Not really the issue, in this case. For Spock to travel back decades in time to change an event that took place then, he would be risking the “well-being of people that do actually exist” at the point from which he began. He is not “holding the well-being of future people as more important…”(by acting as I have suggested that it is appropriate for him to act ), he is, instead, protecting the people who DO exist in the timeline he knows as current.
Of course, if his journey begins immediately after Kirk’s death, then I do not feel that he is presented with any moral dilemma in wanting to “correct” his friend’s death. But all indications are that Spock travels back FROM the period of time which we know as the “Star Trek present”, which is where the TNG-era spinoffs left us. Given Nimoy’s age and appearance, as well as what Spock looked like when we last saw him in TNG, I think that is a reasonable assumption. Wouldn’t you agree?
The best scenario that I have heard proposed is this (and you will have to forgive me, both the fact that I am paraphrasing, and that I do not recall the poster’s moniker):
The timeline has already been altered by someone else, and somehow (the poster did not explain this) Spock has been unaffected. Kirk is alive and Spock realizes that this is wrong and everything is somehow different. He has to convince Kirk to help him restore the timeline, even though doing so will result in Kirk’s death again.

I found this concept compelling, as I think Spock would be more inclined to protect the timeline, as opposed to risking a change in it. However, that story was, unfortunately (IMO), wasted on the TNG character of Tasha Yar in TNG, “Yesterday’s Enterprise”. Anyway, that is not Mr. Abrams story either–but it could have been good Star Trek, while still satisfying those who feel that JJ somehow owes Bill Shatner a significant role in this film. It also would not have required Spock to make such an unethical decision as to risk altering the timeline for the sake of personal friendship. Am I giving the Spock we know too much credit? I don’t think so.
All of this is irrelevant, of course, because JJ Abrams is telling HIS story, and it apparently has no room for a significant Shatner role that would benefit that story.

By the way, a couple of years ago, I wrote an abstract for a philosophy paper I was planning to write. I’ve been so busy that I never finished it. But here’s the abstract:

Our Moral Obligation to Alter the Past

Many philosophers have written on the subject of time travel, but most have dealt primarily with its metaphysical issues. Is time travel possible? Is auto infanticide possible? But while philosophy has explored these paradoxes, it has essentially left the moral considerations of time travel untouched, and indeed, they have been more carefully addressed by science fiction writers. I think it is time for philosophers to address the most obvious of time travel questions: Is it morally acceptable to intentionally alter the past?

Any discussion of the morality of traveling into the past should address these two scenarios:

1) through no fault of your own, you find yourself in the past with knowledge of the future
2) you intentionally travel into the past with the intention of altering the original timeline

With regard to the first scenario, I will argue that you are morally obligated to use your knowledge to prevent the tragedies you know will happen. If Hector is imprisoned in a building that is about to be incinerated by a bomb blast and I could save his life simply by placing a call to 911, I doubt he will be satisfied if I tell him that I won’t help simply because I am from the future. A time-traveler is no more exempt from proper moral action than anyone else. The only difference between the time-traveler and everyone else is that the time-traveler is enlightened about the way future events will likely play out.

Some will agree with this point, but only because they think that by being in the past, you cannot help but interfere, so you might as well interfere in a positive way. But it is quite another thing, they might say, to intentionally travel into the past to enact change. Such an act is objectionable for at least two reasons. First, it is a violation of nature. Second, your actions may erase people from existence. For reasons like these, Star Trek has its Temporal Prime Directive, which essentially criminalizes time travel. But the Temporal Prime Directive is in error. If you have the ability to travel into the past to erase misfortunes, you should do so.

Here are five objections to those who oppose time travel: 1) we cannot help but affect our environment, so interfering with nature is not a moral offence in itself; 2) according to the multiple worlds interpretation of time travel, traveling into the past creates an alternative timeline, rather than erasing the original timeline; 3) we have no duty to bring about the existence of possible people, and if we did, allowing sperms and eggs to go to waste would be moral tragedies; 4) if we do nothing, we know that people suffer, and our duty to prevent that overrides other reasons not to intervene; and 5) some cases of changing the past do not seem morally objectionable, (e.g. traveling five minutes into the past to prevent a child from falling into a river and drowning).

And here is an excerpt from the paper I started:

An objection that will likely be thrown out is that by interfering with the past, you will likely prevent people from ever coming into existence. This is perhaps the most compelling reason for accepting something like the temporal prime directive. But if you are in the past, what responsibilities could you have to a possible future person?

