Thread: So, ethics?

I'm taking an ethics class over the summer, and I'd like to pose a question to you all.

Say you married someone with a hereditary disease that caused their body to rot away, causing extreme pain over his/her entire body. The person you married was fortunate enough to have the disease delayed until his/her 25th year, so you were married at the onset of the disease. Your firstborn child inherited the disease, but it had an earlier onset, at the age of 5. Your spouse, in extreme pain, asks you to end his/her life, because s/he can't stand the pain any longer.

The question is, would you kill someone you loved if you knew it would benefit their well-being? And would you kill your child as well? What is your reasoning behind it? For example, whether you are looking at it in the altruistic sense--that you are helping them, or in a "greater good" sense--their well-being is worth more than your guilt from killing them, or even in the egoistical sense--you decide the pain of your empathy towards their suffering is worse than guilt that you will feel afterwards.

no i wouldn't kill her nor the child, but i wouldn't have married her in the first place either if she were going to die that early. and if i did i wouldn't have a child if it were to inherit the disease in the first place.

Well, how about if you married her and had a child before the illness began?

i still wouldn't kill her nor the child. i'd rather have something die on it's own then to take it's life away.

I don't know, I'm sure that the person who loves me won't tell me to do such thing.

Still, to answer your question (in a hypothetical case), depending in the circumstances I'd do it. If the pain is too much for that person to endure, and rather than enjoying its last moments, that person is just suffering, then I guess, that would be my most masoquistic.

Originally Posted by cronik

I'm taking an ethics class over the summer, and I'd like to pose a question to you all.

Say you married someone with a hereditary disease that caused their body to rot away, causing extreme pain over his/her entire body. The person you married was fortunate enough to have the disease delayed until his/her 25th year, so you were married at the onset of the disease. Your firstborn child inherited the disease, but it had an earlier onset, at the age of 5. Your spouse, in extreme pain, asks you to end his/her life, because s/he can't stand the pain any longer.

The question is, would you kill someone you loved if you knew it would benefit their well-being? And would you kill your child as well? What is your reasoning behind it? For example, whether you are looking at it in the altruistic sense--that you are helping them, or in a "greater good" sense--their well-being is worth more than your guilt from killing them, or even in the egoistical sense--you decide the pain of your empathy towards their suffering is worse than guilt that you will feel afterwards.

Did your ethics teacher throw this question at you? =o

He talked about it during lecture, so I thought about it for awhile and came up with this.

I'm pretty sure that as time passes, you would view your spouse not with love but with loathing, as her need for attention and care grow more and more with each passing day. So to prove your love to her, you get her life insurance.

I'd do it, I'd kill them both.


Also james, thats funny as shit.

Hm, but what's your intention behind it?