I have a newbie question… if A) quantum mechanics shows that we can’t distinguish personal identity by the history of how someone’s atoms got into the configuration that they are in, and B) morality (other things being equal) flows backwards from the end result, and C) it is immoral to allow a child to die on the railroad tracks, then D) why would it not also be immoral to decide not to marry and have children? Both decisions have the same consequence (a live child who otherwise would not be).
At some point we (or the machines we build) will be able to manipulate matter at the quantum level, so I think these kind of questions will be important if we want to be able to make moral decisions when we have that capability.
If I myself were given the task to program the little child life saving machine, I admit that right now I wouldn’t know how to do better than a naive leads-to-child-living rule which would result in the mass of the observable universe being converted into habitat for children...
Assuming that we want it-all-adds-up-to-normalcy, we would hope to find a rule consistent with quantum mechanics that would end up with saving the life of a child on the railroad tracks having a higher moral imperative than converting the available mass of the universe into children (and habitat etc. so that they have happy fulfilling lives etc...)
The it-all-adds-up-to-normalcy approach though reminds me a bit of the correspondence principle in quantum mechanics. (The correspondence principle says that for large systems quantum mechanics should give the same result as classical mechanics). The principle was very useful when quantum mechanics was first being developed, but it completely broke down once we had large systems such as superconductors which could not be described classically. Similarly, I can imagine that perhaps my moral judgments would change if I was able to integrate the reality of quantum mechanics into my moral thinking.
I have a newbie question… if A) quantum mechanics shows that we can’t distinguish personal identity by the history of how someone’s atoms got into the configuration that they are in, and B) morality (other things being equal) flows backwards from the end result, and C) it is immoral to allow a child to die on the railroad tracks, then D) why would it not also be immoral to decide not to marry and have children? Both decisions have the same consequence (a live child who otherwise would not be).
At some point we (or the machines we build) will be able to manipulate matter at the quantum level, so I think these kind of questions will be important if we want to be able to make moral decisions when we have that capability.
If I myself were given the task to program the little child life saving machine, I admit that right now I wouldn’t know how to do better than a naive leads-to-child-living rule which would result in the mass of the observable universe being converted into habitat for children...
Assuming that we want it-all-adds-up-to-normalcy, we would hope to find a rule consistent with quantum mechanics that would end up with saving the life of a child on the railroad tracks having a higher moral imperative than converting the available mass of the universe into children (and habitat etc. so that they have happy fulfilling lives etc...)
The it-all-adds-up-to-normalcy approach though reminds me a bit of the correspondence principle in quantum mechanics. (The correspondence principle says that for large systems quantum mechanics should give the same result as classical mechanics). The principle was very useful when quantum mechanics was first being developed, but it completely broke down once we had large systems such as superconductors which could not be described classically. Similarly, I can imagine that perhaps my moral judgments would change if I was able to integrate the reality of quantum mechanics into my moral thinking.