Pro-choice advocates do not think that we have any special obligations to bring about the existence of certain lives. And even anti-abortionists, who hold that fertilized eggs are people, do not hold that all possible future people should become actual people. If they did, they would have funerals for unfertilized eggs and unsuccessful sperms. So it is not clear how or why we should hold the well-being of future people as more important than the well-being of people that do actually exist. But that seems to be what the temporal prime directive asks of us!

I used to wish that I could go back to kindergarten knowing what I know now and relive life. I would have an enormous advantage. Just imagine all the things you could do. Now, I have three kids, so I could for me, I have to abandon that fantasy. I know that if I jumped back more than a year or two, I would risk wiping out my kids (one of which is my own little Kirk – no really!). So I see where you are coming from. But on the other hand, if something bad ever happened to my little Kirk, I would damn sure take the opportunity to jump back in time and fix it.

Closettrekker, you state that:
“IT IS NOT UP TO ONE INDIVIDUAL TO DECIDE WHAT CHANGES WOULD BE GOOD AND WHAT CHANGES WOULD BE BAD.”

I find this to be an interesting comment, but it is not especially clear. Correct me if I am mistaken, but my guess is that this is just another way of you saying that it is morally wrong to interfere with the past. If I were to take it literally, though, I would have two problems with it. First, by saying that it isn’t up to just one individual, it almost suggests that if many people got together and agreed to mess with the past, it would be okay. I don’t think that’s what you mean to say, though. And secondly, on a very basic level, we are always contributing to the way the future will play out, and as individuals we are constantly trying to determine which actions will be good and which will be bad. In a way, it certainly is up to us as individuals to decide these things. So again, I suspect that you don’t mean anything too literal here – just that we shouldn’t do it.

On another note, you state:
“PLAYING ‘GOD’ is not, IMO, in Spock’s nature. He, of all people, would (again, IMO) be sufficiently equipped mentally to suppress such IRRATIONAL temptation.”
- First, I don’t know if you really want to get into a discussion of what is irrational versus what is rational. I do think your best bet is to focus on the moral angle.
- “Playing God” isn’t usually abhorred because it is irrational. People who use that phrase don’t usually argue that playing God is irrational, but rather, that it is immoral.
- But there is a lot more to say about playing God.
- First of all, Gene Roddenberry was a humanist, which means that he didn’t actually believe in God. He was quite upset with organized religion. Therefore, if Spock were faced with an important decision to make – if he were faced with a difficult dilemma, I doubt very much that Gene Roddenberry (Spock’s creator) would want Spock to just sit back and let things play out as God intended.
- Your comments frequently make use of the word “supposed.” You talk about things as they are supposed to play out. But who decides how things are supposed to be? In Roddenberry’s universe, it would not be God.
- Admittedly, what Roddenberry thought might not be the most important factor. The man was fallible, after all, as we all are.
- But I’ve generally found that the concept of “playing God” just doesn’t have much meaning to it. I would respectfully ask you to define “playing God” and then prove that it is immoral to play God. That’s not an easy thing to do.
- First of all, there is an enormous debate about whether there even is a God.
- Second, even if there is a God, how could we possibly know what he wants us to do? How do we know what interferes with his plan, and what helps fulfill his plan?
- Some people say that if God had wanted us to fly, he’d have given us wings. Others reply that if God didn’t want us to fly, he wouldn’t have equipped us with the intelligence to construct airplanes. Same thing goes for time machines.
- I personally believe that whether or not God exists, we should make the best decisions we can. We should do the best that we are able to do.
- Usually, the term “playing God” is reserved for decisions regarding life or death matters. Who lives, and who dies? What right do we have to decide? These are typically things that are said by pro-life advocates. What they fail to realize is that they really do want to decide – they just want the decision to be the one that they favor. They believe that everyone should live.
- “Playing God” is also often used to refer to interfering with nature, as though nature should be allowed to proceed without us getting in the way. However, there are plenty of things that happen in nature that are pretty awful. I’m not sure that nature is a good judge of what is right and what is wrong, and how things should proceed. Take Hurricanes, for example.
- Suppose you’re standing by a creek, and you see a 5 year old girl drowning, everyone would see it as their duty to get involved – to interfere.
- Some might claim that that isn’t interfering. But at this point, they cease making sense to me. They don’t have clear definitions of what counts as interference and what doesn’t.
- We are a part of nature. We can’t help interfering. We shouldn’t avoid playing God. We should just make the best decisions we can based on the information we have.

