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gotosleep_idiot2010-03-02 06:49 am
apreacherboy.livejournal.com) wrote in gotosleep_idiot2010-03-02 06:49 am
Ethical systems anyone?
Mostly just posting this because I am curious
[Poll #1532678]
Rule based would include categorical imperatives (Lying is always wrong.) and (I shouldn’t pick any flowers because if everyone picked a flower there wouldn’t be any left.) Also deontology, rightness or wrongness derives from the character of the act itself. This category would also include “I don’t want to do this because then the authority will beat the crap out of me.”
Outcome based would include utilitarianism (the greatest good for the greatest people) and (the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few). Also consequentialism, which is that the consequences of a particular act form the basis for the moral judgment of that action. Also includes Hedonism (maximize pleasure), Despotism (maximize power), Pragmatism (maximize satisfaction and adjustment), Existentialism (maximize freedom), and Agapaism (love as the one goal in every situation where we face a choice).
Virtue-based would strive toward the cardinal virtues (Temperance, courage, prudence and justice) and theological virtues (faith, hope and love). It is also possible to strive toward/strive to avoid negative virtues (seven deadly sins). Instead of specific choices determining a person’s ethics, it is long term patterns of behavior that can be observed in individual decisions.
Note: realistically, most people use a little of all three. Choose the one that you think is the main one.
Now for some IC application through a classical problem:
Your stand at a place where one hallway T-ends into another, and an unarmed man comes running toward you. He is out of breath, clearly distressed, and franticly tells you, “I’m being chased by a man who wants to kill me! Don’t tell him which way I went!” And then the man runs down the left hallway.
A few minutes later, a soldier comes into sight, out of breath, clearly furious, and heavily armed, and demands “Which way did that man go?!”
What do you do?
[Poll #1532678]
Rule based would include categorical imperatives (Lying is always wrong.) and (I shouldn’t pick any flowers because if everyone picked a flower there wouldn’t be any left.) Also deontology, rightness or wrongness derives from the character of the act itself. This category would also include “I don’t want to do this because then the authority will beat the crap out of me.”
Outcome based would include utilitarianism (the greatest good for the greatest people) and (the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few). Also consequentialism, which is that the consequences of a particular act form the basis for the moral judgment of that action. Also includes Hedonism (maximize pleasure), Despotism (maximize power), Pragmatism (maximize satisfaction and adjustment), Existentialism (maximize freedom), and Agapaism (love as the one goal in every situation where we face a choice).
Virtue-based would strive toward the cardinal virtues (Temperance, courage, prudence and justice) and theological virtues (faith, hope and love). It is also possible to strive toward/strive to avoid negative virtues (seven deadly sins). Instead of specific choices determining a person’s ethics, it is long term patterns of behavior that can be observed in individual decisions.
Note: realistically, most people use a little of all three. Choose the one that you think is the main one.
Now for some IC application through a classical problem:
Your stand at a place where one hallway T-ends into another, and an unarmed man comes running toward you. He is out of breath, clearly distressed, and franticly tells you, “I’m being chased by a man who wants to kill me! Don’t tell him which way I went!” And then the man runs down the left hallway.
A few minutes later, a soldier comes into sight, out of breath, clearly furious, and heavily armed, and demands “Which way did that man go?!”
What do you do?
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=D
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No answer to the poll because the choices are too limited to be completely accurate for Roxas, orz.
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Watson's probably a mix of Outcome and Virtue....
Dx ARGH, this is hard.
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Ladd's kind of moot, because he doesn't really care about right and wrong. I think he actually likes doing things that are 'wrong' sometimes since he doesn't think too highly of society as a whole, far as I can tell. He'll really just do whatever fits his own personal objective, which tends to be 'kill people to teach them the value and fragility of life,' or just 'kill people because I can.' lmfao
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Okay, so in canon, Suzaku's this Japanese guy who first kills the Prime Minister of Japan in order to stop a do-or-die campaign. Result: Japan surrenders unconditionally and becomes a colony under Britannia but spares the country from being further divided three ways.
Then he casts away his Japanese past/is disowned and becomes an honorary citizen under that system and joins the army as a private. He fights against the Japanese resistance forces.
He wishes to free Japan but only through lawful actions since he views his first act of killing his dad as wrong. Of course this means Britannian law which seeks to stomp out any rights Japanese people still have. Thus, he's willing to do whatever it takes under Britannian rule and law to get to a high enough position so that he could change the system itself from within. But he's also not willing to step over certain boundaries: he's saved innocent civilians during battle and he's taken a bullet when he refused to kill one of them even when ordered directly. He's willing to be soft on opponents if he thinks they can be changed but he's unrelenting in his pursuit.
