Does the end justify the means? Please explain why.
depends on what the end is.
>>907619
So you are saying yes, essentially?
Yes, but you have to think about the second order effects of "bad" behavior. Turns out if the Prince backstabs his way to the crown, he creates a norm where backstabbing is normal and then he himself is killed.
>>907622
Yes
No
Maybe
>>907626
I don't know
>>907628
Can you repeat the question?
>>907617
Depends on the context.
>>907654
What do you mean?
Depends on how many people the ends benefits
Being a crony capitalist nepotist asshat as is common these days, where you step on large amounts of people to benefit only yourself and your family, im that scenario the ends doesnt justify the means.
If youre doing some unethical human experimentation on a handful to cure cancer worldwide? The ends justifies the means
>>907665
Do you people not understand the question? The question was never "does the end ALWAYS justify the means" its "does the end EVER justify the means?"
No. Take for example the Soviet Union, who industrialized at the expense of millions of dead peasants.
The ultimate goal, the end as it were, of industrialization in a command economy is to build an economy that can supply the people with the things that make them happy and productive. The murder of the people to achieve this goal is therefore a betrayal of the end itsslf.
>>907674
Markets are a superior alternative to command economics. Your point is moot.
>>907691
That is beside the point that the command economy did not achieve the goal it set for itself. Or rather it achieved it in such a way that it was meaningless. Ice cream makers are useless for peasants who are starving.
I agree that market economics are the better choice, but that is beside the point of whether the end justifies the means in this instance.
>>907617
I agree ends justify the means. The issues against this view as I see it are unprofitable goals.
Personally, I hold action as the greatest value, and inertia, the greatest weakness. Useless.
The issue with the exemplars of this policy have poorly considered goals which are too narrow in scope, when the maximal outcome should be conceived and promptly pursued.
>>907699
I see the question of whether or not the end justifies the means as the central question of consequentialism. When you say that Soviet command economics is justified because it industrialized the nation, I disagree because there are structurally preferable alternatives that don't beget the reprehensible consequences of communism.
>>907623
In real life if one person does something it doesn't mean everyone will do it.
Assassination is something Machievella specifically mentions that is not always possible to avoid no matter what measures are taken.
He isn't concerned about pipe-dreams about how things ought to be but about reality.
Just thrust ur fy in her means
>>907617
This is a shitty reductionist reading of Machiavelli. A better question would be "would you be willing to remain "ethical" if it meant failing your kingdom" Machiavelli's answer to is this is "no" while an Emmanual Kant would say "yes"
This is why modern politics all follow Machiavellian principles and only fictional super heroes follow Kant.
The ends always justify the means so long as you consider ALL of the ends, not simply the goal.
>>907753
In reality when people start fighting over the throne there is often a loss of momarchical legitimacy that leads to further internal struggles and the generation of usurpers. Kingdoms are often broken over conflicts of succession.
>>907764
The means are ends in and of themselves?
>>907617
why is justification necesary?
like, how is it a thing?
wouldnt figuring out all the possible cause/effect combinations be more important than determining justification?
isnt justification in that context just a sort of ideological marketing gimmick, in the sense that any given justification is ultimately just a way to justify ones actions or positions, and so is operatively meaningless, can be found in this or that, invented, blatantly proclaimed from a position of power, realy the only situation in which it becomes relevant is in a system thats regulated by some complex set of laws or other such regulation, but then its realy just a technical question
in many examples you can ask is the justification itself justified, as in, can a set of actions or positions be seen as justified just based on given justification/pretext
>>907772
The means may have unintended ends.
>>907631
YOU'RE NOT THE BOSS OF ME NOW
>is consequentialism true
no
>explain why
google "objections to consequentialism" especially the stuff written by Bernard Williams
>>907617
Well that's clearly going to depend on the types of means and ends we have/are trying to achieve.
Putting people in quarantine to stop the spread of a deadly virus we have no cure for and could potentially kill millions of lives seems pretty reasonable, even though it is not nice.
Killing them because we have no other way to stop the virus from destroying the human race, that would obviously be preferable than the extinction of our entire race.
