Thursday, June 28, 2012

Quantum Morality

While talking about some of the basics of quantum physics with a friend I realized something interesting. So while Newtonian physics applies to every object that we deal with on a day to day basis, it fails to explain what happens on a quantum level. While we can calculate with the utmost certainty how fast a block of billions of carbon atoms will fall if it's dropped, it's much more difficult to do the same thing with a single atom. On an individual level, atoms sometimes behave much differently than expected. In a way, this makes newtonian physics nothing more than a prediction based on typical and probable outcome. It's a generalization. In the same way, we can describe how individual actions can be different than their generalizations in a moral fashion. For example, we can say that killing as a general category is wrong and it's rare to find many people who will disagree, Thou shalt not kill. But we start to see problems arise when we look at individual instances. What if you're being attacked? What if the person is about to kill others? What if it's a felon on death row who has done terrible things? Suddenly the idea that killing is wrong starts to feel a little less absolute. This is why rules demanding absolute adherence are ridiculous. It's the problem with Kant's "murderer at the door" problem and conflicting biblical commandments. Ethical systems based on rules work fine in the realm of generalizations, but when it gets down to the morally quantum scale, things might not work as you expect.