I think my attempt to give a general description here is failing, so let me take that bit out altogether and focus on the example and see if that makes my point clearer:
I agree this is a “problem” for utilitarianism (up-ticked accordingly).
But it’s also a “problem” for...nearly everyone. How many random people on the street would say, “No, ends never justify the means. Like in that movie, when the baddie asked that politician for the nuclear codes and she said she didn’t know them? She shouldn’t have lied.”
Yes but ends/means and EV are two distinct things. It is true that EV is technical apparatus we can use to make our ends/means reasoning more precise. But that does not mean that people who say ‘the ends never justify the means’ are saying that they subscribe to EV reasoning. It is perfectly consistent to agree with the former but disagree with the latter statement.
Virtue ethics is a good example of this, since it puts emphasis on moderation as well as intuition. So a virtue ethicist can consistently take a moderate, midway approach (where the ends sometimes justify the means) without accepting any particular theoretical framework (EV or otherwise) that describes these intuitions mathematically. Because it is logically possible that morality does not bottom out in mathematics.
Here’s an analogy. Perhaps morality is more like jazz music. You know good jazz when you see it, and bad jazz music is even more noticeable, but that doesn’t mean there is any axiomatic system that can tell us what it means for jazz music to be good. It is possible that something similar is true for morality. If so, then we need not accept EV theory, even if we believe that ends can justify means.
I know. My point is that people who really think “ends never justify the means” are very rare in the world.
(Incidentally, I think I’ve seen you insist and say elsewhere that utilitarianism is a metaethical theory and not a normative one, when it is in fact a normative one e.g first result.)
In the real world, people don’t usually make EV calculations before making decisions, no? That seems very much so like an EA thing.
I think my attempt to give a general description here is failing, so let me take that bit out altogether and focus on the example and see if that makes my point clearer:
Yes but ends/means and EV are two distinct things. It is true that EV is technical apparatus we can use to make our ends/means reasoning more precise. But that does not mean that people who say ‘the ends never justify the means’ are saying that they subscribe to EV reasoning. It is perfectly consistent to agree with the former but disagree with the latter statement.
Virtue ethics is a good example of this, since it puts emphasis on moderation as well as intuition. So a virtue ethicist can consistently take a moderate, midway approach (where the ends sometimes justify the means) without accepting any particular theoretical framework (EV or otherwise) that describes these intuitions mathematically. Because it is logically possible that morality does not bottom out in mathematics.
Here’s an analogy. Perhaps morality is more like jazz music. You know good jazz when you see it, and bad jazz music is even more noticeable, but that doesn’t mean there is any axiomatic system that can tell us what it means for jazz music to be good. It is possible that something similar is true for morality. If so, then we need not accept EV theory, even if we believe that ends can justify means.
I know. My point is that people who really think “ends never justify the means” are very rare in the world.
(Incidentally, I think I’ve seen you insist and say elsewhere that utilitarianism is a metaethical theory and not a normative one, when it is in fact a normative one e.g first result.)