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Posted by: FreedomBuilder The_Universe@galaxycorp.com
Posted to the PTO network by PT Shamrock.
Here's something (to think) about over the weekend.
----begin----
Let me remind you of a puzzle. There are five people:
A Man. (M)
A Woman. (W)
A Friend. (F) (of the man and woman).
A Boatman. (B)
A Stranger. (S)
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The man and the woman are very much in love. They are separated by a river and
there is no way of getting across to the other side (there are no tricks in
this puzzle, there really is no way of getting across). A boatman is able to
take her across the river, but on hearing of her predicament and the fact that
she is so keen to be re-united with her lover, he doubles the usual fare from
$100 to $200. The woman only has $100. A stranger who is passing, hears this.
He tell the woman that he will give her the $100 if she has sex with him. The
woman decides to have sex with the stranger for $100. She receives the $100,
pays the boatman, and is ferried across the river to be with the man. They are
both very happy together. However, a few days later, a friend finds out about
the woman sleeping with the stranger for money, and immediately tells the man.
The man confronts the woman and ends the relationship, stating that he wants
nothing more to do with her. The woman is devastated.
Please rank the five people (M,W,F,B and S) from 'best' to 'worst' in terms of
their behaviour. Put the 'best' character at the top of the list and the
'worst' at the bottom, with the others in order in between.
The purpose of this puzzle is to get you to think about your own personal
system of ethics. In a coherent system, your ethics should derive from your
values - those things which you seek to gain and keep. Many of you wrote in
with your ordered list (for which I thank you). The results are shown below,
best person first, worst person last:
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Most popular choice: (WBSMF)
Next most popular: (BSWMF)
Next most popular: (WBSFM)
Next most popular: (WMSBF)
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Most people put the friend last. The rest of the entries were evenly
distributed amongst the other 120 possibilities!
As you can see (and as predicted) there are many variations and it is unusual
to receive two the same!
This intriguing puzzle underscores the fact that there are almost as many
different, conflicting ethical stances as there are people in the country!
As a nation, we do not have a rational and coherent ethical standard, set of
values or belief system.
In the light of this, it is staggering that we have a workable legal system!
Having a properly considered set of ethics is essential if you wish to become a
person of power and integrity. That very word 'integrity' means that your
ethics (morals, etc.) are integrated - that is they 'hang together' as a whole.
It is a very powerful thing to know what you believe and why you believe it -
the latter being by far the most important.
To obtain such an ethical coherency should be the urgent task of every
intelligent man and woman.
Sadly, this is reserved for the intelligent because it is the study of
philosophy - why we are here, how we should live. To understand philosophy
requires a concerted effort of your rational and discriminating mind - it is
not a plaything. We are having a philosophical discussion now, regarding this
puzzle. The arguments are tricky. They require concentration. You need to
remain rational and focused. Emotions play no part here, neither do crazy
beliefs or religious exhortations. This is the realm of the mind - man's
greatest faculty.
My next book will be devoted entirely to the discussion of a rational and
coherent philosophy to guide your life.
This will be the very hardest thing I have ever undertaken in my life. I cannot
therefore give this entire philosophy to you on one sheet of A4 paper! If it's
OK with you, I will just take a quick look at each of the characters and make a
few brief comments regarding their actions. This will allow you to get a
glimpse of the type of thinking I use.
My answer is not 'the solution' to the puzzle. There is one solution for every
person! However, unlike 99.9% (literally!) of people, I did not just pluck my
answer out of the air. I did not have a 'gut' feeling. I did not respond
emotionally. (there is nothing wrong with emotions, but they are NOT tools of
cognition). Given a similar or even totally different puzzle, my solutions to
the two puzzles would not be conflicting.
Anyway, for your interest only, here are my thoughts.
First, the order. The puzzle did not originate from me, and so I must follow
the rules just like you did and place them in some sort of order.
I would have liked to have placed the boatman and the stranger as joint top,
i.e. almost guiltless. There is really very little to choose between these two.
On a fine balance, I chose the stranger as the most moral. Here is my order:
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Stranger (S)
Boatman (B)
Man (M)
Woman (W)
Friend (F)
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A brief word about each: - Stranger and Boatman: Two important points here. 1)
Neither the boatman nor the stranger are in any way involved in this drama
between the man and the woman. They are peripheral players. 2) Neither the
boatman nor the stranger have any moral duty to become involved or to help in
any way.
The man and the woman are responsible (entirely) for their own predicament
(being separated) and it is their responsibility to sort out their own
problems. They may legitimately ask for help, of course, but it is not beholden
upon either the boatman or the stranger to give it. Only the doctrine of
altruism holds that you must sacrifice your like-values to perfect strangers.
