Except for the whole "it's that or everyone dies" part.
Besides "It's simply what they always were", is 't it?
This doesn't counter my reply, though.
The genophage was nothing but an intentional physical detriment.
Synthesis, by design and as the EC revealed, is a physical advancement, literally having the exact opposite effect of the genophage in terms of krogan reproduction.
Not so fast. Some virtue ethicists (especially Rosalind Hursthouse) explicitly acknowledge the possibility of what they call "tragic moral dilemmas," or situations in which no matter what you do, you act badly. Some examples of this involve situations that you get yourself into because of your own past bad actions (i.e. getting engaged to two different people, each of whom is ignorant of your engagement to the other). Another example might be something like Sophie's Choice, in which the titular character (spoilers, but I assume the statute of limitations here has passed) is asked by the Gestapo which of her two children is to be killed; if she fails to choose, both will be killed. According to Hursthouse, no choice you make in this situation constitutes acting well; you can disagree with her about this, but it would be a bit quick to conclude that her whole system is a failure because of how she approaches these dilemmas.
Granted, I'm in a notional agreement with this but I still think the ethical system of iakus is inherently flawed to not accept an answer.
Granted, I'm in a notional agreement with this but I still think the ethical system of iakus is inherently flawed to not accept an answer.
Fair enough; I'm not quite sure what Iakus' ethical system is, so I'm not in a position to judge that myself. While I can't speak for him, I get the sense that his problems with the choice extend beyond the ethics of it to what's going on tonally and thematically during that whole sequence. That might just be me projecting however, as that's where my problems with it were. If you asked me, "What are the likely, in-universe consequences of Jar Jar Binks becoming a member of the Galactic Senate, given his limited political experience?", my response would be, "Who cares? The prequels stink." That's pretty much how I feel about the ending choices, which is why I don't waste much energy debating which is ethically the best one.
Not so fast. Some virtue ethicists (especially Rosalind Hursthouse) explicitly acknowledge the possibility of what they call "tragic moral dilemmas," or situations in which no matter what you do, you act badly. Some examples of this involve situations that you get yourself into because of your own past bad actions (i.e. getting engaged to two different people, each of whom is ignorant of your engagement to the other). Another example might be something like Sophie's Choice, in which the titular character (spoilers, but I assume the statute of limitations here has passed) is asked by the Gestapo which of her two children is to be killed; if she fails to choose, both will be killed. According to Hursthouse, no choice you make in this situation constitutes acting well; you can disagree with her about this, but it would be a bit quick to conclude that her whole system is a failure because of how she approaches these dilemmas.
Yeah, I'm familiar with this sort of system, mostly via Thomas Nagel.
But I presume Hursthouse has a way to decide between different actions even if none of them can be described as acting well. The question of what to do doesn't just go away when you're in such a situation. I suppose one could punt and go with pure utilitarianism in those cases, though.
Or is this more a description thing? The morally superior choice shouldn't be automatically called "ethical," even if it is the right thing to do?
Whenever we get into something like this I'm reminded of General Buck Turgidson:
Now, the truth is not always a pleasant thing, but it is necessary now to make a choice, to choose between two admittedly regrettable, but nevertheless, distinguishable post-war environments: one where you got twenty million people killed, and the other where you got a hundred and fifty million people killed.
Yeah, I'm familiar with this sort of system, mostly via Thomas Nagel.
But I presume Hursthouse has a way to decide between different actions even if none of them can be described as acting well. The question of what to do doesn't just go away when you're in such a situation. I suppose one could punt and go with pure utilitarianism in those cases, though.
Or is this more a description thing? The morally superior choice shouldn't be automatically called "ethical," even if it is the right thing to do?
