/philosophy/ - Philosophy

Consequentialism is a bit problematic as you can never be certain as to the exact moral value of your actions except after you have done them; Intention is made worthless. I think this is good because the world we live in most of our direct actions (involving one step) usually succeed in their intentions. However, consequentialism would make no sense on levels where consequences are not easy to determine beforehand, such as politics or whole systems of ethics. Here we have the central problem of actual consequentialist ethics then: It would be best to have deontological ethics with the implicit notice that you can break the rules in extreme cases.

>>349

I think it's the 'easiest' ethical system to understand and to find somewhat appealing. But I also think it has a ton of problems. Though consequences aren't always easy to determine, they always result from actions and it makes sense to judge actions by them. Of course, this requires the assuption that every person is free to take any action (I don't mean in the 'free will' sense, but rather in the context of social possibility), is somewhat aware of their consequences and is willing to accept them. Different people might consider different outcomes worse than others so there's that as well to consider, since someone acting a certain way convinced it results in the best outcome possible can't be disuaded by a mere "no it's not". At this point, consequentialism takes a back seat to the assignment of attributes of good and bad to different circumstances or actions in the world. Consequentialism is a method, but it doesn't provide the direction (unless you are utilitarian or humanist or something like that in addition to being consequentialist). So the best way to put it is that consequentialism is incomplete and thus incompetent as an ethical system on its own.

>>354

There is no reason to accept the inverse of a majority. That's an additional clause which cannot be justified within the confines of consequentialism (arguably not even within utilitarianism).

>>360

>The Utilitarian conclusion must obviously be not to kill the redheads, since that leads to more suffering on net.

Death does not equal suffering. Even if you kill someone painfully, they, upon death, cease to be a factor and become neutral. If you don't kill them painfully, then you only lose potential (which can be both positive and negative). The only argument left is that people who are alive might suffer due to people dying. But aside from having little to do with 'utility', this argument is mute if there are more people who don't suffer due to these deaths. And that will always be the case, since most people aren't phazed by most other people's death - not even if they die horrificly. So it follows that if there is ANY kind of benefit to those people dying, the utilitarian is essentially obliged to axe them. Without appealing to the sanctity of life there is no way out of this.

>>361

>"You shouldn't follow the philosophy of doing whatever leads to the best consequences because that will lead to bad consequences!"

Realise that it's possible for "best consequences" to be bad for you. The natural cycle of life might benefit immensly when ridding itself of human life, yet we would hardly benefit from that. The poor might benefit hugely if the richest person on earth payed for all of them, but that person would not necessarily 'benefit' from that.

>>386

>I think it is correct to judge the moral worth of a human by their intentions rather than their outcomes as they have complete control of their intentions (though that is debatable).

Moral worth is a weird way to put it. Intentions precede actions, so it's still the actions that we judge. A murderer with begnin intentions we'll judge less harshly than a murderer with no good intentions whatsoever, but we'd still judge them harshly either way. Intention, even if it can be established clearly, is not a free pass. And if, as you say, control over intentions isn't a guarantee, then obviously it can't be 'correct' to judge people completely on the basis of it.

>>1638

>It would be best to have deontological ethics with the implicit notice that you can break the rules in extreme cases.

But what are extreme cases? What about them makes them exempt of the rules? This is yet another case where we feel inclined to give 'intuition' or something of the like a free pass. If we are going to do that, why even bother with deontological ethics in the first place?

Consequentialism a shit.

Deontology a shit.

Virtue ethics or GTFO.

why is happiness good? why is suffering bad?

>>1667

Why would you even need to ask such a contrarian question?

>>1669

Are you afraid to face the groundless position of your beliefs? This question demands that you define happiness, which few agree on, and to argue for why it is the good in itself which all that are rational should strive for.

Just as Nietzsche asked why we should value truth above other things, you should ask yourself why happiness should be valued over other things.

>>1670

Everything is ultimately groundless, see Münchhausen trilemma, I don't see how this makes a difference. Happiness is by definition the phenomenological state that any given person wants to experience (whether said happiness is reached by specific type of "suffering"/pain, BDSM or such) and suffering the opposite.

>>1673

why is it good? why is its opposite bad?

>>1674

You're still asking for justifications when none can be (ultimately) given. You can't ask yourself out of how the majority uses language.

there you have it. no justification can be given for utilitarian ethics.

>>4892

Yet again punishing the individual to prioritize order. It's dogmatic isn't it? (In a complicated real life situation with insufficent information "setting an example" might be a justifiable decisin though.)

>>1640

>Virtue ethics or GTFO.

my nigga

>>4892

>Accprding to Murphy's Law, I make a mistake.

you're saying this as if surgery is RNG based. It's not, if you make a mistake there was a reason it happened, and since you were the one to make the mistake it's your fault.

>Reply here

>Check thread

>Reply is gone

8chaaaaaaaan. Then again, it should reappear after I post this.

>>5089

>if you make a mistake there was a reason it happened, and since you were the one to make the mistake it's your fault.

True, but then what the fuck do you do after you acknowledge this?

Do you start firing every surgeon who makes a mistake? You realize that if you've ever been in a surgery, the chances are that either the nurses or the surgeon have made a mistake in the past?

