Friday, 11 April 2014

My take on the Control Principle

It's been long since I wrote anything here, and i really have no reason for it.. maybe I did not have as many thoughts as i would have thought.. hmm.. anyway, moving forward, I want to talk about my take on the Control Principle (it's fine if you are not a philosopher and even better, for me, if you have not heard of this anytime before in your lifetime!)


My take on the Control Principle -- It's wrong!

Why? Well to think about it, let's do the following thought experiment, consider you happen to pass by an empty street and you see a little puppy crying .. it can be either he is just stupid or he is about to die (both equally likely) .. you have now 2 pills (that GOD has given you to cure the world) one kills him, other makes him smart (we'll call them A and B) .. either way both stop his whining .. so what do you do? (if you are a mathematician, let me save your time that all events are equally likely, and your probability won't really help you this time! )

Say you give the poor puppy the right pill, this would make the world beautiful and happy again and everyone praises you, else he dies and all the Gods curse you! 


Let's talk of the control principle now, which says "We are morally assessable only to the extent that what we are assessed for depends on the factors under our control" (Stanford Encyclopedia of Phil.)


To every (or most) problem(s) there's always a right and wrong answer.. just because one does not know the right answer (or maybe has absolutely no way to know the right answer) does not magically make the world different.. anything that's not right.. is just plain wrong! 


So, what does that mean? If you kill the puppy you are to be condemned as much as you would have been praised had you cured the little puppy. 


Let's talk crazy now! Assume the universe to be an isolated closed system with a finite amount of goodwill.. say on curing you receive X amount of goodwill, so if you kill it should you not recieve (-X) amount of goodwill.. otherwise how just destroy the "law of conservation of goodwill"
So, what does that mean, if you kill the dog, you are worth an equal share of (negetive) "goodwill" as you would have been had you cured him.. 


So, based on my crazy hypothesis and my opinion on the Control Principle, I would really like to know your opinion about it :)

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