I'll just go ahead and quote Hursthouse on this point: "I take an irresolvable dilemma to be a situation in which the agent's moral choice lies between x and y and there are no moral grounds for favoring doing x over doing y" (this is from page 63 of On Virtue Ethics, Oxford UP 1999). This seems to map on pretty well to the Sophie's Choice situation; sure there's reason to choose a child rather than not choose at all, but it at least seems plausible to suppose there's no reason at all to save one child rather than the other. Like you suggested, you could appeal to utilitarian considerations (i.e. "Child A is smarter and so has more potential to do more good over the course of her life"), but I don't think Hursthouse would be too amenable to this kind of reasoning.
Of course, the Sophie's Choice case isn't very good for illustrating the utilitarian difficulty, since X and Y are a toss-up unless we judge individual value in a way we usually don't in this culture. (Or at least, a way we say we don't.) What if X and Y aren't balanced? Two children in X, a third in Y. And so forth. Depends on what counts as moral grounds, I guess.
This is how Nagel tied himself in knots, because he wanted to keep both the utilitarian concern and the virtue concern as absolutes, and had no clear way to resolve any conflict. Although it reads like in practice he expected utilitarian concerns to trump others when it really came down to it; I don't think he would have endorsed Refuse, for instance.
This doesn't counter my reply, though.
The genophage was nothing but an intentional physical detriment.
Synthesis, by design and as the EC revealed, is a physical advancement, literally having the exact opposite effect of the genophage in terms of krogan reproduction.
Funny, the salarians seemed to think the genophage would be an advantage to the krogan. To counterbalance their destructiveness due to uplifting.
THe krogan disagreed, of course
Fair enough; I'm not quite sure what Iakus' ethical system is, so I'm not in a position to judge that myself. While I can't speak for him, I get the sense that his problems with the choice extend beyond the ethics of it to what's going on tonally and thematically during that whole sequence. That might just be me projecting however, as that's where my problems with it were. If you asked me, "What are the likely, in-universe consequences of Jar Jar Binks becoming a member of the Galactic Senate, given his limited political experience?", my response would be, "Who cares? The prequels stink." That's pretty much how I feel about the ending choices, which is why I don't waste much energy debating which is ethically the best one.
Pretty much, yeah. Renders the entire trilogy pointless to me.
Not so fast. Some virtue ethicists (especially Rosalind Hursthouse) explicitly acknowledge the possibility of what they call "tragic moral dilemmas," or situations in which no matter what you do, you act badly. Some examples of this involve situations that you get yourself into because of your own past bad actions (i.e. getting engaged to two different people, each of whom is ignorant of your engagement to the other). Another example might be something like Sophie's Choice, in which the titular character (spoilers, but I assume the statute of limitations here has passed) is asked by the Gestapo which of her two children is to be killed; if she fails to choose, both will be killed. According to Hursthouse, no choice you make in this situation constitutes acting well; you can disagree with her about this, but it would be a bit quick to conclude that her whole system is a failure because of how she approaches these dilemmas.
In my snarkier moments I've even commented that ME3 degenerated into "Sophie's Choice: The RPG"
And as I've also said, taking away that this is a video game, I would choose destroy given the options we have. But at the same time, I'd hope I didn't survive after making that choice.
What's amusing is that ME1 has the closest thing to an actual Sophie's Choice scenario at Virmire.
Silly, too, given you were forced to pick either Kaidan or Ashley instead of from your entire crew.
What's amusing is that ME1 has the closest thing to an actual Sophie's Choice scenario at Virmire.
Silly, too, given you were forced to pick either Kaidan or Ashley instead of from your entire crew.
And I choose the neutral option after making the choice. Where Shepard says he's coming after the other one next.
Then I can at least RP that Shepard tried to save them both, rather than just throwing one of them under the bus.
But how is being able to make a futile attempt any different from not being able to make a futile attempt? RP-wise, I mean, since obviously the results are the same in both cases.
Sometimes it isn't. And even in teh best cases it's not as good as being able to succeed, obviously.
