The Covenience Machine

[Jim Johnston]

It does matter because the proper use of a convenience machine would not cause these deaths, but the missuse would.

take a car for instance. one could use it properly, obey the rules, get all the tune-ups, etc., and the car could hydroplane and cause a 50 car pile up. Your assumption that car accidents only occur via missuse is a dubious assumption, at best.

Simply put, if you drive the speed limit, obey all traffic laws, wear your seat belt, and watch out for other drivers (who are all doing the same) as you should, there won't be the 75,000 deaths.

Simply put, you must be Amish. Haven't been around vehicles much?

Simply put, people ARE going to missuse it. Can't get around that. So, factor that it. That is: A device that is used for our convenience, but people will missuse it and cost 50,000 Americann lives per yer, and people will properly use it and cost 25,000 lives per year. So, we know that it takes lives - by accident/proper use + accident/improper use + non-accident improper use. Fact is, lives are lost due to our desire to have the machine, doesn't matter how.

And, if you must, take the number down to 25,000. There, that sounds better. Of course we're morally justified with the 25,000. I mean, it's just 25,000. That's a drop in the bucket.

 

[Cheshire Cat]

Simply put, you must be Amish. Haven't been around vehicles much?

No, its just that he doesn't live in California. Ha!

 

[Barnpreacher]

Interesting thread.

I know I'm jumping in here late, but this does sound like a classic case of utilitarianism from a worldly ethical viewpoint. Does your pleasure (convenience) outweigh the pain of others (families who lose loved ones). But doesn't that come into play for any convenience machine or invention? I don't know what the statistics are but I imagine over the years the butter knife has caused some accidental deaths. Granted, it hasn't caused near as many deaths as the automobile. But as Tom said, does it matter if it's 75,000 deaths a year or two?

I guess the hardness of man's heart has its effects on all things, whether it be marriage, the automobile, or the butter knife.

 

[Jim Johnston]

Simply put, you must be Amish. Haven't been around vehicles much?

No, its just that he doesn't live in California. Ha!

Now that's an intrinsic evil.

 

[panta dokimazete]

Got about 10 minutes before chow time, so, to empirically prove my point to my brother, since that is the only evidence he will accept (such a doubting Tom...):

~6000 ambulance services in the US - say they - in toto - only make make 5 life saving trips per week:

6000 X 5 X 52 = ~1,560,000

Total fatalities by auto in the US/year = ~40000

I have the references if you need them.

Your argument only works if you assign an equal amount of hedons all around. Or, if you view your facts in isolations from other facts.

Death could cost 50 hedons while life saving could reap 15 hedons.

When S suffers, for him, it costs 1,000,000,000,000 hedons. When S* gets pleasure it's worth 25 hedons.

How would you know about the above two? Where's the calculations. Gonna find that on your google search engine? Perhaps Wikipedia has an article on it?

Or, say those whose lives were saved went out and did more evils resulting in a net loss of 10,000,000 hedons. Say one became the next Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, and Amin rolled up into one.

Or, one of those who died by getting hit, counterfactually, happened to be the person who would have (had it not been for the car) invented a cure for cancer, thus saving untold millions of lives. Thus the end result puts you in the red. Negative hedon balance.

J.D. haven't you learned anything from Bahnsen, Frame, Helm, Byl, Oliphint, Rae, Moreland, Craig, Shaffer-Landeau, Pojman, Rachels, Adams, etc., etc., etc.,

YOU HAVE NO WAY TO CALCULATE THE MULTIFARIOUS FACTORS!!! How many times do you need to read that? You have no clue how much John X has to pay and how much John Y receives. No one has been able to do this. As Bahnsen has said, you'd have to be omniscient to be a Utilitarian.

Back to the drawing board for you....

