You elided the explanation of the difference, which is psychological rather than metaphysical (just like the difference between failing to donate more to charity vs failing to save a child drowning right before your eyes).
The metaphysical commonality explains why both are very unjustified. The psychological difference explains why one, but not the other, warrants especially significant guilt / blame.
Yes, I see your point. I used the video-of-torture instead of direct torture example to try to get around the common objections of demand-elasticity and psychological distance.
I think the space for refuge in the psychological difference is a lot smaller than may seem. Let’s try another example.
Let’s consider that you purchase a piglet that you keep in a dark, confined cage for 6 months and then slaughter. Would you have done something wrong in the psychological sense for being so personally responsible for it’s life through slaughter? Is that still vastly psychologically different from torturing puppies? Perhaps the intentionality or desire to inflict suffering is the most relevant consideration for psychological culpability here?
If imprisoning the pig is not all that different from puppy-torture, then it seems that the psychological difference hinges on whether you have someone else do the unpleasant task of raising then dispatching of the pig for you or not. It seems odd to me that the act of enjoying the fruits of instrumental torture becomes psychologically benign simply through outsourcing and concentrating moral culpability into a few persons. Perhaps that’s the case. But I don’t think that’s a universal intuition.
A lot’s been written about the failing to donate to charity and saving the child drowning distinction. Intuition does seems to draw a clear difference. But I’m not sure that difference is as solid as intuited after reading Peter Unger’s thought experiments in “Living High and Letting Die”. I’m guessing you may have read that book and have preferred counterexamples?
You elided the explanation of the difference, which is psychological rather than metaphysical (just like the difference between failing to donate more to charity vs failing to save a child drowning right before your eyes).
The metaphysical commonality explains why both are very unjustified. The psychological difference explains why one, but not the other, warrants especially significant guilt / blame.
Yes, I see your point. I used the video-of-torture instead of direct torture example to try to get around the common objections of demand-elasticity and psychological distance.
I think the space for refuge in the psychological difference is a lot smaller than may seem. Let’s try another example.
Let’s consider that you purchase a piglet that you keep in a dark, confined cage for 6 months and then slaughter. Would you have done something wrong in the psychological sense for being so personally responsible for it’s life through slaughter? Is that still vastly psychologically different from torturing puppies? Perhaps the intentionality or desire to inflict suffering is the most relevant consideration for psychological culpability here?
If imprisoning the pig is not all that different from puppy-torture, then it seems that the psychological difference hinges on whether you have someone else do the unpleasant task of raising then dispatching of the pig for you or not. It seems odd to me that the act of enjoying the fruits of instrumental torture becomes psychologically benign simply through outsourcing and concentrating moral culpability into a few persons. Perhaps that’s the case. But I don’t think that’s a universal intuition.
A lot’s been written about the failing to donate to charity and saving the child drowning distinction. Intuition does seems to draw a clear difference. But I’m not sure that difference is as solid as intuited after reading Peter Unger’s thought experiments in “Living High and Letting Die”. I’m guessing you may have read that book and have preferred counterexamples?