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> Consequentialism says that the ends justify the means. They do not. Well, I disagree with that in the absolute sense, which might be where we differ? If we c
by edanm 4y ago
> Consequentialism says that the ends justify the means. They do not.
Well, I disagree with that in the absolute sense, which might be where we differ? If we could accurately foresee the ends of some action lead to more people being better off, it would be moral to take that action. And I think the fact that "the ends don't justify the means" is such a slogan in our world, said as if it's obviously true, is ridiculous.
(And despite you continuously saying this is philosophy 101, I don't think the generally accepted view among philosophers is that utilitarianism is wrong, is it?)
FWIW I think you're right in a practical sense though. If you're having to justify immoral actions by their "ends", you're making a huge mistake, and almost certainly only doing it because you wanted to do that immoral thing anyway. Humans are notoriously bad at prediction and notoriously good at rationalization.
- tptacek 4y agoPeople keep mentioning philosophers here, as if we were having a debate about weak vs. strong rule utilitarianism. My point is that the philosophy being expounded here is pre-Benthamite; it is the philosophy of the Medicis, not of Mill. There is right now on Twitter a circulating post regarding the CEO of the Future Fund, FTX's EA funding arm, a person who did a dissertation on utilitarian ethics, which stated that it might make more sense to save wealthy lives in the developed world before saving lives in the developing world, because the wealthy lives would have greater impact. This is what happens when you take a simple idea about minmaxing the benefit of charitable contributions and hook it up to the morals of 16th century banking families. The snake is eating its own tail.