Ethics of Emergencies

We're talking about killing moral agents not cows and plants.

Which is a pointless question. It has no meaning because of the circumstances.

Nobody is forcing you to be here. If it's a pointless question then don't waste your time responding. Good riddance.

They?? First thing I'd do in your situation is yell "Is there an English teacher in the house" or something like that...

No, but you are trying to demand that others accept the question. If you don't like the way we respond perhaps the problem is in your question.

Must have just come in on the train

I guess that would be better than a sinking ship.

OK. But I did answer the question: the question doesn't have a reasonable answer. What's your answer?

BTW You can't choose to drown. Your body won't let you.

Oh dear, it looks like we have someone that doesn't understand language. Guess what, Modern English was once Middle English was once Old English and all that time there were pedants like yourself whining about "hither" and "thither" and all these "young whippersnappers on my lawn!"



I walk, you walk, we walk, they walk, he walks... English isn't an artificial system based on ironclad logic. It's wild and irregular. The sooner you accept that little bit of reality, the sooner you will have people that respect you for what you know rather than what you've been told.

Sorry as I am completely relax in the water and have even fallen asleep as I floated on my back in the Atlantic ocean, so I would not need that plank to keep from dowsing.

Warning beach lifeguards will get worry and then upset if you do this within their sights.

The clear reply in any case is that you do not have any right to kill another human except in self defense in order to save your life or even your partner life or your child life.

Now the fun question is do you have an obligation to save another human life at risk to your own and that is clearly no also unless there is a duty such as the person being a child place in your care or your mate or............

In fact under common law you can sit on the beach and calmly watch a child slowly dowsing without breaking any law if you do not have a special duty to that child of of some kind.

It depends on the situation.

1) if I am wounded and ther other person is not, then I would probaly let that person survive.

2) if I know the persons background, if he's a VIP who can benefit the world or just some bum, or evil person, then it depends on those factors.

3) if he is wounded, then I would probaly "help" him in another direction than mine.

4) if I am a VIP, I would probaly also "help" him in another direction than mine.

..etc.

What is the right thing to do? Depends on who you are, of course. If you're an asshole who doesn't give a **** about anybody else, you steal the plank. If you have morals and value for human life, you don't. Therefore, you drown.

You aren't some language revolutionary here bucking prescriptivism ("you" isn't, and isn't going to become, "they"), you simply had your narrative point of view mixed up and it's just a simple error really that you could have just as easily copped to or ignored the correction about.

Trying to save face by invoking the mantra of descriptive linguists (which is right about descriptive linguistics without saying anything at all about your error) isn't going to work for anyone but you and you needed no convincing anyway. It just makes you look desperate to save face about anything when you previously just had a glorified typo.

You were much better off than the typo.

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As to your question, I think a big problem people have with ethics is in seeing things as black or white, right or wrong as you phrase it. I think a better way of looking at these things is as a spectrum of more or less ideal between right and wrong. Not all wrongs are equal so it can't be a binary choice (unless I"m mistaken about you not being silly enough to stipulate the nature of ethics themselves in the question) and there can be a scenario where there is a better choice whose alternative is not an unethical choice.

So while I think that ignoring self-interest to put others first is more noble, and a greater societal ideal, I do not think it is unethical to fail to do so. However, your scenario is a bit more ethically complex than that, and involves actually taking action to harm the other person with a directness that I consider direct responsibility that can't be blamed on circumstance (e.g. you can't say the water killed him, this is direct enough where you are), and I personally think that this is wrong to do. I think it is much less wrong to do to kill the other man for your own survival than for, perhaps $50 bucks, but it is still self-interested homicide even if the situation is grave and a matter of survival to you. Your motivations are understandable but this only makes this act less wrong, not right, to me.

So in a choice of kill or drown I drown. But in real life (without the false dilemma, which I understand why you use but must point out) I'd likely not choose either option and split the difference, not voluntarily giving up the plank and drowning but also not trying to keep the other person off of it.

If the person were to try to keep me off of the plank, and threaten my life in any way I would have very little compunction about fighting for my life, even if it causes him to drown. For many of the same reasons I would find it unethical to try to drown the other man for my own survival. But without a false dilemma of 'kill or be killed' it's bloody unlikely that I'll just decide to drown and I'm also not arguing that one must place the survival of others above themselves, just that taking direct actions to kill someone is wrong to do, even for your survival, unless that person was the one threatening it.

The OP has you murdering an innocent person either way. You are a human life... you are a moral agent.

If somebody honestly has an opinion about who they would kill, then I respect that. The answer is duh... look for another alternative.

And for the saving of extra syllables necessary to say "he or she," many people do accept "they." Living languages evolve.

I'd make sure we both understood the circumstances, that only one of us can be on the plank at any one time in order to survive, that I am physically able to remove him/her from the plank to ensure my own survival and his/her death. Then I'd propose a compromise, that we take turns on the plank while holding onto the other dog paddling in the water. We'd then trade turns in the water until we are both rescued.

Sorry it does not matter if he is a bum to removed him from the plank is cold blooded murder

If you are willing to commit cold blooded murder to save your life so be it however it is morally and legally wrong and if I was on a jury I would not have a problem finding you guilt of murder.

Languages do evolve, but this wasn't a case where he/she was correct either ("You and another person" is simply not "they", "he" or "she") so an alternative for it is going to be just as incorrect. "He and she" isn't acceptable as substitutes for "you" (which was the right word to use according to his narrative mode) and you saves just as many syllables. He just lost track of narrative mode and that is a simple mistake anyone can make and this really isn't about linguistic prescriptivism and living languages.

These are great lengths to go to to defend a simple mistake that even the most pedantic purists could make so I think I might have completely exhausted my formidable supply of pedantry on this so far. He made a mistake, no it's not a living language kind of mistake, just a simple, obvious, would-have-been-smarter-to-just-cop-to kind of mistake that was only drawn out by adding to the mistake with the living languages excuse for it.

You are not setting a good example by getting so far off tropic!

Read the first post in this thread. You're wrong. The only time I used "they" was not to refer to myself and another person but rather it was used to refer only to another person in a gender-neutral fashion.

Let me quote the post with emphasis added since you can't be bothered to read it on your own.



Like I said, you're wrong. It seems that you are just bitter over our last exchange which is why you've gone to great lengths to admonish me. I think it's quite pathetic but it's also very amusing since you're provably wrong and have little room to weasel out of your mistake. Let's see if you take your own advice.