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Type and Ethics.

rav3n

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The process matters if its execution renders the original end moot. If not, however, and there is no alternative, using unsavoury means to prevent a far worse outcome is justified.
How do you know what the outcome will be?
 

Lord Guess

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How do you know what the outcome will be?

If you have foreseen a worse outcome, using methods of deduction, taking precedent into account, measuring the facts at hand, and judging the probability of such an outcome resulting, and you take the necessary steps to prevent it, that is justified. Even if the outcome does not end up materializing, the cost of ignoring a warning to a dire consequence is greater than the cost of preparing for a potentially catastrophic situation by any means necessary. With any decision that could have dire consequences, it is always better to err on the safe side.
 

rav3n

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If you have foreseen a worse outcome, using methods of deduction, taking precedent into account, measuring the facts at hand, and judging the probability of such an outcome resulting, and you take the necessary steps to prevent it, that is justified. Even if the outcome does not end up materializing, the cost of ignoring a warning to a dire consequence is greater than the cost of preparing for a potentially catastrophic situation by any means necessary.
This again assumes that there's only one "correct" course of action. Most often, there are many different ways to achieve end goal. Win/win can usually be accomplished.
 

SilkRoad

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I have many moral implications and comparatively few moral truths/beliefs. Basically I have several core beliefs I'm not willing to compromise, and then I read into them and find applicable shades of morality for a given situation. The shades are quite fluid, and I'm very open to discussion/compromise on them, but the closer it gets to the core value the more stubborn and sure I become.

I'm not good at articulating this sort of thing, so I will say that the above seems fairly close to my approach. I have some black and white principles and beliefs which I won't compromise on, but around those I feel it's more about principles than black and white rules. Depending on the situation, some could be pretty flexible/grey area, others seem more defined. I'm really not good at putting it into words. :shock:
 

Lord Guess

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This again assumes that there's only one "correct" course of action. Most often, there are many different ways to achieve end goal. Win/win can usually be accomplished.

In a desperate situation, a win/win situation can't be counted on; what if the other side is unwilling to negotiate? Or, worse still, what if they break their agreement, and cause the original disaster you had foreseen, and this time, have you completely unprepared for it? If you can find a better way, then by all means, take it. Keep in mind, though, that relying on the goodwill of the other side is asking for trouble. If there is no better way, that will, by default, justify any means you must take to that end.
 

rav3n

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In a desperate situation, a win/win situation can't be counted on; what if the other side is unwilling to negotiate? Or, worse still, what if they break their agreement, and cause the original disaster you had foreseen, and this time, have you completely unprepared for it? If you can find a better way, then by all means, take it. Keep in mind, though, that relying on the goodwill of the other side is asking for trouble. If there is no better way, that will, by default, justify any means you must take to that end.
We could set up a million "if" conditions that align with your subjective view of why it's acceptable to enact horrific deeds. But they're all strawmen when you drill down to two core facts:

- No one can predict the future.
- There isn't only "right" path.

It's exactly the line of reasoning suggested that led to the atrocities enacted at Guatanamo Bay.
 

Lord Guess

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We could set up a million "if" conditions that align with your subjective view of why it's acceptable to enact horrific deeds. But they're all strawmen when you drill down to two core facts:

- No one can predict the future.
- There isn't only "right" path.

It's exactly the line of reasoning suggested that led to the atrocities enacted at Guatanamo Bay.

Again, like I said before, your first point would make planning for any future event completely pointless; sometimes, you have no choice but to anticipate the future. As for your second point, while there might be multiple paths to take, there is one which will have an objectively more beneficial result; following this path is what a decision maker should try to do (of course, what constitutes beneficial is somewhat debatable). As for your third point, Guantanamo Bay was arguably not justified, since it didn't end up doing its job well enough; it ended up creating as many terrorists as it detained, and caused American support around the world to drop. It caused more problems than it ended up solving, and it rendered its original purpose moot, which is why it was not justified.
 

rav3n

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Again, like I said before, your first point would make planning for any future event completely pointless; sometimes, you have no choice but to anticipate the future. As for your second point, there are situations where, while there might be multiple paths to take, there is one which will have an objectively more beneficial result. As for your third point, Guantanamo Bay was arguably not justified, since it didn't end up doing its job well enough; it ended up creating as many terrorists as it detained, and caused American support around the world to drop. It caused more problems than it ended up solving, and it rendered its original purpose moot, which is why it was not justified.
  1. Nowhere have I stated that you shouldn't try to anticipate the future. The distinction lies with understanding that anticipation of the future doesn't make it a guaranteed future.
  2. As far as objectively more beneficial results this is subjective, reliant on whether you factor in negative actions, how you weigh the concrete negative actions against the conceptual potential benefits. In other words, shall we bake all the Jews to benefit the German economy? Shall we conquer China, so the Japanese people can thrive?
  3. Again, the path taken for Guatanamo Bay was done so from a purported greater good stance. What are the lives and emotional and physical health of very few, as compared to the potential of another 9/11? Let's flip the scenario as viewed by "Islamic freedom fighters". Considering the past policies of the U.S., what's the lives of 3000 people or more, weighed against the entire wellbeing of the Middle East?
 

