The categorical imperative

[Steelers Baby]

Interesting video you might enjoy from Michael Sandel which deals with a similar subject. Listen to the first 5 minutes to figure out whether or not you will enjoy it.

http://justiceharvard.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=11&Itemid=8

This is an interesting debate, which I have looked in to, because inevitably, people always choose to switch tracks on the train and kill 1 person instead of 5, but will not push a fat man off a bridge to save 5, it is strange how 1 action of choosing 1 death over 5 is very often thought of as more moral then the next, where no one can bring themselves to push the fat man off a bridge.

Quote from nitro:

Do you adhere to it?

For those that don't know what it is, here is a simple situation:

You have a friend, let's call him Bob, whose location at this exact moment you know. Another random person, call him Billy, comes up to you and says he wants to kill Bob and demands that you tell him where he is. If you tell Billy where Bob is, he is 100 delta to die. If not, Bob forever goes unharmed. Do you tell the truth to Billy?

Not lying, according to Kant, is a fundamental principle of morality, or the 'categorical imperative'.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperative

 

[nitro]

Quote from peilthetraveler:

The average cuban Doctor makes $20 per month. The avearge unskilled Haitian makes about $1.25 per day. What doctor wouldnt want a 50% pay raise?

What?

I have no idea what you are trying to say, nor do I follow your arithmetic.

But then if every doctor wanted that payraise and they all left Cuba, there would be no doctors in Cuba and Cuba would need compassionate doctors to come there and work for small change. So the real measure of compassion is in the doctors that make large amounts of money and the take huge paycuts to help the poor. Right?

Hundreds of doctors and other professionals left Cuba when in 1959, Castro came to power and said, whoever doesn't want to be here can leave. When he realized just about everyone took him up on it and did leave, he changed the rules so that you had to go through a lengthy process of approval to be allowed to leave.

I do not know how to measure sacrifice. Is someone that makes $250,000/yr and goes to work for $20 a day making a greater sacrifice than someone that makes $20 a day and can probably go anywhere else in the world and make 100x that? I don't even know where to begin to answer that question, nor do I find it relevant. I like to think that if mathematics were applied to a moral imperative, that it would be topological and not geometric.

How much sacrifice if any at all, "I am my brother's keeper", from good will to Universal Law, is what is in question.

 

[nitro]

Quote from trendlover:

Nitro, explain moral imperative better than the link please.

trendlover, perhaps this does a better job.

http://www.philosophypages.com/hy/5i.htm

 

[CaptainObvious]

Quote from nitro:

Do you adhere to it?

For those that don't know what it is, here is a simple situation:

You have a friend, let's call him Bob, whose location at this exact moment you know. Another random person, call him Billy, comes up to you and says he wants to kill Bob and demands that you tell him where he is. If you tell Billy where Bob is, he is 100 delta to die. If not, Bob forever goes unharmed. Do you tell the truth to Billy?

Not lying, according to Kant, is a fundamental principle of morality, or the 'categorical imperative'.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperative

Seems simple enough. I tell Billy and then call Bob and say, hey Bob, I don't know what you did to piss off Billy, but he's coming to kill your ass. I have told the truth and satisfied any moral imperative to tell the truth to all parties involved.
BTW, there is no such thing as 100 delta as it is impossible to achieve absolute certainty in regard to events that have yet to happen.

 

[Podimer]

This is assuming that we accept lying as a fundamental principle of morality, which if you also follow with
Kant’s definition of enlightenment, which is basically saying to think for ourselves, then we are at liberty to decide that lying might be ok in certain situations. If our volition is for the ultimate good, in this case, save Billy from his perhaps temporary homicidal impulses that he may later regret and Bob from the physical suffering inflicted by psycho Bill, then lying is the best way to proceed.

As the categorical imperative implies, act how you think everyone in the world should act, which seems just a degree or two off of “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” or even Aleister Crowley’s “do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.” IMHO, if everyone lied in the Billy-Bob situation, it is alright by me. It’s like if a surgeon’s patient dies when he plunges the scalpel into the patient he was trying to do a life saving heart operation on, is he a murderer? Or even the mother on a deserted island steals her son’s stash of crack and throws it into the sea so that he may be free from the suffering it would bring, is she a thief? Different circumstances call for different actions, kind of like holding the position a wee bit past your would be stop because it is at a strong support point, we use our discretion. Like perhaps the Cuban docs (if they aren’t doing it for the cash) or modern saints like doc paul farmer (good read on Haiti, Mountains beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder) or mother Theresa, act selflessly with virtue and you are probably aligned with the moral imperative

 

[trendlover]

Quote from nitro:

I do not know how to measure sacrifice. Is someone that makes $250,000/yr and goes to work for $20 a day making a greater sacrifice than someone that makes $20 a day and can probably go anywhere else in the world and make 100x that? I don't even know where to begin to answer that question, nor do I find it relevant. I like to think that if mathematics were applied to a moral imperative, that it would be topological and not geometric.

How much sacrifice if any at all, "I am my brother's keeper", from good will to Universal Law, is what is in question. [/B]

Here is no bias link. 28,000 medical people in many countrys and only 480 try to leave. Ok peilthetraveler? Some maths for you.
Not ALL people are ALL one way. That is your bias.
http://forums.terra.com/foros/cuban...8/Cuba_loses_doctors_to_asylum_offer_P605192/

 

[trendlover]

Quote from peilthetraveler:

So the real measure of compassion is in the doctors that make large amounts of money and the take huge paycuts to help the poor. Right? [/B]

You want to measure that way?
So do not forget to put on your measure stick this same doctors guarantee to go back to the big pay when they finish. Comfort to them. But it is still much compassion that the western doctors have.
You can not measure this.

 

[TGregg]

Maybe it's the beer in me hand that reminds me, but I can't believe nobody has said:

"Immanuel Kant was a real pissant who was very rarely stable. . ."

Must be only us old timers know this song.

 

[trendlover]

Quote from nitro:

trendlover, perhaps this does a better job.

http://www.philosophypages.com/hy/5i.htm

I forget to say thank you for that.

 

[trendlover]

Quote from trendlover:

You want to measure that way?
So do not forget to put on your measure stick this same doctors guarantee to go back to the big pay when they finish. Comfort to them. But it is still much compassion that the western doctors have.
You can not measure this.

When I say "this same doctors guarantee to go back to the big pay when they finish" I am talking about American and other develop free market countrys of doctors.
So how to measure this when some doctors finish helping poor countrys, and go back to thier country to make more money again, then some doctor finish to go back to their country to make less money again?