At least that was how it was before he lost someone important to him yet again. Then he went a little crazy(er) and lost that soft attitude and sold out his friends for a higher position.
And then he changed yet again when he wiped out nearly an entire city's worth of people in one go by accident and was all "I was naive to think I could only get what I want by playing by the rules and through virtuous means. All that matters in the end are results".
OTL. Why so complicated, jerkzaku?
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Also, since the political system hasn't really been working due to said corruption, rule-based is (almost) always out of the question. I think in the end, she's slightly more utilitarian than virtue-based.
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Red is more virtuous than she thinks she is. She thinks she doesn't care about doing good for the sake of good anymore and would like to say that she's got her interests and her interests alone at heart, but she's not even fooling herself at this point in Wake, and is wondering when it's going to bite her in the ass. She's not rule-based, since lol, corrupt government, and her police are basically another gang. And as for outcome...there are certain things Red will not do; there are lines she will not cross. If she was told at gunpoint to kill someone else, she wouldn't be able to bring herself to do it. Her answer to the soldier problem is based both on her mistrust of authority (the only military left in her world are pretty much mercenaries) and the fact that if she tells the soldier where the man went, the man will die. If she doesn't, no one dies.
As for Kanji. Well. Both my characters mistrust authority. Kanji's working on cleaning up his act, but he never did anything really bad. Mostly he just scared people who bothered him, got into fights, and beat up a motorcycle gang so they'd stop going by his house late at night and keeping his mother awake. But all the police figure he's another no-good punk, so when trouble goes down in the tiny rural town, guess who they jump to conclusions about? If they see him hanging around anywhere,they get suspicious and ask what he's up to. He'd immediately sympathize with the running guy rather than the soldier.
Kanji has no problem breaking rules, though. I'd say virtue-based. HE STRIVES FOR MANLINESS OKAY
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since claire doesn't actually believe that anyone truly exists aside from himself (he's a hardcore solipsist) he has no use for any rules set by these nonexistant people. he tends to just kill anyone he thinks to be a "bad person", such as those that kill innocent people or just kill for the wrong reasons. that leads me to outcome-based. but i also picked virtue-based because he does have his own set of virtues and rules for himself, which is another reason why he kills those same people.
YEAH HE'S A WEIRD ONE
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In other words, he's a fanatic.
As to the IC problem? He has no interest in either the man or the soldier. Thus, he has no reason to inform on the man, but nor does he have a stake in seeing the man live. He'd probably find out the "why" behind the whole situation before doing anything.
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Let's see, most of my characters actually are virtue-based, because I guess that's the kind that most appeals to me. I never thought of it before, but it looks like I am pretty virtue-based myself.
Samus has definitely been all three in different points of her life. Starting off, she was very rule-based. She was very focused on following the rules of the Galactic Federation and enforcing them, and not following them seemed alien and wrong to her. However, by the end of her first mission she started moving towards a more outcome-based belief. She did things that might be considered wrong, partially because the Federation wanted her to, but mostly because the outcome was good. And if there was something the Federation wanted her to do that seemed wrong she would try and find a way around it. A lot of this being wiping out the Metroid population, blowing up her planet Zebes, and fighting the Space Pirates hopefully towards their extinction. By the end of the last game chronologically, though, she moves toward a virtue-based belief system, going so far as to go against the Federation's orders and to become a criminal herself. I haven't updated that to her yet, but her evolution in Nautilus has definitely lead to this. So, to answer the IC question, Samus would probably just shoot the armed guy and ask questions later. With her luck the one running from the soldier would be incredibly evil and want to rule the universe or something.
The other character of mine that is interesting in this aspect is the Riddler, because he really has no ethics at all. He simply doesn't care for the human race except for those few he deems 'worthy' of his attention. So he would probably tell the soldier exactly where the person went and just stroll on.
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Solution to the problem: TALK THE SOLIDER TO DEATH.
Marluxiaaa would be outcome based. for sure.
Solution: FLAUNT HAIR. and if he's in a bad mood, probably rat the guy out.
America would be... oh geez. Uh. Virtue, I think. ...And probably outcome, what the hell, maybe I just like outcome based characters.