still more coming…

However, where I think our disagreement really lies is with our differing concepts of morality. Here is a long comment of yours that I found rather telling, and I am going to capitalize the specific words or phrases that I think are the most important:
“If I were to prevent it, not only have I, in retrospect, slowed down the technological progress of all mankind, but I have also prevented 100 million deaths which are SUPPOSED to occur in order to get from there to here. I HAVE NO RIGHT to interfere with that timeline. Suppose two people meet who would otherwise not have because of tragic circumstances related to the war. They fall in love, procreate, and somewhere down the line, one of their ancestors is singularly responsible for curing a disease or inventing something that changes mankind forever in a positive way. Conversely, what if I stop Hitler’s rise, the war never takes place, and someone who is supposed to die does not. He procreates, and an ancestor of his is responsible for something very terrible. On a simpler level, go back to my first scenario. I SIMPLY HAVE NO RIGHT to prevent someone else from being conceived and born, which is essentially what I would be doing if I prevented their parents from meeting in the first place by stopping the war. Any interference with the timeline could trigger such a change, and IT IS NOT UP TO ONE INDIVIDUAL TO DECIDE WHAT CHANGES WOULD BE GOOD AND WHAT CHANGES WOULD BE BAD. It is LESS ABOUT LOGIC (though that is a part of it), in many ways, THAN ABOUT MORALITY. It is essentially the same principle as the Edith Keeler scenario. What you think may be a good thing, may, in the long run, turn out to be very wrong.
If spock were to prevent Kirk’s death, yes, you might say that he could have ended up doing some good. However, that “GOOD” IS TOTALLY SUBJECTIVE, as you can see, and may very well end up preventing someone’s birth (temporal homicide?), an alliance which is supposed to happen, a war that is supposed to be fought at a particular time, ….I could go on and on. PLAYING “GOD” is not, IMO, in Spock’s nature. He, of all people, would (again, IMO) be sufficiently equipped mentally to suppress such IRRATIONAL temptation. This is especially true if a mere full-blooded human like me can figure it out…..I hope this clarifies for you the logic behind my position. If it does not, you’re not going to get it anyway.”

Believe it or not, I actually have a Ph.D. in philosophy, and my dissertation was on Ethical Theory. Now, that in no way validates anything I say. I still need to prove my point just like the next guy, but I do at least want you to know that I’m going to attempt to reply as carefully as I can. I do not mean to be dismissive or flippant.

I personally find the notion of moral rights to be very troubling. What are moral rights, and what does it mean to say someone has no right to do something? It’s easy when we talk about the law. We have the legal right to do legal things, and no right to do illegal things. However, the law and morality are two separate things. Some things are immoral but perfectly legal (like insulting someone for no good reason), while other things are illegal but seem to be moral (like trespassing so that you can save the life of a child who has wandered somewhere dangerous). Personally, I believe that discussing moral rights confuses matters more than clarifies them. If you disagree, that’s perfectly all right. But it would need some clarification. On the other hand, when you say that “I have no right to interfere,” you might just mean that you believe that it is morally wrong to interfere. You might not really be trying to start a discussion about moral rights.

I’m going to jump ahead to something else you said. You stated that “’good’ is totally subjective.” Now, this is an enormous topic. Please clarify if I am not understanding you correctly. If you are really stating that what is good (what is right as opposed to wrong) is totally subjective, then you are adopting the theory of moral relativism. You are not alone. There are other moral relativists out there. Moral (or ethical) relativists believe that what is right for one person could be wrong for another, or what is right for one culture could be wrong for another. Moral relativists believe that morality is a matter of opinion, and that all opinions are pretty much equally valid. Now, I’ll just come right out and say, as others have before me, that I believe that the theory of moral relativism is self-contradictory. This is why: if all opinions are equally valid, if “good” is subjective, then the position of the moral relativist is just one opinion, and the opinion that moral relativists are morally incorrect is another, and both are equally valid. This can be summarized as follows:
Premise 1: Morality is just a matter of opinion, and all opinions about morality are equally valid.
Premise 2: Bill’s opinion is that Premise 1 is false.
Conclusion 1: Since all opinions about morality are equally valid, Bill’s opinion is valid.
Conclusion 2: Since Bill’s opinion is valid, it is false that morality is just a matter of opinion, and false that all opinions about morality are equally valid.
And thus, moral relativism crumbles under its own weight.

In your case, Closettrekker, I think that if you really believe that “’good’ is totally subjective,” then you are going to have a hard time establishing that a person has no right to interfere with a timeline. After all, if “good” is subjective, then who are you to say that someone is wrong in thinking that he/she does have the right to interfere? There opinion is just as valid as yours.

