Unethical acts sometimes necessarily ethically preferable?

Hi All. I wasn't getting much response from the following inquiry, which I posted in another philosophy forum. I'm wondering whether perhaps under some circumstances it is necessarily ethically preferable to have some unethical acts than not to have some. Please allow:

E = that which you take as being ethical.

U = that which you take as being unethical.

With that, I would propose E + E > E. That is, two acts** you take as being ethical are more ethical than just one of the ethical acts alone. Similarly, U + U < U. Two unethical acts are ethically worse than either unethical act alone.

Let me further propose that some acts are just as ethical as some acts are unethical. (If you find Es and/or Us incommensurable, then you'll reject this proposition, but then it seems you might also reject ranking ethicalness, which does not seem preferable, as it's preferable to know what is more or less ethical.) To these instances, to keep things simple, we can designate E = 1 and U = -1.

So it seems E + E + E + U > E. If faced with the option between E + E + E + U and E, it would be ethically preferable to select the former.

Has someone covered this already?

Your thoughts?

-Jordan

Consequentialism defines those acts as "ethical" who will lead to the best consequences. So in your example, the series of acts E + E + E + U would be rated "ethical", and E alone would be unethical.

In consequentialism, there's no such thing as an act that is "always and absolutely bad". Torture might be bad in most cases, but sometimes it's the right thing to do if the alternative would lead to even more suffering.

Consequentialists believe that doing the right thing makes the world a better place. As opposed to deontologists who support acts that follow rules, even when the consequences will be bad.

In consequentialism, there's no such thing as an act that is "always and absolutely bad". Torture might be bad in most cases, but sometimes it's the right thing to do if the alternative would lead to even more suffering.

Yes, but for Heaven's sake let's understand that more suffering can result from torture's unreliable evidence, more suffering can result from bringing the law into disrepute, and more suffering results from the slippery slope --who may be legally be tortured? Children? Idiots? How do we define who is a proper subject for torture? We cannot. More suffering results from brutalising a population that endorses torture, not to mention the torturers themselves.

Hi wowbagger,

This applies to consequentialism, too. It isn't confined to deontics. E would just be that which yields the best consequences, and U, that which yields the worst. Or E could be some amount increasing ethicalness while U would be some equal amount decreasing ethicalness.

And we still get a paradox. Per the conclusion, it still seems necessarily ethically preferable at times to accept that which yields the worst. Actually, it seems more paradoxical in consequentialism. If the goal is to maximize E, then we must allow increase in U. That is: E + U < E + E + U < E + E + E + E + U + U ...

Good points, Belinda.

This applies to consequentialism, too. It isn't confined to deontics. E would just be that which yields the best consequences, and U, that which yields the worst. Or E could be some amount increasing ethicalness while U would be some equal amount decreasing ethicalness.

And we still get a paradox. Per the conclusion, it still seems necessarily ethically preferable at times to accept that which yields the worst. Actually, it seems more paradoxical in consequentialism. If the goal is to maximize E, then we must allow increase in U. That is: E + U < E + E + U < E + E + E + E + U + U ...

The ethical action in consequentialism is the one possible action with the best consequences. There's always at least one such action. You do the sums first, so E + E + E +E + U +U would simply become E, the best overall option, and the other two options would become U1 and U2.

You define E as "that which yields the best consequences", with that definition you can't lump multiple Es and Us together.

Hi Wowbagger,

Fair. It does, however, dawn on me that my little calculus is painfully similar to Parfit's Repugnant Conclusion. The E could be translated as a person whose life is very much worth living; the U, someone whose life is barely worth living. Perhaps it's still slightly novel as per its application to deontics.

-Jordan

What does not seem to arise in this calculation is the hidden 'C', or the long term consequences. These consequences are the effects on the agent and how said agent will act in the future after this event.

When neglecting the 'C', E+E+U < E is true.

However the 'C' can be positive, negative, or 0 depending on the agent. Assuming a perfect agent, able to learn from the necessity of the 'U' and not overuse it, you get, at best, a small positive of proper usage. However humanity is mentally fragile and by committing to the specific 'U' once they tend to open a floodgate stating U = 0, a flawed argument which causes an increase in long term negatives. Thus making any portion including a U also require a C which, to maintain simplicity, we will assign a value of -1. So the new equation becomes:

E=1, U=-1, C=-1

E+E+U (transforms into) E+E+U+C

Final equation: E+E+U+C < E

The unfortunate news is the C will typically be much greater unless the perfect agent is found.

I have read this thread with interest

Can anybody help me out as I have yet to find a cogent argument here or elsewhere that ethics can be reduced to some form of boolean algebra.

