Morality (1 Viewer)

[Peccadillo]

acting as my own moral agent in the situation, the correct response would be to tell her that he was cheating. they are putting me in a situation which is forcing me to lie.

moll - do you concur?

 

[moll.]

The scenario implies you discount the variable, which as you said is mostly human emotion (stress, fear etc etc).. I don't understand why you cannot offer a theoretical answer (or at least method) to my question.

If the obscurity of the hypothetical throws you off... here is a more realistic scenario if it helps?

You are friends with a couple.. You witnessed your male friend of the couple commit adultery with another woman. Your male friend asks you to keep quiet about it as it will destroy his marriage. Your lady friend of the couple approaches you one month later and asks you whether or not the male cheated on her. What framework do you apply?

Consequentialism dictates you should lie to your female friend as you believe it's moral on the grounds you believe it will have the best outcome... Freethought would suggest it's up to the individual.. Which is obviously susceptable to various negative influences like selfishness, favouritism etc etc etc.. Sounds pretty flawed to me... Humanism I would be interested to hear what a secular humanist would do in this situation.. Humanist ideas are certainly formed on ancient theology anyway.

You don't appear to get it. Hypotheticals are largely useless because:
A) your hypothetical situations leave far too much about the individual scenarios unknown and all the minor details are important to the decision. Even if we were to sit here and iron out every single facet of the scenario, it still wouldn't be realistic because their is a cognitive dissonance between the hypothetical and reality, in that telling me "he's a really good friend" doesn't actually mean I have any emotional attachment to what is essentially a fictional character, so I cannot realistically treat him as a really good friend, because he isn't. Which brings me to:

B) Along with this separation of hypothetical and reality is the idea that I am somehow a perfect predictor of my future actions (even if given perfect information) which is a blatant lie. I don't know how I would react in certain scenarios. Nor do you. I could say "I'd probably react this way", but that's just a probability and the actual outcome could very easily differ from the prediction due to a whole array of unknown and unknowable factors at the time of decision such as mood, stress etc.

C) To continue the idea of not knowing how we would react, you might know how you would want yourself to react, but if wishes were fishes there'd be no room in the sea. If I am honest with myself and, for example, admit to my moral failings and say "I would let him shoot my friend" (going back to the first scenario), but then you lie to yourself (even if we both have the same moral system), and say you would shoot yourself instead, then you can paint that as evidence of some sort of moral failing on my part where there is none. Further, the probability of you lying to yourself is greater than me lying to myself, as you have an intrinsic motivation through the idea of a moral act being diagnostic of being moral and thence getting into heaven. It is well documented (see Quattrone & Tversky 1984) that people do this (probably subconsciously), in the mistaken belief that changing what they have to power to change (your answer to the hypothetical) will then change what they do not have the power to change (your actions in reality/moral underpinnings). I deny the concept of an omniscient god and an afterlife, so I have less motivation to deceive myself.