Sometimes, I imagine that also happens to others, I discover a blog and dedicate myself to reading it completely. And so, I come a few ideas to purpose of the posts very old. This time, at Crooked Timber for the purpose of consequentialism (the idea that the moral value of an action depends on its consequences), noted in a post on Consequentialism, compassion and confidence in responding to the criticism that consequentialism always ends up sacrificing the lives of others in function of a good future
As regards willingness to sacrifice individual lives for valuable goals, I think this is an unfair criticism of consequentialists. Look at any of the standard anti-consequentialist philosophical examples – trolley car, organ bank, survival lottery, violinist and so on. It’s always the hard-nosed consequentialist who is supposed to want to save as many lives as possible, and the noble anti-consequentialist who proposes to sacrifice individual lives for valuable goals” such as clean hands, natural rights and bodily integrity.
The author then proceeds to wonder what this has to do with the topic of safety in the predictions, and that a consecuencialista that you do not have a lot of confidence in their own predictions might well end up using one approach rather than rules.
But the point I wanted to highlight is much more simple: That consequentialism is a bad theory according to their own criteria. If the value of an idea depends on its consequences, then we can say that among the ideas have had disastrous consequences (counted in millions of dead) is the consequentialism. For reasons strictly consecuencialistas, I would have to give up that theory