Do the ends justify the means?

[Roflcopter]

Yes I am drunk.

[gambino]

hmmmmm

[kingCHUBBY]

Have you ever been so far even as decided to use go want to look more like?

[paulmuaddibKA]

Do the justify mean the end?

[Waffles]

it's all about the journey

[sgt.d]

depends on the means and the ends...

[Shorty]

lol roflcopterusodrunkbro.

[Andrez]

It depends... Until you don't harm anyone else, just go on and do it, whatever it is!

[Fate]

Yes I am drunk.

[SELECT ALL] Code:

[color=#333333][size=xx-small]Yes I am drunk.[/size]

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Have you ever been so far even as decided to use go want to look more like?

You mean: "Have you ever really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?"

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Ontopic:
It depends on what actions are taken to achieve the end goal.
And since I really can't be bothered with putting forward good examples and explaining them, I'll just link you all to a helpful site. http://www.debate.org/debates/The-end-ju...e-means/1/

[RandumKiwi]

You're on a train heading north, there's 5 workers on the track, it's too late to do anything about this (won't be able to brake in time, there's absolutely nothing you can do) and you're going to kill them.

However, you still could turn the train to the track on the right, but there's 1 worker there and you would surely kill him.

What do you do? Do the ends justify the means... and to add to all this, once you've answered, consider this question:

Imagine you're a man, on an railway over-bridge seeing all this about to unfold... Imagine in this situation, the train isn't turning. There's not much you can do, BUT, a fat man walking past who weighs a tonne, he could be pushed over the bridge, on to the tracks... and from your scientific knowledge, you know with absolute certainty, this would kill him, but would stop the train, saving the 5 men.

What do you do? Do the ends justify the means?

(.. and if all this vaguely interested you, I took it from here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBdfcR-8hEY )

[V-Man]

The problem in answering this question [do the ends justify the means] is people don't usually consider all the end results.
Ha ha ha.
Philosophical noobs.

[Cemer]

no trolley problem noooooooooooooooooo

[tempest]

The problem in answering this question is people don't usually consider all the end results.

It's impossible to consider all end results, and that's the fundamental problem with those philosophical example cases. Suppose the five guys on the track would see the train coming and get away, but you already chose to kill the other guy, who then can't get away?

[Vermi]

yes. The ends justify the means

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4u2ZsoYWwJA&t=6m18s

[vonunov]

The problem in answering this question is people don't usually consider all the end results.

It's impossible to consider all end results, and that's the fundamental problem with those philosophical example cases. Suppose the five guys on the track would see the train coming and get away, but you already chose to kill the other guy, who then can't get away?

It seems possible to me. I think we already established that the train will kill either one guy or five guys, given no other interference, so for whatever reason they are not getting away. There is one thing though -- what if you push the fatass off the bridge but the train operator switches the train to the track toward the single guy? Now you've killed the fatass to save the five guys who aren't even in danger anymore because the train operator has decided to kill one guy instead of five. For that reason I think that it is best not to interfere but to trust the train operator to make the right decision.

As for the operator: In the real world, we would not know beforehand whether the people would get away successfully, so the right course of action would, I think, be to sound the horn and apply the brakes as best as possible, but not to take any action to deliberately endanger anyone further (i.e., aim at the other guy). In this problem, though, it appears to be a given that the five guys or the one guy will surely die, so within those constraints it seems best to kill one person instead of five, even though this may come with an increased emotional burden as taking positive action of switching to the other track might seem like more of a moral offense than simply not doing anything, in which case it may be easier not to feel responsible.