Lord Guess

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  1. Nowhere have I stated that you shouldn't try to anticipate the future. The distinction lies with understanding that anticipation of the future doesn't make it a guaranteed future.
  2. As far as objectively more beneficial results this is subjective, reliant on whether you factor in negative actions, how you weigh the concrete negative actions against the conceptual potential benefits. In other words, shall we bake all the Jews to benefit the German economy? Shall we conquer China, so the Japanese people can thrive?
  3. Again, the path taken for Guatanamo Bay was done so from a purported greater good stance. What are the lives and emotional and physical health of very few, as compared to the potential of another 9/11? Let's flip the scenario as viewed by "Islamic freedom fighters". Considering the past policies of the U.S., what's the lives of 3000 people or more, weighed against the entire wellbeing of the Middle East?

Interesting points.

1. No, you did not say that you shouldn't try to anticipate the future in as many words; however, since the future is rarely if ever guaranteed, waiting to act only on a guaranteed future amounts to that.

2. Continuing the World War II theme, what I had said was that, if there is a better way to go about doing something, it should be done. The Nazis were unwilling to look for such an option which would have resulted in less suffering. An option like this was arguably possible, since the German economic gains came seperately from the Nazi Party's anti-Jewish stance. The Japanese invasions had less to do with preventing a catastrophe or causing a gain than they did with satisfying the militaristic fascism that had come over its military and political leaders; 99.9% of the Japanese excesses during the war were not being done for some greater good or as a matter of necessity, but were done because of nihilistic, amoral hedonism.

3. The intent was for the greater good; it wasn't justified because that greater good was not fully realized, since it ended up harming its own cause more than it helped it. As for the American policy in the Middle East, every country will look out for its own interests before it does a foreign country's; it's a reality of geopolitics, and not one that will, or should, end. The American military is concerned with defending American interests, not Middle Eastern interests; its policy should not be concerned with what would benefit the Middle East, unless that also carries a benefit to the US. As for the terrorists' point of view, if they were not harming their own cause, one could say that, from their own perspective, they might be justified; the reason we wouldn't want to justify it, of course, is because we are on the receiving end of their hatred. Looking at it personally, I would want them to lose; looking at it objectively, both sides would be justified in their actions. However, the terrorists are harming their own cause, which means that their actions have undermined their goal, which means that they are not justified.

(By the way, before you say anything, no, I'm not an American.)
 

rav3n

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Interesting points.

1. No, you did not say that you shouldn't try to anticipate the future in as many words; however, since the future is rarely if ever guaranteed, waiting to act only on a guaranteed future amounts to that.

2. Continuing the World War II theme, what I had said was that, if there is a better way to go about doing something, it should be done. The Nazis were unwilling to look for an option which resulted in less suffering, which was arguably possible, since the German economic gains could have come without the Holocaust. The Japanese invasions had less to do with preventing a catastrophe or causing a gain than they did with satisfying the militaristic fascism that had come over its military and political leaders; 99.9% of the Japanese excesses during the war were not being done for some greater good or as a matter of necessity, but were done because of nihilistic, amoral hedonism.

3. The intent was for the greater good; it wasn't justified because that greater good was not fully realized, since it ended up harming its own cause more than it helped it. As for the American policy in the Middle East, every country will look out for its own interests before it does a foreign country's; it's a reality of geopolitics, and not one that will, or should, end. The American military is concerned with defending American interests, not Middle Eastern interests; its policy should not be concerned with what would benefit the Middle East, unless that also carries a benefit to the US.

(By the way, before you say anything, no, I'm not an American.)
  • Note how hindsight is 20/20? Until you take a course of action, the results won't be crystallised. No one can predict the future, including outcome of actions taken.
  • Note how your points are based on subjectivity and not objectivity? Let's move in a macro direction. Asteroid will hit the Earth. Why must we save the human race, considering the destruction enacted on the Earth by human beings? Let nature take its course and allow the resulting species who survive, reassert a dominance hierarchy where hopefully, the dominant species won't be so destructive.
 

