Your idea of the spectrum reminded me of something that happens in the movie Donnie Darko. Donnie's gym teacher also teaches a class on some kind of super-religious based morality, and her methods are based on a bullshit TV icon who has come up with the idea that all human actions can be categorized as coming from either "fear" or "love." In an exercise in this class, the teacher draws a line on the chalkboard and writes "fear" at one end and "love" on the other. She then hands out flash cards that have scenarios on them, scenarios in which people have to make a choice, and the students are instructed to read their cards aloud and then mark on the chalkboard line which point they think the choice is based in. When Donnie is called on, he reads his card aloud. The card says something to the effect of "[insert name here] finds a wallet on the ground on his way home from school. [insert name here] takes the money in the wallet and then turns it in to the police." He is then asked to mark the line as either fear or love. Instead, he speaks out that the exercise is pointless, that the scenario he has just read has nothing to do with either fear or love, that it doesn't consider whose wallet it is, how much money is in it, etc. The teacher insists that he mark the line, and that "fear" and "love" are the most intense emotions humans can experience. Donnie then calmly tries to explain to her that this is indeed true, but that she is ignoring the entire spectrum of human emotion. The teacher refuses to budge and tells him he will receive a zero for the day if he doesn't mark the line. Donnie then tells the teacher to shove the card up her ass. Needless to say he's sent to the principal's office, but that's beside the point.

The point is, no action comes from any one extreme or another. There are certainly actions that come from a bad place, like fear, but that doesn't mean it can be explained only in that term. Many people do things out of fear that seem morally iffy to objective spectators. But many people also do things that seem morally iffy to objective spectators in the name of love, world peace, "the greater good," etc. There are extremes, yes, but they are a small percentage of what actually happens in the world. Everything else is some shade of each extreme, but mixed with everything else in between.

Also, right and wrong are subjective terms that vary from person to person, group to group. There is no one "right" way, and anyone who believes this is deluded, usually as a way for them to feel secure, and most often based in fear. This doesn't mean they are bad, only that they are narrow-mindedly following one belief blindly in order not to have to deal with the gray areas that really govern the world.

I don't blame anyone for being scared or disgusted with the state of the world, but to think that by not living in terror and doing everything possible to fix it, all the time, is naive and as narrow-minded as you can get. Of course we care that bad things happen, and of course we try to raise awareness, but each person who knows about such problems can't do it for every atrocity, it just isn't possible. People pick and choose what they think they can help and how they can help, they do what they can and they can't do anymore. That's all anyone can do. This isn't saying that no one is doing anything about anything, it's saying that each person does what they can for what they can. I'm sure that covers a lot more ground than what you're imagining from these statements.

I really think you're reading these examples too literally. Interbane was trying to show that there are choices that people make that are gray, not black and white, not to suggest that the handcuffed person is a victim of some purely evil plot. It was a fable of sorts, if you even understand what that means.

Marc Hauser, a psychologist at Harvard, does some interesting research on moral dilemmas such as this one. He has a long list of publications on morality, some of which are definitely relevant to this discussion. Interestingly enough, most people tend to choose the same answers as "right" and "wrong" even when they can't explain why. My favorite result is this one:

Imagine a situation in which someone is angry at their spouse, so they attempt to put poison in their coffee. They somehow mix up the poison and the sugar, and the spouse is fine. Contrast this with a case in which someone means to give their spouse coffee with sugar. They somehow mix up the poison and the sugar, and the spouse dies. In one case, no harm was caused, in another cause, the spouse was murdered. People tend to say that intent is more important than actual outcome: wanting to injure someone and failing is worse than accidentally injuring someone.



The point of the thought experiment, though, is judge what the most moral behavior is for the actor. Clearly, strapping someone to railroad tracks can be considered a bad thing, but the idea of these tests is to examine what people think is right and wrong in the gray zone. It's looking at things close to a "line" (which, I for one, do not think actually exists) and then seeing what it takes for someone to cross that line. The fine-grained differences really get at the way humans conceive of "good" and "bad" behaviors.



Well said, and agreed on all points! Also, I love that movie

Thanks, that's critical thinking at work, right before your eyes. Maybe that college degree isn't such a waste...

So you are saying that all things fall into a grey area that can't be labeled clearly. Then why are you so quick to label my opinions naive, and imply that I don't understand the concept of a fable. If there is no right or wrong just a long spectrum of interpretations of both extremes, wouldn't that make us equally right and wrong. You may be able to quote movies and site your level of education, but you cannot change my mind. It makes me wonder if you were told your answer or did you actually arive there using a rational thought process.

I do believe intent is a major factor. Unfortunately there's no way inside another person's mind to unravel the nuances of their intentions.

