Adolf Hitler and a gorilla are drowning in a river. You can only save 1.

[Antonio the Sixth]

makes u think

[Antonio the Sixth]

Seriously though, SWE (provided he's not trolling) is absolutely correct.

Unless we're talking about Hitler when he's in power and can still do damage (in which case the moral question is a completely different ones that has nothing to to with gorillas), then saving the human being is the only morally acceptable course of action.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Seriously though, SWE (provided he's not trolling) is absolutely correct.

Unless we're talking about Hitler when he's in power and can still do damage (in which case the moral question is a completely different ones that has nothing to to with gorillas), then saving the human being is the only morally acceptable course of action.

Gorillas are an endangered species

Hitler killed 11 million people

And you save him? That isn't morally acceptable.

What's not morally acceptable is to care more for an "endangered species" than for a fellow human being.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Wait, is Tony saying that if Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was captured and arrested, he'd choose to save his life over that of an innocent animal's?

Are you saying that if he was captured we should just kill him? I thought you were against the death penalty.

[Antonio the Sixth]

That's utterly f**ked up, but I'm tired of discussing this, so I'll follow Joe after all. Let's agree to disagree.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Only on Atlas would this be a controversial question.

Which is why 86% of posters chose the morally wrong answer...

[Antonio the Sixth]

If saving Hitler means being indirectly responsible for other people's deaths, then that's a very different situation, obviously. But I don't think that was what the question was supposed to mean.

Otherwise, indirectly killing Hitler is still a violation of the absolute right he has as a human being. That's not the right way make him pay for his crimes - in fact it doesn't even really make him pay for his crimes.

[Antonio the Sixth]

If saving Hitler means being indirectly responsible for other people's deaths, then that's a very different situation, obviously. But I don't think that was what the question was supposed to mean.

Otherwise, indirectly killing Hitler is still a violation of the absolute right he has as a human being. That's not the right way make him pay for his crimes - in fact it doesn't even really make him pay for his crimes.

Where does this "absolute right" come from?

"We hold these truths to be self-evident" etc. (just to cite one source, there are others)

[Antonio the Sixth]

On further consideration I'd probably save the gorilla.

Sorry, Antonio, but, while in almost any other hypothetical of this kind I'd agree with you, it's Hitler.

If you start making exceptions for Hitler, it's very easy to be tempted to make more. Past and present times are ripe with horrible people who did horrible things. Where do we draw the line, then? Surely, it can't be only Hitler, or someone should explain to the victims of Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot why their tormentors weren't bad enough to deserve the same fate. And then, what about Franco, Suharto and the like? They killed a lot of people - not quite as many as those others, but is that really a relevant distinction? And why stop at tyrants? What about Tim McVeigh, Omar Mateen or the forever-unnamed people who bombed Piazza Fontana? What about Charles Manson? How many people does someone need to have killed to deserve being left to die? Isn't one enough? And hell, why stop at killers? Aren't some acts even worse than murder? What does Josef Fritzl deserve?

And yes, I realize it's a bit rich for me to make a slippery slope argument after I've rejected such arguments in other discussions (including with you). I just think this is the one right that can't tolerate any exception without eventually collapsing altogether. Also, as much as I like virtue ethics, I'm very suspicious of any moral reasoning that tends to divide humanity into "bad people" and "everybody else".

[Antonio the Sixth]

What if a trolley was headed down a track and about to run over a tied up Hitler, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Pol Pot, Kim Jong-un and Augusto Pinochet. You can throw a switch to change it but that'll run over a box of kittens on the other track. Do you throw the switch?

The answer doesn't change however you phrase the question.

[Antonio the Sixth]

You know, Tony, maybe AAD is right about you.

As if you ever doubted it.

[Antonio the Sixth]

It’s less that I’m interested in adjudicating whether or when a bad person, even a really bad person, loses the right to life and more that I’m trying to be honest enough about my own motivations and tendencies as a moral agent to not falsely say I wouldn’t, in this situation, choose to save the gorilla.

I am agnostic on whether or not it is possible for a human to lose the moral right to life, which does come before and in situations like this supersede the right to life of non-human animals, through evil actions, and correspondingly even more agnostic on at what point exactly that happens (if it does happen). I cannot say which, between Hitler and the gorilla, would have more of an objective moral claim on my attention. All I can say is that I would choose the ape and hope I’d made the right decision.

You're absolutely right that those are two separate questions, and the thread really did ask about the latter. I can't really say I know that I'd save Hitler if I could. I can certainly see situations where I couldn't bring myself to saving someone, depending on what they did and my emotional state at the time. I'm definitely not going to play holier than thou in this regard.

On the former question, however, I really have no doubt. I very strongly believe that, in a world where all our choices have consequences and should therefore constantly be subject to controls and restrictions (both legal and moral), there ought to be one choice, one single choice, that ought to belong entirely to the individual, and that can only be the choice of whether to live or die. I know you can't agree with that, but I hope it's a valid view to have.

[Antonio the Sixth]

To be clear, my position is that there should be a universal default assumption, both by the individual and by the other people and structures surrounding the individual, that the proper course of action is to continue to live or to allow to continue to live. I think that this is the only morally responsible way to work out agnosticism on the question of whether it's possible to lose the right (or relinquish the duty) to live. I certainly don't advocate a system in which some third party or group of third parties sits in judgment and decides who lives and who dies; I try to be very consistently against the death penalty.

I didn't mean to imply the contrary. Sorry if it came across that way.

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Personally I'd rather say that I know what the right thing to do is but wouldn't necessarily do it. That said, your view is one I take on other issues, and I have no grounds to object to your taking it on this one.