Would You Save a Stranger’s Child or Your Own Dog?

[Carl-Richard]

1 hour ago, Basman said:

Well my dad's more useful and my mom never calls, so...

I think it's a stupid question honestly. Which is what I think about the original question and most pseudo-philosophical (and philosophical) thought experiments. Setting aside the obvious problems like the irreducibility of context like @Natasha Tori Maru pointed out, and that the scenarios are usually simply unrealistic given any reasonable world, and while it's also related, they are usually too vague to be interesting.

If you want to ask an interesting question, ask "what principle would you use to determine the answer?", or "what do you feel most emotionally attached to?", or "if you were to make it an universal rule, what would the answer be?". What these vague formulations do is they mix such potential answers together and then people who only can keep one thought in their head at one time jump at each others' throats for disagreeing when they actually might not have to disagree. It's manufactured polemics.

Yeah duh, people have emotional attachments to things/beings close to them. Yeah duh it's generally stupid to reflexively use emotional attachment as a ruler for moral action. Tell me something that I didn't already know.

The question is about as interesting to me as "would you shit yourself on the bus?". "Other people might not like that (morals), so with respect to that, probably no, but if (context) I really can't keep it in and I don't feel like I have a choice in that (feels/emotion), then yes".

Edited 9 hours ago by Carl-Richard

[Basman]

1 hour ago, Carl-Richard said:

would you shit yourself on the bus?

That's what toilets are for. I'm not a child that can't hold it.

Edited 9 hours ago by Basman