Lord Guess

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  • Note how hindsight is 20/20? Until you take a course of action, the results won't be crystallised. No one can predict the future, including outcome of actions taken.
  • Note how your points are based on subjectivity and not objectivity? Let's move in a macro direction. Asteroid will hit the Earth. Why must we save the human race, considering the destruction enacted on the Earth by human beings? Let nature take its course and allow the resulting species who survive, reassert a dominance hierarchy where hopefully, the dominant species won't be so destructive.

Well, on that note, I would make the decision to save the human race, since my goal is to survive. If I did something to destroy, or deliver the human race to a fate somehow worse than death in order to destroy the asteroid, that would not be justified, since my original goal would now be rendered pointless. On the same note, I would not sacrifice myself to destroy the asteroid if there were another way, for exactly the same reason; my goal in that situation would be to survive; killing myself would obviously not be surviving. If there was no other way but to die, then I would stop the asteroid, since now the secondary goal of saving humanity is what will take priority, since survival would be impossible.

The ends justify the means depending on what your ends are; if my goal was to exterminate humanity, then I would allow the asteroid to hit. If my goal was simply to preserve nature, I would destroy the asteroid to prevent the damage to the biosphere that such an impact would cause, or if I had deemed humanity to be a worse threat to nature than the asteroid, I would allow it to hit and wipe us out. If my goal, like I stated above, was simply to survive, then I would destroy the asteroid, placing my own survival above that of humanity. If my goal was to save humanity, then I would save humanity at any cost; no matter what I needed to do to destroy that asteroid, I would do it.

As for your first point; hindsight is 20/20, however, we can only do the best we can with the information we are given.
 

rav3n

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Well, on that note, I would make the decision to save the human race, since my goal is to survive. If I did something to destroy, or deliver the human race to a fate somehow worse than death in order to destroy the asteroid, that would not be justified, since my original goal would now be rendered pointless. On the same note, I would not sacrifice myself to destroy the asteroid if there were another way, for exactly the same reason; my goal in that situation would be to survive; killing myself would obviously not be surviving. If there was no other way but to die, then I would stop the asteroid, since now the secondary goal of saving humanity is what will take priority, since survival would be impossible.

The ends justify the means depending on what your ends are; if my goal was to exterminate humanity, then I would allow the asteroid to hit. If my goal was simply to preserve nature, I would destroy the asteroid to prevent the damage to the biosphere that such an impact would cause, or if I had deemed humanity to be a worse threat to nature than the asteroid, I would allow it to hit and wipe us out. If my goal, like I stated above, was simply to survive, then I would destroy the asteroid, placing my own survival above that of humanity. If my goal was to save humanity, then I would save humanity at any cost; no matter what I needed to do to destroy that asteroid, I would do it.
Once again, you're reinforcing my argument of subjectivity, where you cannot use objectivity to supplement an argument. So, how can you guarantee that event will happen and how do you guarantee the outcome of your plan?

Anyways, all food for thought when attempting to view any situation. Which is why I greatly question the concepts of good/evil and right/wrong. Since it's all subjective, how can one definitively state that it's good/evil or right/wrong. The worst "evils" were enacted for the "greater good".
 

Lord Guess

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I consider good and evil to be a limiting, outdated concept; however, I can certainly debate the point if I have to:D.
 

Lily flower

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Biblical values: Jesus said to love God and love others and that all other "laws" hang on those two premises. Most moral decisions can be based on loving others. The tricky ones are where loving one person means hurting another. Those take more work to figure out. Also, there is some degree of not being a doormat to the extent that loving others destroys yourself.

Whether the ends justify the means - mostly I would say no, but there are some cases where there is temporary pain to achieve longer good. You take your baby to the doctor to get an immunization for poliio. The baby is hurt and mad for a moment, but is saved from possible death or being paralyzed later in life. In that case, the end justifies the means.
 

Lark

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Biblical values: Jesus said to love God and love others and that all other "laws" hang on those two premises. Most moral decisions can be based on loving others. The tricky ones are where loving one person means hurting another. Those take more work to figure out. Also, there is some degree of not being a doormat to the extent that loving others destroys yourself.

Whether the ends justify the means - mostly I would say no, but there are some cases where there is temporary pain to achieve longer good. You take your baby to the doctor to get an immunization for poliio. The baby is hurt and mad for a moment, but is saved from possible death or being paralyzed later in life. In that case, the end justifies the means.

