RE: Trolley Problem/Consistency in Ethics
January 25, 2018 at 12:04 pm
(This post was last modified: January 25, 2018 at 12:08 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
Put another way, the weakness you're referring to, in each case, isn't a weakness or inconsistency of any of those systems, but a weakness of the people who employ them.
It is only by, as jorg put it, focusing on the immediate and obvious that a person fails to consistently express consequentialist ethics.
It is only by a failure to accurately odentify virtue that a world full of hitlers consider themselves virtuous.
That;s why moral theorists invoke an ability that no person has to assess the system, rather the interactions of people trying to employ the system. Superationality, for example. That, not for nothing, is the virtue of deontology. We aren;t always able to perform this exhaustive moral calculus. The poor fuckers under the tolley would have been hit by now. So we make rules that express what we think would be the product of such a calculus. This is also why divine command fails - because theres no calculus, just a command, where the social contract succeeds..because there's an exhaustive calculus.
It is only by, as jorg put it, focusing on the immediate and obvious that a person fails to consistently express consequentialist ethics.
It is only by a failure to accurately odentify virtue that a world full of hitlers consider themselves virtuous.
That;s why moral theorists invoke an ability that no person has to assess the system, rather the interactions of people trying to employ the system. Superationality, for example. That, not for nothing, is the virtue of deontology. We aren;t always able to perform this exhaustive moral calculus. The poor fuckers under the tolley would have been hit by now. So we make rules that express what we think would be the product of such a calculus. This is also why divine command fails - because theres no calculus, just a command, where the social contract succeeds..because there's an exhaustive calculus.
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