Philosophy Now Forum

Your pet or 100 strangers ? Who would you pick if you could save 1 ?

On edit the strangers were all FOREIGN SERVICE OFFICIALS aka MEMBERS OF THE DIPLOMATIC SERVICE and it may have depended on how people of that sort would have handled my case if I had the opportunity to travel abroad and I ended up in a rather "sticky situation."

emotional ethics are pretty commonplace these days, ie one has to take account of emotional context when formulating any reasoned moral stand, because otherwise it will not be found in reality that the ethical guide is at all pragmatic.

Some people use weighting,ie some say the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one. And others tell the pointy eared hob goblin to shut the f up and get some perspective. Either way most people I suspect assuming the loved their pet and had had him for any length of time would shoot 100 others I would imagine, although there may be some bias towards the other option in some more ethical minded people.

I'd probably hope my family and I would opt to self - evacuate from anywhere where the "kaka" hit the fan if we had any of our cats with us.