I heard of another thought experiment, I can't remember where. "The Science of Good and Evil" by Shermer I think. It went something like this:

Suppose Mark intends to kill Sam. Mark comes to work with a loaded gun, where his work is a tall building. Coincidentally, Sam falls off the roof in a suicide attempt while Mark is loading the gun a few floors below. The gun accidentally discharges and the bullet goes out the window and gravely wounds Sam, who is falling to his inevitable death. Sam dies upon impact with the ground. I think the permutations of the story include a point where Mark retracts his intent to kill Sam at the last moment, but the aforementioned events play out the same. It seems the same as the poisoned spouse example.



Yeah, Donnie Darko rocks. I need to watch it again. There is a similar problem one of my co-workers presented me with. It was homework from her college philosophy class. The problem was over ownership versus responsibility, or something like that.

Basically, the situation is that your friend loaned you his knife a few days ago. Your friend is known to have a temper problem. Your friend comes to you, obviously worked up, and asks for the knife. Some ancient philosopher argued that since ownership of the knife is your friends, you have no right to deny him the knife. The other position, of course, is whether you have a moral obligation to stop him.

The problem sounds like a good problem in theory, but it doesn't accurately apply to the real world. Such decisions must take into account all the details and complexities of the situation. How well do you know your friend? Can you talk him out of it? What are all the details that go into making such a decision? Discussing what's wrong with your friend is the first obvious step. Beyond that, the nuances of your lives take over, and the conversation could branch off into a million variants.



I don't consider you naive, this is an excellent discussion and I'm glad you started it. As for education, I've never been to college, I just enjoy discussing these things. I have no credentials.

Here's what I've taken from this. The moral examples are meant to show how exceedingly difficult it is to draw the "line" in many situations. In some cases, the "line" is so blurred that you can't really place someone on one side or the other. The idealized scenario with the train tracks fails for the same reason the idealized scenario with your friend borrowing a knife fails. The nuances and complexities of everyday life aren't captured. All that remains intact is to show that there are situations where drawing a "line" isn't prudent. In the train tracks scenario, you can alter the "setup" so that only mother nature is incriminated initially. Here's the same scenario with a different setup:

You aren't handcuffed in place. Instead, some turn of events leads you into that position and there is no way to save all the people on the tracks. Your only choice is to pull the lever or not pull the lever. For example, you and some other people are walking along the tracks picking up iron ore pellets to use in your slingshots. An earthquake(or a mudslide) strikes and breaks your legs. It also trips your brother, and he falls onto the tracks and gets knocked out. The other people are similarly incapacitated, but lay on another set of tracks. A train is approaching and the earthquake has damaged it's braking system. Do you pull the handle, or not?

There are many scenarios we could brainstorm that put someone in the position where it's difficult if not impossible to draw the line. Even though such an event is rare, it likely occurs often, since the odds must be multiplied by everyone on Earth that it could happen to.

However, we can potentially draw "the line" in each individual case in hindsight. The problem is, as soon as you decide which side of the line someone is on, they are labeled the same as everyone else on that side of the line. The person who must make the decision to pull the lever is not the same as the person who goes to school and shoots a bunch of people, even if we decide in hindsight that the choice he made was slightly wrong(or at least on the "wrong" side of the line). If you need extra "lines" to draw the distinction in such comparisons, you'll eventually end up with a great many lines. It starts to resemble more of a spectrum than an "us and them."



I'm sure it's a mixture. Einstein wouldn't have come up with the theory of Relativity without all the supporting knowledge from his scientific predecessors. As the saying goes, "don't reinvent the wheel." I'm not implying simple acceptance of the ideas of others, but rather a critical examination before accepting or rejecting. As for the examples, philosophy is greatly aided by what some people call "intuition pumps". Intuition pumps are hypothetical scenarios that help us to weigh our thoughts and ideas against their application. Particularly good intuition pumps are to the philosopher as previously formed scientific principles are to the scientist. Most progress we make is done from the shoulders of giants. It's a progressive, collective endeavor.

I am clearly engaging in critical thinking in discussing this topic, so I find it rude and yes, naive, to assume that I've been "told" my answers.

As a child, religion was never forced down my throat. Of course my parents discussed morals by reading me stories and explaining what to take from them, but as I grew up I began thinking for myself and at this point in life, I question absolutely everything anyone says, so you can be sure that there is no doubt whatsoever that whatever conclusion I arrive at is my own, and not someone else's regurgitated ideas. I mentioned Donnie Darko because it was relevant to the topic and was a correlation I made myself. If you're offended by debating with educated people who may be able to reference a few movies as well to make a point, then I'm sorry you're insecure enough to let that cloud the relevance of those people's statements, but that is your problem, not mine.

