James Guinee
> Okay. Let's just be intellectually honest and admit that
> there was no certainty that the twins would have died, and therefore
> believing it was God's will that no medical intervention be done is not
tantamount
> to voting for certain death.
Wait a second here... So unless we have certainty, we have nothing?
I can act however I want*, and as long as there is a remote chance that bad
outcomes will not result, my actions are not immoral?
That strikes me as an _extremely_ loose moral standard. It seems to
sanction just about any behavior, regardless of results. I can't know for
sure that if I steal a car from a dealership, another one won't miraculously
appear in its place. I can't know for sure that if I start spreading vicious
lies about my colleagues, those lies won't be mistaken as compliments, to my
colleagues' advantage. If that's what we're considering sufficient moral
sanction for behaviors, I cannot even _imagine_ a looser standard.
This epistemological absolutism - the notion that there is nothing
worthwhile short of absolute certainty - has been dogging honest empirical
inquiry for centuries. It's a serious mistake, and it clearly has
implications for morality as well as knowledge.
I agree with the earlier comment that a single example of a moral
dilemmas may not be the best way to judge the morality of a standard.
However, I think that Jim has backed himself into a corner in this
discussion in trying to defend what looks like an indefensible stand taken
in the name of religious "morals" with respect to this situation.
We can take the "intellectually honest" step that he suggests above,
and what we're left with is this:
"The twins would almost certainly have died, and therefore believing
that it was God's will that no medical intervention be done is tantamount to
voting for almost certain death".
I don't see how one could argue that corrected statement helps the
religious stance with respect to this situation. Even if "almost certainly"
were softened to "probably" (which strikes me as intellectually dishonest in
this situation, given the high probability of death), it doesn't help much.
The religious stance in question is still the immoral one.
I think that a defense of religious morality would do better to
concede with respect to this situation, and move on to another.
* Or, to avoid putting words into Jim's mouth, I can act according to a
"moral standard" that almost certainly results in bad outcomes...
Paul Smith
Alverno College
Milwaukee
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