Solution: DEPENDS. IS THE SOLIDER AN AMERICAN?!
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I think Aya would probably wind up being the only one who falls under any of these categories, which would be outcome-based. If this were an earlier version of herself, then maybe she'd fall under virtue-based. Given the kind of people that she associates with now, however, she's definitely more focused on the outcomes in the long run than she is focused on what kind of person that makes her. She sees the futility in the democratic justice that she's used to, since that kind of thing doesn't fly too well in Nautilus. The city has forced her, instead, to focus more on the outcome than morality. (She talks to Graham and Ladd, for Christ's sake.)
So yeah. Not sure if that makes sense, but. There you go.
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To answer the final question: Monoko wouldn't say a single word. She'd just stare at him. If he asked why, she'd say that the other man told her not to tell him.
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Cavil's a special little moral snowflake, but all his perspectives more or less fit into outcome-based morality as well.
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Riyaz: is an interesting mix of rule-based and outcome-based. He's rule-based in that he is absolutely obedient to the Tetherian government and their orders and laws.... outcome-based in that he will do whatever benefits Tetherius in the long run. When Tetherius doesn't apply - as in Nautilus - he still gravitates toward outcome-based: he's strongly in favor of peace, for one thing, and will gladly sacrifice toward that end. He's gotten a bit more virtue-based during his time here, more inclined to say "that is wrong and I won't do it" - which, funnily enough, is also what happens to him in canon, though for completely different reasons.
His response to the scenario would likely be detached and intrigued. He'd ask the soldier for more details, please, because this is interesting and he has no sense of obligation to either the soldier or the one fleeing. If the soldier presented a convincing case, maybe he'd help him. Or perhaps not. In general he'd do whatever was in his (or Tetherius's, if that is applicable) best interest.
Noon: is completely and entirely rule-based, and because he comes from a broken and corrupted system that's what makes him an antagonist in his canon. He looks at things in terms of duty and whether they align with or go against what he considers to be his responsibility/function. He's used to having a relatively high place in his system's hierarchy, so he kind of figures he has the right to have a superior attitude and the ability to treat people however he wants. On the other hand, those directly above him (in other words, pretty much just Monday) he easily defers to and treats with the utmost respect. He will also follow his system to the bitter end even if it is broken, because that's his job and it's not his place to question it.
For the scenario, he would likely have no response to the soldier, considering
he has no reason for him or the running man to prevail. He would probably refuse to answer simply on the grounds that the soldier was being rude to him. XD Very few things frighten him, and a heavily armed mortal isn't one of them.
Jun: is the most virtue-based of my characters. He likes being a hero and stopping the Bad Guys. And at the same time he genuinely believes the best of everyone and wants to be friends with anyone he meets, which I guess is natural coming from a place where battling is a sport and most rivals are friendly ones, so being confronted with genuine evil or danger is... really startling and frightening. Not that it really makes him question his values, he just gets more afraid of acting on them.
His response to the situation would be... well, quite a bit of fear, since life-or-death situations aren't the norm for him, but he'd still probably lie to the soldier rather than get another person killed.
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Paradox would definitely fit in Outcome-based category, especially in his own world. He can and does manipulate things to create what he sees as the best possible outcome for the universe.
In the classical problem? Paradox would probably insist the soldier remove any lethal weaponry and try and figure out the situation before telling the solder the way the man actually went.
Plastic Man would be rule and virtue based. He very much wants and tries to be heroic and good and all of that. But he's still somewhat of a stickler for the law, mostly because he's still learning and he figures that what heroes should do.
In our hypothetical scenario, Plas would probably grab both guys, make sure they don't kill each other, and try and sort out what the heck was going on.
GLaDOS is herself outcome-based, and the morality core forces the rule-based on her. If left to her own devices? She'd do whatever benefited her. But the morality core forces her to adhere to moral laws like don't murder people, etc.
She'd probably tell the soldier which way the guy went, and then follow to watch the blood fly everywhere.
Asrana would be outcome-based, completely and totally. For her, the ends justify the means, and she'll do whatever it takes to get to her goals, even if she doesn't always like what it entails.
She'd feign terror and try and flirt with the soldier long enough to let the man get away, and then tell the soldier which way the guy went when the information would be useless. That way, both of them think she was helping them.
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in the case of this problem she would probably point the second man down the left hall. there's gotta be a reason for this, even if that reason is just fun. and she does try to avoid conflict so.
all in all i think i'm leaning more towards outcome based on this one.