And you can shed what I refer to as your naivete very simply by learning more, on your own. You don't have to have a degree or go to college to be educated, you just have to be ambitious and willing to look at things with an open mind. Read everything you can on a topic you want to know, watch movies that deal with those subjects, critique what you read and see and are told by others and use that information to gain more understanding of pretty much anything you want. The fact that you are hostile toward my citation of a movie and the fact that I mentioned schooling suggests to me some sort of insecurity on your part about measuring up or something similar. I could be reading too much into that, but why else would you try to attack me just because I was able to relate a film I watched to a topic and happen to have a degree? It doesn't make sense if you're confident in your own abilities. I can't help it if I'm college educated and have watched a lot of movies that I can easily connect to discussion topics. It's who I am and who you'll have to deal with if you want to continue to discuss this topic. And I won't apologize for that, it's who I am. You could learn something from us educated, movie watching people, but your ideas are still your own, and no one is trying to change that. We're simply discussing the topic you have put before us.

I'll make a note of it.



At least you're honest.



I wouldn't say that, it's been shown to give you more energy, help you sleep, fight depression, and it could extend your life.

It's easy to pick what you want to reply to. You have made some good points and expanded the conversation somewhat. You have also repeated yourself several times, and focused to much on out pointing me in the debate. Now your all up set and your feelings are hurt. I didn't mean to insult you but I believe you broke the ice on that kind of banter. Now this discussion has dwindled down to almost nothing. I make a point trying to open a new line of thinking and opinions, and you take one sentence and re-make the same point. Obviously the human condition can't be place in column A or column B. You can argue better than me I'll give you that but you're not much for intelligent conversation.

I can see this thread heading downhill fast...

Agreed

This is true. I will now submit that the spectrum is faulty. If you are an "us" then you inevitably will be someone's "them."
In a wide spectrum so many factors must be included that any group will only have one member. This could potentially create a situation where an individual is the "us" and everyone else is the "them". Perhaps a better way of thinking is that WE have a problem. If someone is starving than we are starving, If someone else is being slaughtered than we are being slaughtered. If someone kills because of a circumstance imposed by someone else, than we have killed because of circumstances we have created. If the problem is all of ours than we all must solve it.

I was referring to your obvious inability to accept criticism, and resorting to childish potshots at people. They're doing their best to explain to you the flaws in your arguments, and to answer your questions, and to inform you when you come across negatively. There was nothing unreasonable until your response above.

And why wouldn't you just edit this nothing post to add your next reply instead of double posting?

Recently, a petition was started on the Princeton University campus asking that police officers who make their rounds throughout the campus should not carry weapons. The reason for this petition started by the president of the student body was: “Violent crimes do not occur on a campus such as Princeton, and that weapons instill a feeling in the students that there are criminals among us”. What this suggests to me, is that the president of the student body believes that crime occurs on other campuses, to other people. Also, when someone’s child is found to be addicted to drugs, the reaction of the parents is ,”oh no, my child doesn’t do that”. There are many circumstances were people will say, “This doesn’t happen to people like us”. And what this shows is a lack of empathy for others. How many times have you passed by a homeless person and said to yourself, “that will never happen to me”? Does it ever cross your mind that that homeless person may have been someone like yourself once? (This is not directed to anyone by the way, please don’t see my use of the word you as accusatory) My point is, even though I may not be able to prevent violent crimes, I may not be able to give the homeless a house to live in, I may not be able to prevent drug addiction in children, what I can do, is to never say, “it would never happen to me, or people like us”. I have empathy for others, I place myself in the "other" category, not "us" and not "them".

Of course it is. Any representation of reality is faulty, because it cannot contain as much information as reality. However, thinking of this problem in terms of a spectrum rather than a line is more accurate. I'm speaking of the objective placement of a person's moral character, not the subjective perspective of someone else who wants to label me. I understand most people think in "us" and "them" terms. I also understand that is a reason a lot of bigotry and violence and hatred are caused. That's why I spoke up.

I believe this is one of those "WTF" moments. That's certainly the first thing I said, aloud, when I read this post.

What you have done by hacking up my argument and replying to that tiny section of words in a way that has nothing to do with what I actually said is not the same as what I respond to when you say something. My feelings are not hurt, as you might think, I am simply baffled that someone would let a bias against education cloud their view of the validity of someone's argument. If you're going to insult anyone who disagrees with you, why even join a discussion forum where your ideas will be talked about by a wide range of people? Surely you can't believe that absolutely everyone agrees with you and that no one will ever question your ideas? That is all anyone has done, and yet you've taken it as a personal attack and have then begun to attack back because you feel threatened.

No matter what you believe or how strongly you believe it, other people will disagree with you and they have the right to do so without being attacked for sharing their views. This site is a place for discussion and the prospect of gaining new knowledge, not to have your personal beliefs echoed back to you in every post. If this kind of open mindedness offends you, I suggest you keep your ideas to yourself, where they will certainly never be challenged.