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Yes. Morally, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were unjustified and evil. To say so is not to deny the evil of other bombing and destruction campaigns. The

Yes. Morally, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were unjustified and evil. To say so is not to deny the evil of other bombing and destruction campaigns. The old claim that it was the only way to end the war is a utilitarian/consequentialist claim that misses the point which is that evil means cannot be used to accomplish good ends.

michaelmrose 7y ago
I don't know how you can sidestep the question of whether we could have won the war with less hardship. It isn't missing the point it IS a really important point. Any more complex ethical framework is inevitably only ethical in anyone's judgement until such time as it leads to a bad enough effect that nobody would countenance. For example bombing cities is a horror whether its with nuclear or conventional weapons. If you could reliably predict that refraining from such unethical behavior would lead to an allied loss would you say that it remained the ethical choice knowing that it led to a greater evil end result? I would say that any strategy however ethical that led to a Nazi/Imperial Japanese empire across the world would have been an unforgivable evil no matter how high minded. Logically there is no just reason to desire the suffering of the Japanese people. A solution that also preserved the lives of the Japanese people would be most ethical but what if you have to pick? Even if the end result is not on net evil like Nazi domination of the globe those whose responsibility is the lives of say the English people seem duty bound to consider the needs of their charges over a foreign power. Is this not ethical too? How does that interact with your ethical framework or utilitarians? It seems more apt to suppose that a grand unified theory of ethics just doesn't exist. Its always more complicated than you think. It seems that in some cases refusing to sacrifice your personal ethics to prevent greater evil would itself be evil. Shitty right.
- danielam 7y ago
  I'm not sidestepping the question. I'm claiming that the question is irrelevant because EVEN IF we knew that the war would have been shortened, fewer lives would have been lost, etc, etc, the committing of an evil action for a good end is NEVER justified. If you want a name for the principle behind this moral judgement, I refer you to the doctrine of double effect. The last bit is, frankly, nonsense. If sound moral judgement is how one determines what is good or evil, then how does the suspension of that moral judgement (what you quaintly and confusingly refer to as "sacrific[ing] your personal ethics") allow you to judge which evil is greater, or what is evil in the first place?
  - AnimalMuppet 7y ago
    > I'm not sidestepping the question. I'm claiming that the question is irrelevant because EVEN IF we knew that the war would have been shortened, fewer lives would have been lost, etc, etc, the committing of an evil action for a good end is NEVER justified. If you want a name for the principle behind this moral judgement, I refer you to the doctrine of double effect. And we're claiming that you're wrong. The doctrine of double effect is not the be-all and end-all of ethical thinking, either among theoretical ethicists nor among people wrestling with an ethical dilemma. You seem to think that dogmatically stating your position proves the point. It doesn't. [Edit: On re-reading, you stated that this is what you are claiming, not that this is true, so I was a bit harsh. You may have gotten some spill-over from a completely different topic, where a completely different poster was stating the conclusions of a non-mainstream theory as if merely stating them clinched the matter. It's a bit unfair to you that you get the shorter fuse for someone doing that, when you aren't quite doing so.]
    - danielam 7y ago
      Not at all. From the fact that I made an assertion, as everyone here does, it does not follow that I was under any special obligation to defend the principle in question. Contradicting my assertion with incoherent counterclaims and false assertions accomplishes nothing. Same for presumptuously guessing what I “seem to think”. FWIW, natural law theory (from which the principle is drawn), is, at the VERY least, very defensible.
      - AnimalMuppet 7y ago
        I would guess that, of the people here, something less than 30% would accept natural law as an accepted authority. Of those, I suspect that a large fraction would not accept the doctrine of double effect, or perhaps even know what it is.[1] (I had to look it up; I'd never heard of it before.) While I disagreed with the substance of your post, it was the form that most annoyed me. (You could say I should focus on the substance, and you'd be right, but... I didn't.) Saying "theory X (that most people don't agree with) says Y about this subject, which supports my position" isn't a very effective argument unless you give reason why people should believe or trust X. As I said, I would hopefully have been less annoyed by it, except that I just ran into the same form on a completely different topic. [1] Here I am presuming that the doctrine of double effect does not absolutely and automatically follow from natural law. I suspect that natural law is not unambiguous enough for that. I am not an expert, though; feel free to disagree if you think I'm wrong. I myself do not accept the doctrine of double effect. When faced with a "do I or don't I" decision, inaction is just as much a choice as action, and you're also responsible for the (foreseeable) consequences of the inaction. If Truman had not dropped the bomb, and the US had not invaded, Truman would have borne some responsibility for the continued deaths in China, which his inaction allowed to continue. Or, to use a different example, if you see the crime happening and you do nothing, you are to some degree complicit. You're not in the same category as the person who commits the crime, but you still have some responsibility. (Hey, look, I'm giving unsupported assertions too! It's really hard not to, because nobody's got time to go back to first principles, agree on them, and then derive conclusions.)

