“You run into a house. It is burning and two seven year olds will die but only one can be saved. What if you had a knowledge, a revelation maybe, showing you which child would grow up to be a Hitler? Or worse? A person so evil that she could be called the Devil incarnate almost, a person who murders millions of innocents. Would you leave the innocent child behind for a creature like that?"
Moralists reply that you are to randomly grab a child without thinking of anything else. Don’t ask if she is likely to grow up to be evil or sick. Just make it random and keep it non-discriminatory. They say this is about the value of life not what a person will or won't do if they grow up.
You have to choose between worrying if the end justifies the means or not. They say you must never treat a person as a means but as an end, something that matters, just matters, for being a person. They say the moral status of the child does not matter. If you are forced to make a choice, do you save the child who will be good for she will be good? The answer is that it has to be random. Full stop.
But we know that every situation is complicated and may not be as random as it looks. Also, we think we act without reason but in fact do act with reason. So random isn't really random.
They answer that it is as good as random to you so you simply take whatever child you get nearest to and you get out fast.
What if it were two adults? One is a Hitler who is now engaged in killing millions and the other is the world’s top philanthropist?
Moralists take account of extenuating circumstances. If you left the person who is waging a genocide to die, they would say this was wrong but not that wrong for the person was evil. That actually waters down the "end does not justify the means". The principle needs to be inflexible to mean anything.
They say you cannot reason, “I left him to die to save lives” for he might have made up his mind to stop. You have to give him the benefit of the doubt. It is up to him to change so what he does is not your responsibility or fault so you must save the him if you can.
That would be a practical reason to save him.
But they say it should not even enter our heads. We should tell ourselves, "This is a life. Two wrongs do not make a right. He should be saved regardless."
If that is how we think then how can we condone shooting an insane person dead when they are essentially innocent and going to kill us but don't know what they are doing? If life just matters and the harm it does should not be considered then killing the person is wrong.
Suppose this person in the fire has done nothing YET. And you know he will. If you know there is evil in him waiting for its chance, it hardly seems sane to wait until he starts torturing and slaughtering before stopping him. That would be letting him do it like entrapment and only then you do something about it. Your game could cause the death of one person or thousands. It is not a numbers game. Yet the moralists say you must wait.
The inescapable conclusion from all this that those who talk of principle don't really serve principle as much as they pretend. The principle is indeed abandoned when somebody who is not responsible is about to shoot kids at the local school. The moralists will hate and condemn you if you fail to stab this person to death if necessary.