Life And Death Moral Scenario

[toledo_jesus]

[quote name='tinytherese' date='14 July 2010 - 06:39 PM' timestamp='1279143597' post='2142718']
This is a question I have to answer in my philosophy class for homework at a non-Catholic community college.

"You and a group of friends are in the woods when your friend Benny slips and falls off a cliff. Benny is badly hurt: his head is bleeding profusely and he is unconscious. Fortunately, Brad, Steve, and Tammy know how to get him into the truck without doing more damage. They are now prepared to drive Benny to the hospital. Before she takes off, however, Tammy says the following:

'We'll get Bennyn to the hospital, but those of you left here have an important decision to make. Benny has no insurance. In last week's [i]USA Today,[/i] an undercover team of investigators reported that because of costs, emergency patients without insurance often don't get the best care available. Since Steve has an insurance card, we are considering admitting Benny on it. The card doesn't have Steve's picture, so there is no way the hospital will know Benny isn't Steve before they treat him, and it is quite possible they will never know of the deception. Using the card could be the difference between Benny living and dying, but it is also insurance fraud, which is, of course, illegal. We don't know what to do, so we are going to leave the decision to you all. Talk about it with each other for about twenty minutes. Then vote on it."


Now I know that the ends do not justify the means, just as the Catechism says, but what else can I say about this? Can anyone think of any alternatives to the deception proposed?
[/quote]
Sorry Benny, if you lived I'd hate for you to go to jail. No hospital would turn him away for lack of insurance, and it would be a sorry doctor that didn't try his best to save the patient.
The USA Today report seems flawed somehow. Obviously doctors need to make these decisions about who gets care, but if you are near woods then I'm assuming this isn't an inner-city trauma ward and the doctor isn't going to have to play M*A*S*H*.

[BibleReader]

Sorry if I am stepping on an toes, I haven't time to read all three pages.

The way I see it, too many people focus on the big picture instead of what is actually at hand. We are to take each decision at face value. Each one is credited as either righteous or evil. Given each decision, what you choose, you need to weigh the options of that choice, not of the possible outcome. There are many reasons for this within the faith. You will find that most things within the Bible are commanded as either right or wrong by themselves, regardless of circumstances. There are exceptions to this, yes, but [i]most.[/i] Furthermore, we are told not to worry. We are to have faith that if we do as God commands then the rest should work out as He plans, and we should be okay with that.

Even from the secular point of view, you argue that you have a set of acquired moralities, and weather or not they're truth, you must abide by them for the sake of compromising yourself. The only reason for forsaking personal virtues or commitments is through finding that they were made under false pretenses. Then any reasoning you used to adapt your moral commitments are falsified.

You may also suggest a postulate proving the problems associated with lying. Then under the logic through the postulate you can say that if something is intrinsically wrong, then it would be wrong regardless of environmental factors.