wedrifid comments on Rationality Quotes October 2012 - Less Wrong

8 Post author: MBlume 02 October 2012 06:50PM

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Comment author: Stabilizer 01 October 2012 08:13:25PM 2 points [-]

Suppose you were misguidedly to give your own child poison. The fact that you might think the poison you were administering was good for your child, the fact that you might have gone to a lot of trouble to obtain this poison, and that if it were not for all your efforts your child would not even been there to be offered it, none of this would give you a right to administer the poison—at most, it would only make you less culpable when the child died.

  • Nicholas Humphrey
Comment author: wedrifid 03 October 2012 11:37:11AM 3 points [-]

none of this would give you a right to administer the poison

What does having a 'right' mean in this context? Is Humphrey trying to say that other observers who know that the vial contains poison aren't obliged to allow the confused parent to administer the poison? I suppose that would be a reasonable point to make. If he is only talking in the sense of degree of blame assigned to the confused parent then his claim is more ethically questionable.