Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Ethical Studies', 'Reply to 'Rorarius' 2nd ed' and 'Killing and Letting Die'

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5 ideas

20. Action / C. Motives for Action / 5. Action Dilemmas / c. Omissions

4692	It is not true that killing and allowing to die (or acts and omissions) are morally indistinguishable [Foot]
	Full Idea: Many philosophers (e.g. Rachels) have argued that there is no morally relevant distinction between killing and allowing to die (or the related 'acts and omissions'),..as in not sending food, or sending poisoned food. I disagree.
	From: Philippa Foot (Killing and Letting Die [1985], p.78)
	A reaction: It appears that some omissions are worse than acts. It is more honest to just shoot an injured person, than to walk away and leave them to die. A range of cases.

4694	Making a runaway tram kill one person instead of five is diverting a fatal sequence, not initiating one [Foot]
	Full Idea: If a runaway tram is heading towards a track on which five people are standing, and there is someone who can switch the points, diverting it onto a track where there is one person,...this is diverting a fatal sequence, not starting a new one.
	From: Philippa Foot (Killing and Letting Die [1985], p.85)
	A reaction: Suppose the one person was of immense community value, or someone you personally hated? Clearly she is interested in the agent's virtue, rather than the actual consequences.

22. Metaethics / C. The Good / 2. Happiness / d. Routes to happiness

5655	Happiness is not satisfaction of desires, but fulfilment of values [Bradley, by Scruton]
	Full Idea: For Bradley, the happiness of the individual is not to be understood in terms of his desires and needs, but rather in terms of his values - which is to say, in terms of those of his desires which he incorporates into his self.
	From: report of F.H. Bradley (Ethical Studies [1876]) by Roger Scruton - Short History of Modern Philosophy Ch.16
	A reaction: Good. Bentham will reduce the values to a further set of desires, so that a value is a complex (second-level?) desire. I prefer to think of values as judgements, but I like Scruton's phrase of 'incorporating into his self'. Kant take note (Idea 1452).

25. Social Practice / C. Rights / 1. Basis of Rights

4693	The right of non-interference (with a 'negative duty'), and the right to goods/services ('positive') [Foot]
	Full Idea: There are rights to non-interference (and their corresponding "negative duties"), and the rights to goods and services (with corresponding "positive duties"). Interference usually needs more justification than withholding goods.
	From: Philippa Foot (Killing and Letting Die [1985], p.82)
	A reaction: This invites the question of which is the stronger, and whether paternalism can overrule non-interference, or an expectation of self-sufficiency overrule the positive rights.

27. Natural Reality / D. Time / 1. Nature of Time / b. Relative time

19384	Space and time are the order of all possibilities, and don't just relate to what is actual [Leibniz]
	Full Idea: Space and time taken together constitute the order of possibilities of the one entire universe, so that these orders relate not only to what actually is, but also to anything that could be put in its place.
	From: Gottfried Leibniz (Reply to 'Rorarius' 2nd ed [1702], GP iv 568), quoted by Richard T.W. Arthur - Leibniz 7 'Space and Time'
	A reaction: A very nice idea. Rather like the 'space of reasons', where all rational thought must exist, space and time are the 'space of existence and action'. Their concepts involve more than relations between what actually exists.