1381 réponses à ce sujet

[sponge56]

Saphra Deden wrote...


Yes it is. The ends are a variable.

Are the ends the fate of humanity or the fate of all species? Are the ends the legacy of my family or the wealth of my nation? Are the ends just me getting a top position in a company or are they me winning custody of my kids?

The way the example is used is through moral examples, eg) bomb German cities in WW2 in order to shorten the war, Or use the atom bomb to bring an end to the war.  The two latter examples don't count as they basicaly sound liek you playing dirty in order to strengthen your own personal power/position.  That isn't the 'greater good', its you being a jackass

[EmperorSahlertz]

Saphra Deden wrote...

EmperorSahlertz wrote...

I don't think he has the mental capacity to understand that the line "the end justfies the means" usually means that the ends has to benefit the majority and/or be for the greater good.

No, sweety. The ends can be whatever I want them to be and apply to whomever I want as well. It might only apply to me or it might apply to a nation or a galaxy. It can be anything.

I rest my case...

[someone else]

Saphra Deden wrote...

No, sweety. The ends can be whatever I want them to be and apply to whomever I want as well. It might only apply to me or it might apply to a nation or a galaxy. It can be anything.

utter nonesense - If I rape an 11yr old in the shower cause I want to get off on it, well, that's just my end and the means are justified. - and that's not a reductio ad absurbum strawman - your position justifies virtually any sort of need gratification, up to and including gross criminality

[someone else]

No, exactly NOT "Exactly" - Justification implies some sort of social/cultural moral or legal context -[note the root word justice] - simply taking or doing what you want regardless of consequences is simply animal or savage behavior -

It is true of course, that the victors write the history, but that is another matter.

[someone else]

Not true and only in retrospect - the maxim <the ends justify the means> points to the morality or lack thereof of present action - it is essentially an ethical proposition intended to guide, shape or evaluate moral decisions.

For example, had Saren been correct, then his ends – preservation of meaningful sapient life – could easily be argued to justify the facilitation of the Reaper invasion. And in his delusion he was correct - but as far as we know, getting reaperized destroys everything meaningful that makes sapient individual existence unique and evanenscent.  So since his ends were illusory and false, his actions fail to have justification, notwithstanding his own perception of reality and his conduct within it.

Modifié par someone else, 21 novembre 2011 - 09:40 .

[DonutsDealer]

The problem with the end justifies the means is that you can be in the harmed side. Sometimes it's necessary(an example is sacrificing a thousand so a million can live), but you should always try to find alternatives that harm the less number of people possible.

Saphra Deden wrote...

someone else wrote...

utter nonesense - If I rape an 11yr old in the shower cause I want to get off on it, well, that's just my end and the means are justified.

Exactly. Of-course others might disagree and I suspect they'll have the means to prosecute you.

If you think that way I'm sorry for you, but try to be in the situation of the harmed person. NOT always the end justifies the means.

[EmperorSahlertz]

Saphra Deden wrote...

someone else wrote...

utter nonesense - If I rape an 11yr old in the shower cause I want to get off on it, well, that's just my end and the means are justified.

Exactly. Of-course others might disagree and I suspect they'll have the means to prosecute you.

The whole POINT of "the end justifies the means" is that no one can argue against the end, sicne it was the best possible outcome ofa  scenario. They could however take offense at the means with which you achieved the outcome. But since such a good outcome was achieved, no one will really care about the means. THAT is the concept of "the end justifies the means". What you are describing is anarchy and/or egoistic survivalism.

[Kaiser Shepard]

sponge56 wrote...

Saphra Deden wrote...


Yes it is. The ends are a variable.

Are the ends the fate of humanity or the fate of all species? Are the ends the legacy of my family or the wealth of my nation? Are the ends just me getting a top position in a company or are they me winning custody of my kids?

The way the example is used is through moral examples, eg) bomb German cities in WW2 in order to shorten the war, Or use the atom bomb to bring an end to the war.  The two latter examples don't count as they basicaly sound liek you playing dirty in order to strengthen your own personal power/position.  That isn't the 'greater good', its you being a jackass

Are you talking about Saph's latter two examples or your own?

[EmperorSahlertz]

Saphra Deden wrote...

