“What is worse, a child who breaks 15 glasses on accident or a child who breaks one glass while reaching for a jar while his parents aren’t home?” asked Karen.
“I don’t know… breaking fifteen glasses...?” responded the younger sister of twelve years.
“Alyssa, you’re too old to not realize the correct answer. It’s obvious that the amount of glasses broken is inconsequential to the morality of the action. It matters more how the glass was broken, not how many.”
(Of Course.) From a deontological perspective, the second action is worse only if the child was prohibited from reaching for the jar in question, as willful intent to violate a norm can be shown. (And this is how it is.) - Davidicus I
“Why?” asked Kevin.
“Because the book says so. ‘Younger children will associate the higher level of damage as being more immoral than the reason why it was broken. It is only through reasoning that we may determine which case is worse. In this instance the child who broke the one glass did it while disobeying his parents, therefore causing the problem.’ Kevin, you can’t say that you think the glasses broken on accident was worse because there were more glasses involved.”
“I’m not. I’m just saying I don’t think that the one glass being broken was worse either. Just because the first kid broke the glasses by accident doesn’t mean that he wasn’t doing anything wrong. Shouldn’t one be more cautious of their surroundings whilst in the presence of fragile objects? And who’s to say that the second kid was doing a bad thing by reaching to get the jar? Maybe he is suppose to occasionally reach for high placed objects, a sort of sick game the parents play with the kid everyday, and he’ll be punished horribly if he hasn’t reached said object by the time they arrive. Or what if his little sister is dying and he needs to reach her medicine that has been placed in a jar, high above, out of her reach, not to mention the dog?”
(Right!) Reaching for a jar while his parent's aren't home' seems to be implying some moral judgement but does not really tell me anything. Does the jar contain medicine for his sick little sister or his Mom's valium? - Brianimus
“It’s obvious that a child should not be putting themselves in such a dangerous position while their parents are not home. If some anomaly had occurred that would have made the act permissible, it would have been mentioned. And besides, the first child may not have known the glasses were by him. Think about it in this manner, a man, while driving accidentally hits a bicyclist while looking down at the radio. Another man accidentally hits a bicyclist while angrily swerving around traffic. Which action is more immoral?”
“That’s another point a wanted to bring up. Breaking the glass isn’t the immoral act, but rather the act that resulted in the broken glass. Both situations resulted in broken glass, one is just seemingly more irresponsible. And since you’ve set this situation up in the same manner, I will have to use the same answer. The first man should not have been looking away from the road. The second man should not have been swerving in and out of traffic. The consequences of the actions are sad, but don’t cause either action to be more or less immoral, that, we can agree upon. My point is that you don’t just go around breaking glasses without any sort of primer, we don’t know what that was, so we can’t say that this is a poor kid in an unfortunate situation.”
(Au contraire mon frère.) On utilitarian or consequentialist grounds, the lower level of harm, ie; the fewer glasses broken is held to be preferable regardless of the motivations of the actor. - Davidicus II
If I had to give an answer I would say that it would be worse to break 15 glasses than 1 glass - Meagania
I also do not know if the glass from the fifteen slashed the child to ribbons, I would have to say if the accident resulted in the child's death, that would have to be worse. - Stephonysos
“So my grandfather who accidentally gave the wrong coordinates in the Korean War and killed fifty of his own men is just as bad as a guy who robs a bank and his gun accidentally goes off and kills some innocent bystander?”
“Yes, in that they both had the intention to hurt someone, pacifism, 101. One might even say your grandfather is worse because he meant to kill someone, the other guy may not have even thought the gun was loaded. But again, it doesn’t matter what result the person wanted, they made a mistake. If your grandfather meant to drop candy and teddy bears on the people, then this conversation might be going somewhere. I just do not agree that such a simple statement can be quantified with, ‘the kid who was alone is worse.’ Maybe these horrible parents, leaving their kid alone should have everything they own broken and burned to the grown. Would that change your answer, or the books? These people who sodomize and beat their child every single night, and play sick games of hide the dildo in the highest place possible for the kid to find, do they deserve to have breakable glasses? I just think that we should be a little more critical about supposed authoritative commentators. Because this guy is published, does that mean we have to punish the kids he tells us to? Certainly there has to be some kind of guidance when it comes to ‘moral’ activity, but that’s what laws are for. I wouldn’t know that seat belts save lives accept that there is a law that tells me to where one because it does so. I wouldn’t know that drugs have horrible long-term effects, accept that laws tell me not to do them because I’ll die and potentially kill others. And finally, I wouldn’t know that it is a bad idea to leave children under the age of sixteen home alone, accept for two things. First, the law that says so, and second, the story that tells me that that little punk is going to break one of my good wine glasses and end his escapade with five of my freshly baked cookies from the jar I placed on the top shelf.”