The actual quote from Jesus I think is to "Love others as you love thyself", it is a teaching which has some pedigree among the Jewish tradition, I've read authors who where not Christians, such as Fromm (Jewish but athiest) and Martin Buber (Hasidic Jew?), who believed that it was the logical working out of the commandments and dialogue with divinity which the Jewish tradition was about.

I dont actually believe that Jesus meant to abolish or usurp or supplant the commandments when he said this, in many ways "Love others as you love thyself" seems to me to be the law but the commandments, the ten and other laws within the old testament, are more precise or specific. Like when you ask someone what they believe and then ask them what those beliefs look like in practice, what thinking, words and deeds are requisite as a consequence.

Fromm's book Man For Himself is a very interesting book, it is his attempt to work out an ethics which he thought was in congruence with human psychology or human nature, in a lot of ways it is "legitimate self interest for socialists" because he spends some time working out the differences between selfishness and self-love. He manages it by returning to the idea of "love others as you love thyself", you have to love yourself before you can love others, otherwise you're a martyr or masochist or something, and you need to be capable of one to be capable of the other.
 

Lark

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I consider good and evil to be a limiting, outdated concept; however, I can certainly debate the point if I have to:D.

Really? Why outdated? Why limiting? What is your alternative conceptualisation and how does it avoid the limits and "outdated" nature you attribute to the dichotomy of good vs. evil?
 

King sns

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Really? Why outdated? Why limiting? What is your alternative conceptualisation and how does it avoid the limits and "outdated" nature you attribute to the dichotomy of good vs. evil?

I assumed that he(she?) was talking about the huge amount of situations that involve both/ or grey areas- and of course good and evil are similar in a lot of areas across the globe and people, but still differ. The concepts are still very much alive and the same, though.

Ugh, I felt like I couldn't spit that one out properly.

(Goes to get my coffee.)
 

King sns

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Biblical values: Jesus said to love God and love others and that all other "laws" hang on those two premises. Most moral decisions can be based on loving others. The tricky ones are where loving one person means hurting another. Those take more work to figure out. Also, there is some degree of not being a doormat to the extent that loving others destroys yourself.

Whether the ends justify the means - mostly I would say no, but there are some cases where there is temporary pain to achieve longer good. You take your baby to the doctor to get an immunization for poliio. The baby is hurt and mad for a moment, but is saved from possible death or being paralyzed later in life. In that case, the end justifies the means.

Yeah, love seems to be a common thread in a lot of religions and belief systems. When I learned about triage situations, I thought that doing good could get sticky sometimes. Most of the time care and level of emergency is obvious based on condition.There are some who are nearly dead, you don't save them if their chances of survival are poor. But when you get down to two people who have the same level of acuity but you could only choose one, it is the caregiver choice.
A lot of people would pick the younger and healthier one, but why?
...
There's a lot of reasons why- it's just odd and unnatural for the human mind to have to think about the value of one life over another life on the spur of the moment.
 

Lark

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I assumed that he(she?) was talking about the huge amount of situations that involve both/ or grey areas- and of course good and evil are similar in a lot of areas across the globe and people, but still differ. The concepts are still very much alive and the same, though.

Ugh, I felt like I couldn't spit that one out properly.

(Goes to get my coffee.)

Coffee is good.

I just bawlk at relativism, particularly when its presented as a fact, Chesterton totally tore most of the Nietzsche lite which has since become popular to pieces in a very simple argument in a book entitled orthodoxy, he suggested that it was moral cowardice to suggest such a thing as beyond good and evil was possible, you were either extra good or extra evil but it was/is one of those definitive things its impossible to do without.

I dont know what it is that makes good people blame authority or suspiscious of dichotomies like this right away, perhaps its a deep down hope that Socrates was right and that no one knowingly does harm or evil and that the only evil is really ignorance of the good but it bothers me and its why I tend to retort like that. Often its not something which has been thought out that much and is just thrown out with expectations of acceptance or a kind of easily knocked down moral outrage.
 

Lark

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Yeah, love seems to be a common thread in a lot of religions and belief systems. When I learned about triage situations, I thought that doing good could get sticky sometimes. Most of the time care and level of emergency is obvious based on condition.There are some who are nearly dead, you don't save them if their chances of survival are poor. But when you get down to two people who have the same level of acuity but you could only choose one, it is the caregiver choice.
A lot of people would pick the younger and healthier one, but why?
...
There's a lot of reasons why- it's just odd and unnatural for the human mind to have to think about the value of one life over another life on the spur of the moment.

There are biophilis theories, shared by religious and materlist/evolutionary thinkers which suggest that we're hard wired to have reverence for life and ensure reproduction and resist extinction, its one possible explanation. Its one I like anyway.
 
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