A creature running under that paradigm is abandoning their humanity. We can only exist as human beings with rights if we respect our fellows' human rights.
So if your daughter is kidnapped by the a Colombian Drug Cartel and you decided that since you're a badass, you're going to go save her. Then you kill 20 baddies that are themselves cutthroat murderers that would have undeniably killed a greater number of people. Can you really tell me that the ends wouldn't justify the means?
If MI-5 kills 4 terrorists which where preparing to bomb a bus station with hundreds if not thousands of people, they're in the wrong for not respecting the rights of the terrorists? Or would they be in the wrong for not protecting the citizens of the country they're supposed to be protecting?
The ends will always justify the means in the mind of the person doing the act. What makes the actions of one person (or government) right is that in the minds of other people the means are also justifiable.
If someone is willing to not respect my rights and kill me to steal my wallet, I'm willing to forgo their rights because lets me honest, the ends do justify the means if it benefits not only yourself, but the rest of the population.
I'd be totally justified in trying to save my daughter and nobody would be justified in stopping me. This is not a case of ends justifying the means because my opponents are all unjust. I am not sacrificing innocents to get her back. However, if innocents happened to be in the way, I'd have to make a choice in either abandoning my rights or not; the innocents would be entitled to retaliate.
In the anti-terrorism case, if the presumed terrorists were in fact innocents, then they (or their champions) would have a right to retaliate against the aggressors or against their commanders.
In our minds and to ourselves, we are always justified, but we can't justify ourselves from a moral standpoint, nor plead our case if the innocents have decided to retaliate.
Oh I agree. The moment you go on a killing rampage to rescue your daughter from the cartels, you justify other people taking action against you to protect themselves. The thing is, there needs to be someone that resigns their rights and does the right (so to speak) thing. Someone needs to keep the terrorists at bay. Someone needs to protect the citizens from the gangs. Morally objectionable? Maybe. In the eyes of a few. In the eyes of the rest, these people are heroes.
What do you mean by that? Why is it so? What is a "right", in fact?
You've just offered another slogan. You're going to have to work harder than that if you want to argue against consequentialism --- the idea that what matters are the consequences of each action, not the principles it contravenes.
What ends are good in consequentialism? De-ontological morals to one degree or another are necessary to avoid moral relativism. If you agree moral relativism is bad, you agree consequentialism is bad.
Ultimately consequentialism requires you to adopt some set of moral axioms that define what ends are good. If you adopt zero such axioms, then you're back at nihilism. Once you have your minimal set of axioms, you then reason about consequences of the action to try to figure out its likely effects on net utility.
Most consequentialists adopt a "golden rule" sort of axiom about minimising suffering. An alternate formulation is about maximising agents' preferences. Generally people's intuitions about morality are broadly similar, so the challenge is to handle the corner cases most efficiently. But the basic moral relativism problems don't occur for consequentialists.
It's difficult to arrive at a plausible set of moral axioms that are going to lead you to positions such as "homosexuality is unethical", "might is right", or "slavery is ethically neutral". Very few consequentialists arrive at these positions, as far as I'm aware. Some consequentialists do end up back at what are essentially deontoligical positions, however, by re-deriving them consequentially. They argue that it's ineffective to try to reason ethically on a case-by-case basis. I think this is an empirical question about what is practical for most humans.
I do not understand how that follows. It's entirely possible to imagine a world in which a god/God judges you by the results of your actions instead of your intentions. (E.g. a woman may have been raped, but pre-marital sex still condemns her to Hell; or, perhaps less unfairly, you're not "saved through faith alone" but rather judged by how many people you've positively affected.)
That's deontological, i.e. certain events have inherent value, instead of being judged by their effects. Deontological morality means the effects chain is terminated. Otherwise there is no termination and no value ascribed to an action.
[I'm not too familiar with the (English) vocabulary used in these discussions, so I'll try to expand my previous comment a little and lay off the jargon. If you still disagree, can you point out where?]
