Ends justifying the means. Good or bad.
I have heard the phrase, "ends justifying the means" in contexts in which the means are questionable. Is there a clear line where the ends do justify the means in general?
Also lets consider an exaggerated situation where many innocent people must die in order to get a magic genie lamp. With it one can achieve any goal you want including restoring those that died to get the lamp in the first place making it as that no harm occured. But that is only if you succeed in getting it in the first place. So it's odds more than clear outcomes.
Also lets consider an exaggerated situation where many innocent people must die in order to get a magic genie lamp. With it one can achieve any goal you want including restoring those that died to get the lamp in the first place making it as that no harm occured. But that is only if you succeed in getting it in the first place. So it's odds more than clear outcomes.
Comments (65)
In the mind of the one decides to take a destructive action. Not because his back is against a wall, or his child is in immediate danger, and he's running out of options, but in cold daylight. A general, calculating how many dead soldiers will fill up the moat so that the rest of the army can cross. A municipal official defunding school lunches, in order to beef up the police force. A contractor, deciding to take shortcuts on waterproofing, to get his building finished before the refugees arrive. And heads of state, daily weighing the human cost/benefit ratio of economic/diplomatic/military responses.
Quoting TiredThinker
The functional element is always IF.
If the decision is based on sound enough intel, risk is minimized to the fullest possible extent, nothing unforeseen goes wrong and all the other participants behave as predicted, the outcome is good, and the decision appears justified.
Objectively, however, nothing is justified before the fact - only after. There are always unknown factors and quantities; unintended consequences and byproducts, including collateral damage that wasn't figured in. There are no ends. An episode is finished; a hurdle passed, a goal reached, a battle won, but the process continues. Every interim "end" is the result of the means used to achieve it: The means determine the ends.
1. Good means, good ends
2. Bad means, good ends
3. Good means, bad ends
4. Bad means, bad ends
:smile:
Quoting 180 Proof
5. Beanz Meanz Heinz
Private language? :chin:
Quite alright, ol' chap! Is anything amiss with my ordered list though?
But aren't the bad means bad ends in themselves? If I can save 100 lives by killing 1, that is good ends (saving 100 lives) with bad means (killing someone). But also the killing of that someone is a bad end in itself.
Quoting 180 Proof
The list speaks for itself.
In which case the question becomes "Am i justified to cause some ends (a,b,c) in order to get other ends (x,y,z)."
Well, you might wanna kill a certain Mr. X and it so happens that doing so saves a 100 people.
Rather I was arguing that killing Mr X is an end in itself. And the saving 100 people are also ends. They are all ends - even the means are ends. So you are just weighing up different ends based on some moral theory.
Yup, it depend then on intent.
The notion of ends and means depends on intent as mediated by causality. Your end: save a 100 people. Your means: kill 1 person. The goal (save 100) is achieved through a subgoal (kill 1).
Quid accidit?
2. Bad subgoals, good goals
3. Good subgoals, bad goals
According to your list, 2. is better than 3. Now let's flesh that out with a hypothetical example:
2. killing 500 (bad subgoal) to save 100 (good goal)
3. saving 500 (good subgoal) to kill 100 (bad goal)
Do you agree with the above order - that 2 is better that 3? Your list suggests the goal always carries more moral weight than the subgoal - why?
That formulation doesn't make sense to me.
There is a guy called Mark. Mark really really wants to save 100 people over there. That is his goal. in order to do that he has to kill 500 people, but oh well, he really wants to save those 100 people.
Mark is a 2. in the list kind of guy - his goal was good, his sub goal was bad.
There is also a guy named John. John really wants to kill 100 people over there. But in order to carry out that plan he must first save 500 lives.
John is a 3. in the list kind of guy - his goal was bad, but his subgoal was good.
Your list places Mark as morally better than John. Why? Your list places the goal as carrying more moral weight than the subgoal - why?
I could easily respond to that by saying ...
2. Kill 100 (bad subgoal) to save 500 (good goal)
3. Saving 100 (good subgoal) to kill 500 (bad goal)
... and asking which is better?
Quoting Agent Smith
In Mark and John's example, who is better?
At best your new example would show that the list is not fixed and is context specific.
The question doesn't make sense.
1. Good means, good ends
2. Bad means, good ends
3. Good means, bad ends
4. Bad means, bad ends
Mark killed 500 to save 100. John saved 500 to kill 100.
Since you just repeated your list, i assume that you are deferring to your list.
Mark is 2.
John is 3.
So I guess you would consider Mark as morally preferable to John. Do you agree?
I want to save 1 person - my daughter. That is my end.
To save her I need to kill 100 innocent people. That is my means.
This is number 2. in your list, yes or no? Good ends (save my daughter), bad means (kill 100). This is number 2.
I'll continue in the next post, but I thought I'll take it step by step to avoid confusion.
The point you're trying to make has utility monster undertones.
Your list suggests the goal carries more weight that the sub goal. My point is why? Most of your replies have been to repeat the list which doesn't help!
So is your list based on utility? If not what? Why are bad bad subgoals not as bad as bad goals? Does it matter if the goal or subgoal causes more harm?
The notion of ends justifying the means is incoherent (to me) without the end having more weightage than the means.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/777050
Well I gave a number of examples. John want to save one person - Mark. This is an end, do you agree?
To do so he kills 100, this is the means to his end, do you agree? Each time he kills someone, he says "for Mark!"