>>5093

I was not arguing a moral standpoint. I was simply calling out something that wasn't right.

But I would say in response, since the doctor is trying to help the person, and because it is called a mistake, I would say you should not fire them unless it happens regularly. clearly a punishment should be enacted but really not much. In this case I'd say you'd only do a serious punishment if:

a)The surgeon had used a terrible method for doing something that wasn't guaranteed to work

b)It happens often enough to the point where you can say that the surgeon is probably just bad

c)It was on purpose

>>5100

>I was not arguing a moral standpoint. I was simply calling out something that wasn't right.

That's kind of the context of the thread, we are in reply to >>386 and >>431

I think we're going to be sticking this middle ground you've nailed right there.

And since I'm here I might make a few corrections slightly related to this, in >>4892 I meant to write "fire him" instead of "punish him", my post looks dumb now.

>>5101

I apologize, I definitely worded something wrong. I'm not making a moral claim here. The post wasnt supposed to imply that I knew of some "superior" moral path. It was definitely within the context of the thread just not directly.

>>363

>at this point you've gone so far beyond possible reality that you might as well be asking "do you want one purple polka dot dragon or two?"

I don't think anon was suggesting the impossible.

One of the problems with the argument that potential pleasure derived from living must necessarily outweigh the suffering caused by killing a minority is that what is meant by 'suffering' is very open for debate.

For instance, let's assume redheads can be killed off painlessly, and let's further assume that this can be done in such a way that the redheads themselves, on average, are not aware that it is happening until it is too late. Obviously, in a utilitarian utopia, these redhead haters would go for options like these to minimalise suffering even further. So in addition to the pleasure for the majority of not having to deal with redheads, the redheads themselves produce barely any suffering worth mentioning. And I don't think that the scenario of such a 'purge' is more absurd than a utilitarian utopia itself.

Your only way out is to argue with lost potential. But, firstly, it can't be guaranteed that, utilitarianistically speaking, a lived life will impact overall happiness in a positive way (let alone in a more positive way than the same life being lost), and, secondly, even if you could, utilitarianism would have to start considering every potential outcome of potential lives, which would make it even more impossible to discern what exactly the ideal outcome of a given action is in the first place.

How is the long-run factored into these conclusions? If killing off all minority populations to create an ethnically homogenized society resulted in the long-run nullification of ethnic conflict or power struggles, since this would essentially create an infinite amount of utility and happiness since it continues to generate results far into the future, is it therefore worth a single short-term avalanche of sorrow and a massive loss of utility?

>>1669

Very myopic of you to consider that position as solely contrarian. As a Stoicist, I have to ask you, what if suffering is required to build character or to do good in this world? If you abandon all principle in pursuit of your happiness, what separates you from canal hedonists?

>>4892

"Of course not"

You presume too much. If a doctor makes one mistake in their entire career, then yes there will be consequences for that mistake, but nothing compared to the consequences facing a doctor who makes frequent or aggravating mistakes.

The task we are given as humans in society is to attempt to foresee the consequences of our actions and to make our decisions based on the expected consequences. Someone's inevitably going to make a mistake because they failed to foresee the negative consequences of their choice. They will be punished in despite of their good intentions, because otherwise there would be no incentive to anticipate possible negative consequences.

>>5093

Do you start firing every surgeon who makes a mistake?

Of course not, the consequences of doing that would result in increased death and suffering. or are you forgetting that the punishment itself must also not increase suffering? Firing an incompetent doctor may very well save lives, just as firing a competent but unlucky doctor will result in more people dying.

Moral nihilism obtains. Consequentialism is in contradiction with the structure of logic.

Even if it wasn't, it's identical to both deontology and virtue ethics, because you can define the 'good' consequence however you like. Rather than material consequences, you can define it as following a rule, or as having embodied a virtue, and voila you've re-created the other systems within consequentialism.

Similarly, consequentialism as a deontology:

The rule is to obtain the best material end state.

Consequentialism as virtue ethics:

The virtue is to always seek the best material end state.

Naturally deontology and virtue ethics are also identical.

>>431

>Morally, you may have a point, but practically, one cannot simply wave away all ills committed with the best of intentions with a "poor feller didn't mean any harm."

Amazing true fact: people lie. If your intentions can excuse your actions, guess what people will do.

>>1667

Happiness is a sensation which is good by definition. If it's not good, it's not happiness.

Suffering is the set of sensations that are bad by definition. If it's not bad, it's not suffering. E.g. workout pain is not suffering. A good itch-scratching scratch is not suffering.

You can argue these things exist or don't exist, but definitions don't need justification. They just are. They just be.

>>5133

You can also argue that suffering is a pathway to happiness. Again, this is entirely orthogonal to justification.

>>4892

Depends what you want. What are doctors for in the first place?

They don't really exist for any intentional reason. There is demand for doctoring and doctors therefore get paid. The demand is largely arational or pre-rational, not reasoned. It's largely modernized witch-doctorism, as health outcomes rarely affect doctor prestige. In America, those who have more restricted access to all healthcare live longer, healthier lives. Consider dietician advice, which varies from counterproductive to very counterproductive. Yet demand still exists.

Frankly, if doctors aren't for making people healthy, who cares if they make mistakes? Punishing the doctor for not doing something that isn't even their job is petty sadism.