| | I find myself disagreeing with all of the major participants on this thread. Of course, my degree of disagreement varies, as does the content of the disagreement. I don't have the time or patience to go through all of it, but thought I'd offer a few points of where I disagree.
First, I'm mostly in agreement with Bill. I think that in certain emergency situations, rational self-interest would lead to sacrificing others. Where I disagree with Bill is in his use of the word "rights". Bill and I had a long debate about the nature of moral principles, where I argued a moral principle does not tell you that you should do X or Y, but instead is an epistemological tool that provides you knowledge of the consequences of your actions. Once you can foresee the consequences, you still need to evaluate the consequences by the standard of your own life. So for me, rights are not some kind of moral obligation. They're principles of understanding. When the rapist finds himself in a kill or be killed situation, the principle of rights still exists. He knows that killing his her is a further "violation of rights". In other words, he knows that he's further pitting his life against hers and the rest of civilization. The principle shows him that the consequences for his actions are very, very bad. The principle doesn't disappear simply because it's an emergency. In this particular emergency, he has two choices. If he lets her kill him, he knows the consequences are bad. If he kills her, he also knows the consequences are bad. What should he do? Rights qua moral rules tells you to kill yourself. "Life as the standard" qua moral rule tells you to survive. If you're used to treating principles as rules, you're stuck being immoral, and then have to act on your emotions. But if you see principles as epistemological tools of understanding, then you get to the point where you have to compare the foreseeable outcomes, instead of trying to follow the rules in order to be moral.
When you get to this comparison, some have suggested that the rapist's rational self-interest is to die, or possibly that he has no rational self-interest. Excuses are made that he's not rational, or doesn't value life, or whatever. I think these all sound like excuses. They're assumptions needed to make sure that people's moral rules always apply, even in screwed up situations like this. If you have a rule that says never sacrifice another, then in this situation you simply argue that a person's death is not really a sacrifice at all. If you have a rule that says they should act on their rational self-interest, you can say it doesn't apply to someone who isn't rational.
My understanding is that rational self-interest is not based on whether the person is rational or not. It's suppose to be objective, not subjective. While we don't always have all of the knowledge to know what another person should do, it doesn't mean that it's a subjective morality. We can understand what is "good" for the person. We can understand what values would actually promote his life, instead of what values he happens to be pursuing. The fact that the rapist is evil and irrational doesn't mean he doesn't have real interests. There are still values that objectively promote his life. Rational self-interest is a way of describing those values that really do benefit him. So any attempt to dismiss him as irrational is irrelevant. The question isn't what is he going to do (we're pretty sure the rapist would kill her). It's not even what we would want him to do. The question is, from the side-line of this forum, with full knowledge of the situation, what do we think is the best choice for him. This last part is essential. Too many comments revolve around what we think is right for society. We think he should kill himself because it benefits us, it benefits her (who we prefer), and it benefits society (one less rapist/murderer). We might even say that's "moral" in some sense. But morality is a guide for individuals to make choices on how they should act. The rapist may not choose to act morally, or to even understand it, but we're not asking what he'd do. We're asking what would benefit him the most. If he were to act on his own best interest (or rational self-interest), what would he do?
Now given a choice between killing the girl (and all of the foreseeable consequences), and dying, the choice is pretty bad. Objectively speaking, can he get any value out of his remaining life? It's unlikely that he'll live a rational, completely fulfilling life. But that choice was lost when he decided to rape her. Now he must choose between a world of limited value and high risks, and a quick death. Bill has suggested that the limited value is better than none at all. I find myself agreeing. And his rhetorical point about trying to convince the rapist to choose to die instead is actually a pretty strong point. Convincing someone that they will never find any value or joy in life and should kill themselves would be tough, not because they're irrational, but because it wouldn't be true. Life is hard to predict, and its full of possibilities. It would be irrational to think that you couldn't find anything pleasant. Of course, the situation might change if he knew definitively that he'd be caught, convicted ,and put into a jail for life with giant rapists using him like he used her. Then it would be much easier to convince him that not only will it be next to impossible to find joy in life, but that death would be the alternative. Since this scenario left open the possibility of him getting away with it all, I don't think this argument applies.
Jeff has argued that a person's value hierarchy need to be understood to make this kind of decision, and that it can change the outcome in a way that letting yourself die is the more meaningful choice. I'm not convinced. First, the rapists value hierarchy is not likely to change the equation here. Second, if I understand the use of the term value hierarchy here, it seems to be a way of choosing to elevate some values above another. The question here is, are your values objective or not? Is there room for you to rearrange your values so that the outcome of a moral choice is contrary to what an objective outsider, with full knowledge of the facts of your life, would decide is the correct choice? If your value hierarchy creates a non-optimal choice, wouldn't we have to say that your hierarchy is irrational? Isn't the morality of the choice based on what is actually beneficial to your life, and not simply what you think or feel is?
Yes, there are times where your feelings are irrational, but going against your feelings can be more costly in the short-term than going with them. If you really hate someone, but you know you shouldn't, it may be better to not spend time with them where you would if you felt different. But the consequences have to be minor. If they were major, the best advise would be to suck it up, power through it, and deal with your emotions when you have more time. And certainly where your life is on the line, that couldn't be more true. You might feel very guilty, sitting in a life-boat, not offering what little food you have to your neighbor, but if death is the alternative, you better push aside your feelings and make a choice with the full capabilities of your mind.
Jeff, maybe this isn't exactly what you meant. The term "value hierarchy" is sufficiently vague and abstract that it might be just a confusion. But it sounds, from all of your posts, that you think holding certain values becomes a value in itself. Not sacrificing others is under normal circumstances a useful and beneficial policy, and maybe you can value the policy because of that. But as you incorporate the policy into your view of yourself, you start valuing the policy even when it stops being beneficial. And then, in these emergency situations, you feel like the choice is between literal death on one hand, and destroying what you think of as your self and life on the other. That's my understanding of your position. Please feel free to correct it. But if this is right, then it seems like the problem was in taking this contextually useful policy, and incorporating it as a contextless rule into your view of yourself and the "proper" way to live.
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