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(I need suggestions is what I'm saying.)

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[anzki4]

in the case of 2 dying people and 1 bottle of medicine, they are equal, so I can let my own egoistical needs choose.

What if your loved one is old and the other person just a child?

[Vector]

I'd probably talk to my loved one about it.

[anzki4]

Well that's for sure. I would talk with him/her even if they were both roughly equally old, in case he/she wouldn't want to live with the guilt.

[andrea]

well, I assumed all other things being equal. of course, loved one being old and stranger being child changes quite a bit. I agree with vector, I would talk to loved one.

[anzki4]

What if after having talked with your loved one*, he/she would insist that you give the medicine to him/her?

*old loved one and young stranger-scenario

[Criptfeind]

I would not talk to loved one. My decision not theirs. My guilt not theirs.

[Gantolandon]

I most definitely would not murder them without discussing it though (this is in a theoretical scenario where I do decide to kill him).  You can't claim to be killing for someone else's sake if they don't even want you to do it.

This is probably something that could seed another interesting discussion about ethics.

No.

The two outcomes are not the same.

One outcome leaves someone dead and people mourning over their death.

The other outcome leaves someone dead, people mourning over their death and a murderer who will struggle with guilt for the rest of his life and possibly never come to terms with what he did (especially if he sees the people mourning over the dead person).  He will also carry a terrible secret from his loved one... or, if he discussed it, a terrible secret with his loved one who will also feel (perhaps even worse) guilt.  Even if the murderer is never caught, he'd probably remain paranoid about being discovered for the rest of his life.  And even if they came up with a foolproof alibi and removed all evidence that anyone even touched the plug... their guilt could one day cause them to turn themselves in or admit it to the family of the victim.

This is quite a bold assumption. If we are talking about ethics and assume that the murderer has acted according to what he believes in, it would be quite possible that he wouldn't feel any guilt. Or at least this guilt wouldn't be so terrible.

I'd say it's up to him and his moral system.

I think you don't seem to understand that in these ambiguous cases, I think people should just decide for themselves.  I put forth my version of rationality--as it pertains to me, and the people I care for.  It has nothing to do with what everyone else does, so far as I am concerned.

Not exactly. I just think that it's quite pointless to apply such an abstract situation to your specific situation, because they seem to be really, really improbable. Moreover, real life is full of other disrupting factors. What if the transplant is not what could save your loved one? What if you accidentally harm the relevant body part and destroy it in the process? Why is it that only the bone marrow of this particular man would be sufficient?

The only reason to actually discuss it is to debate if it is morally wrong to harm a stranger to save someone you care for. That's why we need to assume so much of quite ridiculous guidelines in the start.

If my loved one was ill and was going to die, I would be sad. But I would accept it... death happens. it is one of the few things we can be sure of in life.
But if my loved one was healthy and some stranger actively killed him/her to harvest some body part... well, I would be much more angry, because it wasn't an accident. Why him/her? why did that person have to take my loved one's life?

Actually, I'm pretty sure that in the original question no one even knows that this person was murdered.

sure, if I just look at myself, by killing the man, I get my loved one back and then it is another family's problem.
but morality ( usually) is not about yourself and your interest, but also about other people. Mine is, anyway. I will, when possible, avoid a greater injustice.
in the case of 2 dying people and 1 bottle of medicine, they are equal, so I can let my own egoistical needs choose.

In this case there could be also a family which would most probably mourn the affected man.

[andrea]

If my loved one was ill and was going to die, I would be sad. But I would accept it... death happens. it is one of the few things we can be sure of in life.
But if my loved one was healthy and some stranger actively killed him/her to harvest some body part... well, I would be much more angry, because it wasn't an accident. Why him/her? why did that person have to take my loved one's life?

Actually, I'm pretty sure that in the original question no one even knows that this person was murdered.

they don't. But when I act, I do so using the information that I have. Even if they don't know about it, it doesn't make my actions any different.
My morality is based on this:
One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself
One should not treat others in ways that one would not like to be treated

killing that man to give my loved one a transplant clearly breaks both, because as I explained above, if such a thing happened to me I would find it horrible and wrong. That was the meaning of the example. I may not be discover, but even if nobody else knows, I know what happened. And that matters when deciding.

