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Jim_Johnston · #97 (**permalink**) 11-24-2007, 11:12 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jdlongmire

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tom Bombadil

Quote:

Originally Posted by jdlongmire

Got about 10 minutes before chow time, so, to empirically prove my point to my brother, since that is the only evidence he will accept (such a doubting Tom...

):

~6000 ambulance services in the US - say they - in toto - only make make 5 life saving trips per week:

6000 X 5 X 52 = ~1,560,000

Total fatalities by auto in the US/year = ~40000

I have the references if you need them.

Your argument only works if you assign an equal amount of hedons all around. Or, if you view your facts in isolations from other facts.

Death could cost 50 hedons while life saving could reap 15 hedons.

When S suffers, for him, it costs 1,000,000,000,000 hedons. When S* gets pleasure it's worth 25 hedons.

How would you know about the above two? Where's the calculations. Gonna find that on your google search engine? Perhaps Wikipedia has an article on it?

Or, say those whose lives were saved went out and did more evils resulting in a net loss of 10,000,000 hedons. Say one became the next Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, and Amin rolled up into one.

Or, one of those who died by getting hit, counterfactually, happened to be the person who would have (had it not been for the car) invented a cure for cancer, thus saving untold millions of lives. Thus the end result puts you in the red. Negative hedon balance.

J.D. haven't you learned anything from Bahnsen, Frame, Helm, Byl, Oliphint, Rae, Moreland, Craig, Shaffer-Landeau, Pojman, Rachels, Adams, etc., etc., etc.,

YOU HAVE NO WAY TO CALCULATE THE MULTIFARIOUS FACTORS!!! How many times do you need to read that? You have no clue how much John X has to pay and how much John Y receives. No one has been able to do this. As Bahnsen has said, you'd have to be omniscient to be a Utilitarian.

Back to the drawing board for you....

Dear brother, according to your answer, no technology would ever have been developed. We would exist in a perpetual state of analysis paralysis. I concur with the fact that we humans are indeed limited by our non-omniscience. How wonderful it is that we have sovereign guidance over all these things! Since we know that "all things work together for good", we can take some comfort in knowing that even with our simple pragmatic calculations we do not pre-judge the worth of even one human life over the other. It is a choice to utilize the technology we develop with an understanding that some risk comes with the reward. You did not include the consideration that along with my vote to allow the machine would also be my tacit expectation to utilize it. It is my choice to take the risk, along with my authority over my family to expose them to the risk and I am willing to do that only because the risk is so small, the reward so great and the ultimate outcome is under God's sovereignty. I use this rationale every day.

It is this rationale that we follow when we reject the "convenience machine" of abortion. God has helped us understand the risk v reward in this instance. The risk of murdering or tactily approving the murder of a human being, any human being, no matter what the "hedon" balance is, compromises our assurance of eternal reward.

It is also this rationale that I follow when I approve the "convenience machine" of capital punishment. God has helped us understand that certain acts (say murder) outweigh any present or future potential of this person, so the risk of approving this death does not compromise my eternal reward and is also a high reward for society, in general.

My seeming "empiricism" is always tempered by my God-given morality and an understanding that He is sovereign.

SDG!

J.D.

No technology would develop only if you oversimplify things. You see, I don't only take consequences into account (or, sometimes God tells us what they are and so an omniscient being told us what they are and we can trust him). To give a cost/benefit answer, as your only answer, suffers from the problems I've listed.

"All things work tegether for good" is simplistic again. Why not bring back American slavery? Because it's immoral? Oh, so we need to look at the morality of our actions? That's what I'm doing here. So you've begged the question, again.

I know we all have the "gut feeling" that our use of cars isn't immoral. And, it probably isn't. But, when asked for a moral justification for that, we must admit that you've flat out not given good reasons for that "gut feeling." The numbers you gave were always shown to be based on short sighted and sloppy calculations, you frequently assumed the morality of the action up for discussion, and you didn't include other necessary features required for making moral decisions, you just appealed to teleological ethics.