michaelmrose 7y ago

I don't know how you can sidestep the question of whether we could have won the war with less hardship. It isn't missing the point it IS a really important point. Any more complex ethical framework is inevitably only ethical in anyone's judgement until such time as it leads to a bad enough effect that nobody would countenance. For example bombing cities is a horror whether its with nuclear or conventional weapons. If you could reliably predict that refraining from such unethical behavior would lead to an allied loss would you say that it remained the ethical choice knowing that it led to a greater evil end result? I would say that any strategy however ethical that led to a Nazi/Imperial Japanese empire across the world would have been an unforgivable evil no matter how high minded. Logically there is no just reason to desire the suffering of the Japanese people. A solution that also preserved the lives of the Japanese people would be most ethical but what if you have to pick? Even if the end result is not on net evil like Nazi domination of the globe those whose responsibility is the lives of say the English people seem duty bound to consider the needs of their charges over a foreign power. Is this not ethical too? How does that interact with your ethical framework or utilitarians? It seems more apt to suppose that a grand unified theory of ethics just doesn't exist. Its always more complicated than you think. It seems that in some cases refusing to sacrifice your personal ethics to prevent greater evil would itself be evil. Shitty right.

danielam 7y ago
I'm not sidestepping the question. I'm claiming that the question is irrelevant because EVEN IF we knew that the war would have been shortened, fewer lives would have been lost, etc, etc, the committing of an evil action for a good end is NEVER justified. If you want a name for the principle behind this moral judgement, I refer you to the doctrine of double effect. The last bit is, frankly, nonsense. If sound moral judgement is how one determines what is good or evil, then how does the suspension of that moral judgement (what you quaintly and confusingly refer to as "sacrific[ing] your personal ethics") allow you to judge which evil is greater, or what is evil in the first place?
- AnimalMuppet 7y ago
  > I'm not sidestepping the question. I'm claiming that the question is irrelevant because EVEN IF we knew that the war would have been shortened, fewer lives would have been lost, etc, etc, the committing of an evil action for a good end is NEVER justified. If you want a name for the principle behind this moral judgement, I refer you to the doctrine of double effect. And we're claiming that you're wrong. The doctrine of double effect is not the be-all and end-all of ethical thinking, either among theoretical ethicists nor among people wrestling with an ethical dilemma. You seem to think that dogmatically stating your position proves the point. It doesn't. [Edit: On re-reading, you stated that this is what you are claiming, not that this is true, so I was a bit harsh. You may have gotten some spill-over from a completely different topic, where a completely different poster was stating the conclusions of a non-mainstream theory as if merely stating them clinched the matter. It's a bit unfair to you that you get the shorter fuse for someone doing that, when you aren't quite doing so.]
  - danielam 7y ago
    Not at all. From the fact that I made an assertion, as everyone here does, it does not follow that I was under any special obligation to defend the principle in question. Contradicting my assertion with incoherent counterclaims and false assertions accomplishes nothing. Same for presumptuously guessing what I “seem to think”. FWIW, natural law theory (from which the principle is drawn), is, at the VERY least, very defensible.
    - AnimalMuppet 7y ago
      I would guess that, of the people here, something less than 30% would accept natural law as an accepted authority. Of those, I suspect that a large fraction would not accept the doctrine of double effect, or perhaps even know what it is.[1] (I had to look it up; I'd never heard of it before.) While I disagreed with the substance of your post, it was the form that most annoyed me. (You could say I should focus on the substance, and you'd be right, but... I didn't.) Saying "theory X (that most people don't agree with) says Y about this subject, which supports my position" isn't a very effective argument unless you give reason why people should believe or trust X. As I said, I would hopefully have been less annoyed by it, except that I just ran into the same form on a completely different topic. [1] Here I am presuming that the doctrine of double effect does not absolutely and automatically follow from natural law. I suspect that natural law is not unambiguous enough for that. I am not an expert, though; feel free to disagree if you think I'm wrong. I myself do not accept the doctrine of double effect. When faced with a "do I or don't I" decision, inaction is just as much a choice as action, and you're also responsible for the (foreseeable) consequences of the inaction. If Truman had not dropped the bomb, and the US had not invaded, Truman would have borne some responsibility for the continued deaths in China, which his inaction allowed to continue. Or, to use a different example, if you see the crime happening and you do nothing, you are to some degree complicit. You're not in the same category as the person who commits the crime, but you still have some responsibility. (Hey, look, I'm giving unsupported assertions too! It's really hard not to, because nobody's got time to go back to first principles, agree on them, and then derive conclusions.)