Thread: "Let us do evil that good may result..."

The following is a quote from this thread which has becoming somewhat bogged down. I thought the question was so provocative that it deserved seperate consideration.

Originally Posted by daisym

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Would you be prepared to torture a seven year old girl for the sake of saving the city? I would be interested in hearing some answers to this.
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For the sake of argument, we'll assume the girl in question is completely innocent of all wrong doing, yet torturing her will somehow prevent the catastrophic destruction of a large city and all its inhabitants. The specific circumstances are irrelevent.

This is really just a specific case of the general question of "Can evil means be justified by good ends?" And, if they can, to what extent.

I'd be interested in hearing answers to the specific question or thoughts on the general one (or, better yet, both!)?

PS daisym will, I hope, forgive me for stealing her question.

It certainly proposes an interesting discussion topic. Rather than answering the question directly, I'm actually going to pose one myself. I'm sure that many people will say that "yes", it is justified to torture one innocent to save many innocents; but perhaps we should look a bit further. What I mean is, what if one girl wasn't enough. What if we had to torture two innocent children to save a city? 10? How many do we reach before we say "no more?" Is one life worth 100,000? Or then again, is one life with 3 or 4? If we say that yes it's ok to torture one innocent for the sake of the many, we need to ask where the line is eventually drawn?

Noahath raises a good point.

In the case of only one, I would say that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few...

The utilitarian ethic of the "greatest happiness for the greatest number" would apparently dictate that we torture the innocent girl to save the possible millions of people in the city. However, even this is manipulable; who is to say that the little girl's happiness in life would not outweigh that of the many, many people of the city, or that she would not spread greater happiness later? It seems a cruel act of mobocracy for the rest of us to simply dismiss such a possibility.

Does the end justify the means? Or do the means justify the end? Or is it false to say either justifies the other, perhaps? If we accept that the means justify the end, then in this case, saving the city is not justified because the only way to achieve such an end is via torture. On the other hand, if the end does justify the means, then torture is justified because many others will be saved. As for the general question, such a decision is not mine to make, in my opinion, and thus my choice would probably follow one of inaction; in fact, I don't think any of us are really qualified to decide which is truly of more value, the means or the end.

If it came down to daisym's situation, and the decision was mine to make... I either save the city from death or save the girl from torture; that is the dichotomy. I suppose we could come up with endless reasons as to why choosing one over the other is the better choice, but the decision that we go with is necessarily linked to our own happiness. None of us objectively know what the best decision is. Would I feel better torturing a girl and saving millions, or would I feel better saving a girl and leaving millions to die? Neither option offers any real happiness, but one more so than the other, depending on each of our upbringing and values. I think I would feel much better if I were to follow a path of inaction; that is, to not torture the girl, very unfortunately for the millions of city-dwellers.

I think there must be another way, so the little girl can be saved from torture. Perhaps if she is tortured to save a city, then a whole state will be destroyed. I think doing evil to make good happen isn't the right way....there are consequences for everything and if you do an evil, you will regret it.

Personally I think the torture of an evil person to save an innocent is something I could stomach doing myself. I would not however be able to torture an innocent, no matter how much good it would do.

I believe that "the needs of the many outwiegh the needs of the few." I think thats from star wars or something lol.

Meaning I will most likely choose to torture many, to save a larger number, I would kill three people to save four. But of course I would take into the account the value of the people. cold? absolutly.
Judging based on if they support a family, thier age, whether or not they are good people, good for society etc.

after awhile it gets alittle extreme, if we had to choose 1 city of atleast 1,000,000 people, choose between philadelphia and chicago to die, maybe chicago has 200,000 more people to who live there. I would consider the value of those cities to benifit the country, world. and not in personal values.

Originally Posted by Dilettante

The following is a quote from this thread which has becoming somewhat bogged down. I thought the question was so provocative that it deserved seperate consideration.



For the sake of argument, we'll assume the girl in question is completely innocent of all wrong doing, yet torturing her will somehow prevent the catastrophic destruction of a large city and all its inhabitants. The specific circumstances are irrelevent.

Never. I couldn't torture anyone, period - I couldn't bring myself to do it if a whole city was at stake. There have to be other ways of saving the city than torturing kids.

Now if your talking about torturing Bush or Osama ... Well, I still wouldn't want to do it, but if I were forced to do it, I wouldn't feel that bad about it considering torturing either of those two would save a city ...

Originally Posted by Dilettante

This is really just a specific case of the general question of "Can evil means be justified by good ends?" And, if they can, to what extent.

I'd be interested in hearing answers to the specific question or thoughts on the general one (or, better yet, both!)?

PS daisym will, I hope, forgive me for stealing her question.

Can evil means be justified by good ends? I can't answer this conclusively with a 'yes' or 'no', to me, it would depend on individual circumstances.

JMO though.

Originally Posted by noahath

It certainly proposes an interesting discussion topic. Rather than answering the question directly, I'm actually going to pose one myself. I'm sure that many people will say that "yes", it is justified to torture one innocent to save many innocents; but perhaps we should look a bit further. What I mean is, what if one girl wasn't enough. What if we had to torture two innocent children to save a city? 10? How many do we reach before we say "no more?" Is one life worth 100,000? Or then again, is one life with 3 or 4? If we say that yes it's ok to torture one innocent for the sake of the many, we need to ask where the line is eventually drawn?

Definitely a slippery slope. If we say that it's OK for the sake of a city, what about half a city, or a ward or district? What exactly would the criteria be in deciding where to draw the line?

"Can evil means be justified by good ends?" And, if they can, to what extent.

Well in that scenario with the 7 year old girl why would torture be evil? It would be the means to save an entire city. I think it is a simple matter of numbers not taking anything else into account. I can see the parralel being applied to current political issues.

I think it would be more interesting if the question were posed. Would you be prepared to torture a 7 yr old girl if there was a 1% chance of saving an entire city. In that case I would say definetly not as I'd think everyones would be. 50% chance of saving the city? I dunno.

In general I don't think evil will ever lead to good ends. It just leads to more evil.