Posted: Feb 11, 2018 3:13 pm
Calilasseia wrote:Thomas Eshuis wrote:Ayn Marx wrote:Consequentialist ethics ( presumably not of the Randian kind?) carries with it one significant problem in common with many other ethical systems. To compare the validity of ethical systems some agreement has to be reached as to what exactly is a desirable outcome. Survival of the human race would appear to be an unarguably positive aim but there are many of a fundamentalist religious persuasion who hold earthly outcomes are insignificant in the light of some form of imagined ‘salvation after death’. It is almost impossible to have anything like a meaningful dialogue with these people. Such wouldn't matter apart from the terrifying fact they’re gaining ever more political power.
Agreed. My question to Cali was about supposedly doing away with consequentialist ethics and I'm wondering who suggested that.
I was somewhat concerned that your attack on the appeal to consequences fallacy might be misinterpreted by the usual suspects.
Of course, this doesn't apply when actions manifestly have consequences, but that's a distinction that the usual suspects, with their usual penchant for anti-rigour, either miss because their heads are full of bubble wrap, or will elide over duplicitously in order to push their various doctrinal agendas. Though one branch of consequentialist ethical thinking attempts to attribute consequences to principles, which potentially opens some cans of worms best left unopened by the unsophisticated.