> If you agree moral relativism is bad, you agree consequentialism is bad.
I disagreed with this statement.
My examples were meant to say: it's possible to have "god-given morals" (and thus no "moral relativism") while still judging acts by their consequences ("consequentialism").
In such a universe, wearing a sexy dress into a bad neighborhood may be morally fine (act ok), but if this causes you to get raped (pre-marital sex bad) you're still going straight to Hell (so act ok, results bad -> bad). Conversely, if I'd kill my neighbour for no good reason (act bad), and my neighbour happened to be 1920's Hitler (results good), I will be rewarded richly (so act bad, results good -> good).
Some disclaimers: this may be based on a misunderstanding of the words you used; I don't think the universe I sketched is the universe in which we live; and of course rape is not the victim's fault, and not wearing sexy dresses may not be enough to prevent it from happening (for the sake of discussion, though, in this particular instance it wouldn't have happened if the victim had worn a more conservative garment instead.)
In my opinion this hypothetical God that judges actions based on their consequences simply allows you to derive a consequentialist position in a deontological framework.
In consequentialism, you adopt some set of moral axioms, and say "this is how I'm going to define what worlds are good and bad, and I'm going to judge actions according to the worlds they are likely to create". This deontological version is instead saying, "I'm going to imagine there's a god, who reasons morally as follows...", and then saying the god reasons consequentially.
I think this derivation path does get you away from the "moral relativism" that's at the bedrock of a consequentialist position --- you've got to adopt some axioms. But it only does this by imagineering this "god" that behaves in an arbitrary way. All this is doing is pretending that the axiom you desire is a property of the universe you inhabit, rather than a property of you.
Deontological ethics are hierarchical. Greater goods take precedence over lesser goods. But, killing someone for a greater good doesn't making killing good, i.e. it isn't justified.
Huh. By the sound of it, they take the stance that violence against non-violence is a flat-out unjustifiable act, regardless of the consequences.
But on those grounds, can't you say the trolley is a violent enemy that must be stopped, so violent acts are justifiable? You certainly can't expect to cause violence only to the enemy, especially if you consider psychological violence to be violence (and why wouldn't it be? Torture is torture.). By causing violence only to the enemy, you may be causing psychological violence to any who happen to in the blast radius / capable of witnessing your violence, thus you are causing violence to them.
So it's a moral goal for a flawless world with no-one else in it. Of course, if the whole world were like this, then pushing someone in front of the trolley would be justifiable, because they would have not been justified in not throwing themselves in front of such a violent enemy, if they were aware and able to do so.
I don't buy it. Ideals are worthless if they can only exist in an impossible world.
There's the rub though. How do you respect others' rights? Would enslaving 10 people to set 100 free not be respecting others' rights (at least in the long term)? Now you can argue whether or not that's the right way to respect others' rights, but it's respecting the rights of others nonetheless.
Rights are characters of the individual, even if the individual lives in a social context. So those 10 have as much rights as those 100. Sacrificing the few for the sake of the many means you yourself are never justifiably safe, you can always be in the minority.
Sure. But you have to sacrifice someone's rights, don't you? By not enslaving those 10 people, you're sacrificing the rights of those 100 people. And while that doesn't mean that you're ever safe, it does guarantee that you have the highest chance of being safe.
When you are acting like that, you are not sacrificing other people's rights, but your own. That is, you are opening yourself up for rightful retaliation from the victims, or whoever might want to champion their cause (friends, families etc). You may be able to physically defend yourself, but you won't have moral grounds to plead your case. In other words, if you act like an animal, you can be treated as such.
> We can only exist as human beings with rights if we respect our fellows' human rights.
What are said rights?
For example, do I have a right to food? If so, who is obligated to provide it? ("govt" isn't an answer.)
How about a right to live in the southwest US? (I may require a dry climate for health reasons.) How about with an ocean view for my piece of mind? How about a right to live near people who I like or away from folks whom I don't like?
