Its a large component of my morality. Being basically a subcomponent of ethic of least harm. I mean armchair idealized morality is great but this life don’t always give you a good option.
It’s a farce.
There are never only two choices. It is impossible to actually construct a real world situation where in there are only two choices. Even in an elementary school, given a test with only on question on it and it only has two answers, you can eat the test, scribble on it, punch the computer screen, walk out, etc.
Even in prison with guards pointing guns at you and putting you in a position to do either A or B you have options.
However, the concept of lesser evil is a shallow abstraction of the real world experience of pragmatism. Amongst all of your options, what course of action leads to the most desirable outcomes?
This is a real thing. We do it all the time. People in positions of grave responsibility have to do it with consequences and constraints that are absolutely gutting. Let’s say the war has already started, well, now you have to make decisions about how to avoid losing the most strategically important objectives, even if that means people dying. In fact, the strategies employed in war force decision makers into these sorts of choices as a matter of course - an opponent knows you don’t want to make certain sacrifices and will therefore create pressures that trade off those sacrifices with strategic objectives. Sometimes it’s not even that they believe you’ll give up the strategic objectives but the delay you have when choosing will give them an advantage, or the emotional and psychological toll of being put in such situations repeatedly over a long campaign can create substantial advantages.
Lesser evil is rhetorical sophistry or mildly useful thought experiments when exploring the consequences of ethical frameworks in academia.
Do not compare evils, lest you be tempted to cleave with the least of them!
–Victor Saltzpyre
(A raw line probably inspired by somebody else lol)
It’s always odd to me when words develop parallel but distinct meanings based on context. Like, I know “to cleave to” something is to attach to it, but it trips me up (esp. in a Warhammer context where Saltzpyre would be hanging out) since I default to “he was cleaved in twain”.
As with most other English oddities, I assume this is holdover from my ancestors treating other languages like swap meets.
Totally! It’s weird how it can mean the meeting spot between two things, or the separation of them.
It’s like someone started using it wrong and it just caught on.
Maybe it was the “could care less” of its day hahaha.
Depends how evil the lesser evil is. There is a point where even the less bad choice is so bad I refuse to choose at all, even if it means a worse outcome overall.
In politics for example I might vote for a party close to the centre, despite being far left myself, if it is the only tactically sound choice to prevent a fascist from being elected, but I wouldn’t vote for a fascist to prevent an even worse fascist.
But why? If you had the choice of getting stabbed with a pin or stabbed with a knife why would you ever abstain or not choose the pin? It just doesn’t make sense.
Your example doesn’t fit since it doesn’t involve doing something myself (as opposed to something happening to me) and there is no morality involved the choices.
The reason I wouldn’t do something evil to try to prevent something even more evil, is because I don’t believe in doing evil things, even with good intentions. Sometimes I think it’s better to just let the trolley do its thing, rather than getting involved, if there are no good choices.
Inaction when action is an option is still a choice.
One of the major premises of the trolley problem is the choice.
It’s very specifically a scenario where everything is a choice.
The only way to not choose a scenario option is to not participate at all.
Yes. But what I’m trying to say is that whether you are an active participant in the outcome matters too, not just the outcome itself.
Inaction that causes a harm is an action. Say for example you’re a muslim that doesn’t vote for a female candidate because you feel she doesn’t do enough to help your people. If the other candidate actively allows great harm to your people, you failing to vote for the female candidate is helping empower the harm on your people.
I just hope we never see this example in real life.
That’s a terrible example. I was talking about having a choice between two evils and not an evil and a woman.
That a disingenuous reply at best, the choice is clearly “person doesn’t do enough to help your people” vs “person who actively allows great harm to your people”.
The example could probably have done with being gender neutral, but even so.
I’m not sure why you zeroed in on the female part and not the “doesn’t do enough to help your people” part.
Not choosing is also a choice. It may or may not be the right or wrong choice.