This doctrine holds: "From each according to his ability to give; to each
according to his need" A more evil doctrine never existed.
The boatman and the stranger are both 'guilty' of a very slight lack of
compassion - that's all.
A good way to test situations like this is to extend them into the ridiculous.
Let's say the woman only need one penny to get across and the stranger would
not give it to her unless she slept with him every night for a year. The
principle is the same, I think you would agree.
Or let's say that the woman was half a penny short of the fare and the boatman
still refused to take her. Again, the principle is the same.
Or, extend it the other way. The woman has left a halfpence piece on the
opposite bank, three miles away and wants the boatman to row her for free so
that she might recover it. Should he do this out of compassion for her
predicament?
Or, she wishes to borrow $10,000 from the stranger so that she might give it to
the man for him to pay off a gambling debt. Should the stranger lend it out of
'compassion'.
Now in a rational philosophy, everything is based upon an exchange of values.
Not sacrifice. Not altruism. This allows us to unscramble the problem of how
'evil' the boatman and stranger are being.
A rational man would give the woman one penny to get across, without asking for
anything in return. Why? Because the smug feeling of helping her would far
out-weigh the value of a penny.
Should he give her $10? Probably not in this situation.
If it was to reach her drowning infant son, then yes, because the feeling of
having saved a life has a higher value (for him) than $10.
In the above puzzle, should he give her $100 to reach her lover? Certainly not.
This is definitely not a life or death situation. It's just a silly incident
for which she is responsible. Furthermore it is an incident which has no
serious consequences.
Should he have asked for sex in return for $100? He can ask for the moon on a
stick if he wants to! This is just the offer of a trade. She can tell him to
get lost, or jump him immediately. The offer of a trade (no matter how
one-sided it might appear) is not coercion. I can legitimately offer you $5 for
your house. You could then tell me to take a jump, but no harm has been done
and I did not coerce you. The standard 'extension' of this problem is this: A
man is driving through the desert and sees a broken-down jeep with a half-dead
woman hanging out of it. He stops. She begs him for a drink and a lift back to
town. He agrees if she will have sex with him there and then, otherwise he's
leaving her to die. The same problem, right? Just a difference of scale. In
this example, for a rational man the good feeling of having saved a woman's
life for no effort on his part, is preferable (of FAR higher value) to the
transitory feeling of forced sex with a desperate partner.
The stranger is better than the boatman because he has absolutely no part in
this drama. The very mild good feelings he would get from helping in this
insignificant situation are not of equal value to $100. Probably one dollar
would cover it. He is right to refuse to part with a life-value just because
someone 'needs' it.
The boatman is also not responsible for this situation. He is a businessman who
exchanges his time and effort for money. He is entitled to charge double, or
triple if he can get away with it. He is not obliged to ferry anyone across who
'needs' a free ride.
Sainsburys are not obliged to hand out free food to those who 'need' it. Just
because the woman needs to get across, this does not mean that the boatman (or
anyone) must respond to her need. However, his lack of compassion is slightly
worse than the stranger's because the lady had the normal fare, and so the
boatman would have been paid reasonably for his services.
Still he is not obliged to carry her at any price - even $10,000 if she offers.
It is his boat, his oars, his arms, his energy. No man or woman through their
'need' has a right to create a mortgage on him and demand his services.
Next comes the man whose crime is incoherency. That is, he has not taken the
time or trouble to construct a coherent and rational system of ethics and
morals for himself. He is like most people in this respect. He does not know
what he believes in, or why. He claims to 'love' the woman, but does not know
what this means. If something goes wrong, then he just jerks in response and
ditches her. His crime is ignorance and laziness.
There is actually a missing piece of information in the puzzle, I feel. I need
to know if the woman is acting rationally when she sleeps with the stranger. I
have assumed that she is. We need to know this in order to determine the man's
morality.
Imagine, for example, that the man had said just last week to the lady:
"Darling, I love you and I want us always to be together. However, I am a
strictly monogamous person and expect you to be also. If you are ever
unfaithful, then it will be the end of the relationship. Sorry, but that's the
way I am. That is what I believe. I want you to know this, in advance. "Well
then, the man would soar straight to the number one 'completely guiltless' spot
because he is acting exactly in accordance with his previously stated ethics.
If this were the case, the woman would be acting irrationally in sleeping with
the stranger.
She would be sleeping with him knowing that it would almost certainly end the
relationship with the man. So, we assume they never had such a conversation and
that the woman is acting rationally in the belief that even if the man found
out, his love would be strong enough to win through this difficulty.
