Q&A: About the podcast with Daniel Doshi – the problem of evil
About the podcast with Daniel Doshi – the problem of evil
Question
The questions I’m asking are based on the following assumptions –
- There are people who are *objectively* more moral than other people. It is admittedly not always easy to compare, but it seems to me that a person who donates all his personal wealth to research aimed at finding a cure for cancer is, almost objectively, more moral than the leaders of the Nazi regime.
- Even taking free choice into account, there is an influence of a person’s genetics and biology on his morality.
- If we replace a given person with a more moral person, the world will be a better world.
Therefore –
- Couldn’t one design a world in which the average human brain would evolve to have a more morally “good” tendency than it does today, and thereby create a better world, even if only a little? This can be compared to the capacity for cooperation, which developed significantly through evolution.
- As for a particular baby born into an immoral society, to parents with immoral genetics, I assume that probabilistically he is most likely to be immoral as well. So then, would the most correct thing be to kill the baby (who has not yet done anything)? To forcibly remove him from society in order to increase the chance that he will become a better person (or make sure to educate him contrary to the society in which he is growing up)? Or to do nothing and hope that the less likely thing will happen, and the baby will turn out moral by some miracle? True, the first two solutions seem absurd, but in fact the last solution is the least rational of the three.
Answer
A question with this kind of logical structure was already asked today. Was that you? Whether it was or not, you should be careful not to be taken captive by logical structures like these. They have persuasive power far beyond their real quality. Speaking from experience. I also went through that logicist stage.
As for your question itself, there are logical leaps here. I accept your three assumptions. But notice where you arrived with the last assumption: such a replacement would make the world better. That is true in terms of outcomes. But you are ignoring the moral problem in the murder or kidnapping itself, even if the result is better. The act itself is morally problematic. In other words, it is not true that every act that brings the world into a better state is necessarily a moral act. This is of course also connected to the well-known trolley dilemma (you can search for it on the site or on the internet generally).
When you ask whether it can be engineered, are you talking about the Holy One, blessed be He? I assume this cannot be done, at least not under the other constraints He wants to achieve. Search here on the site for a discussion of natural evil.
As for the baby, you can understand my answer from what I wrote above.
Discussion on Answer
Any situation in which there is a threat justifies killing, as long as the threat is clear and not doubtful. I don’t understand what the problem is. What does that have to do with killing a person just because he is less moral? And even if we get into sorites-type considerations, so what? There are quite a few such situations. Life is not a picnic, and sometimes there are no sharp answers.
Hi, I really appreciate your response! This was my first question today, and actually ever on the site 🙂
I’d be glad if you could clarify your answer regarding the baby in light of your claim on the podcast that when necessary it is possible, and even obligatory, to destroy a person even if he is committing a robbery for a single shekel (if I understood you correctly).
By analogy to Gaza (just for convenience) – if a Gazan carried out a terror attack, is it right to eliminate him and prevent future attacks? What if he entered the territory of the state and is planning to carry out an attack in the near future? Is it right to prevent this and eliminate him before he does it? What if he is planning to carry out an attack in the distant future? What if he has “only” joined the military wing of Hamas? What if he is only showing interest in joining Hamas? And what if he has just been born, but statistically is likely to join Hamas and carry out an attack?
At what stage is the most moral action murder/kidnapping? I’m afraid we enter a kind of sorites paradox that is hard to solve…
As for the trolley dilemma, I understand the analogy in general, but I can’t find in it a sufficient analogy to the probability factor, where there is a non-negligible chance that the person really does deserve the death penalty.
Thanks!