Crossman and Crowley make very good points above, delineating three possible types of justification for some of the things you say:
1) Don’t turn him in because the negative effects of the undermining of the institution will outweigh the benefits
2) Don’t turn him in because [some non-consequentialist reason on non-consequentialist grounds]
3) Don’t turn him in because you will have rationally/consequentialistly tied yourself to the mast making it impossible to turn him in to achieve greater benefits.
(1) and (3) are classic pieces of consequentialism, the first dating back at least to Mill. If your reason is like those, then you are probably a consequentialist and there is no need to reinvent the wheel: I can provide some references for you. If you support (2), perhaps on some kind of Newcomb’s problem grounds, then this deserves a clear explanation. Why, on account of a tricky paradoxical situation that may not even be possible, will you predictably start choosing to make things worse in situations that are not Newcomb situations? Unless you are explicit about your beliefs, we can’t help debug them effectively, and you then can’t hold them with confidence for they won’t have undergone peer scrutiny. [The same still goes for your meta-ethical claims].
Eliezer,
Crossman and Crowley make very good points above, delineating three possible types of justification for some of the things you say:
1) Don’t turn him in because the negative effects of the undermining of the institution will outweigh the benefits
2) Don’t turn him in because [some non-consequentialist reason on non-consequentialist grounds]
3) Don’t turn him in because you will have rationally/consequentialistly tied yourself to the mast making it impossible to turn him in to achieve greater benefits.
(1) and (3) are classic pieces of consequentialism, the first dating back at least to Mill. If your reason is like those, then you are probably a consequentialist and there is no need to reinvent the wheel: I can provide some references for you. If you support (2), perhaps on some kind of Newcomb’s problem grounds, then this deserves a clear explanation. Why, on account of a tricky paradoxical situation that may not even be possible, will you predictably start choosing to make things worse in situations that are not Newcomb situations? Unless you are explicit about your beliefs, we can’t help debug them effectively, and you then can’t hold them with confidence for they won’t have undergone peer scrutiny. [The same still goes for your meta-ethical claims].