"I would absolutely vandalize the window to save myself... but I would stand accountable for my crime after the fact, pay for the damage, and earn my victim's forgiveness."
Not to take their point of view, but just to argue the point itself logically: What you did (smashing the window) is either a crime, or it's not. It's either wrong, or it's not. And you know it when you're doing it. You even know it before doing it (i.e. right now, and when you were writing the article).
If the act is wrong, why do it? How can you do anything knowing it's wrong?
If the act is right, why apologize? I would apologize as well, even maybe use words to the effect that "I know what I did was wrong", but that would be just because I would be talking loosely. I would be contrite toward the individual whose window I broke, but not because what I did was wrong (if the person thinks I should die rather than break his window, I think he's a psychopath that ideally should be locked away), but because of embarrassment etc. You get the point.
Same goes for your "pushing someone out of harm's way" argument. It's like you're saying "I know what I did was wrong, but...". If you really think what you did was wrong, then - here comes the extreme hypothetical! - then, if you had a time machine, you would go back and right the wrong. Right? After all, what you did was indeed wrong. Right? So why wouldn't you really fix it (with a time machine), instead of just hypocritically fixing it after the fact?
I wouldn't ever commit such a violation unless I was absolutely certain that I could make up for it afterwards and that the victim would forgive me.
So if you were unemployed and knew you couldn't pay for the window, you'd fall to your death, contra "When one's survival is at stake, morality takes a back seat"?
Smashing the window is a violation of the building owner's property rights. It's wrong, regardless of my reason for doing so. I would only do it in an extreme survival situation where I had no other choice because I'd rather be guilty of a crime than be a red stain on the pavement bellow. There are other ways to pay for the window. First of all, I'd explain the situation to the property owner and appeal to his common decency. Most people would understand and forgive the offender without requiring payment. If he was a hard-ass about it, I'd offer to work off my debt to him. If that still wasn't good enough, I'd call the local media and make a story out of it to apply social pressure. If he still stood firm before the whole community and insisted on payment that I couldn't provide, I would have to turn myself over to the mercy of the courts and accept whatever sentence the judge deems appropriate and then pay my debt to the building owner later, when I'm able to.
Noble, and I understand what you're saying. But I think you're avoiding my hypotheticals!
Maybe what we have here is a situation of two rights clashing against each other. On the one hand violating another person's property rights is wrong, and on the other hand it's much 'wronger' for any human to value a window over a person - or any advanced sentient life form. There are countries in which you're punished for not aiding a Person In Peril.
I don't agree that it's morally wrong to value a window over a person. Values are just thoughts and can't hurt anyone. Only actions can be moral and immoral. There are all kinds of different laws all over the world but laws and morality are two very different things. I would even go so far to say that all laws imposed by nation states are immoral.
Values are not just thoughts, they are your 'settings' let's say. They're your 'hue', Like the RGB color values in photoshop. They're always 'on' but not always acting. If you think blacks are inferior to whites, that's a value, and you will act on it sooner or later. So in that sense values can, and do, hurt. That's why people try so much to change each other's values! And if a person values his shatterproof window over you, he'll let you hang by the ledge till you drop.
All your thoughts are stored in the brain and exist even when you aren't focusing on them. They can't hurt anyone in there but you can hurt people by taking action. It's not the thought that does harm, it's the action. Leaving you to hang is not an action, the absence of an action. Only actions can be immoral, not their absence.
Well that's philosophically debatable! Trolley problems etc.!
Some people btw don't understand why philosophers bother with thought experiments. Many times, as in this case, they are meant to help you figure out your stance regarding whether inaction (among other things) can be immoral. So say for instance I know someone is coming to your house to kill you, and I don't notify you or the police. According to what you said above, a person who does notify you is neither better, nor worse, morally, than me. My intuition says that's false. Yours might say it sounds fine. What matters is that the thought experiment has helped us figure out where we stand on this issue.
It could definitely be viewed as a trolley problem because it's basically pitting two different properties against one another. Without action, your body will be destroyed but with an action, the window will be destroyed. To "pull the lever" is to choose to destroy someone else's property in order to save your own. Because of the vast disparity of value between the two properties, I would be willing to "pull the lever" and I believe the window's owner would understand and forgive me.
I know it can be emotionally tempting to say that it's morally wrong to not help someone in need but we have to keep our emotions out of these things and work it out rationally. Only actions can be moral or immoral. Think of it this way: Only things can have physical properties. A ball can be red. A ball can be heavy. A ball can be smooth... The absence of a thing cannot have physical properties. The absence of a ball cannot be red, heavy, or smooth. Actions are the same. Something has to exist in order to have any defining characteristics.
You could think of it another way too: If we were responsible for every death that we could prevent, we'd me mass murderers every single day. Think about it. We know that there are people dying right now of starvation and we could go and feed them right now, if we really wanted to. In every second of every day, there's an infinite number of good things we could be doing and an equally infinite number of bad things we could be preventing. Fortunately, it's only the actions we take that can have defining characteristics. Our actions can be fast or slow. They can be deliberate or accidental. They can be moral or immoral. The absence of an action is just nothing and cannot be said to have any such defining characteristics.