The terrorist would be an agent diminishing the value of your scenario, so let’s say a bear is mauling a friend of mine while the guy watching cats on the internet is sitting on his bear repellant. I could push the guy away and save my friend, which of course I would do. However, I’m still committing an infraction against the guy who’s bear repellant I stole, I cannot argue that it would have been his moral duty to hand it over to me, and the guy has the right to ask for compensation in return. So I’m still a defector and society would do well to defect against me in proportion, which in this scenario I am of course perfectly willing to accept.
Now let’s say that two people are being mauled by the bear and the guy’s brain is somehow a bear repellant. Should I kill the guy? The retribution I deserve for that would be proportionally worse than in the first case. I might choose to, but I’d be a murderer and deserve to die in return.
So I’m still a defector and society would do well to defect against me in proportion
Which, of course, they wouldn’t do. They wouldn’t have much sympathy for the guy sitting one bear repellant, who chose not to help. In fact, refusing to help can be illegal.
I suppose in your terms, you could say that the guy-sitting-on-the-repellant is a defector, therefore it’s okay to defect against him.
I suppose in your terms, you could say that the guy-sitting-on-the-repellant is a defector, therefore it’s okay to defect against him.
No. My point is that the guy is not a defector. He merely refuses to cooperate which is an entirely different thing. So I am the defector whether or not society chooses to defect in return. And I really mean that society would do well to defect against me proportionally in return in order to discourage defection. Or to put it differently if I want to help and the guy does not, why should he have to bear (no pun intended) the cost and not me?
Societies often punish people that refuse to help. Why not consider people that break the law as defectors?
In fact, that would be an alternative (and my preferred) way to fix you second and third objection to value ethics. Consider everyone who breaks the laws and norms within your community as a defector. Where I live, torture is illegal and most people think it’s wrong to push the fat man, so pushing the fat man is (something like) breaking a norm.
Have you read Whose Utilitarianism?? Not sure if it addresses any of your concerns, but it’s good and about utilitarianism.
Okay, makes sense. There could be a technical problem with evaluating a punishment “in proportion”, because some things could be difficult to evaluate, but that is also a (much greater) problem in consequentialist ethics.
The terrorist would be an agent diminishing the value of your scenario, so let’s say a bear is mauling a friend of mine while the guy watching cats on the internet is sitting on his bear repellant. I could push the guy away and save my friend, which of course I would do. However, I’m still committing an infraction against the guy who’s bear repellant I stole, I cannot argue that it would have been his moral duty to hand it over to me, and the guy has the right to ask for compensation in return. So I’m still a defector and society would do well to defect against me in proportion, which in this scenario I am of course perfectly willing to accept.
Now let’s say that two people are being mauled by the bear and the guy’s brain is somehow a bear repellant. Should I kill the guy? The retribution I deserve for that would be proportionally worse than in the first case. I might choose to, but I’d be a murderer and deserve to die in return.
Which, of course, they wouldn’t do. They wouldn’t have much sympathy for the guy sitting one bear repellant, who chose not to help. In fact, refusing to help can be illegal.
I suppose in your terms, you could say that the guy-sitting-on-the-repellant is a defector, therefore it’s okay to defect against him.
No. My point is that the guy is not a defector. He merely refuses to cooperate which is an entirely different thing. So I am the defector whether or not society chooses to defect in return. And I really mean that society would do well to defect against me proportionally in return in order to discourage defection. Or to put it differently if I want to help and the guy does not, why should he have to bear (no pun intended) the cost and not me?
Societies often punish people that refuse to help. Why not consider people that break the law as defectors?
In fact, that would be an alternative (and my preferred) way to fix you second and third objection to value ethics. Consider everyone who breaks the laws and norms within your community as a defector. Where I live, torture is illegal and most people think it’s wrong to push the fat man, so pushing the fat man is (something like) breaking a norm.
Have you read Whose Utilitarianism?? Not sure if it addresses any of your concerns, but it’s good and about utilitarianism.
Okay, makes sense. There could be a technical problem with evaluating a punishment “in proportion”, because some things could be difficult to evaluate, but that is also a (much greater) problem in consequentialist ethics.