[SalmonGod]

Just finished reading through this thread from the beginning.  The tangent debate about personality rewrite vs death penalty reminded me of this poem

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Hard Rock / was / "known not to take no shit
From nobody," and he had the scars to prove it:
Split purple lips, lumbed ears, welts above
His yellow eyes, and one long scar that cut
Across his temple and plowed through a thick
Canopy of kinky hair.

The WORD / was / that Hard Rock wasn't a mean nigger
Anymore, that the doctors had bored a hole in his head,
Cut out part of his brain, and shot electricity
Through the rest. When they brought Hard Rock back,
Handcuffed and chained, he was turned loose,
Like a freshly gelded stallion, to try his new status.
And we all waited and watched, like a herd of sheep,
To see if the WORD was true.

As we waited we wrapped ourselves in the cloak
Of his exploits: "Man, the last time, it took eight
Screws to put him in the Hole." "Yeah, remember when he
Smacked the captain with his dinner tray?" "He set
The record for time in the Hole--67 straight days!"
"Ol Hard Rock! man, that's one crazy nigger."
And then the jewel of a myth that Hard Rock had once bit
A screw on the thumb and poisoned him with syphilitic spit.

The testing came, to see if Hard Rock was really tame.
A hillbilly called him a black son of a bitch
And didn't lose his teeth, a screw who knew Hard Rock
From before shook him down and barked in his face.
And Hard Rock did nothing. Just grinned and looked silly,
His eyes empty like knot holes in a fence.

And even after we discovered that it took Hard Rock
Exactly 3 minutes to tell you his first name,
We told ourselves that he had just wised up,
Was being cool; but we could not fool ourselves for long,
And we turned away, our eyes on the ground. Crushed.
He had been our Destroyer, the doer of things
We dreamed of doing but could not bring ourselves to do,
The fears of years, like a biting whip,
Had cut deep bloody grooves
Across our backs.

And ethics/moral relativism is really easy, the way I see it.  I've always seen the arguments against it (such as the 'leprechaun told me to shoot you') motivated more by smugness than honesty.

Every decision that I see as having ethical relevance gets puts through one criteria -- Would I want to live in a world where everyone behaves in this fashion..

That criteria has been implied already, but not directly stated, nor its full implications discussed.  For instance, I am a pacifist, but I get rather technical about putting my pacifism through the above criteria.  The core reasoning for being a pacifist is that I do not want to live in a world where people use violence as a tool to solve problems.  If I use violence as a tool to solve my problems, even if that problem is being faced with violence, then I directly reinforce the existence of a world where people use violence to solve their problems.  To say otherwise is literally the same as saying that 1+1=0.  However, I also don't want to live in a world where people value their personal ideologies over the lives of others, so I am more likely (as personal judgement deems necessary) to use violence in defence of another than I am in defence of myself, unless I know that they are of the same mind as I.  I am also a parent of two very young children whose well-being is directly related to mine, so I am thereby required to see to my own safety, even if that involves betraying my pacifism, at least until they are able to care for themselves.

It's slightly crunchy, but it's nowhere near impossible to hold a soundly reasoned debate, like some make it out to be.  Also, it does rely on personal value judgements, as the type of world a person wants to live in can vary... but the vast majority of people want basically the same things.  They don't want to have to worry about other people murdering, stealing from, or lying to them, among other things.  Many people selfishly engage in these behaviors out of a combination of laziness (because it makes life more convenient for them) and lack of perspective.  Some people might even do it out of necessity (stealing for food).  If caught, people will of course try to justify their behavior and as a relative issue, sometimes this is possible (like stealing for food).  More often people make a mockery of relativistic thinking (it's ok because everyone does it or my ethics aren't the same as yours), but very rarely will those people maintain those shallow arguments when they find themselves the victims of those same behaviors.  In other words, those justifications are only supposed to apply to themselves, which invalidates their reasoning.  They're called 'cheaters' in game theory for a reason.

[Fenrir]

I'd say it's up to him and his moral system.

I think you don't seem to understand that in these ambiguous cases, I think people should just decide for themselves.  I put forth my version of rationality--as it pertains to me, and the people I care for.  It has nothing to do with what everyone else does, so far as I am concerned.

