3 ms·

The ends do justify the means. It's just that the means are also ends.

CamperBob2 3y ago
Also, there's the Achilles' heel of utilitarianism in general to deal with: "Even the very wise cannot see all ends." A cynic might say "Even the very wise cannot see any ends."
- FeepingCreature 3y ago
  Then the cynic jumped out of a window. (Clearly, there is some ability to see ends.)
  - CamperBob2 3y ago
    ... and landed on some tracks just seconds ahead of a runaway trolley, derailing it before it could hit a busload of nuns.
hiAndrewQuinn 3y ago
Yes! This was the realization that started moving me away from many flavors of consequentialist utilitarianism. There is to me no ontological distinction between means and ends, or the cause and the effect as an action. There is a vast literature prioritizing the latter at the expense of the former, an illusion brought upon us by the arrow of time our consciousness happens to be travelling in the same direction as. But if we're going to prioritize along that axis we might as well claim actions to the left of us are privileged relative to actions to the right of us. I admit this is splitting philosophical hairs. "Doing X at time T means at time T + 1 many many sentient beings will benefit" is not really a hard-consequentialist argument - we don't prioritize X because it is at time T. But now consider: "if future sentient beings no longer care about Y, then doing X now will benefit nobody; deciding on not-X, however, saves resources we can then use towards whatever we do care about." Now totalize that, and add in a modesty claim: As the people at the start of history, we (maybe) have no control over what moral concerns future beings will have at all, and if we do then we can (maybe) can choose to craft a future where no moral concerns are detected by any sentient beings in the future at all. Is that good? I have no idea, but it's a lot more fun to try to puzzle through.

Also, there's the Achilles' heel of utilitarianism in general to deal with: "Even the very wise cannot see all ends." A cynic might say "Even the very wise cannot see any ends."

FeepingCreature 3y ago
Then the cynic jumped out of a window. (Clearly, there is some ability to see ends.)
- CamperBob2 3y ago
  ... and landed on some tracks just seconds ahead of a runaway trolley, derailing it before it could hit a busload of nuns.

hiAndrewQuinn 3y ago

Yes! This was the realization that started moving me away from many flavors of consequentialist utilitarianism. There is to me no ontological distinction between means and ends, or the cause and the effect as an action. There is a vast literature prioritizing the latter at the expense of the former, an illusion brought upon us by the arrow of time our consciousness happens to be travelling in the same direction as. But if we're going to prioritize along that axis we might as well claim actions to the left of us are privileged relative to actions to the right of us. I admit this is splitting philosophical hairs. "Doing X at time T means at time T + 1 many many sentient beings will benefit" is not really a hard-consequentialist argument - we don't prioritize X because it is at time T. But now consider: "if future sentient beings no longer care about Y, then doing X now will benefit nobody; deciding on not-X, however, saves resources we can then use towards whatever we do care about." Now totalize that, and add in a modesty claim: As the people at the start of history, we (maybe) have no control over what moral concerns future beings will have at all, and if we do then we can (maybe) can choose to craft a future where no moral concerns are detected by any sentient beings in the future at all. Is that good? I have no idea, but it's a lot more fun to try to puzzle through.