CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020
| Author | Kelic, Vasko |
|---|---|
| Title | Approaching the Problem of Numbers |
| Summary | Should we, other things being equal, rather save more people than less? For example, if presented with a choice between saving either two or one in every morally relevant aspect identical persons, are we obliged to save the two? Regarding these questions, my aim in the thesis is two-fold. My first goal is to criticize attempts at answering them that I deem wrong. The principle that permits agents to choose who to save would be rejected due to a lack of completeness and intuitive plausibility of arguments in its favor. Approaches that suggest a performance of lotteries (either weighted or equal chance ones) would be abandoned due to the irrelevance of their possible justifications. My second goal is to defend the principle according to which agents have an obligation to save a greater number of people. In defending this approach I will contend that 1) death can be morally bad, 2) the death of more people is worse than the death of less people, and 3) the worseness of such an outcome can ground our moral obligation to save more people. |
| Supervisor | Moles, Andres |
| Department | Philosophy MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2020/kelic_vasko.pdf |
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