Justice is a value created by society so as to achieve the greatest good for the most amount of people without requiring omniscient knowledge.
In order to determine whether a person should be removed from society, one must first be able to recognize that they are detrimental to the greater good. In order to prevent false identification, society uses the concept of “crime”, that is, doing something detrimental to another and thus to the greater good, as a marker that indicates someone is harming the greater good. Thus, criminals are recognized and arrested. However, in order to preserve a person’s potential for good, which cannot be measured without omniscient knowledge, a society often uses punishment other than capital punishment. Thus, justice is only a creation of the utilitarian framework.
Fairness is a value instilled by society into its people by education and societal pressure. It is almost innate in that it is a value partially created by greed and the fear of someone damaging one’s own property, life, or happiness in the goal of furthering their own.
but for many people justice and fairness are ends in themselves. Sometimes the desire to uphold justice conflicts with wanting to improve overall happiness and wellbeing. For example, we would never allow someone to use lethal experiments on human beings even if it could yield information that could potentially save even more lives
That’s because we’re not omniscient.
We cannot know whether it would save more lives.
However, if we knew that using lethal experiments on 10 people would save 11 people, exactly, without a doubt, and that if it was not carried out the 11 would die, then the situation would be different, wouldn’t it?
If you still feel like “that’s a bad idea” despite knowing exactly what will happen, that’s because you’ve been conditioned by society. Society is not omniscient, and thus puts limits on itself, acquired by natural selection, to realize that, more often than not, things like that will cause more harm than good.
It’s the difference between a machine and a human being. A machine knows that, when half its computational cores are overheating, shutting down that half will prevent the other half from burning out as well. The machine sacrifices half, so that at least the other half survives. Otherwise it loses everything.
A human wouldn’t know, can’t know, that killing half the human population would save the other half, and so wouldn’t risk it.
You’re right. We can’t ever have guaranteed results in anything we do. That doesn’t mean taking risks is likely to have worse outcomes in the long run. We wouldn’t forgo imprisoning convicted murderers because it can’t ever be guaranteed that it’ll have a positive result
Exactly.
But that’s not what the question is about, is it?
It’s about whether good and evil are subjective.
My point is that they are objective, but that we cannot know their objective values and must rely on subjective values to measure them.
Since we can’t guarantee that convicted murderers would go on to increase their value until it becomes positive, we imprison them or sentence them to death.
Since we can’t guarantee that a medical procedure that might save some but damage others will actually save people, we don’t carry through.
Since we can’t guarantee that dropping a bomb on a terrorist enclave will actually kill terrorists and not some random villagers whose village was mistaken for such an enclave, we don’t drop the bomb, not until we either get more information or the potential losses rise to a point where the death of the villagers are acceptable in light of those losses.
Society is really a compromise. Everything is in reality. We can argue about ideals and we can argue about truths but in the end, reality isn’t black or white or grey, it’s every color in the universe and then some.
But you’re still just rejecting the experimenting because there’s no guarantee that doing it will cause more good than harm but in the other case with the convicted murderer, you’re fine with imprisoning them even though it’s not guaranteed to be good for society overall
Let’s analyze both situations.
Situation 1: A medical procedure is likely to cause death in a amount of people but may save b amount of people. It may cause permanent injury or damage to c amount of people, and will cause distress to d amount of people. It will cause happiness in e amount of people.
The values of each case will vary. For example, the psychological pain and future suffering of a daughter who lost her paraplegic father to the experimentation, compared to the happiness of a man who was reading an article about the end of a disease brought about by the experiment, and his feeling good about it, are two very different values.
Thus, an omnipotent being would string together all these variables and values and solve them to receive a single value x, where if x is positive, the experiment should be carried out, and if negative, it shouldn’t.
In this case the chance of it being positive is relatively low from a non-omniscient perspective, due to several variables, but primarily the fact that it’s unlikely that the experiment will succeed and find a cure.
Situation 2: A convicted murderer has killed a amount of people, but releasing them may save b amount of people, and cause happiness in c amount of people. This may also cause distress in d amount of people, permanent injury or damage in e amount of people, and possible deaths of f amount of people.
In this case the chance of the value x being positive is very low, primarily due to the fact that the convicted murderer is likely to murder again, lowering his or her value more.
An omniscient being, however, may discover that this person will find a cure for some disease that will save thousands, and thus have them released.
However, society would rather imprison them, as society is not omniscient and only sees the above statement that the value x is likely to be negative.
You’re kind of understating the benefits of getting rid of a disease by representing them with the example of a man being happy because he read about it. It makes for a biased comparison and I didn’t even specify details that you could’ve used to infer the chances of net gain are low. I just said as a thought experiment what if there was someone who wanted to use lethal experiments on human beings to potentially save more lives. Then you said we’re not omniscient so we wouldn’t do it because we can’t guarantee results. Now you’re saying that if chances of gain and the amount of gain entailed by those chances outweigh the potential loss then it should be undertaken but what I’m saying is most of society would not agree
Those examples are there to show the wide range of different effects that must be added to the equation.
Like I say this quote, “society will not agree” because it is not omniscient and cannot know that the net gain is positive, and thus would not undertake it.
Society does not care about other things besides the greater good. It only appears to.
I’ve already shown here that justice exists because of that utilitarian framework.
I don’t understand what you’re arguing about anymore.
Now you’re going back to saying society does not do things that it does not know will have positive results and I’m sure when I bring up the convicted murderer thing again, you will say that society does it because it’s more likely to be good than bad. Do you somehow not see the inconsistency here? Society doesn’t have to be omniscient to undertake anything risky
only, knowing in the end whether it would save more lives is irrelevant
the intent to save more lives by doing so is still there, and is all that matters
Wth are you even talking about now?
Where do I say this?
I’m going to put this in simple terms.
Society does things that, to the best of its knowledge, benefit the greater good.
It’s not omniscient so it can’t actually reach the greater good, and instead sets up systems that help it get as close as possible to the greatest good.
The obvious implication here is that society won’t undertake actions that it doesn’t know will have a positive net gain
No, this is the specific example of the experiment.
so when you’re talking about the experiment society will require guaranteed results but not with the convicted murderer?
No I’m saying that society doesn’t know that the net gain will be positive and doesn’t want to risk it.
In this case they are sacrificing something, or taking losses, in order to gain potential benefits.
With the case of the murderer, if they simply kill them, then they’re sacrificing potential benefits to prevent potential losses.
Obviously they’re different cases.
smol brain moment
I’m so glad I was on my phone with 4% battery when this started and didn’t reply and now I can enjoy the bliss of not having to serve and be served word salads.