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A small circle: Does the end justify the means? |
Category: Diary 14 comments
5 Apr 2004 @ 18:06 by Aiden @69.33.46.10 : An old question 17 Jun 2006 @ 16:44 by Lukas Keagy @201.230.119.249 : speeding What about speeding iligaly to save a life? 17 Jun 2006 @ 16:45 by Daniel Grabthenles @201.230.119.249 : lying to NK what about lying to the North Korean government to avoid war? 17 Jun 2006 @ 16:46 by kristen valerie @201.230.119.249 : nothing hi 17 Jun 2006 @ 16:47 by Maria Frendor @201.230.119.249 : just a note how's it going 17 Jun 2006 @ 16:48 by name finder @201.230.119.249 : the verification Thank you your verification finder has great randome words 17 Jun 2006 @ 16:49 by k @201.230.119.249 : k k 17 Jun 2006 @ 16:49 by l @201.230.119.249 : l l 17 Jun 2006 @ 16:49 by g @201.230.119.249 : g g 17 Jun 2006 @ 16:50 by d @201.230.119.249 : d d 17 Jun 2006 @ 16:50 by v @201.230.119.249 : v v 17 Jun 2006 @ 20:37 by i2i : Moral Relativism: Various historical and cultural events and practices, including the Holocaust, Stalinism and communist atrocities of the 20th century, Apartheid in South Africa, genocide, unjust wars, genital mutilation, slavery, terrorism, Nazism, etc., present difficult problems for relativists. An observer in a particular time and place, depending on his outlook (e.g., culture, religion, background), might call something good that another observer in a particular time and place would call evil. Many people in other times and places thought slavery, for example, acceptable, even good; while many (though certainly not all) today view it as a great evil. Many writers and thinkers have held that one can justify any number of evils based on subjective or cultural preferences, and that morality requires some universal standard against which to measure ethical judgments. link Anyway, Lukas, do you really believe that "speeding illegaly to save a life" compares with either this, Noble Lies?, or that, Did Claremont professor fake anti-Semitism against herself? 16 Nov 2007 @ 17:51 by tlingel : Ethics 101 Ask Philosophers ;-) The question is a popular one in high school. One would have expected that Claremont Professor to known better - don't they teach Philosophy in College anymore? The question does come up, now and again, here, under one form or another. This one is dated November 2005: Dear Scholars: At what point can the end ever justify the means? I am particularly interested in your response in the context of criminal justice. For example, is it ever acceptable for a police officer to perjure himself/herself to ensure a conviction of a defendant he/she knows to be guilty? Pete C. I liked the way this one was presented as it offers a context. Contexts help, even (or, perhaps, especially) when it comes to answering abstract questions. Whether we know it or not, we all abide to one degree or another by our philosophies, some mistaken, some far reaching. Philosophy is fun, Philosophy is powerful - It comes heavy with consequences (like the Philosophy that resulted in thousands of troops being flied to Iraq). Ethics is one of the three main branches of Philosophy, the other two being Ontology and Epistemology. Generally speaking, Ethics is a subpart of axiology, that is, the answer to the question: "How do I make judgments?", whether ethical, aesthetic, or otherwise. It asks such questions as "How should I act?", "What is the proper way for people to behave?", or, for that matter, "Is there a proper way to behave?" and "Should I care?", Etc. While attempting to provide an answer to such questions, the Philosophy student is cautioned that there is usually no "right" answer per se in Philosophy. (There are bad answers to philosophical questions, there are also many different good answers.) Anyway, here was Jyl Gentzler's take on the the question: What else could justify the means other than the end? The question, though, is what end we should have in view. In the case that you imagine, it seems that the relevant end is getting a guilty criminal in jail. Let's assume for the sake of this discussion that we have no reason to doubt that such an end would be a good thing. Let's assume that the person is truly guilty of a violent and unprovoked crime and that he's very likely to continue his life of violence if left unchecked. We then weigh the good end of preventing further violence against the bad means of lying and it looks like, on balance, the goodness of the end outweighs the badness of