I disagree with that interpretation of consequentialism.
What determines an action’s rightness or wrongness is what consequences can be reasonably expected to occur from that action, not what results actually occur. If I help an old lady across the street, and that just so happens to lead to her being in the street at the time that an out of control car hits her, then I am not to blame for that outcome, because I could not have predicted it. To say that I should be blamed for that when it’s a matter of pure chance (or that I deserve credit for doing something I reasonably expected to cause harm, but happened to produce a good result) is, well, silly. It means that it’s just a matter of luck whether your actions are moral or not, and that there’s no way of knowing ahead of time whether they will be.
Now to be clear my stance isn’t “ends justify means” either as isn’t yours, because had I beaten up some terrible criminal and taken that money from them, it would only have made what I did in actuality even worse, and couldn’t be a moral stance to build a society on. Beating up people on the street for money is not maximizing good even if that money is given away in good actions, I’m sure we agree on that.
That doesn’t line up with your argument at all. The only way your position makes any sense is by arguing that the ends justify the means.
Imagine that I had a cursed sword that grows more powerful with each person I kill with it, and my country is ruled by an evil dragon that I need a very powerful sword to defeat. Is it ethical to go out and murder a whole bunch of innocent people (who might also get murdered by the dragon, who knows!) in order to power up my sword so that I can defeat the dragon? To say “yes” would certainly require saying that the ends justify the means. But this is no different from what you’re arguing. The dragon is Trump, the cursed sword are the Democrats, and the innocents are the Palestinians. At the point when you’re feeding innocents to the cursed sword or voting for someone who’s engaged in genocide, you yourself have become a danger to society and to the world.
You talk about “a moral foundation to build a society on,” but if you care about that at all, then obviously my position is the correct one. How on earth is “sometimes it’s morally obligatory to do genocide” a moral foundation to build a society on?
By moral purity I mean the willingness to do anything, as long as one perceives it to be the most morally good action they can personally take, no matter what actual consequences it causes.
The most morally good action one can take is the one that can be reasonably expected to produce the best consequences, and moral rules/theories are designed to help make those predictions. If the actual consequences are things that could have been reasonably predicted, then there’s not really a difference between the actual consequences and “what I perceive to be a morally good action.” Again, you are ignoring where my moral rules come from and acting as if I randomly arrived at them by throwing darts.
Look; if your obscuring and derailing this discussion the past few messages has been an attempt to disengage me, well, you have now succeeded.
In your quest for moral absolutism in a world very flawed, you have ended up supporting genocide while trying not to. Even Hannah Arendt in her critique of lesser-evilism doesn’t come to the conclusion one should choose the worse evil by not opposing it as you’re insisting here; but to always remember that the lesser evil is still evil, and do all that can be done so you won’t end up in the situation where you’re forced to choose in the first place.
You are not responsible for the system that’s forcing you to play by it’s shitty rules, and you’re not personally responsible for not managing to change it, or even for whatever the election result ended up being. But you are responsible for your own actions, and those you’re supporting here have been the ones enabling a lot worse outcome for the world. The bus is still headed off the cliff.
As I have sadly lost my faith in you taking part in this discussion with honesty, continuing has been rendered pointless. So: Have a good day! :)
Disappointing. 99% of arguments on here are just screaming at each other and slinging insults. I thought perhaps it would be possible to have an intelligent discussion that went deeper than that, but I guess that’s “derailing” from our regularly scheduled programming.
So fine then, you’re a genocidal fascist who’s too racist to see Palestinians as human beings with moral worth. Let’s just do that forever then.
I disagree with that interpretation of consequentialism.
What determines an action’s rightness or wrongness is what consequences can be reasonably expected to occur from that action, not what results actually occur. If I help an old lady across the street, and that just so happens to lead to her being in the street at the time that an out of control car hits her, then I am not to blame for that outcome, because I could not have predicted it. To say that I should be blamed for that when it’s a matter of pure chance (or that I deserve credit for doing something I reasonably expected to cause harm, but happened to produce a good result) is, well, silly. It means that it’s just a matter of luck whether your actions are moral or not, and that there’s no way of knowing ahead of time whether they will be.
That doesn’t line up with your argument at all. The only way your position makes any sense is by arguing that the ends justify the means.
Imagine that I had a cursed sword that grows more powerful with each person I kill with it, and my country is ruled by an evil dragon that I need a very powerful sword to defeat. Is it ethical to go out and murder a whole bunch of innocent people (who might also get murdered by the dragon, who knows!) in order to power up my sword so that I can defeat the dragon? To say “yes” would certainly require saying that the ends justify the means. But this is no different from what you’re arguing. The dragon is Trump, the cursed sword are the Democrats, and the innocents are the Palestinians. At the point when you’re feeding innocents to the cursed sword or voting for someone who’s engaged in genocide, you yourself have become a danger to society and to the world.
You talk about “a moral foundation to build a society on,” but if you care about that at all, then obviously my position is the correct one. How on earth is “sometimes it’s morally obligatory to do genocide” a moral foundation to build a society on?
The most morally good action one can take is the one that can be reasonably expected to produce the best consequences, and moral rules/theories are designed to help make those predictions. If the actual consequences are things that could have been reasonably predicted, then there’s not really a difference between the actual consequences and “what I perceive to be a morally good action.” Again, you are ignoring where my moral rules come from and acting as if I randomly arrived at them by throwing darts.
Look; if your obscuring and derailing this discussion the past few messages has been an attempt to disengage me, well, you have now succeeded.
In your quest for moral absolutism in a world very flawed, you have ended up supporting genocide while trying not to. Even Hannah Arendt in her critique of lesser-evilism doesn’t come to the conclusion one should choose the worse evil by not opposing it as you’re insisting here; but to always remember that the lesser evil is still evil, and do all that can be done so you won’t end up in the situation where you’re forced to choose in the first place.
You are not responsible for the system that’s forcing you to play by it’s shitty rules, and you’re not personally responsible for not managing to change it, or even for whatever the election result ended up being. But you are responsible for your own actions, and those you’re supporting here have been the ones enabling a lot worse outcome for the world. The bus is still headed off the cliff.
As I have sadly lost my faith in you taking part in this discussion with honesty, continuing has been rendered pointless. So: Have a good day! :)
Disappointing. 99% of arguments on here are just screaming at each other and slinging insults. I thought perhaps it would be possible to have an intelligent discussion that went deeper than that, but I guess that’s “derailing” from our regularly scheduled programming.
So fine then, you’re a genocidal fascist who’s too racist to see Palestinians as human beings with moral worth. Let’s just do that forever then.