Asklemmy

Morality is:

• subjective - it depends on a set of moral premises that each individual adopts. None of those premises are epistemically true/false, at most they might be seen as moral/immoral by other people holding other moral premises.
• scalar - an action can be heavily moral, weakly moral, ammoral, weakly immoral, or heavily immoral

Among Atheists (like you and me), common moral premises that I see are stuff like

• human life is valuable +> causing loss of human life is immoral
• knowledge is good +> striving to become more knowledgeable is moral
• suffering is bad +> causing suffering to another human being is bad

If we adopt that "suffering is bad" premise, I don't think that your actions in this fake story were immoral, as you had no way to meaningfully alleviate the suffering of the hypothetical woman. But that's heavily contextual, the fact that she would have a lot of other people consoling her plays a role.

Bonus question:

That depends on the weight that one gives to "free will" (whatever it means) vs. lack of suffering.

A lot of it distills down to whether or not someone has been hurt by your actions. Even tangentially.

That's the thing about morality.. it's a spectrum and there's not always a definite right or wrong thing to do. Unless you are outsourcing your morality to an idealogy to do the thinking for you, in which case the question is pointless.

Instead of talking to the victim, maybe it was possible to talk to one of the women aside, and express your concern that this should be taken legally.

For your train question, the answer is obviously ("obviously") to save the person, because from your vantage point, it appears that person is not in their right mind and is going to take actions that will permanently impact their body or even kill them. I say "obviously" because if you change the train to gender reassignment surgery and the 'victim' is a teenager, then the question gets much more complicated.

I think when you make cut and dry rules about morality, then it becomes an ideology and you're not acting morally or amorally, you're following a script. And there isn't a definite line that can be drawn between having not enough and too many moral rules.

A lot of the time it needs to be a case by case judgement, because humans and life are complicated things that defy a complete moral categorisation.

Society.

For me I think about the damage my choice will do. In your case I think ignoring the women and going on with your day is fine because there are already people helping and one more isn't going to change things.

If she was standing on the trainline the moral thing to do is drag her off. I think this because you are stopping her from dying, stopping a train driver and everyone around from witnessing a death. She can suck up the fact that her free will was denied.

As someone whose done a lot of bad in their life, morality is about survival and not having to spend the latter half of your life in constant regret over every time you let your core values slip and gotten someone hurt because of it. Doing bad things puts you in company of people who do bad things, and often put your life in jeopardy. Standing up for what you believe in regardless of the consequences is the right thing to do, even though it might really hurt at times. I don't use an external source of morality, but rather consider the impacts of my actions. If you can't justify why you should or shouldn't do something you need to look into why that's the case and be ready for an answer you don't want to hear. That's how you grow.

Ultimately, you should decide a set of core beliefs and CONSTANTLY challenge them for contradictions. You're going to be wrong on some of them, last thing you need is to deathspiral into a world that doesn't make sense just to protect something that never really applied to you anyway. My advice is not to hurt people because hurt people hurt people and by proximity, it's going to be you.

In summary there's not really "right" or "wrong" so much as "does this contradict with who I am as a person"

"...And that's what your holy men discuss, is it?" [asked Granny Weatherwax.]

"Not usually. There is a very interesting debate raging at the moment on the nature of sin, for example." [answered Mightily Oats.]

"And what do they think? Against it, are they?"

"It's not as simple as that. It's not a black and white issue. There are so many shades of gray."

"Nope."

"Pardon?"

"There's no grays, only white that's got grubby. I'm surprised you don't know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people like things. Including yourself. That's what sin is."

"It's a lot more complicated than that--"

"No. It ain't. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they're getting worried that they won't like the truth. People as things, that's where it starts."

"Oh, I'm sure there are worse crimes--"

"But they starts with thinking about people as things..."

—from Carpe Jugulum, by Terry Pratchett.

Morality is subjective. We each decide for ourselves what we consider good and bad. You can still construct a useful ethical system, though. Personally, I don't want to be murdered. Therefore, I want to live in a society where murdering people is outlawed. Some people might want to murder, and I want to live in a society where they are segregated from the public if they do so, i.e. jail. You can extend this to much of the social contract we live under, in this case rape.

From your description, I don't think what you did was wrong. The bystander effect is very real and just human nature. Seeing that she was being taken care of by someone was enough IMO.

What makes something moral or immoral?

If you get a universal answer please let me know. Brilliant philosophers have argued about this for thousands of years. It's probably the most important question in philosophy. A universally satisfying answer would be like Einstein's theory of general relativity.

I think in reality people usually decide what's moral based on intuitions learnt/taught in childhood.

Philosophers disagree about if the same (in)action made with different intents has the same moral value. Ie it's not agreed that "doing nothing because you're too busy" is morally different than "doing nothing because you're trying to be sensitive to her wants".

If you felt like your presence wasn't wanted you were probably right. Is there a reason to think the people already attending her wouldn't have thought to suggest a rape kit?

What impacts did your inaction really have?

Okay enough consoling you. This isn't really about you, it's about her and people that might be in a situation like hers in the future.

Regardless of whether or not you should have done things differently then, is there anything you can do right now? There are probably lots of things you could do to reduce the chance of something like this happening again in that neighborhood. Think of 3 yourself then get 2 more from people that know the situation better. Pick one of the 5 and do it.

Suffering worsened vs lessened.

The will of God. Actions that align with the will of God are moral; actions that work against the will of God are immoral.

The problem is, the will of God is interpreted by us feeble humans with our own biases and limited understanding. I don't trust anyone who says she knows the will of God and neither should you. Certainty in one's own morality is a quick path to evil, as history has shown time and again. We must do our best and hope, be open to correction, and never become complacent.

I like the stanza from abolitionist poet Rev. James Russel Lowell's "The Present Crisis":

New occasions teach new duties; Time makes ancient Good uncouth
We must upwards, still, and onwards, who would keep abreast of of Truth