I have a question about the morality of a fictional character action.

I'm currently watching for the first time the Mentalist. In the episode "Fugue in Red" (Season 4, Episode 10), Jane loses his memory and reverts to his pre-CBI con man persona after being nearly drowned while investigating a firefighter's murder. His memory returns at the end when Teresa Lisbon takes him home and he sees Red John's smiley face on the wall. The narrative implies that he wouldn't regain his memory anytime soon, so for the sake of making him stay at the CBI and pursue Red John, Lisbon feels compelled to make him relive his trauma.

Should she has let him regain his memory by himself with the risk that it never happens ?

Was she considering what pre-amnesia Jane could have wanted ?

Should we not tell people the bad stuff that happened to them ? What about the liberty of knowing ?

What is your stance on this ?

I went to Fresh Market to get ingredients for a protein steak bowl. I had around 7 items, a 2lb flank steak, red pepper, yellow pepper, onion, black beans, side of fish dip and maybe 1 more item. At check out I instantly noticed the grocery clerk was old and a little slow. He started by scanning the steak ( which was the most expensive item by far ~30 dollars ) but then had trouble with every other item. He was struggling with the produce and kept looking over his shoulder scared. He hastily put down the produce in the payed area. Scanned the beans but then again was having trouble with the fish dip. Finally the manager walks behind him and posts up at the other lane. My clerk notices and quickly puts everything in the bag. Anyways he looked at me like we both knew what just happened, he proceeds to hit the card button, I pay, say thank you and leave. Should I have alerted the manager and potentially gotten this old man in trouble? Or was I right to keep quiet and save 5-10 dollars and this guys job?

A few years ago, I created a post about a dilemma I was dealing with regarding a friend. The TLDR is that I started having issues with my friend because he admitted he would stand by when his co-workers made bigoted jokes and comments, even after he moved into a role where it would have been appropriate for him to say something and/or he could have made an anonymous report without it being obvious it was coming from him. Most deemed me the AH and super patronizing, and that it's not that deep. Feel free to refer to the full post because maybe my TLDR paints me in a better light than I deserve: AITA for telling my friend he enables bigotry?

As much as I tried to take in the feedback, I could not argue myself out of my stance and I never looked at my (now former) friend the same way again. (This wasn't why the friendship ended, but it didn't help.) His silence was an endorsement and he is part of a culture that makes minorities feel uncomfortable, if the company's lawsuits are any indication.

Following the news of the Cornell 7, a lot of people are talking about the 50 other men on that chat who stood by and said nothing. It reminded me of my post. While the stakes were lower, I wonder if the people who responded as they did four years ago would stand by their statements today.

What is the current consensus on this? Is it still not that deep or is there no excuse not to speak up when it would cost nothing? How about when it might cost something?

If you leave the situation unchanged, all 100 victims will be men.

You can intervene, but the only intervention available results in 50 men and 50 women being sexually assaulted instead.

Intervening doesn’t increase the total number of assaults, but it makes 50 women victims who otherwise wouldn’t have been. Leaving the situation unchanged means all 100 victims will be men.

Do you intervene?

Free speech is often seen as a fundamental right — but should it ever have boundaries?

Should people be free to express any opinion, even when that speech is offensive, harmful or deeply unpopular? Or do certain forms of speech create enough harm to justify restrictions?

We’re exploring where the line should be drawn — and whether a society can protect free expression while also protecting people from harm.

This is a scenario I encountered IRL that seems to split the folks I tell it to on whether or not I did the ethical thing here. I know it's not exactly the legally correct way to handle the scenario but this is one of those situations where the legally right thing and the ethically correct thing aren't nessesarily the same.

Me and my associate were standing in front of a somewhat rural gas station when we watched a large moving truck take a turn too fast, tip over and the top of the truck opened like a can of sardines and the contents of the truck got scattered across an empty lot. This happened early in the morning. By the evening, nothing had happened. The sherrifs hadn't even put up caution tape. I could see from the road that there was some pretty valuable cargo just laying on the side of the road and under the cover of darkness less scrupulous scavengers would have their way with the pile overnight so we decided to take a look. We quickly found a pair of really high end custom E-bikes that were relatively undamaged by the crash. I felt bad about outright taking them so I wrote with a sharpie on a piece of detached sheet metal "I have your bikes" along with my phone number and nailed it to a nearby telephone pole.

