I realize that just because I am fairly confident I wouldn’t suffer terribly from killing the baby if my knowledge was fairly complete, I can’t say that for all people. People’s utility functions differ, as do their biological and learned aversions to certain types of violence. The cognitive dissonance created by being presented with such a situation might be too great for some, causing them to break down psychologically and rationalize their way out of the decision any way they could. What if we upped the stakes and took it from some anonymous baby painlessly being snuffed out, to your own adult child being tortured?
Look at our dear friend C-. I was not thinking about him when I wrote my last post, but for those of you who know the situation, he seems to be the embodiment of this dilemma. What becomes of the man who, knowing the gravity of the situation and the most likely outcome, still decides NOT to kill the baby???
I realize that just because I am fairly confident I wouldn’t suffer terribly from killing the baby if my knowledge was fairly complete, I can’t say that for all people. People’s utility functions differ, as do their biological and learned aversions to certain types of violence. The cognitive dissonance created by being presented with such a situation might be too great for some, causing them to break down psychologically and rationalize their way out of the decision any way they could. What if we upped the stakes and took it from some anonymous baby painlessly being snuffed out, to your own adult child being tortured?
Look at our dear friend C-. I was not thinking about him when I wrote my last post, but for those of you who know the situation, he seems to be the embodiment of this dilemma. What becomes of the man who, knowing the gravity of the situation and the most likely outcome, still decides NOT to kill the baby???