RE: Trolley Problem/Consistency in Ethics
January 25, 2018 at 11:15 am
(This post was last modified: January 25, 2018 at 11:48 am by The Grand Nudger.)
Why do you think consequentialism focuses on the immediate or the obvious? OBVS people do, but perhaps that;s why consequentialism is generally an institutional referent?
We can't, for example..watch a building burn with people inside and fail to call the fire department. Only a very bad person would do that. However...we don;t want private citizens running into burning buildings to save people.
rule - virtue - consequence.
We can expand upon that for a range of individuals and behavior, showing the relationship between each component and an individual and this forms the basis of all of the different ways we may view that person, their act, and what they do or don;t deserve on account of it. There may be no chasm between the three except insomuch as people insisting that the "right" system is one of them attempts to assert it. Consider how each component affects the other above. A good person who breaks that rule is no longer considered a good person. A bad person who makes that call is thought to have been a good person at least in that event. The good and heroic person who makes the call and then runs in to save people is praised..but also considered to be somewhat of a lucky idiot who might have just as easily contributed to the deaths of others or themselves...something we generally associate with bad people who don't follow the rules.
Quote:We might, on some exigent circumstance, choose to sacrifice the life of one in order to save five. But we wouldn't want people doing that at every opportunity, as that would quickly become intolerable.-that's consequentialism. The end of a society that isn't made intolerable justifies the means of allowing some people who we might be able to save to die. Even if we maintain that it's a virtue to be the kind of person who could/would save them. Even if we set a rule that says you can't, by and large, sit back and watch people die.
We can't, for example..watch a building burn with people inside and fail to call the fire department. Only a very bad person would do that. However...we don;t want private citizens running into burning buildings to save people.
rule - virtue - consequence.
We can expand upon that for a range of individuals and behavior, showing the relationship between each component and an individual and this forms the basis of all of the different ways we may view that person, their act, and what they do or don;t deserve on account of it. There may be no chasm between the three except insomuch as people insisting that the "right" system is one of them attempts to assert it. Consider how each component affects the other above. A good person who breaks that rule is no longer considered a good person. A bad person who makes that call is thought to have been a good person at least in that event. The good and heroic person who makes the call and then runs in to save people is praised..but also considered to be somewhat of a lucky idiot who might have just as easily contributed to the deaths of others or themselves...something we generally associate with bad people who don't follow the rules.
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