Quote:
Originally Posted by dreadgeek
Actually--and I didn't make this clear at the outset--I am saying that there are limits on the utilitarian position. If, in the course of saving five people, I take an action that results in the death of one person but that action does not use that person as an instrument to achieve my goal of saving people, then the action is morally defensible. If, on the other hand, the only way to save the five people is to use a sixth person, against his will, as an instrument then it is not morally defensible.
I base this off an old Ursula K. Le Guin story where there is a utopia but with a catch--in order for this utopia to exist one child must be spend his entire life locked in a basement with no human contact. In this case, the child is an *instrument* to some other end. *Because* the child suffers, we have a utopia. The child then is merely an instrument for the happiness of the greatest number. That is a trade-off that I would have a hard time finding morally defensible. On the other hand, in modern capitalist nations we have societies that are less equal than it is imaginable for them to be because there is a balance between freedom and equality. This is a trade-off that it is at least possible to defend morally, certainly in principle.
Does that make sense? For me the crux comes down to whether we are using others as instruments to some end, which I do not think is defensible or if they are casualties of circumstance.
Cheers
Aj
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Yes, I agree with you AJ that using someone as an "instrument" isn't a morally defensible act. Another way to talk about this is to put it in terms of means and ends. The end is the outcome, the means is the way to get to the outcome. My belief is that human beings are ends in themselves, i.e. have value apart from what they can be used for in terms of actualizing a particular end result. So it can be said that it is not morally defensible to treat a person as a purely means to some other end, and not an end in her/himself.