Ignorance is always a less serious crime than willful evasion or compromise of
your ethics, and this is what makes the woman slightly worse than the man.
Again we have to make a small assumption. We must assume that she didn't want
to sleep with the stranger, and does not make a habit of just sleeping with
anyone who offers $100. Incidentally, why would this be 'bad' for a woman or a
prostitute for that matter?
Because sex is a very intimate thing, closely allied to the finest human
emotion of love. It should not be given away or sold because the loss of that
intimate part of you (your body and a part of your mind) cannot be compensated
for by receiving $100, or even $1,000 for that matter.
Prostitutes, like alcoholics, drug addicts, etc., can only continue because
they have deliberately numbed themselves to these realities. This is known as
evasion.
So the woman is worse than the man because she deliberately sacrifices a value.
She willingly destroys or ignores her own ethics. For what? Certainly not some
'higher' ethic or value. She did not do this to save her drowning infant son.
This would have been acceptable. If forced, it is acceptable to sacrifice a
lower ethic to a higher, but not the other way around.
Finally comes he 'friend'. I had no trouble placing him last. This is someone
who for no personal gain sets out to destroy something wonderful (the man and
lady's love for each other).
Here is an important point: the fact that he does it for no personal gain
(altruism) immediately makes this a more evil act than if he had done it for
personal gain.
This is the exact opposite of conventional morality which states that the more
you sacrifice for no gain whatsoever, the 'better' the person you are. This is
the doctrine of altruism.
As you can see, even a simple philosophical puzzle forces you to think through
your complete value system and to start to order your thoughts. I hope you see
that even my briefest thoughts on the subject are very far from a standard
'slopped-out' response. A coherent philosophy is a powerful thing. It allows
you to move through life with power and certainty. A random or half-formed
philosophy fills you with doubt and fear - it leaves you paralyzed.
This brief discussion is not intended to describe my philosophy in detail. It
is just to get you thinking and to make you realise that these questions of
morality and ethics are complex unless you have a guiding system to see you
though. If I state that you need a rational and coherent philosophy to guide
your life, we would need to ask (at the very least); "What do you mean by
rational?" and "What is coherent?". Also, why is rationality important, or even
valid? How can we determine when one is acting rationally? Why is this 'better'
than acting irrationally? These, and many similar questions, need to be
answered before a philosophy can be built. This would take a book.
Most importantly, morals (ethics etc.) are to allow YOU to live your life in a
coherent manner. They are not for 'society' or to create a 'better world'. If
everyone had a rational philosophy, the world would be a better place, but it
is not in the pursuit of this that an individual man or woman embarks upon the
study of this subject. They do it selfishly - i.e. for themselves. This single
sentence is the key which will allow you to decode the philosophical minefield.
Finally, let me ask you another moral puzzle. Cover up the small print at the
bottom of this page until you have thought about this puzzle, then have a look
to see what I think.
Supposing you alone were granted the power of invisibility. By uttering an
incantation, you could render yourself totally invisible. A second incantation
made you visible again. What, if anything, would you do with your power? In
case your imagination needs tempting, let me remind you that you could sit in
on secret meetings, gain advantages in business which would make you a
multi-millionaire overnight, become a voyeur, sit in on cabinet meetings at No
10, etc., etc. You could. in fact, have the power to rule the world, almost!
[The answer to this puzzle is found in the paragraph just above it. A system of
ethics is for you. It's function is to guide you to a happy and fulfilled life.
The function of ethics is not to produce a 'better society', although this
might be a by-product. You cannot force people to follow a moral code in order
to implement your vision of a 'better world'. This is religion.
So, ethics are for you - for your selfish benefit. This means that once you
have worked out a beneficial ethical code, you would follow it because it is in
your rational self-interest to do so. Note, you do NOT follow a code because it
is in the interests of others (e.g. 'society') to do so. This is the doctrine
of altruism.
Therefore, if it is in your rational self-interest to follow your own ethical
code, you would follow this code regardless of whether you were invisible or
visible! You would therefore do nothing 'evil' whilst invisible. You would not
cheat whilst invisible, but be honest whilst visible for example. This is the
mark of an incoherent philosophy, inflicted upon you from outside, and to which
you subscribe out of FEAR. Fear of being 'caught' or ridiculed.
The test of anyone's morality is always to ask what they would do if there was
absolutely no chance whatsoever of being caught. A rational person would never
act differently in these circumstances. Being caught has nothing to do with
their morals!]
---end----
My response
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