Mr Chattertons Self Reliance Article...

[ScubaInChicago]

I was asking about the "two sides" involved in the discussion in this thread. I think you may have misinterpreted my post a while back, unless you are suggesting that some of he participants in this thread are incompetent divers.

Sometimes the shoe just fits...

 

[danvolker]

Two things are conveniently omitted from your parable. First, the responsibility bourn by the fatty, for knowingly entering the cave with great difficulty despite knowing the same issue would arise during a time-limited egress...and then staying until close to time to leave; those decisions placed the group in danger purely to benefit his sense of curiosity. Consequently, the universal principal may be stated more narrowly and thus escape Kant’s argument: an life may be ended by an otherwise innocent person or group as the sole means of escape from an assuredly fatal trap knowingly created and aggravated by the owner of the life without sufficient cause.

Second, as a post-script, this (“Had I persisted, they may have also taken my life and
still killed Scott to save their own. There was truly nothing I could have done
to save him.&#8221 doesn’t gibe with the milquetoast’s earlier willingness to actively end two innocent lives as well as her own simply to assuage her conscience. If she was willing to die and kill to avoid killing, then she should have been willing to resist to the point of forcing her friends to kill her even if the likely outcome was merely her death occurring moments before the fatty’s (perhaps they could have used her dead weight to tamp the charge). It might have delayed them long enough for the fatty to live; it might have forced them to have second thoughts; it might have resulted in her unlikely success.

As you well know, this parable has been around a lot longer than I have

In the first instance you discuss, for a diving paralell, we would be unlikely to KNOW that this Porker had knowingly entered into this situation with any awareness of the problem it would create....and as they were together as a team, the others could have determined that the large caver should not be allowed to enter the small opening....Since they did not, the end result is that we should follow Kant's more universal principle.

In the second instance, I agree that she should have actually put up a fight, and not given up. If they had begun pulling him backwards, with the water as lubricant, they may have pulled him back in, gotten through themselves, and then attempted to PULL him through as had occurred on the way in. Her lack of action was immoral.

 

[nimoh]

Sometimes the shoe just fits...

no idea what you are trying to say, so I'll just leave it alone

 

[boulderjohn]

no idea what you are trying to say, so I'll just leave it alone

I will admit that I am overwhelmingly baffled right now about the whole thread. If there are two sides, I don't know what they are, and I am not sure which one I am on.

 

[Dr. Lecter]

In the first instance you discuss, for a diving paralell, we would be unlikely to KNOW that this Porker had knowingly entered into this situation with any awareness of the problem it would create....and as they were together as a team, the others could have determined that the large caver should not be allowed to enter the small opening....Since they did not, the end result is that we should follow Kant's more universal principle.

It's a poor analogy for diving, I'll agree, but just to stick with the cave for now...

The fatty would have been in a unique position to determine how easily or not his own body passed through/obstructed the opening, potential threats to all that his fellow team members could only observe indirectly. Therefore, he bears more responsibility for the team's impending doom; the cave team’s members all share some blame for not thinking ahead, but the fatty shares more of it. Thus, we’re back to my point that Kant’s universal principal can be stated more narrowly than you claim and the milquetoast can morally kill the fatty.

As an aside, if you think the milquetoast had a moral responsibility to kill the others and herself to save the fatty...don't you think the fatty had an obligation to urge the rest of the team to sacrifice him? More, to tear apart his own corpulence with whatever materials were at hand and/or his own hands, just to possibly clear the obstruction, even if those self-inflicted wounds killed him? As broadly as you’re stating them, Kant's universal principals essentially require all involved to commit seppuku for the others involved in this circumstance, resulting in nobody surviving. Certainly, the fatty should have demanded they pull him back in, allow the team to exit, and then pull him out head-first if they can.

In the end, someone should have put Mr. Hobbes on the phone. I disagree with but do not challenge the morality of the milquetoast's right to conscientiously object to the point of getting them all killed, because I also support the moral right of the other three to do whatever they needed to survive the fatty's trap, including killing the milquetoast if she made it necessary and using her inert mass to shield them from the blast necessary to dislodge the fatty.

 

[danvolker]

It's a poor analogy for diving, I'll agree, but just to stick with the cave for now...

The fatty would have been in a unique position to determine how easily or not his own body passed through/obstructed the opening, potential threats to all that his fellow team members could only observe indirectly. Therefore, he bears more responsibility for the team's impending doom; the cave team’s members all share some blame for not thinking ahead, but the fatty shares more of it. Thus, we’re back to my point that Kant’s universal principal can be stated more narrowly than you claim and the milquetoast can morally kill the fatty.