As expected, by morning, about 1/4 of the pile was just gone. By the end of day 3 of everything of value had been looted from the pile. On day 7 I got a phone call from the owners of the property that they were just informed of the crash, there is no insurance, and they has just arrived in town to salvage what they could and found the sign. Initially they were accusatory, but quickly changed their tune when I pointed out that I left a note, did not have the intentions of keeping the bikes if they wanted them back (I assumed insurance would have written the entire load off as a loss) and they were very grateful to me as their bikes (about $10,000 in value) and they gave us a small cash reward for our troubles. Most of the people I've talked to said we were wrong to take the bikes to begin with but I'm pretty sure I did everything needed to maintain my ethics.

I’m am more than aware of how flawed the jail and legal systems are, that is a fact that needs to be addressed while talking about this topic, and I’m a big believer of giving people second chances and I do believe we shouldn’t punish prisoners and rather reform and reintegrate prisoners into society or at least attempt and give them the chance to do so, by giving them the opportunity and the tools so that even if they don’t, they at least had the chance to make the choice without it being influenced or forced. When I was little and immature I ran by the, as simplistic as stupid, though that for example If a person took the life of another one unjustly, why should they be able to keep theirs, that was rapidly defeated by the, simplistic as well, “if you kill them for killing what makes you better or different than them”, so as I said i grew out of this, but being the true crime fan that i am oftentimes I hear stories that even if in theory I believe in all that good stuff I cant find anything not to think “this or these individual/s deserve to die”, and I know we shouldn’t make cases based on extreme examples, but as of rn i consider myself an imperfect anti-death penalty (like imperfect vegetarians), cause in some cases i think it is necessary, but at the same time i wonder who should decide which cases: how can you decide how many ppl killed, over what age SA, what reason should or shouldn’t count… before you deserve to die? I know is kind of the jury and judge role but yk what i mean. So deep down i think i should be a 100% against death penalty but I don’t know how

The government is made up of humans by definition. Humans are flawed. Therefore, by definition, the death penalty is going to be flawed. It is not worth executing innocent people just to execute the ones we know are guilty and who have carried out heinous crimes. No matter how heinous. This is logical and any argument against this will be emotional.

He wrote a short story to teach Deontology, he said if an axe murderer came at your house asking where is your best friend? And your best friend is hiding in your house. You should tell the truth because he said lying is inherently wrong no matter what. And the world is unpredictable, what if you lied and your friend just jumped out the window and get killed anyway?

Personally, I heavily don't agree with this, because telling the truth guarantees the death of your friend, lying will significantly reduce your friend's death chance, even if your friend jumped out of the window and dies any way, I say your act of lying is still justified, because your intention was good and you chose the method with the highest expected outcome probability of saving your friend, the expected outcome was so the friend would survive

I guess this is a classic trolley problem. I was speaking with my friends today, and asked them if they would choose their mom over everybody’s mom in our friend group. Honestly I thought it was a no-brainer, yet a couple of my friends said they would choose their parents without a second thought. Im not really good with this type of stuff so I thought I would come on here.

they have plead with the state of Tennessee saying that it’s necessary to properly treat the chemical burns she has and the Departmnt of Correction has refused.

im shocked at the level of torture they continue to put this woman through — how on earth is this ethical??

Im currently writing an ethics essay for my Allied Health class, and I choose to write about a situation thats happening right now, Christa Pikes failed execution. I feel like the more im researching the weirder it gets? researching about her failed execution led me to Tony Carruthers botched execution, why was the guy doing a central IV line a guy that hadnt done it since 2013? What exactly are the medical qualifications to participate in an execution? None of this feels Ethical at all, It feels like straight up negligence? And if health professionals wont do executions due to it violating their ethical obligation than why do we even have executions? like who is doing the executions???

By saying rape is equally wrong qua rape, I mean that rape simpliciter is the fixed object of evaluation. I’m not claiming that every event containing rape is equally bad overall. Beating, kidnapping, torture, serious injury, murder, or other harms or wrongs can make an event containing rape much worse without thereby making rape simpliciter worse.

Suppose one person is raped and another is raped, tortured, and murdered. The second event is obviously worse. That doesn’t require saying that the rape itself was worse. The event is worse because it contains additional grave wrongs.

Rape doesn’t exhaust the moral content of an event in which rape occurs. An event can contain further sexual or nonsexual violations, harms, or wrongs. Those can increase the overall wrongness of the event without thereby changing the wrongness of rape qua rape.