To put some substance into your calculus:

The Holocaust was unethical (U); being unfaithful is unethical (U) does U=U?

Saving a life is Ethical (E) Doing a favour for an elderly relative is ethical (E) does E=E?


Even if you disagree with the ethical values I've given the above examples I'm sure we can all think of examples of our own which seem to throw up the same apparent inequalities.

Gareth,

Let me clarify. Not all ethical acts are equal, nor are all unethical acts equal, but I've asked in this thread that, for the sake of discussion, we consider only E's that are equal to one another, U's that are equal to one another, and only those E's and U's that have the same magnitude.

I don't think that Ethics is a running tally. I also do not think that certain actions, devoid of context, are, in and of themselves, ethical/unethical. What you have, in reality, is not a running tally of ethical actions versus unethical actions, what you have are actions and their consequences. To determine the ethical nature of an action, it must be judged based on its context and motivations. For example, you could say "killing people is unethical," and that would be a plausible statement. But what if you knew that a person was a child molester? Would killing that person be an unethical act?

What's more, even if you can determine whether individual actions are "ethical," or "unethical," you can't enumerate "ethical" versus "unethical" acts, because not all acts have the same moral impact. For example, who is a more ethical person: a rapist who habitually walks old ladies accross the street, or someone who saved a child from drowning who steals songs off of the internet?

Read the OP carefully.

Read the OP carefully.

Was this directed to me?

If so, I did read it.

The point of my response is that I take issue with the implied premise of the post (as I understand it) -- and I explain why.

To elaborate:

You seem to consider Ethical/Unethical actions to be correspondable by numerical value. It's just not that simple. First, you have to determine by what standard you are judging ethical action. Even then, there are so many shades of ethical value to any given action, that assigning numerical value becomes gross oversimplification.

Hi JacobAWyatt,

I defined E as "that which you take as ethical." The idea was to avoid any particular ethical standard or precept. Pick whichever standard you prefer. So long as it's possible to find ethical equivalents, unethical equivalents, and ethical and unethical "acts" with the same magnitude, then we can proceed. Believing ethicalness varies is necessary for ethics to have value anyway. And I'm keeping it simple to illustrate the point.

Also, I just realized my double asterisks in the OP didn't link to anything. The ** after the word "acts" was supposed to link to a little explanation: I use "acts" as shorthand for "that which you take as ethical." "Acts" could mean that which has the best consequences, conforms to the categorical imperative, is most virtuous, best adheres to this or that standard, etc.

I defined E as "that which you take as ethical." The idea was to avoid any particular ethical standard or precept. Pick whichever standard you prefer. So long as it's possible to find ethical equivalents, unethical equivalents, and ethical and unethical "acts" with the same magnitude, then we can proceed. Believing ethicalness varies is necessary for ethics to have value anyway. And I'm keeping it simple to illustrate the point.

Also, I just realized my double asterisks in the OP didn't link to anything. The ** after the word "acts" was supposed to link to a little explanation: I use "acts" as shorthand for "that which you take as ethical." "Acts" could mean that which has the best consequences, conforms to the categorical imperative, is most virtuous, best adheres to this or that standard, etc.

Oh, well, in that case, I stand corrected: I did not read it (I thought by 'OP' you meant "Original Post;" which I did read).

I'm not at all convinced that it is possible to find ethical equivalents of any kind. Every act has its own unique shades of motivation and consequence. I do think that many moral acts are identical in terms of principle (for example, stealing songs off the internet, in principle, is the same as stealing cash from an elderly neighbor suffering from dementia -- you are stealing with the knowledge that there is no way you will ever suffer any legal or tangible consequences); but that is not at all to say that they are the same in terms of ethical value (see my song stealing vs. robbing the elderly example; one is clearly more heinous than the other, although they are the same in principle).

But really, I must backtrack a bit. It actually is possible to tally total ethical value on a life-long holistic scale -- if you are an egoist (and I am). If you take what is most moral as being that which is best for yourself, long-term, then what follows is that, if you take account of how close your life has achieved the idealization of your value set, then the extent to which you have achieved it is the extent of how good a person you are. But if you want to evaluate specific acts and tally them that way, then that is tricky, at best; impossible at worst.

So with egoism, perhaps you'd view the E as some "act" which you take as best for yourself (over a longterm, holistic scale), and U, worst. Perhaps we can agree that under egoism: some "acts" are of equal value for yourself, some are of equal disvalue, and some of those values and disvalues have equal magnitude. It might be hard to flesh out equalities and magnitudes, but perhaps we can agree they still exist.

My point, which I feel is rather weak at this point, was to expose a sort of paradox - that sometimes some unethical acts are necessary ethically preferable.