Ends Never Justify Means?

[BluffTHIS!]

[ QUOTE ]
"But that still doesn't make the criminal not guilty, just not as deserving of the same punishment as another person who commits the same act without any mitigating factors."

Disagree. Stealing your car to save 1000 lives is simply not a crime at all. In fact NOT stealing it would be the crime. You and chez fight hard agaisnst this obvious fact because you are worried about a slippery slope. But slippery slope arguments should not be used for slam dunk cases.

[/ QUOTE ]


To the contrary. Slippery slope arguments are valid and explore the logical end of small wrong actions which can be much bigger and worse actions. Now naturally any person would see the difference between stealing a car to save 1000 lives and killing a person to steal a candy bar. But the person who would do the latter includes the former in his much wider range. So having the attitude the latter is OK will inevitably lead a small portion of people committing that to commit the latter, because of belief that one can commit a wrong to achieve a supposedly good end, when one could have refused to even have taken the devil's bargain to begin with.

And part of the slippery slope not often achnowledged is that there can be much greater, albeit unintended, consequences from a small wrong act. You go to steal the car to save the 1000 and in your getaway unwittingliy strike a pedestrian in the street and kill him. That wasn't your intent, but it was a result of a chain of actions that began with your theft.

[guesswest]

There's so much wrong with that statement I could ramble on forever, but I'll stick to one observation.

The slippery slope argument does not apply because your motive in stealing the car is not gaining possession of the car, your motive is saving 1000 people. If the slippery slope argument did somehow apply it'd mean you would compulsively escalate your behaviour to save 1500 people the next time, god forbid.

[BluffTHIS!]

Stealing is an objectively wrong act period. You are trying to justify it by your intent in committing that act when you have a different ultimate goal.

But people like you love situational and relativistic ethics so that you don't have to make the sacrifices required in order to be a moral person, nor to make judgements about the morality of acts committed by others as well as yourself. It would make you feel bad to do so. It's just a form of cowardice.

[Darryl_P]

[ QUOTE ]
So having the attitude the latter is OK will inevitably lead a small portion of people committing that to commit the latter, because of belief that one can commit a wrong to achieve a supposedly good end, when one could have refused to even have taken the devil's bargain to begin with.


[/ QUOTE ]

How about the attitude of "I will do a package of actions which include some bad and some good only if I'm sure the overall result is positive"?

Is there a danger of someone with this attitude eventually killing for a candy bar?

2nd question: Do you believe it's wrong to steal a car to save 1000 lives?

[BluffTHIS!]

You can't do wrong to do good. Any otherwise good result is tainted by the wrong actions, even if they are a small portion of such a group of actions.

And regarding the 2nd question and all the other similar types David has posited in recent threads, I turn my back and walk away from that false choice, i.e. no.

[Darryl_P]

[ QUOTE ]
You can't do wrong to do good. Any otherwise good result is tainted by the wrong actions, even if they are a small portion of such a group of actions.


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OK, so you say it's still wrong, fine. Moving away from Sklansky's simplified hypotheticals, do you believe real life sometimes puts us in situations in which we MUST do wrong and our only choice is to choose the least of the wrongs? Or is there ALWAYS a choice which is not wrong at all?

[David Sklansky]

"You go to steal the car to save the 1000 and in your getaway unwittingliy strike a pedestrian in the street and kill him. That wasn't your intent, but it was a result of a chain of actions that began with your theft."

It sounds like you actually wouldn't steal that car. Or at least condone the actions of someone who wouldn't. Do you realize that NO ONE on this forum agrees with you?

[andyfox]

"Stealing your car to save 1000 lives is simply not a crime at all. In fact NOT stealing it would be the crime."

Isn't this the argument in favor of affirmative action? That to do nothing in the face of black underachievement is to condone it and, in essence, a much greater injustice than the "crime" of privileging black applicants?

[Borodog]

[ QUOTE ]
"Stealing your car to save 1000 lives is simply not a crime at all. In fact NOT stealing it would be the crime."

Isn't this the argument in favor of affirmative action? That to do nothing in the face of black underachievement is to condone it and, in essence, a much greater injustice than the "crime" of privileging black applicants?

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't really see these arguments as analogous. Especially given that in affirmative action there is a one to one correspondance between individuals who are discriminated for and those who are discriminated against.

[joes28]

I believe, and I think society as a whole believes, that it is ok to sacrifice life if it either 1) increases the total amount of life, or 2) greatly enhances the quality of life.

This means that war is justifiable if in the end life (for society as a whole) is either greatly improved, or if life is actually saved. Making this judgement is very hard, and in my opinion in the past has been made to much in the favor of war.

This same reasoning applies to stem cell research/abortion. If taking these lives (which may not even be considered life, or could at least be agreed to be less valuable life because they have no connection to society) greatly enhances the quality of life for society as a whole or saves lives then this research should continue.