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Russell Hogg's avatar

On the question of moral culpability for eg attempted murder I always give the example of running over a child while momentarily distracted in reaching for some sweets. Are we really to punish everyone the same regardless of the consequences? I think we are and I’d not punish any of the drivers. Intention is everything.

On the trolley problem I’d not want to throw the leaver. My strong intuition is that in some sense society does not want me to make these kind of choices. The default is ‘mind your own business’. But if they gave me a hat with ‘Safety Officer’ written on it and a salary with instructions to save lives as best I could I dare say I’d be throwing the leaver if not happily then at least more readily.

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Moral Government's avatar

If we live in a purely materialistic world than our moral intuitions are driven by evolution. What we deserve or entitled to doesn’t really matter. We are basically doing what will get the best outcomes in the long-run. The drunk person who runs over a child has the genes or whatever to hurt the tribe while the drunk person who manages to not hit the child has better genes and thus the tribe should allow his genes to pass to the next generation and snuff out the line of the first.

If the father was good at managing money and made a lot of it than there’s a good chance that the son will also be good at it so should be given the money to manage when his dad dies. The person that makes more money should be able to use it how he wants and before monogamy he would have used it on more wives. He is better at being productive so he gets more kids to improve the gene pool of the tribe. And it has to seem just to us because our moral intuitions evolved.

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