The more there is to lose, the more the means are justified.
When talking about the ends you must take into consideration all consequences of your actions, not only if your goal was reached and the consequences of that goal
>>907770
This still isn't falling outside of Machivillian principles.
He has one chapter on how to handle a kingdom if you inherited a throne by blood and another if by force. He also says it is easier to stabilize if it is inherited by blood.
Machiavellian politics are pragmetic and amoral. It's not "kill everyone you hate", it's saying that if it has the best out-come you should choose the killing option. Ethics play no part in the descion making, although a leader needs to have the illusion of being ethical in order to maintain order.
Once you actually read his work you realize why is he considered the father of modern politics: all the non-machivilians got left in the dust because they had priorities other than success (for example: dentology or pie-in-the-sky idealism)
>>909319
I have a fully consequentialist view of ethics. The deontological rules are simplifications that apply in most but not all situations and they come to us through long experience. We should not defy them easily because it leads to bad consequences.
He is arrogant if he thinks he can give a step by step method to avoid catastrophy in the case of usupation. So often very smart men in the thick of the real experience cannot navigate their way to a beneficent end.
>>907617
>Does the end justify the memes?
Yes.
>>909371
Maybe you should actually read him before you try to critisize him.
The Prince does not contain "step by step guides". On the surface level it contains the rules of what sort of political choices lead to what consiquences. The subtext reading is about human nature.
Also, he's smugness is warranted. Many would credit him with inventing political theory, or at the very minimum being the father of modernist politics.
"Arrogance" is thinking that you can handwave away this type of thinking without even reading the damn books. No one really cares what your personal ethics is and it it really isn't relevant to discussing politics.
There is no real end, except inevitable heat death of the universe or something like this. Because of this fact justification rely on arbitrary defined point of time. Doesn't seems to be a very valid logic for me.
>>909487
>He has one chapter on how to handle a kingdom if you inherited a throne by blood and another if by force. He also says it is easier to stabilize if it is inherited by blood.
Sounds like a guide to me friendo. I'm being hyperbolic when I say it's a step by step guide.
So he says it's good to usurp the crown by violence if you don't fuck it up, but it's not trivial to not fuck it up. Its thought to be a bad idea for a good reason and that's why there is a moral rule against it. You don't do it because you'll probably do it wrong and fuck things up for everyone.
Give me a teleology of beginning and end that are not contingent and I'll give you justification to the means
The ends justify the means because that's what an ends/means relationship is. And this phrase appears nowhere in Machiavelli.
Stop thinking in clichés and open a fucking book.
>>907617
No. Never. The ends have never justified any means, ever. It's what evil people say when they do evil; that sometime in the future, good will come.
Evil does not breed good.
The ends cannot justify the memes because the ends arise out of the completed action but in order to act the person needs to justify the action.
The ends only justify the means in retrospect, it's "history is written by the winners".
>>909690
What about when an evil act is committed, and people become more aware and cautious of said evil act?
>slavery
>genocide
>>909511
>Arbitrarily determined point in time
What is the present, for 400 Alex?
Stop looking at human action from some bullshit Universal perspective, it doesn't matter to finite subjects
>>909717
Higher crop yields justify slavery.
Higher per capita GDP justifies genocide.
People can justify any evil, and no good ever comes of it.
>>909511
That's the fault of your worldview, not the fault of reality. Your worldview is faulty. Exchange it for one that works.
>>909745
If it is justified, why not call it good?
>>909749
He's right though. This is a major weakness to Consequentialist philosophy in general.
Let's say that outcome DOES determine the moral worth of an action. I help an old lady across the street. Assume that had I not done this, she would be hit by a car. I help her, and she is safe. Her being safe is the consequence of my action. This is a good consequence, thus the action is good.
But let's look farther into the future. She gets into her car, and drives onto the highway. She has trouble seeing, and she shouldn't be driving. She causes a huge accident, killing 20 people, including herself.
The extended consequence of my action of helping her across the street is now the death of 20 people. It would then make more sense to say that helping the old lady across the street was morally wrong.
