Consequentialism - is it ultimately flawed ethical idea

[Straha]

It does not. But why should it? A materialist recognizes that at some point in history the conditions allow one system, and at a later stage another system. Clearly I'm not going to castigate Mesoamerican natives for having a violent culture - back at the time it was inevitable. The point is that we cannot have it now. Same goes for Nazism. It was an objective fruit of the circumstances, if you're so willing. A materialist cannot and will not subscribe to subjective emotions. I may not like fascism and nazism, but I understand that their birth is as preordained as that of the tsunami or that of the earthquake, except they're social processes.

And you can call it, this thread is dead.

Your stance has morphed considerably, and this new position completely undercuts any possibility for you having any position. The second you state that ethics are determined by material conditions around us and that ethical exclusions, and adjudication in general, come second not only to categorization but to societal mindset you lose the chance to have any basic set of ethical beliefs or values. Put another way, you are creating a system wherein anyone can determine that their conditions are akin to those of the Nazis, Aztecs, Turks, whomever and that the normal rules that would govern play go out the window. In such a world they may decide that committing mass murder, enslavement, whatever is 'preordained' and that what they are doing is not just acceptable but inevitable and beyond reproach. Anyone anywhere, at any time, can simple stand up say "Child of my times" and get their gun.

What you're advocating for isn't consequentialism as much as it's ethical opportunism, ethics according to how much you feel you can give out, and if you do anything questionable it’s not your fault, it's pre-ordained. There is no way to discuss differing systems with you because there is nothing that you stand for, and no position that you take that you can't willingly give up if it proves to be the slightest bit inconvenient intellectually.

Ethics in name only.

[K. A. Pital]

I hold a variety of "intellectually inconvenient" positions. I think that is a lot better than absolutist ethics anyway.

I see you didn't reply to the point about Nazism relying on the subjective concept of necessity (which you tout as a way out for absolutism) in a life-or-death struggle as much as it relied on dehumanization. No wonder.

[Alyrium Denryle]

What you're advocating for isn't consequentialism as much as it's ethical opportunism, ethics according to how much you feel you can give out, and if you do anything questionable it’s not your fault, it's pre-ordained. There is no way to discuss differing systems with you because there is nothing that you stand for, and no position that you take that you can't willingly give up if it proves to be the slightest bit inconvenient intellectually.

In was going to respond in this thread earlier, but I lost posts due to power outages, got distracted by academics and sodomy etc.. but now that I have time...

This is not what he is saying at all. He is simply saying that ideology, and in fact, all of human behavior is fully caused. Calling something like nazism evil (as opposed to unwanted, or unpleasant) is like castigating a lightning bolt that struck your best friend. It is pointless. The causation may be complicated, but that does not make the rise of nazism, or the behavior of any individual nazi any less fully determined by a causal chain that involves absolutely zero uncaused moral agents, and at no point did the universe cry out in terror when the holocaust happened.

As for the primary subject of this thread, consequentialism... Trying to create an ethical system that prescribes what is and is not morally correct is a pointless endeavor. Why? Because the Naturalistic Fallacy (the idea that an ought cannot be derived from an is, and a claim to the contrary is fallacious) is a load of crap due to question begging, as it assumes there is some Ought in the first place. There is not. At least not in a "this is right, and it being right is a property of the universe" sort of way.

Humans have an in born sense of what is right and wrong. Empathy, combined with a lot of tribalistic learned and evolutionary baggage. The idea that pleasure is good and pain is bad? Hard-wired into our brains. The extension of this to other humans? Hard-wired into our brains, but confounded by in-group/out-group thinking as a result of our hunter-gatherer past. However, these consequentialist values are not all that is there. The concepts of fairness and reciprocity key to any deontological system are also hard-wired into our brains, and these two are in a neurological tug of war any time we make a complicated ethical decision.

Thus, no attempt at creating an ethical system that uses only one will EVER be coherent. The best we can do is describe what the ethical reasoning employed by our brains happens to be, and then try to get rid of the logical inconsistencies like prejudice based on race and other irrelevancies that evolution has "gifted" us with.

You end up with a form of Ethical Pragmatism being the only viable option, where ethical Practice is paramount. Where one simply attempts to weigh the various ethical concerns with a recognition of one's own fallibility, and get on with life. Here, ethical theory becomes instrumental to ethical practice, rather than the traditional models with have ethical practice being instrumental to the fulfillment of ethical theory.