Dear brother, according to your answer, no technology would ever have been developed. We would exist in a perpetual state of analysis paralysis. I concur with the fact that we humans are indeed limited by our non-omniscience. How wonderful it is that we have sovereign guidance over all these things! Since we know that "all things work together for good", we can take some comfort in knowing that even with our simple pragmatic calculations we do not pre-judge the worth of even one human life over the other. It is a choice to utilize the technology we develop with an understanding that some risk comes with the reward. You did not include the consideration that along with my vote to allow the machine would also be my tacit expectation to utilize it. It is my choice to take the risk, along with my authority over my family to expose them to the risk and I am willing to do that only because the risk is so small, the reward so great and the ultimate outcome is under God's sovereignty. I use this rationale every day.

It is this rationale that we follow when we reject the "convenience machine" of abortion. God has helped us understand the risk v reward in this instance. The risk of murdering or tactily approving the murder of a human being, any human being, no matter what the "hedon" balance is, compromises our assurance of eternal reward.

It is also this rationale that I follow when I approve the "convenience machine" of capital punishment. God has helped us understand that certain acts (say murder) outweigh any present or future potential of this person, so the risk of approving this death does not compromise my eternal reward and is also a high reward for society, in general.

My seeming "empiricism" is always tempered by my God-given morality and an understanding that He is sovereign.

SDG!

 

[Mushroom]

"Hedon balance". Now there is an interesting term. My mind is incapable of forming a mental picture around those words, and for that I am grateful.

 

[Jim Johnston]

Got about 10 minutes before chow time, so, to empirically prove my point to my brother, since that is the only evidence he will accept (such a doubting Tom...):

~6000 ambulance services in the US - say they - in toto - only make make 5 life saving trips per week:

6000 X 5 X 52 = ~1,560,000

Total fatalities by auto in the US/year = ~40000

I have the references if you need them.

Your argument only works if you assign an equal amount of hedons all around. Or, if you view your facts in isolations from other facts.

Death could cost 50 hedons while life saving could reap 15 hedons.

When S suffers, for him, it costs 1,000,000,000,000 hedons. When S* gets pleasure it's worth 25 hedons.

How would you know about the above two? Where's the calculations. Gonna find that on your google search engine? Perhaps Wikipedia has an article on it?

Or, say those whose lives were saved went out and did more evils resulting in a net loss of 10,000,000 hedons. Say one became the next Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, and Amin rolled up into one.

Or, one of those who died by getting hit, counterfactually, happened to be the person who would have (had it not been for the car) invented a cure for cancer, thus saving untold millions of lives. Thus the end result puts you in the red. Negative hedon balance.

J.D. haven't you learned anything from Bahnsen, Frame, Helm, Byl, Oliphint, Rae, Moreland, Craig, Shaffer-Landeau, Pojman, Rachels, Adams, etc., etc., etc.,

YOU HAVE NO WAY TO CALCULATE THE MULTIFARIOUS FACTORS!!! How many times do you need to read that? You have no clue how much John X has to pay and how much John Y receives. No one has been able to do this. As Bahnsen has said, you'd have to be omniscient to be a Utilitarian.

Back to the drawing board for you....

Dear brother, according to your answer, no technology would ever have been developed. We would exist in a perpetual state of analysis paralysis. I concur with the fact that we humans are indeed limited by our non-omniscience. How wonderful it is that we have sovereign guidance over all these things! Since we know that "all things work together for good", we can take some comfort in knowing that even with our simple pragmatic calculations we do not pre-judge the worth of even one human life over the other. It is a choice to utilize the technology we develop with an understanding that some risk comes with the reward. You did not include the consideration that along with my vote to allow the machine would also be my tacit expectation to utilize it. It is my choice to take the risk, along with my authority over my family to expose them to the risk and I am willing to do that only because the risk is so small, the reward so great and the ultimate outcome is under God's sovereignty. I use this rationale every day.

It is this rationale that we follow when we reject the "convenience machine" of abortion. God has helped us understand the risk v reward in this instance. The risk of murdering or tactily approving the murder of a human being, any human being, no matter what the "hedon" balance is, compromises our assurance of eternal reward.

