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Part 1 of 4
Thanks Arnaud,
I would say that you certainly have risen to the challenge; I really appreciate having some "competition," or at least, someone to help me test out the strength of my reasoning.
I'm not sure I can concede your refutation that my Island murder scenario is irrational. Just as identical ends can be reached by both valid and invalid methods, I can't agree that your analysis of the motivations of the leaders on the island are necessarily fear and passion. Of course, because we're human (and I'll try to touch on this in a minute when I get to our discussion of Jung) I don't believe it is ever possible completely eliminate passion from the mix, but I do think that an experienced, mature individual can reach a point where his behaviors are predominantly guided by reason and logic, as far as those particular skills are able to guide one. Your assumption of family members being offended by the execution is reasonable, but not a necessary consideration. There is nothing in the scenario that requires anyone on the island to have family members present – perhaps they are a small handful of survivors of a plane wreck or something, and there's nothing to stop the leader from choosing a scapegoat, in part, based on the lack of family members present to object (the businessman who didn't bring his wife along, or the woman whose husband died in the wreck, for example).
There is, externally, no way to tell the difference between a crisis-management decision motivated by passion and one motivated by cool reason. Both decisions are made quickly, both decisions are designed to deal with extremely dangerous circumstances, and unless the decision-maker is in an obvious panic, the only person who can really know how the decision was arrived at is the decision-maker herself.
As to your claim that the decision is an irrational one in light of basic social values of justice, I have to remind you that you live in a country where capital punishment is outlawed. I don't. Many U.S. Citizens, people whom I have to assume at some level are mature, sensible, reasonable adults –I have to assume that out of a number larger than half of our national population, there is a significant number of them who are reasonable adults—believe that execution is a sensible way to deal with violent crimes, particularly murder, and in this country, alleged criminals are executed farily regularly. I won't argue that this is right, or that it's fair, or even that it's rational. I do maintain, however, that it is a practice that is considered very rational by a large number of rational people. Since I can't argue than I'm smarter than they are, I have to find some other way to account for this in my thinking.
Continued: Part 2 of 4
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