the means. Not only, it seems, are we permitted to lie; in fact, we're morally obligated to do so. The problem with this line of reasoning is that it doesn't take into account all of the relevant ends. In this context, when we are considering the ends, we must also consider the ends of the entire criminal justice system- namely, to protect the interests of all citizens, not only the interests of victims or potential victims of crimes, but also the interests of the accused. It's very important to all of us that we have a system in place that minimizes the chances of being wrongly accused and convicted for a crime. We need to feel confident that we ourselves will not be mistakenly convicted, that our friends and family will not be mistakenly convicted, and that the truly dangerous, rather than the mistakenly convicted, will be stopped. To achieve this end, we agree to put certain rules into place which constrain the ability of any one of us to make decisions on the basis of a short-term cost-benefit analysis. It seems that overall and in the long run, we're more likely to learn who has committed what crime if all of the witnesses are speaking the truth rather than deciding on their own whether the wrongness of deceit is outweighed by the benefits gained from conviction. For this reason, we put a rule against perjury in place and we back up that rule with a threat of punishment. An interesting question is whether it is ever rational for any of us to consider ourselves exceptions to rules that we ourselves endorse. Jyl Gentzler teaches at Amherst College. Before coming to Amherst, she studied at Bryn Mawr and Cornell. Currently, she's working on an assessment of the main argument of Plato's Republic, tentatively entitled Defending Justice. 14 Jan 2008 @ 02:56 by i2i : Context Excellent analysis. Thank you. More specifically, the title of the post is a not too subtle reference to Machiavelli (as strongly hinted by the picture.) In that context the question was a direct allusion to The Prince, whose most relevant passage I'll post here for reference: "Everyone understands how praiseworthy it is for a prince to remain true to his word and to live with complete integrity without any scheming. However, we've seen through experience how many princes in our time have achieved great things who have little cared about keeping their word and have shrewdly known the skill of tricking the minds of men; these princes have overcome those whose actions were founded on honesty and integrity. (...) Having good qualities and always practicing them is harmful, while appearing to practice them is useful. It's good to appear to be pious, faithful, humane, honest, and religious, and it's good to be all those things; but as long as one keeps in mind that when the need arises you can and will change into the opposite. It needs to be understood that a prince, and especially a prince recently installed, cannot observe all those qualities which make men good, and it is often necessary in order to preserve the state to act contrary to faity, contrary to mercy, contrary to humaneness, and contrary to religion. And therefore he needs a spririt disposed to follow wherever the winds of fortune and the variability of affairs leads him. As I said above, it's necessary that he not depart from right but that he follow evil. (...) In actions of all men, especially princes, where there is no recourse to justice, THE END IS ALL THAT COUNTS [emphasis mine]. A prince should only be concerned with conquering or maintaining a state, FOR THE MEANS WILL ALWAYS BE JUDGED TO BE HONORABLE AND PRAISEWORTHY [emphasis mine] by each and every person, because the masses always follow appearances and the outcomes of affairs, and the world is nothing other than the masses. The few do not find a place wherever the masses are supported." ----Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince (1532 CE) Quidnovi has a couple of related entries on a very similar topic: here (The Anti-Machiavel) and here (Noble Lies?). Other entries in Diary 13 Jun 2006 @ 23:54: The Final Frontier? 4 Mar 2006 @ 07:17: The Age of disinformation 20 Feb 2006 @ 08:21: Political Fiction---or is it? 10 Nov 2004 @ 03:22: "Family Values" 18 Oct 2004 @ 21:58: One Nation Under God 23 Aug 2004 @ 01:24: The Planet is Fine... 27 Apr 2004 @ 15:23: 54% 24 Apr 2004 @ 14:32: The Schmürz 20 Sep 2003 @ 15:42: The American Way 18 Sep 2002 @ 12:52: Where is Away?
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5 Apr 2004 @ 16:54, by D