A twist on an old morality question

[hyphenate]

This is similar to one posed to me many times through the years which I always reply flippantly to just to irritate the querent. But I thought I would see how other people see this one on a completely objective point of view.



You're swimming in a lake, and there is a kitten and a child drowning, and you can only rescue one of them. Somehow, you get a flash that the child will grow up to be a serial killer, or another Adolph Hitler. The kitten will be an ordinary kitten, who, if you rescue it, will live to be a great old age of 18 and will be a good companion for a single owner.

So....do you rescue the child, knowing its future, simply because rescuing a child is more important than rescuing an animal;

Do you rescue the child hoping that an intervention will prevent somehow the terrible future you saw;

Do you rescue the child because it's simply the right thing to do;

Do you rescue the child for some other reason;

Do you rescue the cat because you don't want that future to come true for the child;

Do you rescue the cat because it will be a better presence on the earth for its years;

Do you rescue the cat because you like animals better than children;

Do you rescue the cat simply because you feel there is no escaping destiny and the child must be stopped before all those terrible things happen;

Or do you make some other choice?

[cynatnite]

1. Rescue the child without a doubt...

I don't believe the future is set in stone.

[tocqueville]

2. I am a freeper and I let both drown

then I go an sue the parents and the owners of the cat for letting it happen and expect $ millions for "emotional distress". I have of course a doctor certifying I couldn't swim that day....

[tocqueville]

3. I am Karl Rove, save the child and become his mentor

can be useful in the future...

[Geoff R. Casavant]

4. I rescue the child

because to me people are worth more than animals, at least in this context.

Okay, I get a flash that this child will be the next Hitler. But do I also get a flash of the future victims, and the possibly greater evil one of them might have inflicted if not killed? Or do I see the results of the fight against the genocide, the way the horrors of Nazism ultimately contributed to a more united Europe?

I was just reminded of a Star Trek episode where Kirk allowed a woman to be killed by an auto, because the cost of her living was too great.

All in all, some moral judgments were not meant to be decided by one person, but the one reality I would face is I had the chance to save a child and didn't.

[T Wolf]

5. Tough choice.

With the belief that all children (at least) start out with a "clean slate", I would be hesitant to condemn the child to death because I had a "flash" about their future. Knowing nothing about their background (parents and therefore, likely future), I would lean towards the child.

That being said, I would try to save both.

Here's a twist on the twist... Your family cat vs. George Bush? Your family pet vs. a (human) stranger?

[hyphenate]

8. Oh, no question

My cat would be in my arms while I waved "bye-bye" to Georgie Porgie.

[calico1]

6. The kitty. n/t

[Orrex]

7. The child

The answer, for me, is simple. If I am equally able to rescue either the cat or the child but not able to rescue both, then I will rescue the child. My “intuition” that the child will be a serial killer is irrelevant, because as a rational being I do not accept intuition as a compelling motivation. Whether or not the future is “destined” is also irrelevant, because I have no means of perceiving that destiny and am therefore not qualified to base judgments solely upon it.

The underlying question suggests that there is some moral absolute by which we may assess the correctness of our answer, but I see no evidence that such an absolute exists (or that we can know it in any verifiable way). As such, we have no way to determine if either the cat or the child has a greater moral “right” to exist, and ultimately we can base our decisions only on our own preferences.

I choose the child over the cat also because I am more readily able to empathize with the human than the feline. Whether this is a result of “nature” or “nurture” I can’t say, but it is the case nonetheless.

[TalkingDog]

9. It doesn't matter what the child will become. What matters....

Is what you will become if you decide to murder her/him by neglect.

The crux of being a whole, adult human being is that you can only be responsible for your own choices. If the child grows up to become a dangerous person, you can help stop the destruction to the degree that you are able. But you cannot, morally or ethically, make that choice for her/him.

[TlalocW]

10. I rescue them both

Then beat the child to death with the kitten.

TlalocW

[txaslftist]

11. Put the kitten in a toesack and tie a rock to the child.

But that's just me.

[Chan790]

12. Hmm...

The kitten first, go back in for the child. Most mass-murderers start off as animal abusers so he's probably the little prick that threw the kitten in the lake to begin with. That and I can do CPR on the child if he's stopped breathing by the time I get back out to him but I can't recesitate a cat. Also children can swim and cats can't.

The fact that I hate children doesn't come into it, actually the little bastard's lucky I went back for him at all...throwing a poor defenseless kitten in a lake.

I'm not serious, I don't know what I'd do...but having been a lifeguard in HS and being 6'4" and 230, I doubt that unless the child weighs 200 lbs that I couldn't retrive both or try. Then we'd all drown...oh well. As my favorite author says of major tragedies: "So it goes"

[Mist]

13. The kitten, if I KNEW the kid was a bad seed. But then I love cats! nt

[kenny blankenship]

14. Keep going with the flip answer

the question doesn't have a useful answer but explores the respondent's belief in their own irrational intuitions. By any nation's standard of morality (that is morality in its dictionary sense of a set of fixed rules, a system of correct behaviors established socially and not open to question) you have to rescue the child. Everyone present (if there are others present) can see that there is a human life in danger and moreover a child's life, which is generally set at a higher worth than the life of an adult (not in all cultures but certainly in ours). Countermanding that rule is the certainty that you experience that the child will grow up to commit overwhelmingly evil acts and wreak havoc on the lives of many people and cause them to question the justice of life. This certainty is only your personal intuition and is based on no rationally acceptable evidence at all. No one else present can see this--and from the circumstances given in the question it would certainly be impossible to convince anyone else of what you "know" about the child. Following your baseless intuition when life is immediately at stake would be a heinously immoral thing to do: who the fuck appointed you Omniscient Deity of the Universe? Everyone can see the child is there and its life is in danger, any normal person placed in your shoes would see that, but you are paused by "evidence" which is apparently nothing more than "a disturbance in the Force" or some other "ESP" derived belief you have about the future of the child which, if you were to explain it to a board certified psychiatrist that such was a basis for action--action with life or death consequences-- would cause you to be committed to a looney bin. ALmost nothing is certain not even in science: everything regarded as certain there is actually contingent. It's contingent on other scientific propositions being true which have stood the test of years of experiments, challenges, and rechecking, becoming modified, qualified, often partially reversed, and with time finally accepted. The question you pose proposes certainty without any test of time or without external confirmation through the help of others, and poses a "certainty" based on no furnished evidence of ANY kind.

However since most of us have never experienced such "flashes" of utter certainty--certainly no one I've known has admitted to me that they had a belief in a future determining power in their intuitions and random thoughts--that means most of us have never had to balance the impulses such "certainties" cause in people against the expected standards of behavior. Most of us do not experience the flashes and thus have no experience wrestling with them. In other words, if at some future date you are going to become so crazy as to immediately and completely credit psychotic thoughts you have about drowning children being the Next Hitler or growing up to be evil serial killers, then there is nothing you can say now, today while you're still sane, about what you will do later when you've gone insane and are bombarded by such a "certainty". There's no useful answer you could give, starting from a state of legally competent sanity, about what you would do in a future state of insanity.