From: Anders Sandberg <asa@nada.kth.se> wrote:
>From my action perspective bin Laden is indeed not as guilty as the
bombers, although he is severely guilty.
### I would perceive his guilt as stemming from his desire to kill. While
the bombers proved their desire to kill by killing, he proved his desire by
helping them. This is a sufficient proof for me that he is immoral (=willing
to thwart innocent life-wishes), and therefore may be killed.
--- They had a partial choice and did not make the ethical choice. He largely caused the situation, but the actual execution was left to ethical subjects.### But I don't think he really "caused" the situation - he just helped, and what matters is his provable intention.
----
If that doesn't appeal to the standard human reaction, that does not have to be a problem with the ethical perspective. I also wonder if the practice of putting the blame on the evil planner rather than the people doing things isn't risky because it seems to absolve the doers too much; maybe it would be better to show that you do get punished from following bad orders?
### If orders are immoral, both those who issue them and those who carry out the orders are to be blamed. The whole chain of command can under certain circumstances be judged guilty.This approach was taken in the war criminal trials in Nuremberg.
Rafal Smigrodzki, MD-PhD smigrodzkir@msx.upmc.edu
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat May 11 2002 - 17:44:18 MDT