(Yeah!) Where are his parents? How often do they leave their child alone? - Brianimus
Why aren’t the parents at home? If the child is too small to reach for a jar on the counter or self, they should not be home alone. My final answer will be the second situation because the parents were not at home and the child should have supervision, not because of the broken glass and not because they were possibly doing something wrong. - Jessicrates
I say the parents should be home. BAD PARENTS! WHERE ARE YOU? but we cannot assume they were home in the first case. - Stephonysos
(That's true.) For myself there are too many unknown variables to answer this question. The variables include what is meant by 'worse'. - Brianimus
I agree with Brianimus, in fact I was going to say a few of the same things. The question is very vague and has a lot of implications that it wants to read to make. All I am going to say about the term ‘worse’ is that it is too vague. The term ‘accident’ implies that the child was doing something they were allowed to do or even something good. The child could be doing something wrong, that was not directly connected to the glasses that caused them to break. The question also doesn’t state if the child was hurt or not. That is the first thing I would need to know to determine, which is worse; the incident where the child got hurt would be worse. If the child was not hurt in either case, then the case where the child was doing something they were told not to do would be worse, as the second situation suggests. Not because of the number of glasses broken, but because the child was breaking a rule. (I guess that's my final answer.) - Jessicrates
(I agree with Brianimus, too.) I dont really think there is enough information here to give a "correct" answer, or much of an answer at all really - Meagania
“Whatever, you’re making me angry. Let me finish my homework.”
(If I may interject,) I will make two assumptions that I think reasonable considering the context within which the question was posed. My first assumption is that this is a moral dilemma, and as such questions of aesthetics, prudence, and so on are of no concern. My second assumption is that second scenario involves more than a broken glass, but also a broken promise and that such a promise (to commit or refrain from certain acts) does not exist in the first, because if there was not a promise in either case, there is no moral question. Conversely, if in both cases there was a broken promise (and assuming the information presented is the only morally relevant information (i.e. there is not other issues such as pain caused by the act, which would pit consequentialism and virtue ethics against each other)), and assuming the promise in both cases was of equal weight, and assuming that child had no reason to believe that his/her actions would likely result in the broken glasses, then the number of glasses broken is morally irrelevant. I think not making these two assumptions (a. this is a moral question, and b. this is the only morally relevant information available, and therefore a promise is implied in the second scenario), the question is not a moral one, and to make it one would require writing the narrative from which this case was extracted – a book on practical ethics. With the assumptions on the table, the question is simple. The first scenario presents no moral issue. The second does (broken promise (e.g. don’t try to grab for a jar when we (parents) are not home)), and therefore the act is morally worse by default. - Corilios
I think that Corilios understood what I was trying to get across in my argument with Kevin. Many of you are focused on the parents, but what would you say if the parents were home but not watching their child at that moment? My main arguement in this conversation was that the immoral motive in the second case scenario makes it the worse of the two situations.Many of you also mentioned that whether or not the child got hurt would change the situation. Say he got hurt in both situations, the first was just an accident.The second however, was the result of him ignoring his parents wishes to not reach for the jar on the high shelf.There are of course many factors that are not given but I guess I don't always think of the "What ifs?" The information was given to me and the question was asked. the answer I came up with reflected my experiences as a child combined with what I've learned so far in my applied ethics class. :)- Karen
They can hear us! F*ck! - Corilios
KevinRb
Cory's Evaluation of Kevin's Narrative
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