Do the Ends justify the Means?

@Dustin: Nice post, and I’m sure that your professor was well-pleased with your paper. but Kant didn’t make direct claims as to what moral right and wrong were. His Grounding for a Metaphysics of Morals only sought to demonstrate that ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ are constructs determinable. For him, an action isn’t wrong simply because someone has wrong intention; an action has moral worth if it is made in a manner inconsistent with an intent that correlates with a subtle law (which to his credit he did NOT attempt to translate into concrete terms). Only if an action has moral worth can it be appropriately judged as ‘right’ or ‘wrong,’ which again are not given finite distinctions in Kant’s writing. That he sidestepped this bullet is telling of just how bright the man truly was. Admittedly it smacks of a neo-Platonic and relativistic notion of those labels which was decades ahead of its time (enter: phenomenology).
That said, Kant is still by my reading a Deontologist. What makes Kant a Deontologist is not that he gives a strict formula for determining ‘right’ and ‘wrong.’ It is that he states that there is a universally intuitable thread which determines moral worth, making ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ actual and universal constructs of our categorically judging sensibilities.

Would a lie ever really save 100 lives? Is lying universally wrong? Is the preservation of human life universally right? My answer: We’ll find out what I’d do if this ever happens to me. I’ll make a post and everything. :)

@Remedium… awesome response, and great insight towards Kant. It’s hard to find people who have pushed through his writings.

You mentioned, “Kant didn’t make direct claims as to what moral right and wrong were.” He certainly avoided objective definitions of right and wrong, but he implied moral behavior with subjective words like ‘ought’ and ‘will’. He formed a correlation between, the way man “ought” to act, and, their will that their actions should become a universal law. I think that with the word “ought” Kant implies, albeit between the lines, right and wrong behavior. But this is the only way to write an ethical treatise that encompasses the entirety of ethical scenarios. All ethical scenarios are extremely complex and the only expert capable of perfect judgment is the one making the decision; that is the genius behind the categorical imperative… it forces a mutation of the golden rule upon all individuals and puts in their hands the future of humanity. It takes into consideration certain situations where the golden rule may be impractical….. I’m rambling now and I’ve completely forgot where this was going, sorry, I fear I’ve made no point at all, haha.

@Remedium

I just went back and read some of the earlier posts you made, I had no idea you had already brought up Kant. I way behind in this debate

“Of course, my reading of Kant adheres less rigidly to his interpreters’ views on his writing. Following an individual’s categorical imperative, acting in a way consistent with a person’s nature, is what creates morally worthy action.”

Awesome!… it seems as if everyone, including my philosophy teacher, takes such a simplistic view on Kant’s imperative. I completely agree with your interpretation.

@Sean

“Now, think for a minute what saying “The ends DO NOT justify the means” actually implies. Is it okay to lead a terrorist to believe he’ talking to a fellow terrorist when in reality he’s talking to a cop. Not if the ends don’t justify the means. Lying to someone is a bad thing to do. That’s a little facetious on my part, but I think it still makes my point. People always use the extreme to explain a philosophical argument. What about the common and mundane. If the ends do not justify the means, then we have to count on all the people of the world to be nice. And that’s something you can’t count on.”

No one is defending whether lying is always a bad thing… yeah certainly there are times when it would be foolish to tell the truth. Lets say I am hiding jews in my closet and Nazi’s come in… Yeah I’ll lie.

But, this doesn’t necessarily mean that I am justifying lying by the end result. I am justifying lying, in this scenario, with my motive and intent. The problem with believing the end justifies the means is that it gives credit and moral justification for variables completely out of our control… what I mean by that is this: let’s say, in my previous example, the Nazi’s come in a find the Jews despite my lie. If I need certain ends to justify myself, I now lied to no benefit at all; my lie was in vain, it was not justified by the ends. Does this unfortunate end have any effect whatsoever on the action of the initial lie. I believe not. The Motive/Intent justifies the means, not the end.

One more example. Let’s say, after dropping both atomic bombs on Japan, they still refused to surrender and we were forced to invade the mainland with enormous casualties… Would the bombs have seemed as justified? All of the innocent people would have died for nothing… could we then justify our action even though the war continued and we saved no life.

