3/12 Of a Pregnant Woman

Would you use the dynamite?

  • Total voters
    15
alyster

alyster

Well-known member
A pregnant woman leading a group of people out of a cave on a coast is stuck in the mouth of that cave. In a short time high tide will be upon them, and unless she is unstuck, they will all be drowned except the woman, whose head is out of the cave. Fortunately, (or unfortunately,) someone has with him a stick of dynamite. There seems no way to get the pregnant woman loose without using the dynamite which will inevitably kill her; but if they do not use it everyone will drown. What should they do?

 
Nevermind the moral implications of this question: If the cave exit is so narrow that a pregnant woman got stuck in there and I used dynamite, I think there might be a good chance the whole cave exit area comes crushing down blocking the exit or killing me.

 
Mitsuru said:
Nevermind the moral implications of this question: If the cave exit is so narrow that a pregnant woman got stuck in there and I used dynamite, I think there might be a good chance the whole cave exit area comes crushing down blocking the exit or killing me.
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The dilemma probably assumes you will be fine if you explode the woman. 

 
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Even if all drown except for the women and her baby, how does she get unstuck? If we let her and her baby live, would we just expect her to live forever there stuck in a tiny cave hole?

 
Doctor said:
Even if all drown except for the women and her baby, how does she get unstuck? If we let her and her baby live, would we just expect her to live forever there stuck in a tiny cave hole?
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She would probably get unstuck in 9 months at the latest?

But for real, they'd get professional help?

 
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alyster said:
But for real, they'd get professional help?
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We can't guarantee that. The options are blow up a mother and her child to save an unknown number of people, or let an unknown number of people die and a mother and her child live in the hopes that someone in the outside world discovers her and is able to get her help before she dies from dehydration.

 
Depends on if the woman is my partner/family or not.  If she's my partner/familyr, I kill everyone else and she lives.  If she's not my partner/family, she's dead.

It's very simple.

 
A classic conundrum that philosophers have thought about for many years.  I do not think there’s a right answer, and you could argue from  both a utilitarian or deontological POV.  I.e. that the best possible outcome would be the choice that saves the most life, or that it would be immoral to actively take life to preserve those of others.

i believe I fall more into the latter camp.

 
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