As an aside, if you think the milquetoast had a moral responsibility to kill the others and herself to save the fatty...don't you think the fatty had an obligation to urge the rest of the team to sacrifice him? More, to tear apart his own corpulence with whatever materials were at hand and/or his own hands, just to possibly clear the obstruction, even if those self-inflicted wounds killed him? As broadly as you’re stating them, Kant's universal principals essentially require all involved to commit seppuku for the others involved in this circumstance, resulting in nobody surviving.

In the end, someone should have put Mr. Hobbes on the phone. I disagree with but do not challenge the morality of the milquetoast's right to conscientiously object to the point of getting them all killed, because I also support the moral right of the other three to do whatever they needed to survive the fatty's trap, including killing the milquetoast if she made it necessary and using her inert mass to shield them from the blast necessary to dislodge the fatty.

The three were hosed from their poor situational awareness which put the Porker into the cave with them....so once they accepted and assisted him on getting into the cave, they could not kill him later on because that would help them....But I do agree with you that Porker should have demanded the others destroy him, so that they could live....This would not make the act of exploding him expressly moral, but it might be something they could live with...

 

[Dr. Lecter]

Unless you're also going to dispute that (under your analysis) the fatty had a moral obligation to literally tear himself apart to try (likely in vain) save the others--who had a moral obligation to die quietly without harming the fatty--I think my reductio ad absurdum argument is complete. If Kant demands that all five die, either by their own hands or through their own inaction, when one death is all that is necessary...Kant is wrong. And framed as broadly as you have argued, the universal principal concept is meaningless.

Perhaps truncation by Hume's Guillotine would allow the fatty to be removed?

 

[ScubaInChicago]

no idea what you are trying to say, so I'll just leave it alone

I am saying this IS NOT a UTD/GUE/TDI/LMNOP agency this or that against anyone...It's about either you're a thinking diver that knows how to make the correct decisions on land and in the water that will solve nearly any problem that arises during the dive or a selfish jag like Ed who only thinks about himself. It's sad that this thread somehow became derailed to the point that an official agency representative of a respectable organization has to disassociate wannabees who may or may not be talking out their ass from the organization in an online forum.

 

[danvolker]

Unless you're also going to dispute that (under your analysis) the fatty had a moral obligation to literally tear himself apart to try (likely in vain) save the others--who had a moral obligation to die quietly without harming the fatty--I think my reductio ad absurdum argument is complete. If Kant demands that all five die, either by their own hands or through their own inaction, when one death is all that is necessary...Kant is wrong. And framed as broadly as you have argued, the universal principal concept is meaningless.

Perhaps truncation by Hume's Guillotine would allow the fatty to be removed?

Doc, I am pretty sure neither you nor I would ever end up faced with such a foolish dilemma. Each of us has developed Dive planning skills and an awareness that prevents the poor choices of this Caving example.
Any actual real life decision we are likely to face, is also far more likely to offer much more apparent ethical certainties.
The ethical issues in the story though, do a good job in explaining how important it is to buddy with people of similar ethics -- and with no one of poor skills ( that would be for mentoring on baby dives, not explorations).

One thing I know for certain, is that Sandra, or Bill Mee, or George, or Errol, or anyone else I would do a challenging dive with, would each feel the same way I would, about duty to help your buddy.. another reason insta-buddies are ridiculous--you can't possibly KNOW an insta-buddy after 3 minutes of chatting on a boat.

 

[Dr. Lecter]

Doc, I am pretty sure neither you nor I would ever end up faced with such a foolish dilemma. Each of us has developed Dive planning skills and an awareness that prevents the poor choices of this Caving example.
Any actual real life decision we are likely to face, is also far more likely to offer much more apparent ethical certainties.
The ethical issues in the story though, do a good job in explaining how important it is to buddy with people of similar ethics -- and with no one of poor skills ( that would be for mentoring on baby dives, not explorations).

One thing I know for certain, is that Sandra, or Bill Mee, or George, or Errol, or anyone else I would do a challenging dive with, would each feel the same way I would, about duty to help your buddy.. another reason insta-buddies are ridiculous--you can't possibly KNOW an insta-buddy after 3 minutes of chatting on a boat.

I agree that if you have a buddy in the first place, you have an ethical obligation to them to the extent you've both agreed to assist eachother. The point of many in this thread has been that the obligation of which you speak is not shared just because two or more divers happen to be in the same place at the same time--especially when that place is deep underwater, far inside a wreck, with all involved having incurred large deco obligations.

A sign we used to have on the mechanic's shop counter said it best:

A severe lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.