It is also this rationale that I follow when I approve the "convenience machine" of capital punishment. God has helped us understand that certain acts (say murder) outweigh any present or future potential of this person, so the risk of approving this death does not compromise my eternal reward and is also a high reward for society, in general.

My seeming "empiricism" is always tempered by my God-given morality and an understanding that He is sovereign.

SDG!

J.D.

No technology would develop only if you oversimplify things. You see, I don't only take consequences into account (or, sometimes God tells us what they are and so an omniscient being told us what they are and we can trust him). To give a cost/benefit answer, as your only answer, suffers from the problems I've listed.

"All things work tegether for good" is simplistic again. Why not bring back American slavery? Because it's immoral? Oh, so we need to look at the morality of our actions? That's what I'm doing here. So you've begged the question, again.

I know we all have the "gut feeling" that our use of cars isn't immoral. And, it probably isn't. But, when asked for a moral justification for that, we must admit that you've flat out not given good reasons for that "gut feeling." The numbers you gave were always shown to be based on short sighted and sloppy calculations, you frequently assumed the morality of the action up for discussion, and you didn't include other necessary features required for making moral decisions, you just appealed to teleological ethics.

 

[panta dokimazete]

No technology would develop only if you oversimplify things. You see, I don't only take consequences into account (or, sometimes God tells us what they are and so an omniscient being told us what they are and we can trust him). To give a cost/benefit answer, as your only answer, suffers from the problems I've listed.

And, as I've said, and as you continue to ignore, my cost v benefit analysis includes trust in God's guidance, through Word and Spirit - what He does tell us and what He doesn't tell us. What do you have to offer?

"All things work tegether for good" is simplistic again. Why not bring back American slavery? Because it's immoral? Oh, so we need to look at the morality of our actions? That's what I'm doing here. So you've begged the question, again.

The only one oversimplifying is you - you continue to try and run the discussion off-course by critiquing vs. offering an alternative to my rationale. It is easy to drum up problems, not so easy to give solutions. Your method is weak.

I know we all have the "gut feeling" that our use of cars isn't immoral. And, it probably isn't. But, when asked for a moral justification for that, we must admit that you've flat out not given good reasons for that "gut feeling." The numbers you gave were always shown to be based on short sighted and sloppy calculations, you frequently assumed the morality of the action up for discussion, and you didn't include other necessary features required for making moral decisions, you just appealed to teleological ethics.

lol - My earlier presupposition that automobiles have a higher reward than risk was based on a reasonable assumption that I then backed up with factual evidence based on a presupposition of the equal value of human life. At least my "short sighted and sloppy" calculations refer to real numbers and not to some figmented "hedon" that I pulled from some nether region of my body!

You appeal to "something" that disallows for anyone to make any decision based on anything because we can't possibly know all the consequences caused by our decision. Now, I will and have admitted to our non-omniscience, but I have plenty of support to decide/choose based on my faith and reason. What are you appealing to?

Are you afraid to swat a fly because of all the potential ramifications? All I hear is what I hear from my atheistic opponents:

What if? What if? What if?

Let's discuss what is.

 

[Jim Johnston]

J.D. I'm confident that you have not answered anything I've said. I' sure you're confident that I have not adequately dealt with your position. So I think we can both sleep well knowing that what we've said has not been overturned.

As I told someone via private message, I'm gonna bow out of this convo now. Constantly repeating arguments, having points ignored or not grasped, having to do background work to get you up to speed, etc., is all putting my hedon balance in the red.

I'm sure you can agree that it would be immoral for me to continue this conversation anymore since my cost of hedons outweighs any benefit you or anyone else are receiving.

I hope three Excedrin and a shot of J.D. (the ole #7) can bring my hedon account into the black...

 

[RamistThomist]

I couldn't resist. Even so, Paul still wins.