But in the end, you have the satisfaction of being able to play a character who at least makes the attempt. Who isn't meekly led by the hand to the outcome, but who at least struggled against fate. One can see nobility in that kind of struggle, to not go quietly Why else are last stands held in such high regard in storytelling? And why else is Shepard's speech in the Troll Ending lauded even as his standing there like a doofus afterwards laughed at?
Forgetting this is a videogame, I don't see the ethical problem of Destroy if you've already ruled out the other two. There are no other, less destructive means of destroying the Reapers.
Control would be a less destructive option, I'd say. At least according to the game's end if you do choose Control. But I like to position myself into Shepard as much as I can, and think what option I would take. And personally, I do have a hard time believing that the Reapers could obey me for all eternity. And even if they did, what's to say that the "Shepard Catalyst", who is not actually Shepard anymore, wouldn't just reach the same flawed conclusion in the end as the original Catalyst did?
So yeah, all things in all, I do believe Destroy is the most ethical option, despite the huge collateral damage to the geth. I mourn their loss, in fact. But it was the necessary sacrifice.
So yeah, all things in all, I do believe Destroy is the most ethical option, despite the huge collateral damage to the geth. I mourn their loss, in fact. But it was the necessary sacrifice.
I agree. What helps me deal with it is the fact that geth would probably be the first race to support Shepard with her choosing Destroy.
I agree. What helps me deal with it is the fact that geth would probably be the first race to support Shepard with her choosing Destroy.
No they wouldn't, no race would let itself be destroyed when there are other options that allow it to live. To think otherwise is the height of delusion.
Sometimes it isn't. And even in teh best cases it's not as good as being able to succeed, obviously.
But in the end, you have the satisfaction of being able to play a character who at least makes the attempt. Who isn't meekly led by the hand to the outcome, but who at least struggled against fate. One can see nobility in that kind of struggle, to not go quietly Why else are last stands held in such high regard in storytelling? And why else is Shepard's speech in the Troll Ending lauded even as his standing there like a doofus afterwards laughed at?
Control would be a less destructive option, I'd say. At least according to the game's end if you do choose Control. But I like to position myself into Shepard as much as I can, and think what option I would take. And personally, I do have a hard time believing that the Reapers could obey me for all eternity. And even if they did, what's to say that the "Shepard Catalyst", who is not actually Shepard anymore, wouldn't just reach the same flawed conclusion in the end as the original Catalyst did?
Why would two different AIs reach the same flawed conclusion? I can see them reaching the same conclusion if it was the right conclusion, but if they were going to make mistakes wouldn't they be far likelier to make different mistakes?
I also don't see why the Sheplyst would be any less capable of controlling the Reapers than the original version was. And we know that the original's control lasted for millions and millions of years.
So it's a drama thing rather than an RP thing, then. Gotcha.
It's wanting to RP a certain character. Not just Mac Walter's character
It's wanting to RP a certain character. Not just Mac Walter's character
But you can RP the character. You just can't control the world around him. Wanting choices doesn't mean you get them.
Unless we're talking about say, having a futile argument with the Catalyst about his problem being non-existent. I certainly agree that this should have been in as a matter of RP. (While I wouldn't have bothered with this most of the time because most of my Sheps don't consider arguing with crazy AIs to be a worthwhile activity -- I wasn't a big fan of Shep's dialogue with Sovereign, for instance -- I know I'm very much an outlier there.)
Then pick Refuse. You control your actions, not the results of those actions.
Warning the colonists makes no difference, and what's more, given the timer, Shepard would know it makes no difference. I find no moral value in gestures I know to be meaningless.
this is true. But Bioware made it abundantly clear that Refuse is "You Chose Wrong" (akin to the Spirit Monk choosing to join Master Li in Jade Empire) I could almost hear them flipping the table in a fit of pique as the Catalyst goes "SO BE IT!!!"
And while warning the colonists would certainly not have saved the colony, it could have in theory, allow any ships near the relay or the edge of the system to escape.
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