Sometimes the means appear to justify the end, and sometimes it does not. I personally hold all human life at the highest value, and would have a difficult time agreeing to kill anyone.

This very type of decision is made often without notice or chance for debate.

For example: Genetically modified food has saved thousands from starvation; its disease resistant grows in multiple climates, and in some cases it has its own insecticide engineered into its DNA.

This is a good thing right? It’s completely safe; the FDA doesn’t require food manufacturers to list any genetically modified food on nutrition labels.

Only a few people have died from severe allergic reactions caused by GM corn, and just think of all the countries we can feed who can’t grow enough food, that is if GM food wasn’t banned in most other countries.

This is a very difficult topic to just say yes or no to. I am glad that the Universe will unfold exactly how it should, without needing my opinion.

@Jordan,

I didn’t mean to imply that you made an error… many of the greatest philosophers and politicians have said the same thing you have. Just defending the other side.

The poll is a great idea and I think it is fine as it is. This is an issue that can break off on too many tangents; trying to have an answer choice for every opinion would be overwhelming. I like the bluntness of the poll question; it forces people think through all aspects of the issue.

i just wanted to say that the number of time godwin’s law applies to this discussion is almost hilarious.

@Jonas,

Thanks for the response. I’ve read through your post a few times. It took me a while to discover the point at which we disagree.

“First, we have to define morality.”
Defining morality isn’t exactly a straightforward endeavor, especially when religion is involved. Before one can hope to define morality, one has to define what is good (and this is extremely subjective when gods and prophets are involved)… am I wrong? Fortunately though, I seem to agree with you and Sam Harris (and Aristotle) about what good is: well-being (ie happiness). And thus we have saved a lengthy argument. So, we both believe that morality is the study of well-being/happiness… If I’m wrong thus far, let me know.

From here you said, “The goal (good morality) is always to reduce suffering and increase well-being, and there are right and wrong ways to do this, even if we don’t know what they are.” This is the point where our opinions diverge… and I’m not saying your wrong, just pinpointing areas of disagreement so that they can be focused on. I agree with you that the goal (good morality) is always to increase well-being; I don’t believe, though, that reducing suffering is necessarily going to yield happiness. In my opinion, happiness and well-being are states of mind, independent of suffering altogether. Suffering is inevitable. I find it difficult to link ‘good morality’ with the reduction of suffering. Without acceptance of the ubiquity of suffering, hedonism seems the best course towards happiness.

Maybe I’m getting caught up in minutia, but I think we are like-minded, only, the tiniest of details are leading us to different conclusions. The reason I say this is because, despite our differences, I agree with your final example. You stated that killing 1 person to save 10 is not necessarily always right/good/moral. I agree!, but apparently for different reasons. You reason that, “the question is not whether or not we should hold people responsible for their actions, it is whether the action can be deemed “right” if the outcome is better than the alternative.” I strongly disagree. I believe that morality must be aimed towards the individual and his/her action; the individual must be held accountable for what he knows in any given situation (if I don’t know that I’m killing Hitler, than I’m nothing but a murderer). The alternative yields a detached humanity that is only justified by quantified unknowable reactions.

After reviewing this I had a thought. I think our differences come from the fact that I am focusing on micro-morality (individual) and you on macro-morality (political). After thinking a bit, I agree that a political system needs to be centered around utilitarian philosophy (and a system can only be judged by its outcome, an individual can only be judged by his actions). A good political system must yield positive ends; but, with regards to punitive matters and individual liberty, everyone must be judged according to their action and intent.

Jonas, what do you think of this for a unifying thesis! The moral value of anthropological governing systems must be judged according to the ends they yield; inversely, judgment of the philosophical morality of residing citizens therein, must be confined to their respective actions and sphere of knowledge.
(haha, this sounds astoundingly pretentious huh)

@Dustin
Nice attempt at a unifying theory. You took the best bits from both the deontological and utilitarian camps, though I would still say that the statement is still clunky and suffers from the inability of thinking agents to know ahead of time just what ends will be yielded by a system. That’s where intentionality comes in, no doubt, but this still seems dissatisfying to me; if, by attempting to brainwash the world into believing something to be the truth- say, 2+2=5- for my own selfish motives I should inadvertently raise the standards of education the world over. The morality of this action is exceedingly dubious. Normative laws, it seems, are difficult to apply unless they allow for dynamic circumstances.