So you are a moral relativist? I am a little puzzled by the way you use the word “rationality”, as, by its definition you can not have a valid one of your own any more than you can have your own logic.

If you are not telling me that, at least in this particular case, you wish to view the world in your own way, regardless of logic, I can accept that, actually. I would not be able to tolerate it, and I might think it unwise, but I think you would have that right. If that is who you are, and you want it that way, I have nothing to say against it.

Maybe I just don't love them enough.

I did not say that you did not love the person “enough”. It just seemed to me that you were trying to say that you had your own logic or something. That perplexes me.

[Leafsnail]

This is quite a bold assumption. If we are talking about ethics and assume that the murderer has acted according to what he believes in, it would be quite possible that he wouldn't feel any guilt. Or at least this guilt wouldn't be so terrible.

In this scenario, the murderer is me.

I can make "assumptions" about my own mental state, yes.  This is a question about what I think, not about what a sociopathic robot would think about it.

[Grek]

General Comments:
I am seeing alot of people wanting to Take A Third Option in this thread by justifying their decision based on practical concerns. That's not what this thread is about. You should treat each of these cases as an idealized situation, one where the fundemental crux of the issue is the actual ethical dilemma, not the vagaries of some specific situation that you've constructed in your head to justify your choices. Assume that you're working in the least convenient possible circumstances, the ones that force you to really decide. Feel free to also post what you would do in real life, of course, but this sort of exercise is best done if you also consider the idealized case.

Also, moral relativism is a terrible system of ethics and nearly everyone that espouses it is objectively a bad person.

First Dilemma:
In an ideal circumstance of perfect knowledge that this new personality is distinct from the old personality, and that no relapse will take place, then it would be wrong not to release the man as soon as we were aware of his new personality.

In more realistic circumstances, this sort of brain damage is sufficently unlikely that I would argue instead for life in prison. Of course, I would argue for life in prision even if he hadn't gained a new personality, as it is wrong to kill prisoners regardless of what they did.

Second Dilemma:
In the ideal case, where I know for a fact that this man will die with a probability of 1 and that my spouse will live with a probability of 1 if and the reverse happens if I don't, then it makes no difference if I act or not. The fact that I think that my spouse is the best person ever and that this man is an utter pillock does not matter. Everybody's life with worth something, regardless of who they are.

In slightly ideal circumstances, where the probabilities are less absolute but still perfectly known, the moral thing to do is to maximize the sum of P(person A lives) and P(person B lives), since the lives of any two humans are morally (if not emotionally) interchangable. I'd be an emotional wreck if that means that my spouse doesn't get help, but that doesn't change what the right thing to do is.

In completely realistic circumstances where the probabilities are neither absolute nor known, it is wrong to kill one person to save another, as humans have a well known bias towards overestimating the good of their own actions and underestimating the harm. Since I cannot be sure that I'm not just rationalizing the murder of innocents for my own gain, I'm not going to kill him.

In either of these three cases, I'm encouraging everyone involved to sign up for cryonics, of course. It's a good policy regardless of your current health.

Second And A Half Dilemma:
Interestingly, my response is the same in both cases: Give the medicine to whoever would bring about the greater sum of P(survival) and, in the case of a tie preference to my loved ones and, more importantly, deference to the wishes of any of the potential patients that wants to give up their chance at the medicine to help others. I tell the looser that I flipped for it to spare them the anguish, and the winner (once out of earshot of the unmedicated individual) that I saved them specifically.

[Fenrir]

Also, moral relativism is a terrible system of ethics and nearly everyone that espouses it is objectively a bad person.

In the words of those more inclined to crude diction, shit just got real.

All right, from whence do you get these objective morals? How is it that you derive what should be from what is? Prove to us your rather audacious assertion.

[SalmonGod]

I think it's funny because if you look at morals/ethics objectively, they are in fact relative, whether you want them to be or not.

[Fenrir]

A quick Google search on moral relativism seems to reveal that other people are being woefully incorrect in their practice of it and their reasoning for it, so perhaps he feels justified in saying so, because my moral relativism and the moral relativism he as seen may well be different.

EDIT: Every bit more that I read about moral relativism leads me to suspect that this is true. I shall await his reply.