EmperorSahlertz wrote...


The whole POINT of "the end justifies the means" is that no one can argue against the end

No, that depends on who I feel it needs to be justified too. IE: my family or my nation or myself.

Again, no it doesn't. For your means to be justified it has to reach an end which will reach a wide consensus that it was the best. Wether you yourself only feel that you need to justify it to yourself, is completly irrelevant.

[someone else]

Saphra Deden wrote...

No, that depends on who I feel it needs to be justified too. IE: my family or my nation or myself.

that may give you some sense of complacency but as a moral position it is totally bankrupt - you seem uncharacteristically dense on this point - you simply cannot claim "justification" apart from a shared body of ethical or legal precepts, no more than I can declare myself King of Denmark and expect your loyalty and fealty (if I give you the tivoli gardens and a baronecy, maybe..huh?)

Your position is closer to "To the victor belong the spoils" than the ends justify the means.

...i must away.

Modifié par someone else, 21 novembre 2011 - 10:00 .

[sponge56]

Kaiser Shepard wrote...

Are you talking about Saph's latter two examples or your own?

Apologies, not clear.  I was talking about Saph's

[Kaiser Shepard]

sponge56 wrote...

Kaiser Shepard wrote...

Are you talking about Saph's latter two examples or your own?

Apologies, not clear.  I was talking about Saph's

Then what makes the examples you provided that much more ethical?

[someone else]

[quote]Saphra Deden wrote...

[/quote]

Everybody decides what is moral for themselves.

[/quote]

Patently they do not.  Religious adherents defer to canon law, and conform their actions (if they wanna go to the good place) regardless of personal or selfish motivation.   If people naturally made effective moral choices, the very idea of a moral dilemma would be moot.  

Your thesis would substitute pragmatism and expediency for ethical and legal standards - it is only in the extreme case that your position will be correct - for example,  the Romans burned carthage to the ground and plowed it under with salt to ensure nothing would ever again take root there.   Rome thereafter ruled North Africa for 4-500  more years, establishing the unquestioned rule of roman law, religion and customs - and within that system of value, the ends did indeed justify and even glorify the means.

In the ordinary case, such a complete conversion is not the rule,  which mirabile dictu, returns us to our thread.  If and only if Cerebrus succeeds in establishing a new galactic order dominated by a human-reaper hegemony, will it be logically consistent to argue that the EJTM (hope you don't mind the acronym - getting bored writing it out.

Should Cerebrus fail, the majority of its action will reap well-deserved approbrium, and the good it has done will be passed over (Mussolini famously got the trains to run on time, which is more than the social democrats have managed.)

Modifié par someone else, 21 novembre 2011 - 11:46 .

[sponge56]

Kaiser Shepard wrote...

[Then what makes the examples you provided that much more ethical?

It wasnt about being ethical, it was legitimate examples of 'the greater good'

[Arkitekt]

I like how this discussion was diverted to morality and now religion.

Of course, in this respect I side with Saphra a 100%. The only commenter here who has a clue on how fragile our moral systems really are, and how they ultimately rest in every one of us, not any unreal reference such as the naive "Greater good" (what the **** is that? Who gets to define it? You? Ah!) or any non-existent deity.

someone else also makes the correct questioning that if the ends do not measure up to what was promised, do the means still make any sense? Well, I think you are confused here. Because take for instance the Holocaust. If our "favorite" Chancellor of german's history had actually caused the extinction of a certain ethnic, was it "justified"? Well, Saphra has the correct answer here, it depends to whom you are justifying and what criteria you are demanding. If you think that destroying a whole ethnic is a good thing (Which is a proposition that would have to be shown independently), then it would probably have been justifiable. But no if you don't.

[Arkitekt]

someone else wrote...

Patently they do not.  Religious adherents defer to canon law, and conform their actions (if they wanna go to the good place) regardless of personal or selfish motivation. 

Way to go! I would ask you to reprhase that sentence without contradicting and embarrassing yourself in such short fashion as you did there, but then it wouldn't be as funny, and you actually saved me the trouble of pointing out the obvious truth that religious adherents who defer to this religious laws have their own selfish reasons to do so (not always about going to "the good place", but still)

[someone else]

But they do not regard themselves as acting selfishly, but rather in accordance with higher law, and since you are championing moral relativism, it is their perception, not yours, that counts.

