Why don't the means justify the ends?

[Appleby]

Just to clarify my example a little. Giving your own life is not the option, murdering another person is.

Also, in terms of free will being compromised that may or may not by the case. But what, in principle makes killing one person wrong when it saves 10 people when if not you will all die?

I know that this is the teaching, but what is the reasoning behind it?

JD

This is Lifeboat Ethics and situations like these do not happen in real life – as we say in the legal profession, bad situations create bad laws.

Back in the 1970s schools taught what was called “Values Clarification” in which young children were given “lifeboat” situations, e.g. “There are 10 people in the boat and 3 people have to be thrown overboard or the boat will sink. Make a case for you not being one of those people.” There were variations on this including cannibalism.

And in point of fact, when I was trying to adopt, I was actually asked these two questions (which I call the Kobiashi Maru questions):

(1) If you were in a boat with your natural child and your adopted child and the boat tipped over, which child would you save? My answer was “Any child in a boat with me would be wearing a life jacket!”

(2) What if you [a single woman] meet the perfect man but he doesn’t like children? My answer was, “If he doesn’t like my children, he is NOT the perfect man.”

Finally, there is a book by Ursula LeGuinn called “Those Who Walk Away from Omelas” in which the premise was the question If you could make the world perfect by torturing one child throughout its life, would you do it?

These situations do not occur in reality, therefore discussing them as if they do is of no value. As Captain Kirk put it so well, “I don’t like no-win situations.” Find another way.

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

It’s an often used phrase in arguments. I know the Church teaches that the means don’t justify the ends.

But why not? What is the reasoning behind it?

JD

Lack of likeness to one another: “the good” is not (as such) “the bad”. Only the good is real, the morally bad is “anti-real”. The difference between these is irreducible; they have nothing in common. Size & shape are both real qualities of real things; even though size and shape are utterly & irreducibly different, they can be united by a third thing, such as a solid object. Six inches will never be the number of faces of a cube, but it can perfectly well be the length of a side of it.​

That which is morally bad is not related to what is good in this way - they are so alien to one another, that no action can be divided into “potential parts” in this way, except in the human intellect; there can be no “real relation” of one to other, but only a “relation of thought”. Good is being - they are convertible terms; evil by contrast is impossible to speak of, because only good has being; so even to say that evil is impossible to speak of is to mis-speak. Maybe we can call it “ungood”.

This dividing action in the intellect comes of the way the intellect works, and because of our limitations: God is One, but we separate God into attributes so as think more easily about Him, even though thinking in this way is not what God is, but is a series of constructs. Because of what we are we need to be inaccurate in representing to ourselves good & evil; this is useful & harmless, provided we realise that our thoughts about X & Y are not X & Y.