[quote]Phaedon wrote...
[quote]Arkitekt wrote...
I'm not speaking about your own Shepard, but the moral scent of almost all of paragon choices in Shep. A lot of them are like "I know this may cause troubles, but I feel it's the right thing to do despite its consequences, so I'll do it".[/quote]
You are in a way. Choices matter in the context of the motive of the person who picks them. If one of my Shepards can see them in a non-deontological manner, so can everyone else.
[quote]Or your calculation is completely bunk and terrible, which is the correct answer. You are merely saying that because the world in the fifties was going more or less ok, with great growth numbers, etc., then the world war two was fine. And then you say that the consequentialist thought *should* think this way, or else it isn't so.
However, all this reasoning is pure crap, since you are conveniently forgetting the 60 million people who died, and the hundreds of million who suffered terrible losses in their families, traumatic body injuries, cities completely destroyed, whole ethnic groups almost genocided. This is *not* a good consequence, and you just wipe it out under the carpet and proclaim that the nice growth figure that you can observe in the fifties makes it all okay.
To do this, you fudge your numbers in order to get the result you want. That's why it is a strawman.[/quote]
Yeah, except that I don't support my hypothetical calculation at all, and I'd ask you to stop suggesting that I am, immediately. [/quote]
Easy, Phaedon, I didn't say you suggested it, I said you suggested *others should suggest* if their methodologies were correct. And it's this connection which is bunk, and for the reasons I've stated.
[quote]You'll find that several historians support that the American economy was kickstarted during WW2. Heck, women actually entered the workforce. Do you doubt for a second that someone could go ahead and suggest that the extension of the great depression and keeping the women out of the workforce would be worse in its long-term consequences than WW2?[/quote]
Yeah, and that someone would fail miserably at understanding the butterflies involved...
Even still, the sheer amount of negative stuff is so large in WW2, that even a good economy kicker cannot ever be proclaimed to be sufficiently good that erases all the other stuff. OTOH, it's also not surprising that *some* good things may have come out of WW2.
[quote]Not a single ideologist but a consequentialist would argue, at that point, that WW2 was a good thing, and that its instigators should be rewarded. You consider this "asinine". Well, so do I. But here's what I find even more asinine:[/quote]
What I find asinine in here is that you are still arguing that a "consequentialist" would reward the ****s, without any evidence whatsoever, but rather with some Glenn Beck style of connection here. No, obviously, a consequentialist would never reward a bad ideology, for that would have terrible consequences itself, which are even easy to foresee.
Damn, you make me defend a system of ethics that I don't even endorse! This only because of the really bad arguments you put out!
[quote]The everyday belief that the consequences of your actions matter more than your intent.
That if a childish joke or accident goes out of hand, the instigator in question, which could even be a small kid, would have to be treated like a criminal, and that they'd have to consider themselves as such as too.[/quote]
Yeah that's kind of vague. Give me a proper example. You should always be aware though that instigation is indeed a crime.
[quote]We are not talking about an "eye for an eye" relationship towards action and repercussion, we are talking about an "eye for a nail". Yes, that's what I find asinine, and this is why I can't help but wonder how you, an otherwise reasonable poster, can defend this.
[quote]Not really. One can say a certain consequentialism is "teleological", but I think that's butchering a word for no reason. Teleology deals more with the perceived notion that the world is logically directed towards somewhere for a reason, thus our ethics should be aligned with this vision of the world. It's a false perception, of course. Consequentialism is about you building out the outcome you want.[/quote]First off, teleology is probably one of the few ideas that has such a huge scope. Let's keep it to ethics. Consequentialism is connected to teleology, but as I mentioned earlier, in a very unteleological way. You'd be surprised how many teleologists of the past were the exact opposite of consequentialists.[/quote]
I wouldn't because I don't confuse the two at all, and I don't get it what you are trying to say here. What am I exactly "defending" in that quote that is in contradiction with your last sentence? Teleological arguments are, in my POV, always flawed because they assume that the universe has a well defined direction, meaning, reason, etc. It's a highly religious setting for morality. OTOH, consequentialism is a very mechanistic way of dealing with ethics. It's also obviously wrong, but not because of its "setting". I agree with its materialistic foundation. The problem lies, of course, with the huge distances between Physics and Ethics. The scope is so large and the facts and variables so infinite, that a competent account for all those things would be impossible to take on.
However, one can reach some insights from it. Like I said with the other poster (I'm terrible with names), you don't have to take it seriously, but you can nevertheless be slightly informed by it.
[quote]Consequentialism is about the consequence being the greatest factor when judging an action, no matter if you do so by yourself before taking it, or if you are judged by others for something you did, whether you intended to do so or not.[/quote]
Of course, "consequence" implies a time stamp. At which "move" are we to calculate the pros and cons? 4 moves ahead? 5? 6? 100? Consequentialism also has this enormous problem.
[quote]Having a set goal is not consequentialist. If you are going to connect it with anything it is...I don't know? Anti-nihilism? Though that's far from correct, too.[/quote]
Having a set goal is consequentialist, if by "goal" you equate it with "the greatest good". Since the definition of "the greatest good" is always subjective at its core, it is always dependent upon what you feel or think is the "greatest good". It makes no sense to strive for a sub-par "greatest good" in your ethics. You would always have the goal of the greatest good (such a thing just may not be exactly equal to other "greatest goods" that you may have heard or shared with the culture of your upbringing, etc.)
[quote]"No one saw" is definitely entering in a completely different branch of ethics, so let's not go there.
Yeah, sure, a bright consequentialist will be able to foresee some of the consequences. But a true consequentialist will go ahead and build the perfect world if s/he thinks that the "advantages" are more than the "disadvantages", even if that involves limiting the liberties of others.[/quote]
If we are to define liberty as a very big important factor in "the greatest good", then such a Xanatos Gambit would actually make it so that people would be more free, not less.
Mind you, I don't think such a gambit can even be reasonably discussed, it's obviously impossible to do. But if we think this carefully, we will find here the roots of theological defenses for the ghastly nature of their gods, with all the cruelty and pain and suffering we have to endure coming from a "loving god". Their defense will consist of a "Xanatos Gambit" in which we have to have faith that this world is the best possible one, and all those cruelties will have a very big pay off somewhere in the end, etc.
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