Ethics and Contradictions

[Boyish-Tigerlilly]

When you are making ethical decisions, how do you avoid contradicting yourself when amalgamating multiple separate ethical philosophies? Many ethicists seem to combine various ethical systems, but to me, it seems as if they frequently contradict their intentions because they are forced to combine theories. By combining theories, they are putting together, many-a-time, diametrically opposed concerns which leads to wacky answers.

For example, when dealing with Utilitarianism, Singer states that euthanasia should be up to the parents of a child (if that child is severely ill, dying etc) and that others shouldn't interfere. He believes that you should maximize the preferences of the parents because the newborn doesn't have personhood. Many other ethicists agree with this, such as Tooley etc. Now, this is a widely-accepted ethical position, however...they then contradict themselves later because Singer states that if the parents let the child live, refusing the fact that the child will live in severe pain, the doctor could potentially ignore them, kill the child, and still be ethical. How does this jive with the previous Utilitarian focus on maximizing preferences?

Further, they say not to use emotions to cloud judgement in the decision-making process of utilitarianism; people think of babies as persons, but they aren't if one looks at the criteria, according to all these professors and ethicists. The emotions of looking at a cute baby get in the way---now...how does this jive with the notion of happiness/preferences being maximized if you are going to ignore the preferences used to make the decision? If your goal is subjective and emotional, how can you eliminate emotions?

As well, what if the "preferences" of a massive hoard of people are to torture and maim one person. Surely the preferences and euphoria of a huge mob would outweigh the act-preferences of the one individual suffering!? Some of them seem to just either ignore this all-togther or admit that you would have to accept it, because if you ignored their preferences, then you are going against act-utility preference-- variation.

[Akhlut]

When you are making ethical decisions, how do you avoid contradicting yourself when amalgamating multiple separate ethical philosophies?

By having a personal philosophy of not giving a damn about other people's nonfinancial actions unless they harm another individual without that individual's consent. As far as financial actions, I'm for generally a lot of regulations in order to maximize "good." Also, in extreme circumstances, whatever action that would maximize good I'd try to take (so, if I had to theoretically kill one man to save 10, I'd kill the one). The only contradiction in my personal ethics would be for the extreme circumstances, as I'd likely be more willing to do something to keep my loved ones alive, even though I recognize my actions as being against my personal philosophy. Hard to overcome things wired into my brain by evolution, I fully admit.