Help explaining a logical fallacy to my friend

I recently had a conversation with my friend on morality in which I asked for an example of when r*pe would be considered a "good act." The example produced went something along the lines of this.

"What if a war lord was holding a bunch of people (200 mil in this case) and you could only stop them by r*ping them."

Clearly, this doesn't say that r*pe is a good act, but more justifies it by saying that it's positive consequences outweigh the negative consequences. Not only that, but it disregards every other option like incapacitation or straight up just killing the war lord instead. This just reminds me of the story of a mother in the Holocaust being forced to either shoot one of her sons or gas the other. Just because one option had good consequences over the other, that definitely didn't make her choice a good one. I can definitely be wrong, but I feel like there is some logical fallacy at play.

My only difficulty is that I feel there is one, and I cannot explain it well enough because my friend's response to me saying that his argument is flawed on a logical level is, "I gave an example"

The main issue I see is that there are multiple systems for evaluating whether an act is ethical, and you seem to be using different ones. Your friend seems to be taking an act utilitarian approach - an act is ethical if it, on balance, causes more good than harm. Which, like every ethical system, is an imperfect way of evaluating things. Like in the example you gave. Shooting your own child to spare another a more painful death in a gas chamber would, on balance, create more good than harm in that situation, but I think most people would agree that this doesn't make it a good act.

I do think that the hypothetical, where raping a warlord is the only way to free millions of hostages, is implausible for the reasons you listed, unless you engineer some highly specific situations within that hypothetical. At that point, I think you're getting into something like appeal to extremes .

In your conversation with your friend, there are several issues involving logical fallacies and poor reasoning. Let's break down a few of them:

1. **False Dilemma (or False Dichotomy):** Your friend's scenario presents the situation as if there are only two options: committing a morally reprehensible act (rape) or allowing 200 million people to be harmed. This oversimplification ignores other potential solutions, such as incapacitating or negotiating with the warlord, which you've already mentioned. By presenting only two options, it manipulates the moral evaluation by artificially reducing complexity.

2. **Appeal to Consequences:** This argument attempts to justify an immoral act by appealing to the consequence of saving lives. While utilitarian ethics might sometimes weigh actions based on their outcomes, it's important to recognize that this is not universally accepted as a moral framework. Arguing that an act is justified because of its consequences does not inherently make it a "good" act; it just introduces a consequentialist perspective, which might not resolve the moral issue in question.

3. **Moral Relativism (or Ethical Subjectivism):** The example implies that the morality of an act can be entirely dependent on the situation or consequences, which is a slippery slope. While context can influence moral judgments, this perspective can lead to justifying almost any act under extreme conditions, which many moral frameworks would contest.

4. **Reductio ad Absurdum:** In a way, your friend's argument could border on this fallacy by extending a moral question to an extreme hypothetical scenario intended to force a particular conclusion. While reductio arguments can be valid, when applied poorly, they can become straw man arguments by caricaturing the complexity of moral reasoning.

5. **Straw Man Argument:** By setting up an extreme scenario, your friend may be misrepresenting the complexities of moral choices and ethics. Instead of dealing with more reasonable, nuanced situations where moral principles can be genuinely applied and debated, the scenario side-steps the main issues by framing the problem in an almost fantastical way.

In discussing this with your friend, you might want to address these points to clarify why the example is problematic from a logical and ethical standpoint. It's not just about providing an example but ensuring that the example is relevant and doesn't oversimplify the ethical dilemmas or ignore alternative actions.

"What if a war lord was holding a bunch of people (200 mil in this case) and you could only stop them by r*ping them." To whom do your two “thems” refer? Poor pronoun use.