But hey, what if among those 20 people, were a pair of individuals on their way to shoot up a church or a school. The old lady killing them saved everyone at the church or school. Thus, helping her was "good", and her killing the 20 people was "good".
How far do we want to look into the future in order to determine "THE" consequences of my action? What outcome determines the moral worth?
Anon's point there was that only the eventual and final end of literally everything is a non-arbitrary stopping point from which one could reflect on the total, full extent of any one single action. It is only from this point that you could truly be fully informed on the consequences of an action. Thus, it makes no sense to say with any sort of absolute certainty that an action is good or bad based on the consequence, because you have a limited and arbitrary frame of reference for what the consequences actually entail.
>>909806
The law has developed rules for determining liability in cases with a difficult chain of causation which may be helpful here.
To determine liability in negligence you must find proximate causation not intermediated by an intervening act, then you must find that the tort is reasonably foreseeable.
There's a famous case where some conductors helped a guy into a train that was moving from the station. He was carrying explosives that fell out of his possession because of the jostling of the conductors and exploded on the track, which caused a scale in the station to fall and injure a person inside. The conductors are not liable though they are the proximate cause of the tort because the outcome was not foreseeable.
You can apply the same rules in moral theory to determine whether someone is at fault for performing an action which led to a bad consequence.
This isn't the only rule to use, but it is one that helps rid us of the seemingly insurmountable ambiguity of consequentialist theory. The outcome in the train example is bad, but the conductors are not morally responsible for the outcome.
>>909906
In so many words I think I just said that there is a difference between being a cause of a morally bad outcome and being responsible for the morally bad outcome.
The consequentialist can also sustain that regardless of who caused the outcome or is responsible for the outcome, the outcome is what we are morally obligated to avoid. The remedy can come through rules imposed by institutions rather than in choices by individuals. For example the outcome of train example may be preemted by prohibiting volitile explosives on the premises of public transport.
>>907617
Depends on what you mean. In the colloquial sense I'd say "yes," but the end is often more than just the end goal. Lets say my goal is to save 100 lives; would any means justify that? Yes, but that's assuming they stick to that goal perfectly. If I perform my act of saving 100 lives by taking 1000, I'm down 900 people. In that example, the means themselves are a part of the end.
>>907674
Basically this. Though depending on the way you phrased the OP's statement, you could simply say that the problem was with the end that was reached. Had the ending been good, then it would have justified the process. You could just say the process failed. There's a difference between the "indented end" and the "actual end". The latter justifies the means, the former doesn't. The truth in the statement is dependent on which definition of "end" you're using.
>>907673
No actually it's the former.
>>909992
>indented
intended*
>"guys easy with the criticism, the end will justify the means just w8 and see ;)"
>oops I'm out of power and/or dead, l8r guys
repeat ad infinitum
>>907617
When it suits me, yes.
>Please explain why.
It's a matter of preference. There's no search for truth in your question. And the more empowering stance on this matter of preference would be: when it suits me.
>>907617
No, because the consequences of an action is not what decides if it is moral or not, even though autist sperglords since David Hume have though so.
>>910004
This
Your ends are somebody else's means to end you.
Social contracts of commonly defined and centrally enforced goods and bads are one of the few things that break this cycle, even if they aren't perfect themselves.
>>909782
My point was to say that people rationalize justification when none exists.
You don't go to an apple tree and pick oranges. Just doesn't happen.
>>907617
Means don't exist in a vacuum, but always work toward some end. If the ends didn't justify the means, no one would ever do anything because they couldn't justify the incremental steps towards their goal, regardless of how mundane that goal was. The only real debate is in terms of what means are acceptable for what ends.
>>907673
>does the end EVER justify the means?
SOMETIMES
Utilitarian ethics are fucking cancerous.
>>910287
I don't think it's so much that as it is how you might feel, in retrospect, about whether or not it was worth it for the amount of work put in.
Perhaps you might realize the oppertunity cost was greater than you had thought, too great even. You may not even realize the oppertunity cost until after the end.
>>907617
Has anyone in this thread bothered to first define what it means to 'justify'?
Seems to me like a pretty important definition to make before making any claims about it.
