Would you murder an innocent person if it meant saving the lives of about one hundred people?

Today the answer is no, tomorrow my answer might be yes. All depends on my mood I suppose… or who I am.

No

I honestly don’t know. It would depend on the circumstances I imagine. It sounds callous, but who is the one and who are the 100? I would have to look at the whole picture. I wouldn’t discount that I could do it though.

If I loved any of the 100 would-be-saved, you can bet on it.

Which one hundred people?

Too vague.

That sounds like two separate and different questions.
1.) Would you murder an innocent person if it meant saving the lives of about one hundred people?
2.) Would you take the life of that person, even if that person wasn’t willing to sacrifice themselves?

In Scenario #1, no. The guilt albeit hard to live with, really lies in the lap of the ones doing the killing.
In Scenario #2, if it was a person that was terminally ill and they begged me to take their life because they were suffering and wouldn’t end it via suicide, then I would consider it. If the question is meant to represent that the other 100 will die whether the one individual kills themself or I do it, I still feel fairly confident that I would not be the murderer. Even if the 100 people are killed and the one person and I survive, I would hope that we could eventually look upon this as a manipulative mind game out of our control and eventually work through this horrific experience.

“Let them die!” – James T. Kirk

This question has been popular lately among philosophers. Check out this site

In the examples given, I would have no problem switching the track. Pushing the fat man is more problematic. I agree that the moral issue is the same. If push came to shove (pun not intended), I don’t know if I would have the courage to directly take the life of another. There would be too many alarms going off in my head about the wrongness of murder. It may or may not be a factor that I am a bit overweight myself.

Look, I was in combat and was ordered to shoot at the enemy. I did that with the goal to scare him away, not to kill or hurt him. Frankly, I had no bitch with the Vietnamese people and since I was a technician I didn’t think it was my duty to kill them.

I feel the same way about shooting at a stranger, no matter what my “leaders” tell me. Now if the guy was threatening to kill 100 of my family and friends, I’d shoot the bastard.

@Nullo I deliberately left the question vague, because I wanted see how people would respond without them knowing why I’m asking this. I was trying to see how objectivists and collectivists would respond to it based upon Utilitarianism vs. Deontological ethics.

Deontological ethics state that the morality of an action depends on the action itself, regardless of the consequences of the action. Utilitarianism states that what is morally good is one that results in the greatest good for the greatest amount of people.

@LostInParadise I’ll try to make time to view that link. It’s that time of the week where I have to get my butt off of the couch and go to work.

No. The premise that is the basis for the question is invalid. Murder of an innocent (an act of commission) is in a different category of moral choice than saving people in need (an act of omission). This is one of those Zen parlor game questions, like asking if a tree falls in the forest, and nobody is there to hear it etc….

Ethical dilemmas cannot be answered by a simple yes or no.

Absent further detail: of course.

Without specifics, the question is “should 1 random person die or should 100 random people die?”

That is a hard question to answer. It depends on this one person. If it looked like there were to have a bad future, then sure why not! But only if I also knew that the other people whom I’m doing this for, are actually grateful. If they were ungrateful then no, I wouldn’t.