[EVA] The EoE Situation

[Gwern Branwen]

On 14:30 Sat 05 May     , Michael Camilleri wrote:
> Brendan Jamieson wrote:
>
> > I don't believe in moral and ethical relativism. SEELE's means and
> > ends were both evil and morally bankrupt regardless of how they viewed
> > themselves or their goals. There needs to be a baseline that
> > determines a just/noble/moral/ethical concept versus an evil one.
> > People rarely believe that they are evil themselves, but that doesn't
> > mean that they aren't. Sure, SEELE truly believed that they were doing
> > what was best for mankind. But they are horribly misguided.
>
> At the risk of this devolving into a philosophical discussion on good and evil that goes nowhere can a person be evil if they don't realise it? I can agree that actions might be evil but it seems to me that if a person honestly believes themselves to be good when they aren't then they're delusional, not evil.
>
> Michael.

At the risk of further rendering this more philosophical: surely - why not?

Consider the large area of consequentialist ethics (and more specifically, utilitarian ethics)! I don't think by such standards SEELE could fail to be accounted evil, regardless of whether the proximate reaons are that of delusion or defects of reasoning.

It's more the Kant-influenced fields which hold intent to be supremely important.

Incidentally, this discussion of SEELE reminds me of a common argument against 'negative utilitarianism' (utilitarianism following a utility rule in which suffering is minimized): that such a view inevitably forces one to conclude that the most moral thing to do is kill all of humanity as quickly and painlessly as possible, since over an indefinite or infinite timespan, humanity in general will suffer tremendously, piling up heaps of negative points, and at least by killing all humans, you guarantee the points will never fall below a certain negative point.

--
Gwern
Inquiring minds want to know.