Which Person is Engaging in the Greater Evil?
A) Person A is not entirely sane. He doesn’t think it is wrong to kill other people because he doesn’t believe that there are other people. He thinks he is in some sort of virtual reality world which he is trying to get out of. He thinks what appears to be a person isn’t, so it is permissible to kill that illusionary-person if that illusionary-person causes him any discomfort. So he kills many people, and becomes one of the greatest mass murderers in history. But if he knew without a doubt that he was killing people, he would stop.
B) Person B knows he is in the real world. He knows people exist. He doesn’t think we should kill people; he knows that killing people is wrong. And he knows Person A is a killer. However, he also knows that there are all kinds of diseases which are killing some people, making life miserable and difficult for others. The way Person A kills his victims allows their corpses to be used for medical research, and this research might allow for the cure for all kinds of maladies facing humanity. Person B doesn’t approve of the actions of Person A, but he knows he can’t stop A. So he gives funding to Person A so that Person A can continue his murdering spree. He knows whether or not he helps Person A this way, Person A would continue to kill. With B’s funding, Person A is able to kill more and the deaths will be cleaner, less painful. And yet if he doesn’t fund Person A, the deaths would be meaningless. He justifies what he does to himself by saying it is all being done for the common good, and one might as well be able to do some good out of all the evil. But yet, his funding is allowing more evil to be done than would be done without it.
Who is more culpable here? Who is doing the greater evil?
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Who is more culpable?
I guess this is clasic casuistry, but I’ll play along. A person is not generally morally culpable unless they have knowledge that what they are doing is wrong. However, if the person is responsible for their ignorance, or has chosen to remain ignorant then they may be culpable for that and so incur culpability for their actions. Accordingly Person A is not culpable unless they have chosen to be ignorant, in which case they are culpable. Whatever real world parallel is involved, it’s important to note a distinction between 1) mental illness, 2) ignorance, and 3) an obstinate refusal to recognize the biological fact of human life. Categories 2 & 3 may involve moral culpability. Category 1 does not.
Person B, I believe, is clearly in formal, material cooperation with evil assuming they are acting as an individual. There are any number of places to which it is praiseworthy to give money; they are choosing to fund a project that involves killing people rather than any of the other myriad projects that may help some people without killing others.
Who is doing the greater evil?
Well, as A is killing the people and B is continuing to enable it, and so both are really complicit in the same evil act. A may or may not be culpable, but B certainly is.
Eddie
Obviously in this case, I have already pointed out that Person A is not sane.
But I agree with your general reasoning here (are you surprised)? See, we can agree on things.
I really do believe people who do B are quite culpable for the evil they help fund, and indeed, they are as you said complicit in the act. But I do think there is something worse with B than A even if A were ignorant and not insane. For the person who knowingly kills or helps kill another person for the sake of some “greater good” means the person willingly commits an evil in full knowledge of that evil and full understanding of what that evil means. It’s not just that they know more — but also that they are still willing after knowing, it shows to me they are that much more a moral monster. Of course, in this case, Person B would justify themselves by saying, “The ends justify the means.”
I just hear that far too many times. But what moral person can ever argue in this fashion?
Obviously, if one wanted to engage this discussion further, one could imagine where I got the idea for this question from. It’s not too difficult, I am sure. And it’s why I think so many people have fallen for the devil, just because they devil knows the truth. Even the devil can quote scripture, even the devil knows the truth, but he will only use it to justify evil. Just like so many in politics.
I agree with you that, assuming him to be sufficiently self-reflective to understand the implications of his position, someone who was against abortion but in favor of funding ESCR would be in a morally untenable position to say the least.
Unfortunately, I suspect that in the real world few people are really quite as unreflective as A, nor as conscious of the implications of their beliefs as B.
A great many people live by essentially situational ethics — because a great many people react to things at an emotional level (somewhat informed by certain principles and instincts) rather than actually thinking about things.
I guess I agree all around. ‘The ends justifies the means’ is an unsatisfactory (and ultimately immoral) approach to moral philosophy. Many people unconsciously espouse it because they rely on intuition rather than reason in forming moral judgments. As to how to change that, I am not sure. I think the Catholic religious formation should clearly treat moral philosophy as part of the curriculum, and at least some attempts at it were made by my Catholic high school. My impression, however, is that it is not a top priority for the guardians of our public educational system.
Comparatively speaking person A would not be morally culpable for his actions assuming he is not at fault for coming to that state in the first place. Person B is obviously culpable.
It’s really a useless exercise, since neither person A nor person B represent any realistic personalities. They don’t exist, except perhaps in a strawman argument against John McCain.
God Bless,
Matt
Does McCain believe life begins at conception or does he just say it for votes?
Does Bush believe life begins at conception or did he just say it for votes?
The thing is, both of them claim to know the truth. Yet it didn’t stop them from supporting ESCR (we are not just talking about being pro-choice in ESCR and letting businesses decide, but they supported federal funding of ESCR).
So either they didn’t really believe, or they show they don’t care for life. One or the other. The first proves they are not pro-life, the second, of course, also does.
No way can anyone who is pro-life support ESCR. It’s not possible. But that doesn’t mean they don’t know life begins at conception. Just knowing that makes the situation much worse and the anti-life position that much clearer.
Bush opposed funding for ESCR, except for on already discarded embryos; there is a moral distinction there and he certainly was criticized quite heavily by the Dems in 2004 – it was mentioned over and over again in the campaign. He was also opposed by people like Frist and McCain on the issue. Bush certainly appointed justices as if he believes life begins at conception. He was just a disaster in pretty much every other way….
Eddie makes good points. I don’t think we can look into a man’s heart and see what his true feelings are. I suspect that many pro-life except for “x” politicians may be exercising (regretfully) political pragmatism based ont he majority will. Some may be practicing some form of “cognitive disonance” much as the founding fathers did with regard to slavery.
In the end we need to look at the fruits likely from all possible outcomes in the election and vote for pretty much anybody except Hillary/Obama (the unabashedly evil ones).
God Bless,
Matt