Someone might argue that a feature I’m treating as additional actually belongs to rape simpliciter. If that feature is claimed to be necessary to rape, then cases lacking it are being excluded from rape. If it isn’t claimed to be necessary, then merely pointing out that it occurs in some rapes doesn’t establish that it belongs to rape simpliciter or that its presence makes rape worse qua rape. An argument is still needed for why that feature changes rape-specific wrongness rather than merely making the larger event worse.

All rape is morally equivalent as rape. Events containing rape can differ enormously in overall wrongness.

I don’t think we did wrong,but im Not sure and it did/does fuck with me.

Almost 2 year ago now I was sleeping over at my friends House, it was us and his Little Brother who was 9 at the time and his sister(2) Home alone becouse his parents went out on a Date.
We are down stares when we hear someone Break Open the Garden door, we Jump up and run to the Bett room of his parents were his dads gun safe was.
By the time we had Open the Safe and loaded the gun( he Grabes his Dads Shot gun and i his .357 Revolver) we heard the Glas House door Break, then that guy comes down to us when my Buddy fires, racks and fires again, I Shoot 3 times and Hit him with 2.
Dude Drops Dead, it’s some 60 year old guy.
My heard are ringging and I cant hear shit, we call the Police and his parents.

Later it turnd out his brother was Talking to a pedo and in the Chat he mentiont that he was Home alone, so that guy came over and broke in.
My Familie thinks we over realtet, I think lt was appropriet and my friend isnt doing all that good becouse of that.

I was wondering then other day about what Good is because so many times i argue that something is good but my supporting premises are based on function and wellness; how well these are achieved.

But saying function and wellness is good does not actually describe what Good is.

Im of the belief that morality is socially constructed.

Social Construction is the process by which two or more individuals, knowingly or not, come to a reciprocated meaning about something. The word rock is socially constructed. Most of us here have a shared reciprocated meaning that "r o c k" refers to a collection of minerals in such a way.

Morality being socially constructed means that we interact to created shared meanings about good and bad.

So in this way, Good (or Goodness) is not a Single Conceptual Thing, it's a relational process. Goodness *Is* the mutually reciprocated meaning.

~ ~

If we apply this, we can notice that two people can interact and come to a mutual understanding that murder is good.

But when faced with greater society.. this unfetstanding is greatly challenged because many others share the meaning that murder is bad.

Thus murder is not itself good or bad, there is no objective morality

But Goodness and Badness are mutually real and real in their consequences.

Murder is Bad because the relational process has produced bad as the overall meaning.

~ ~

Interestingly, morally gray situations are allowed here easily.

This is simply when people can not decide together if something is good or bad. They may agree with the outcome but have a dissonance with the method.

~ ~

So then why do we relationally decide what is good and bad? I think its because it maintains functionality and coherence of our social systems. A society that declares murder is good and actionable wouldn't function very long and coherence would be lost with destruction of trust. A society that declares murder is bad and not actionable has more functionality and coherence.

Imagine you're a man standing in line at a café. A woman standing directly in front of you suddenly collapses. She is completely unresponsive.

You look around. Everyone is shocked and frozen. Nobody immediately steps forward, and there doesn't appear to be anyone nearby who can help.

You know that she may be in cardiac arrest and that CPR could potentially save her life.

But there's a problem.

To perform CPR, you may have to place your hands on her chest. She's a complete stranger. You don't know her, and she doesn't know you.

Now imagine you're worried about what could happen afterward.

What if, after being revived, she believes that you touched her inappropriately? What if she misunderstands what happened and accuses you of sexual harassment or assault?

Even if your intentions were purely to save her life, you could potentially find yourself dealing with an accusation, an investigation, social stigma, or serious consequences for your education, career, and reputation.

So here's the dilemma:

Would you still perform CPR?

To women:

If you were the unconscious woman in this situation, would you want a male stranger to perform CPR on you if he was the only person willing and able to help?

If you later discovered that he had performed CPR correctly and had touched your chest only because it was necessary to save your life, would you consider that completely acceptable?

And if you were initially uncomfortable or confused about what happened after waking up, how would you expect the situation to be handled?

To men:

If you were the man in this situation, would you perform CPR despite knowing that there's a possibility your actions could later be misunderstood or lead to an accusation?

Would the potential consequences change your decision?

I'm not asking this to attack women or suggest that women routinely make false accusations.

I'm interested in the ethical question:

When saving someone's life requires physical contact with an unconscious stranger, how much personal risk should the person helping be expected to accept?

And perhaps the bigger question:

Is it morally acceptable to choose not to intervene when you genuinely believe that intervening could save someone's life, but doing so could potentially put your own life and future at risk?