He now comes to you and wants your advice - does his means justify his end. What do you say?
:up: I know mon ami, it's just that in the real world, an omelette in the pan means a (hopefully) few, broken eggs.
Then we're off-topic, oui?
:up: Good exchange. What was your goal, if I may ask, mon ami?
C'est la vie, eh @schopenhauer1?
:ok:
It's an emotional one. He's not calculating costs or justifying means; he's just following paternal instinct.
100 what? Terrorists who were holding his son hostage? Soldiers, guarding a fortification in which his son was prisoner, possibly tortured? Innocent bystanders who just happen to be in the way?
Maybe.
If they're hostiles, yes; if they're bystanders, he says, "Sorry, I have no choice"
It's too late, John. You have done evil. Your son is worth no more to me, or to the world, than each one of those people you killed. NO - and more:
Each one of those people you killed has a father, brother, mother, wife, husband, son, daughter or comrade who now lives for revenge.... even if they have to fight their way through 100 strangers to get to you.
Yes I agree, and that is the point I was trying to make to the other poster. The means are themselves ends. The 100 people John killed are not merely means that he can pass through to his end. Each of those people are ends in themselves.
I think we are on the same page on this issue.
[quote=I. Kant]People are ends in themselves.[/quote]
Pretty much. People - also water buffalo and sunflowers - are ends in themselves as far as karma is concerned; to evolution, we are all either means or useless byproducts. But we don't just end when we die. Everything is interconnected, every act and event sets more acts and events in motion.
There is no end, until the universe shrivels up into a point of overheated nothing, at which time, I've been told, something begins.
An attempt at a resurrection of our discussion. I believe you're on the right track. Items 2 and 3 on my list are a bit off, but I tell myself all moral theories are ... a bit off and that makes me feel so much better. How would you have it be then? Should I swap 2 and 3?
Based on the context specific answer you may keep 2 and 3 in that order, or swap them.
I.E for some moral dilemmas the order will be 2, 3. For others it will be 3, 2. It depends on the specific situations.
In terms of the title of this thread, there is no general moral rule that the ends justify the means, nor that the ends do not justify the means. It depends on the specific means and specific ends for the specific context.
The difficulty arises when the ends and the means have opposite moral valence. This is precisely what ends justify the means is all about.
1. Bad means, good ends
1a. Kill 100 to save 500
1b. Kill 500 to save 100
2. Good means, bad ends
2a. Save 500 to kill 100
2b. Save 100 to kill 500
Morally speaking ...
i) 1a > 1b
ii) 1a = 2a
iii) 1a > 2b
iv) 1b < 2a
v) 1b = 2b
vi) 2a > 2b
In short
1a/2a > 1b/2b [depends on the context]
I foresee hundreds of mass murderers rushing about with cries of "for Matthew", "for Luke", "for John", "for Adolf", on their lips, and very few survivors.
The difficulty is that ends and means are only separable in the limited mental intentionality of the individual. So what purports to be a pragmatic approach to morality falls at the first hurdle. For in reality saving and killing are interchangeable as ends and means. One might say that there are no ends, because the end one has in mind, if achieved, becomes the background means to some new end, just every effect becomes a cause of a new effect.
The counterpoint to the cliche of @TiredThinker's title, "The end justifies the means", is "The road to hell is paved with good intentions." The two balance out exactly, with no residue of wisdom remaining, as it commonly the case with folk sayings.
So if the end is to end all wars, that justifies the war to end all wars? This was the thinking that 'justified' the most pointless war of all time, WW1. This is the thinking that justifies state torture in America today. It is always a false claim because it is only ever invoked to justify immorality. One Does not need to justify kindness with the intention to better another's life, but one needs to justify cruelty in some such way. The good needs no justification, but only the bad.
That is correct! I believe it's one major snag in the whole consequentialism project.
Quoting unenlightened
Indeed. They are not two categorically different things.
"Ends justifying the means" is only universally possible if we can universalize the ends as being good.
On a cosmic scale, we could think that destroying a city of millions to save the entire earth of billions is considered universally good. But what if humanity evolves into a galactic civilisation and our expansion kills off eco-systems and potentially trillions upon trillions of other beings that would have become the same or have their own worlds they try to save? In that case, wiping out humanity would be the means justifying a universalized good end for the entire galaxy.
The problem is not where to draw the line, the problem is to fundamentally understand whether or not the "ends" are actually good.
What is a good end? The means are meaningless if the end cannot be universalized as "good", and we are no way near being sentient enough to grasp that causality. We end up only operating on hope.
Perhaps we need to look at the issue from a relational point of view.
Everything is an end unto itself, but one end could be a means to another end.
You rang?
:lol: Only to inform you how right you are! I hope you weren't in the middle of something important. I'd hate to be a nuisance monsieur! Au revoir fellow traveller! Our non-grandchildren will not sing of our brave exploits! :lol:
We can regard our life as a uselessly disturbing episode in the blissful repose of nothingness.
-Schopenhauer
Quoting Agent Smith
This is true. Aggressive paternalism assumes life is good and necessary for someone else. It disregards suffering of another so that X goals are achieved. Indeed it is ends justifying means mentality and a deontological miscalculation.
Im rambling perhaps as I have no context for which I was called but the thread is about ends justifying the means so Im going with that.
Captain Leland Stottelmeyer:[hide=viewer discretion advised]To hell with this! I'm outta here![/hide]
Really, the answer to the question as to whether the ends justify the means is "It depends".