Just as a thought experiment, I'd like to see what you would do in this situation:
You're homeless and cannot afford any meals. You are slowly dying and have no options. Assume something is in the way of getting help. If the opportunity arose to kill somebody and be caught for it in a safe and secure way (ie. not getting shot by a bystander), would you do that for the opportunity to go to jail for your life to be fed, clothed and washed? Basically, would you sacrifice the life of someone else for the security of yours?
*Suppose the death penalty is not an option as well
No, I would not. The price of life should not be an others life. The moral death that would follow that incident would not be worth living with. There's also the use of taxpayers money that would be keeping me alive for many years, even though I did nothing to deserve it. Murder for the sake of living is nothing to live with.
I know yours is the morally correct answer, but I would, if my two options were limited to just those specified in the question (which would never be true). Because if I lived in a world where people, both collectively and individually, didn't care enough about me that they were willing for me to slowly starve to death, I would owe them nothing. That said, I could/would never actually kill someone - I don't even kill insects (excluding wasps - we have an ongoing feud).
Thanks for the clarification. When I was five, my older brother told me to catch a 'hoverfly' in a jar, from outside their nest at the base of a tree. I learned two things that day. 1) My brother is not an expert in flora and fauna. 2) Wasps are not to be trusted and must be eliminated on sight. To clarify, this stance only applies to the 'standard' wasp found in the UK.
Flawed question. There are any number of nonviolent ways to be sent to jail/prison. That aside, no I wouldn't.
No, I wouldn't and my reasons are twofold. 1) The obvious, guilt. Guilt is selfish, despite the fact that on the surface it could be confused with the possibility that I am too moral to kill someone to save my life. In reality, I think, I just couldn't live with the guilt. 2) This is more subtle: my nature and human nature would simply refuse to believe there were no other options of survival, I think.
This would be hard to answer if it was actually happening to me. To answer it from the safe distance of a life with constant internet access, where I eat as I please and no one I know has been to jail for any serious time? Impossible. I wasn't born privileged- I've been starving because my family couldn't afford food, and we've been weeks or days away from being homeless at times. My father kept it together (somehow), but if he didn't this question could have become very real for me. But even at the hungriest, even with the landlord calling every day, even when we got $12 christmas presents even though it's also my birthday- even then, this would have been a hard question to answer. I think, in all honesty, that if it would help myself and my brother out of that situation, I would do it. But if it was just me, I would die hoping.
I find this answer sincerely interesting. It's the other people that you care about who you could justify doing morally wrong things for. Obviously it's said a lot, but still, very very interesting. We must be more motivated by love and compassion than I might have thought.
Well, there are times when an objectively bad thing (like lying) can be used to prevent an even worse thing from happening (like murder.) No one's going to blame you for assaulting someone to prevent a rape, as long as you don't cause any more harm than is necessary. I think the statement still holds through.
I agree, but I find a definition of "objectively bad" is vague. Badness is intrinsically something the person judges for themselves. If you were objectivist, for example, another persons death is objectively better than yours. Personally, though, I would value their life just as much as mine though.
You’re in a desert walking along in the sand when all of the sudden you look down, and you see a tortoise, crawling toward you. You reach down, you flip the tortoise over on its back. The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can’t, not without your help. But you’re not helping. Why is that?
I've never been put into such a situation, so it's difficult for me to say, but I honestly don't think i could kill someone. This is probably considered cheating for your experiment, but I would try to do something like rob a bank. Actually there was that story a few months ago about a man who did just that because he didn't have health insurance and needed the care provided in our prison systems.
It doesn't seem all that unreasonable. If you can't care for yourself, do something to put yourself in a place where you get free care. I guess there are a lot of different ways to go to prison than murder though. Which would certainly be preferable.