lesson, terrorize us, dehumanize us, or whatever. I'm not guilty.
As a moral dilemma, I find this one fairly easy to answer, despite the horror of the situation -- perhaps precisely because the horror is so artificial, just the construction of a sadistic mind.
A more interesting question might be if the guard told you to do something fairly innocuous -- something that itself was not morally wrong -- and if you didn't do it, he would kill a prisoner. E.g. "Scrub this toilet or I will kill that guy." If you refuse, I still think you're not guilty of a crime or even of an immoral act. You're prisoners in a concentration camp with sadistic guards. What happens isn't your fault. On the other hand, it's just a toilet, so why not clean it, right?
But then, what if the guard says "Sleep with me or I will kill that guy"........?