Would you kill a puppy for $1000000? | Page 53 | INFJ Forum

Would you kill a puppy for $1000000?

Perhaps the really interesting question here is why we would apply the categorical imperative to puppies, but not to the animals we kill to eat.

If it is immoral to kill a puppy, is it not immoral to kill any animal? What makes puppies so special compared to other animals?
 
Perhaps the really interesting question here is why we would apply the categorical imperative to puppies, but not to the animals we kill to eat.

If it is immoral to kill a puppy, is it not immoral to kill any animal? What makes puppies so special compared to other animals?
The purpose of the murder.

It is immoral to kill a puppy for no other purpose than to win a million dollars in a sick game.

It is not necessarily as immoral to kill a head of cattle to feed a few hundred people.

But I reckon the generations after us will think differently - eating meat is likely going to be as horrific and inexplicable to our grandchildren as homophobia is to us.
 
People are generally fine with the (ironically utilitarian) categorical imperative of...

We agree that it is acceptable to end the life of another creature, in order that more may live.

Even to the extent of plausibly agreeing to be cannibalised in the circumstance of some disaster or other, under particular conditions.
 
I'm with Kant and his categorical imperative on this:

Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.

That is, the problem with utilitarian calculations like this is that they typically suffer from a failure of imagination in calculating the true, long-term costs. And that's even if we wish to play the utilitarian game.

Taken to its logical conclusion, an act such as this inflicts irredeemable damage to the culture and to the collective human psyche.

One million dollars is nothing compared to the value lost to the human community when such an act is committed.

Taken like this, I think you would have to do all kinds of mental gymnastics to then justify the act even on purely rational grounds.

Act in this way, and what you're submitting to is the principle that murder is acceptable given a high enough 'reward'. Murder a puppy for a million dollars today, but keep your silence when someone chooses to slay your mother for a billion tomorrow: this is the weregild and the principle you've chosen.

The problem with the categorical imperative is that you already have a set of morals which guide what you're going to select as the universal law. In this case you choose to interpret a single act of killing as if it means that thereafter murder is justified. So it's cherry picking combined with the slippery slope argument.

Another way to see it would be, for example, that it's a universal law that each time one could get a million dollars for killing a puppy, one should do it. There's no need to say that the universal law is about killing but about puppies. Or it could be about mammals, or about exactly a million dollars. Or about causing some harm to get some benefit. One must always decide what the word "universal" means, and other people are going to disagree with you. You're simply choosing a level of abstraction that's convenient to your already existing moral position, in this case indignation over thinking about a puppy being killed. There's no pure rationality when it comes to morals.

It is not the person committing the act who's submitting to a principle by which murder is always justified. It is actually you who are suggesting imposing such a principle on everyone on the basis of Kant's imperative. Is that not tyranny? I think people should be free to change their minds and adjust their opinions according to the situation. If you claim that a person killing a puppy submits in principle to having their mother killed, it just means that you are unwilling to see any differences in those two situations on the basis of your desire to have a universal rule, and that is much more worrying than someone killing a puppy for a million. You may call that desire for a universal rule logic, but I don't.
 
The problem with the categorical imperative is that you already have a set of morals which guide what you're going to select as the universal law. In this case you choose to interpret a single act of killing as if it means that thereafter murder is justified. So it's cherry picking combined with the slippery slope argument.

Another way to see it would be, for example, that it's a universal law that each time one could get a million dollars for killing a puppy, one should do it. There's no need to say that the universal law is about killing but about puppies. Or it could be about mammals, or about exactly a million dollars. Or about causing some harm to get some benefit. One must always decide what the word "universal" means, and other people are going to disagree with you. You're simply choosing a level of abstraction that's convenient to your already existing moral position, in this case indignation over thinking about a puppy being killed. There's no pure rationality when it comes to morals.

It is not the person committing the act who's submitting to a principle by which murder is always justified. It is actually you who are suggesting imposing such a principle on everyone on the basis of Kant's imperative. Is that not tyranny? I think people should be free to change their minds and adjust their opinions according to the situation. If you claim that a person killing a puppy submits in principle to having their mother killed, it just means that you are unwilling to see any differences in those two situations on the basis of your desire to have a universal rule, and that is much more worrying than someone killing a puppy for a million. You may call that desire for a universal rule logic, but I don't.
Yes, all of these objections are valid.

The trouble is that even if we allow for individual situations to be judged on their own merits, either in terms of utilitarian or some other kind of consequentialist formulae, I think at bottom, principles are still being invoked.

I do think the categorical imperative has some use in modern moral thinking though (questions like, 'should we ever negotiate with terrorists?'), though of course we still submit to all of the critiques of the past two centuries when invoking it.
 
Perhaps the really interesting question here is why we would apply the categorical imperative to puppies, but not to the animals we kill to eat.

If it is immoral to kill a puppy, is it not immoral to kill any animal? What makes puppies so special compared to other animals?
It's not immoral to kill puppies. Puppies are not special compared to other animals in the way that humans are.

Categorical imperative = Busted

If we look at this from the standpoint of virtue-ethics it wouldn't even be immoral to habitually hunt puppies for sport. A person of good character still remains one.
 
It's not just the categorical imperative though. Ethics is a difficult topic because it is a truth universally acknowledged that on the internet all debates on the possibility of moral principles lead to Hitler :D
 
It's not just the categorical imperative though. Ethics is a difficult topic because it is a truth universally acknowledged that on the internet all debates on the possibility of moral principles lead to Hitler :D
*Jumps to Hitler*

Hitler was a vegetarian as well as an INFJ = Bad

Theodore Roosevelt was an ESTP who hunted animals for sport and ate meat = Good
 
All the people who say they'd kill a puppy just go on my "Will eat/feed to my dogs in the event of starvation" list. :tearsofjoy::tearsofjoy::tearsofjoy:
 
Perhaps the really interesting question here is why we would apply the categorical imperative to puppies, but not to the animals we kill to eat.

If it is immoral to kill a puppy, is it not immoral to kill any animal? What makes puppies so special compared to other animals?

No animals, no monetary system! Kill all animals for true freedom!
 
Would you rather starve than eat your dogs?
I'd say it is not a choice, but it is not a realistic argument. As brain function shuts down, we lose our ethics and will eat anything to survive, which is why humans have committed cannibalism under extreme starvation.
 
I'd say it is not a choice, but it is not a realistic argument. As brain function shuts down, we lose our ethics and will eat anything to survive, which is why humans have committed cannibalism under extreme starvation.
I don't blame you, it isn't really a choice unfortunately.
 
It's not just the categorical imperative though. Ethics is a difficult topic because it is a truth universally acknowledged that on the internet all debates on the possibility of moral principles lead to Hitler :D

Everyone is Hitler!
 
Perhaps the really interesting question here is why we would apply the categorical imperative to puppies, but not to the animals we kill to eat.

If it is immoral to kill a puppy, is it not immoral to kill any animal? What makes puppies so special compared to other animals?

Hi, welcome to Veganism 101.

Unless you're already vegan, then you already know that.
 
Yes. We slaughter animals for eating anyway. So if it was not for eating but for €1.000.000,- then that money could be used very well for good causes and organisations to better the world. I might sound really cruel for this. But even though I absolutely love animals I don't see them as precious as humans at all. But ofcourse it would probably still go against my nature... But what sick person donates so much money anyway to someone just for killing a puppy? That is the real crazy one :p