And the point I wished to make, was that not everyone decides what is moral for themselves - some surrender individual choice in favor of a "recieved" morality - which they adopt wholesale, like Samara's 1500 sutras.

Finally, your elevation of self-interest to the level of morality entitles you to the Social Darwinism prize of the night.  No one has better regard for the invisible hand than I, but even Adam Smith did not regard it as a moral principle.

Modifié par someone else, 22 novembre 2011 - 12:16 .

[Arkitekt]

Ah, moral relativism is not about patting in the back of deluded people. People decide what they deem moral or not. They may even, gasp, decide to defer their ethical standards to someone else.

And these ethical standards may include extraordinary selflessness, etc. However, do not ilude yourself. The person who is championing these traits is doing this either because he loves it, or because he is searching for some epiphanic experience.

I do good things because I like to. I like seeing happy people around me, so I try to please them. I like the idea of people being happy, that gives me happiness. But because I act accordingly, it does not make such acts less "selfishly".

Even these moral lessons we get everyday, they come from "somewhere" around us, trying to "teach" everyone how nice the world would be without hatred, etc.,etc. This is because there are people who want such a world to come about. They want a world where they would be happy. All of us do. And so we engage in complex negociations of this. Because we all want slightly different things you see.

[Maxius Artucus]

Arkitekt wrote...

Ah, moral relativism is not about patting in the back of deluded people. People decide what they deem moral or not. They may even, gasp, decide to defer their ethical standards to someone else.

And these ethical standards may include extraordinary selflessness, etc. However, do not ilude yourself. The person who is championing these traits is doing this either because he loves it, or because he is searching for some epiphanic experience.

I do good things because I like to. I like seeing happy people around me, so I try to please them. I like the idea of people being happy, that gives me happiness. But because I act accordingly, it does not make such acts less "selfishly".

Even these moral lessons we get everyday, they come from "somewhere" around us, trying to "teach" everyone how nice the world would be without hatred, etc.,etc. This is because there are people who want such a world to come about. They want a world where they would be happy. All of us do. And so we engage in complex negociations of this. Because we all want slightly different things you see.

I don't think morality is a result of our own wants at all. Examples like men who support abortion and such, prove that this is not the case. It does, however, have to do with how we were raised and what we were told is right and wrong. Selfish acts are nothing more then selfish acts. Morals however are deeply embed reasons.

Modifié par Maxius Artucus, 22 novembre 2011 - 12:22 .

[Arkitekt]

someone else wrote...

Finally, your elevation of self-interest to the level of morality entitles you to the Social Darwinism prize of the night.  No one has better regard for the invisible hand than I, but even Adam Smith did not regard it as a moral principle.

You see? You hate Social Darwinism so you chastise me because you think I'm "championing" it. You are trying to put what you thought was my idea down, so your idea may have a better chance. This is what I am talking about. However, "Social Darwinism" has very little to do with Ethical standards, and much more with economics, I doubt that you know what you are talking about. If there was anything like "Moral Darwinism", it would be self-evidently true: morals are what the people that form a society decide they are, and if certain "morals" die (with generations, etc.), they are substituted by the new, more adaptable to the realities.

IOW, "self-interest" is not an ideology (I am no follower of Ayn Rand), but a reality of our beings. It's who we are. There is a difference between the desire and the outcome. The first is the source of our morals, the second are the morals themselves. You are confusing the two (and so did Ayn Rand, as a matter of fact).

[Arkitekt]

Maxius Artucus wrote...

I don't think morality is a result of our own wants at all. Examples like men who support abortion and such, prove that this is not the case.

Please, I hadn't laughed all day and now you come here to make me spill my evening milk!!

You say that men would never support abortion? Are you kidding me? Only a non father to say such silly things! 

Joking aside, there are plenty of good reasons why men do approve of abortion. Perhaps they love the idea of empowered women. People fall in love with ideas all the time.

It does, however, have to do with how we were raised and what we were told is right and wrong. Selfish acts are nothing more then selfish acts. Morals however are deeply embed reasons.

So it's turtles all the way down. While true, that does not explain anything.