More coming soon…

Hi debating friend,

First, I must apologize for not replying earlier. But I’ve been busy, and your comments were complex enough that I couldn’t just whip off a response.

You state:
“I like where you are going with this. It is an interesting angle, however, this only stands to reaffirm my position. I would indeed be “tempted” to prevent such tragedies, but here is where that is irresponsible. If I prevent such an event, it is principally no different from preventing Edith Keeler’s death. Imagine the amount of technological progress which mankind gained out of the necessities of WWII (to single out one of your examples). If I were to prevent it, not only have I, in retrospect, slowed down the technological progress of all mankind, but I have also prevented 100 million deaths which are supposed to occur in order to get from there to here. I have no right to interfere with that timeline.

Interesting comments. I believe I understand you fully. However, I disagree with you on two points.

First, I do not agree with you that preventing a known tragedy is principally the same as preventing Edith Keeler’s death. What makes the Edith Keeler situation so unique is that Spock had before knowledge of both possible timelines. He was able to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of each possible outcome. And after doing so, he determined that the timeline in which she dies, was, unfortunately, the better path. When we consider the possibility of preventing World War II or preventing the assassination of JFK or the terrorist attacks of 911, we do not have knowledge of both timelines in front of us. We do not know that these tragic events have made the world a better place overall. So this is a fundamental difference between the Edith Keeler case and other cases of meddling with the past. I believe you will agree with this. I don’t really see how anyone could disagree. If you do, please explain. Now, in my opinion (which you might disagree with), I believe that it’s more likely that these terrible events have made the world a worse place overall, and not a better one. I understand if you disagree with me here. You would certainly be correct to claim that good things often result from tragedies. I just think that tragedies typically have more negative results than positive ones, and that is why I like the idea of preventing tragedies.

Although you and I have not convinced each other, I believe we are getting closer to determining the root of our disagreement. And if I’m correct, you could probably grant me what I’ve said above and still have plenty of room for disagreement. Perhaps I should post this now and continue in another post…

Hi Katie!

You stated:
“Well, I’ve been reading all of the posts and, based on my own observation have to say that according to past behaviour, the character Spock would not have just accepted Kirk’s death. He had more than a “love” for the man. It was deeper than that. Kirk did what he did to restore Spock (in ST:III); but because (as it seems) the producers/directors whatever, don’t want to do another similar movie for Kirk, there he lies on Veridian III.”

I agree with you about Spock. I also agree with the producers that they shouldn’t do a Search for Spock-type movie to bring back Shatner. Still, from what I’ve heard about the plot of this movie, it seems like there would be an easy way to include Shatner. As a result of Spock traveling to the past, things could be altered so that Old Kirk is alive at the end. And for those of you like Closettrekker, Spock wouldn’t necessarily even have to try to prevent Kirk’s death. Just by appearing in the past, things could change in unpredictable ways, including Kirk not crossing paths with that falling bridge.

Katie, you also state:
“Too bad he didn’t come up with the idea of training a new set of cadets at the academy (like he did in ST:II) primed to take over the Enterprise; then the new, younger crew would not have to worry about the all-mighty canon as much. They could develop stories and be added as long as it didn’t violate the existing established story.”

I agree, and it always bothered me that they didn’t allow Kirk and company to age in a normal, dignified way. Kirk didn’t need to be fighting shapeshifters in ST6. He didn’t need to fistfight Soran in ST7. Why wasn’t he behaving more like Adama on Galactica? There could have been countless stories in which he could have appeared as an older guy who acted like an older guy. Actually, I wish that TNG hadn’t been so far in the future. There was no need to jump so far ahead in time. If they had only jumped ahead a couple of decades, then Kirk and Spock and any other TOS members could have appeared alongside TNG characters without needing any outlandish explanations.

As for the Borg thing, I’m unsure where you saw the argument that saving Kirk would in any way assure the Borg assimilation of Earth (it does not have to be a consequence so drastic to be immoral), but there are holes in your analysis anyway. You make way too many assumptions–like Ben Sisko filling Picard’s role, etc.. You could not guarantee that two men/women will make the same choices, at identical times, and get the same results. For instance, in First Contact, it was necessary for Cochrane to fly his warp ship at a certain precise time. Surely, someone else would eventually do it, but would the Vulcans see it when they did? That was the key point. If you assume that Sisko or Shelby will make the exact same choices that affect the timeline (which is in itself a stretch), you still cannot guarantee that they would be made at precisely the same time or affect those around them in the same way. Both of those factors have to be considered as well in taking such an action as to risk altering the timeline. There is no way of getting around the immorality of Spock or anyone else taking such a risk.