The ends justify the means

The moral framework my opponent is suggesting leads to pain and suffering at the hand of an ethics that claims, in effect, actions cannot be judged for the results they produce nor the intentions behind them. This philosophy greatly limits the extent of which we as a society can curtail suffering, because it limits the actions we can take to curtail. If an action's morality is defined only by its intrinsic nature, and not by the ramifications nor the intention, any 'good' that is only possible via an intrinsically 'immoral' action will only be possible if the society either drops this limiting philosophy of intrinsic moral analysis, or is forced to change its morals to make the action moral, in which case neither the intention nor the results apply to this action which is now intrinsically 'good,' (which is actually an immoral action if taken intrinsically) When one considers if 'The end justifies the means,' one must realize that this statement is not nor does it claim to be a normative ethical system itself. It cannot be, for it does not define what a 'good end' is nor if the means to achieve it 'outweigh' the end. This statement is merely an extension of preexistent morals, further extending the reach of these morals and the extent to which they can be achieved. If society defines human life as something to be protected, and places a higher value on it than the life of a tree, then it follows that even if this society places a tree as a value, it would be moral for one to cut down trees to make a log cabin to survive harsh winter. Thus, the ends (human life) justify the means (the death of a tree). Examples of society justifying the means with the ends is all around us-- and for good reason. I wouldn't live in -- nor would I wish upon my worst enemy-- a society in which no 'good' can be justified with any amount of 'bad. ' This society would go extinct with this limited morality. In a society such as the one mentioned, punishment (prison) would be illegal for it is immoral to lock up a human being against his or her will. It's easy to see that this is absurd, for the criminal broke the law and the public needs to be protected from further crimes, but that is what the results of denying the simple fact that the ends do justify the means causes. Rebuttals 1) "One may choose to study hard and the other may choose to cheat off the one who studies. The person making the choice may say that, in judging the relative moral weight of the means and ends, and thinking of the ramifications this could lead to, he has decided that all in all the result of him passing is morally preferable to the result of not passing. " Cheating for personal gain is already considered an intrinsically immoral act in society. So in this case, 'The ends would not justify the means' for the ends are immoral. 'The ends justify the means' is not necessarily a subjective morality. It is only subjective if the morality of a society already is subjective. Murder in our society is considered immoral, even if it benefits someone, so to say 'The ends justify the means' would claim murder was moral if the person doing the murder knows he or she will benefit is just false. The 'Ends' of a situation is the analysis of the morality of a situation according to the morality of the society. 2) " It is simply unreasonable to believe that a person can truly know the full ramifications of his actions. " 'The ends justify the means' morality does not claim people should act according to arbitrary whim. If you saw an infant being attacked by a dog, would you kill the dog if you had to if you wanted to save the infant? What if by doing so the owner of the dog committed suicide because the dog was all they had? You couldn't have foreseen that, and you were rationally justified to act, so would you be considered immoral? 'The ends justify the means' is simply a moral ethic that says 'The most possible good is good. ' Striving for the most possible good (The ends justify the means) is more moral than the illogical notion that any 'bad' actions cannot be justified by any results. 3) " The circumstance is sometimes mentioned by moral philosophers or psychologists in which a large boulder is rolling down towards a group of 15 hikers who would surely die if you do not shove a rather fat man between them (large enough to stop the boulder) therefore killing him. Surely, they say, the life of the one is worth sacrificing for the good of the many. In violating that primary moral principle (the inviolability of innocent human life) in directly participating in the murder of the large man, one has so thoroughly betrayed the very source of the goodness of the intention that it brings into question the integrity of the act itself. While the fact of the death of 15 people is doubtless tragic, we cannot do evil that good may come of it. " This notion is nonsense. No one in the history of the World has presented a valid reason why pushing the fat man in that scenario is immoral. 'It is immoral because murder is wrong,' they say. If life is defined as a value (we shouldn't kill the fat man), then saving more of it (15) is more of a value (1). Following your logic, we should let the a billion humans die if it was necessary to murder someone, for it would be immoral to do so. Is that morality useful? For whom? This scenario only stresses the point and makes it very obvious, but it's no different than any other. Any time we pass up good for a lesser good in the name of being good, I consider that evil proportional to the amount the latter is less than the former. 4) " In the same way, a morally good intention (defending the environment) does not constitute a morally positive action if the means are intrinsic evils (murdering the owner of a coal mine). "'The ends justify the means' is not a equivalent to 'Do what you want as long as you believe it's good,' for it is immoral of people to assume they are completely rational. One should not assume because they believe an end is moral that it truly is moral any more than people, under my opponent's philosophy should assume so. For instance, would it be moral of someone to get high on meth and kill someone, claiming they thought they were rational and justified, and that the other person was attacking them? However, if the person in your scenario for some reason knew the 'ends' of killing owner outweighed the costs (means) of his deaths, why shouldn't she kill him? Why would that be immoral if it produced results which were morally preferable to the alternative and was done so in good conscience. In conclusion, morality must be defined as what is the most moral -- morals being defined as what individuals rationally consider to be moral (excluding the morality of intrinsic morality (this debate)) . If we are limited by defining an action's morality in a vacuum -- we are left with exactly that: a morality designed for a vacuum. A morality useless for this World. A morality that is objectively immoral.