@Jona
The problem with defining morality according to a standard of well-being and happiness is precisely the problem with defining well-being and happiness. What are they? Do they entail the same thing in the minds of all people? And do all conscious things deserve those things? If, in this world, such a law is taken and applied universally, not only is there immediate hypocrisy, since to sustain the lives of each and every human conscious thing requires resources and thereby a strain to be placed upon other conscious beings (plants, animals) which are commonly raised in camps to support the growing demand, but eventually, if human beings are engineered to live longer, to be able to reproduce longer, by prioritizing human happiness universally we end up continually modifying the systems of our planet such that the energy not bound up in human sentient organisms, of whom there will become increasingly more and more, has fewer and fewer places it can go upon re-entry into the earth at death (longest. sentence. ever). This brings about self-inflicted destruction in the long term, if indeed teh earth’s infinity of resources becomes smaller than the infinity of consumptive human cells-o-perception. And what of the problems people experience with increased life expectancy? Eating food born of suffering? Eating meals without diversity? It seems to me that ‘happiness’ and ‘well-being,’ though it looks swell on paper, are just too vague and inevitably a human-preferencing system of morality emerges- who would honestly save a cat before another person if faced with a burning house (in Nazi Germany, for the hell of it) scenario? And by preferencing human beings, if we are to be egalitarian, we perform an action which in the short-term seems moral but which will likely have long-term repercussions that would challenge the perceived morality of that action. What a lively can of worms this is.

@Dustin — I know man, I’m saying that you got me! I hadn’t considered it in the way the you put it. Thanks for the mind-expansion

Not sure if anyone else said this but..

the answer is dependand on the means and the end. I can ruin anyone who voted “yes” with my following words, I remember it from somewhere a while ago.

3 men are ill in hositpal, all of them have a failing organ each. There is a man in the waiting room whos a match for all three men. Would you take that mans organs to save the three ill men?

Of course you wouldn’t. Anyone who said anything other than “answer is dependable on ends and means” is a little off in my opinion. Some case it would be justified, in others it wouldn’t.

@Jonas
I’m intrigued. You must have some personal insight into the phenomenological experiences of non-human life forms to make such claims. It has been suggested by empirical testing that plants are not only conscious of their surroundings but that they communicate with other plants; they have allies as well as enemies, and they react accordingly to each. Is this not some level of consciousness, to recognize an ‘ego’ and an ‘alter ego?’ Other creatures follow suit. What’s more, though well-being and happiness may be measurable states of the brain (though I’m not entirely sure how all variables are accounted for), what conditions those states is not in all cases the same. We can assume that some hierarchy of needs (sans Maslow) had ought be met before these states may be attained, but that may be making too much assumption; the thing a being needs to experience such states is simply a body-mind which is working and ideally un-tampered with. When one plays havoc with the body-mind or kills the organism completely, that being is incapable of experiencing those things as such. Furthermore, any decision made which will conceivably detract from that experiencing of well-being or happiness in the long term would have moral implications. What I see in this equation is an attempt at quantifying well-being, happiness, and valuing axiomatically their worth as concerns other beings which aren’t human, of whose experience-unto-themselves we can say startlingly little and yet about which we can be so ready to make definite claims.
Perhaps when there is a concrete definition for consciousness I may be willing to concede the point, but as it stands now it seems to me that murder is both morally wrong and at the same time is at present necessary for the sustaining of human life. That’s not to say that sustaining human life is wrong. I’m not going to starve myself on behalf of another sentient life form, but I will treat the steps necessary for sustaining myself with the utmost reverence and think critically about what is being said any time someone bandies about the terms ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ as necessary opposites in a totally objective sense.
I’ll check out the book you mentioned when I get the chance. Thanks for the discussion. :)