http://www.meridianmagazine.com/arts/080807knight.html

And I think we can pretty confidently place our trust in both Hitler and the Joker to kill.

So the answer is to become his pawn and do his killing for him?

Well, maybe that’s where the difference of opinion is here, because I think we are. Of course we don’t know that it will save anyone’s life (same with Vertical Limit, he didn’t know for certain that cutting off his father would save them, the anchor still could have given way), but given the fact that the Joker has been good on his word of killing people in the past, I think we have a very near certainty that he will be keeping his word that he will kill. As I mentioned previously, chances are good that he’s going to blow up both ships anyways, but that shouldn’t really affect your choice, because it doesn’t affect the outcome.

It’s like Hitler saying, “If you throw these five people in the furnace, I will spare you and these four people. Trust me.”

It’s actually more like Hitler saying, “Throw these five people in the furnace, or I’m going to throw all ten of you into the furnace.”

We’re not trusting that he’s going to spare lives, we’re trusting that he’s going to kill. And I think we can pretty confidently place our trust in both Hitler and the Joker to kill.

It’s like comparing the boat scenario to a western where a man kills his friend who has fallen and broken his back – doing so to make sure his friend doesn’t die a slow, horrible death. There’s no direct comparison to the movie scenario.

We aren’t discussing facilitating a death that will occur inevitably – or choosing to minimize death that is absolutely certain. We are talking about killing other people in order to save your own life at the order of a criminal – without any certainty that he won’t kill you anyway, to boot. (This is a man who slaughters at will, for no real reason other than that he can and he enjoys it.) We are talking about being an active accomplice to murder, with absolutely no certainty that it will save one single life. It’s like Hitler saying, “If you throw these five people in the furnace, I will spare you and these four people. Trust me.”

Sorry, to me that’s a no-brainer.

As far as the responsibility to kill goes, if my last comment didn’t clarify anything, I’m not sure what will. But I’ll try one more analogy, this from the movie Vertical Limit. At the beginning Chris O’Donnell is rock climbing with his father and sister and they are all connected by ropes. Something happens and they all fall but are prevented from plummeting to their death because the top of the rope is anchored into the rock. The sister is the closest to the top of the rope, O’Donnell is in the middle, and his father is dangling at the end of the line. The anchor begins to slip. It is not strong enough to hold all three of them. Soon it will give way and all three will die. O’Donnell cuts the rope below him and lets his father fall to his death. His sister never forgives him for it.

As terrible as it was, it was just something he had to do. He had the ability to save his sister, and so he had a responsibility to save her. And he had to save her by killing his father.

First of all, it’s true that an individual might be motivated simply out of desire to save his or her own life and it’s obvious that, if that were the motivation, there’s no moral content in that choice. But it appears that that’s a distraction to the greater issue here, so let’s pretend instead that the detonator is in fact hooked up to your own boat. Does that change anything?

What is the greater issue? If the detonator his hooked up to your own boat, and you press it thinking you are blowing up the other boat, you are an idiot and you are dead. The only thing it changes is the result. You still made a bad moral choice, and now it’s also a bad factual one.

The reason your other hypotheticals are irrelevant is that they change important parts of the equation. Of course it’s not always immoral to take a life to prevent a greater loss of life, but that’s not what we’re talking about. This started because you said:

I’m still wondering about the film’s morality, if from a different angle. It seems to take for granted that the people on the ships made the right choice by choosing not to press the button. In fact, it celebrates this choice by infuriating the Joker up above – the folks in the boats might as well have been Whos singing in Whoville and frustrating the wicked plans of the Grinch watching from above.

But was it the right choice? I don’t think it’s as black and white as the movie wants to make it out to be. The Joker had proven himself to be good on his word. If it hadn’t been for Batman, they all would have died. A captain of a ship has a moral responsibility to at least try to save his passengers, even if doing so requires a difficult choice.

That statement is just plain wrong, given the facts of the situation in the movie. The captain did not have a moral responsibility to try to save his passengers by blowing up another ship full of passengers. It’s not a difficult choice.

In fact, the plot of the movie only works if it’s not a difficult choice. The Joker predicted that the people of the city would “eat each other” when the chips were down. He made sure they were presented with that kind of choice; i.e. a choice of whether to save yourself by killing someone else. If it were a difficult moral dilemma, the point of the movie would be lost.

I understand exactly what you are saying, MCQ, with regards to killing or letting die. But the train scenario in 250 has everything to do with what we are discussing. If you don’t see it, I’m not sure what to say.

Obviously you are not directly responsible for the deaths of all the people that die. But you have in your power the ability to prevent at least some of the deaths. Doesn’t that power give you some responsibility? You can no longer turn your back and say, “none of this has got anything to do with me.”

If I pass a man in a street who has just been mugged and stabbed, I have a responsibility to try and save him. Even though the stabbing had nothing to do with me, I have a moral responsibility to try and save his life just because I can.

The question at stake here is just how far that responsibility extends, but I don’t see any reason to believe that it ends full stop with the taking of life itself. Taking such a position is wrought with problems.

Imagine we discover the location of a terrorist cell that is responsible for the lives of thousands and will kill thousands more. But right before we are about to drop a bomb on the building we discover an innocent janitor has moved into the building full-time. Do you call off the mission?

The central point I was making (and not the only one btw) is that there is no moral equivalency between killing a boatload of people and refusing to do so, which results in a terrorist killing two boatloads of people. You are not complicit in the terrorist’s act. He makes his own choice and takes his own action, which you are in no way responsible for. If you choose to kill a boatload of people, however, you are directly responsible for their deaths and you thus became a mass murderer to save your own life. There is no moral justification for that. It’s cowardly and despicable on every level. Stop pretending otherwise.