Link to article: Apathy towards injured kid
This article reports an accident in China, where a 2-year-old girl was hit twice by two vans one after another. The little girl was left bleeding on the road side for over 15 minutes and eventually died in the hospital. During the time she lied bleeding on the road, 18 people walked by, saw her injured body, but chose to do nothing to help the kid. Millions of people around the world have decried this “lack of morals” in the Chinese society.
This accident can be related to our reading of chapter 21 in The Fundamental of Ethics by Shafer-Landau. In this chapter, the author presents ten arguments against moral objectivism. One of them discusses how the absence of categorical reasons can reject moral objectivity. Categorical reasons are reasons that require everyone to act according to objective moral duties, regardless of people’s feelings or desires. The Argument from Categorical Reasons revolves around the plausibility of categorical reasons and their connection to objective moral duties. It basically left objectivists with two options to defend objectivism: either showing that moral duties do not have to provide categorical reasons, or proving that categorical reasons do exist.
The accident of the little girl in this article can be used to support that moral duties do not have to provide categorical reasons. If there is one moral duty that is likely to be objective, it should be one that says: it is morally right to help a dying innocent baby. However, as Shafer-Landau mentions on page 331, whether that moral duty requires us to take action to help that dying innocent baby is a different story. According to what actually happened on the scene, 18 physically capable adults passed by the bleeding baby without showing a slightest sign of concern about her. Those people did not feel the urge or desire to save the dying little girl, despite that helping her is morally correct. This is an example of how a moral objective duty does not seem to provide reasons for everyone to obey it.
The example above shows how premise 1 of the eighth argument against objectivism is not always true. I think there are even more common examples to prove the rejection of premise 2: There is no such thing as categorical reasoning(Shafer-Landau 330). Lets suppose that if objective moral standards exist, then there's categorical reasons to follow them (330). That doesn't mean that we follow these reasons because of the chase of personal gains. For example, lets suppose 1 of the 18 people actually ended up helping the child. It could be perfectly plausible that they would have helped the child not out of personal attention or media attention but because its just the right thing to do. A simple call to "911" would even count. I think its just in human nature to feel sympathetic and so I think examples like the later also prove the validity of objectivism, according to objections against premise 2.
ReplyDeleteThis example reminds me of a discussion I had in an Intro to Psychology class freshman year. We spoke about a situation nearly identical to the one outlined by Hien, in which multiple people heard the screams and cries for help of a woman on the street, but closed their blinds, as everyone expected someone else to take action. According to the study we discussed, the less people that are around in the instance of an emergency, the more likely someone is to take action and call 9-1-1. The more people that are there, the less personally responsible each member of the crowd feels. I think this presents an interesting question in regards to morals. Sure, most of us do objectively believe that it is right to help someone in need, but given the opportunity to do just that, no one wants to step up to the plate. Does this pull for the case of ethical subjectivism? Do we only adhere to morals when we feel most responsible, when we know that we will be directly connected to the line of blame if a situation is not properly resolved? If a moral view is objectively correct, why wouldn't we be more eager to act on it, regardless of the circumstances?
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