Posted 30 September 2010 - 07:31 PM
It's completely possible to answer from a moral perspective. I take the perspective of Kantian universalist ethics on this issue, which is to say I support his formulation of the categorical imperative.
In a nutshell, he would say that any ethical rule that you wish to apply to a given set of circumstances can only be applied if you wish it to be applied by all people in all similar circumstances. In other words, ethics are not an individual thing, they are universal, and if you aren't willing to 'will' a universal application, or a categorical imperative, then you can't apply it in your own case. It's in a sense a moral test.
In other words, the ends don't ever justify the means, if the ends are ever wrong they are always wrong in all circumstances.
And saying that the means justify the ends isn't the way I would put it either. Rather I would say that the means may justify a lack of action despite the ends. For instance, take the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagisaki. Now of course people debate how things would have gone down without them, but lets assume for the moment that lots more people on both sides would have died had we not bombed the hell out of those two cities. I would argue that two massive unprecedentedly brutal attacks on innocent civilians can never be morally justified, and as a result the means (being immoral) justify a lack of action, despite the ends of increased loss of life over all. The increase in loss of life is more morally justifiable, or more honerable, than the murder of countless civilians to end a war.
However, to say the means justify the ends might be seen as a tacit support of the doctrine of double effect, which I also reject. The doctrine sets forth three rules required to justify an act with a known harmful result:
1. The nature of the act is itself good or at least morally neutral
2. The agent intends the good effect and not the bad either as a means to the good or an end in itself
3. The good effect justifies the bad effect in circumstances sufficiently grave to justify causing the bad effect and the agent exercises due diligence to minimize the harm
In essence I guess I think that's just too vague. It would prevent a justification of nuclear attacks on civilians, fortunately, but it might allow for other forseen harmful consequences because the act itself is "good" and the "intended" consequence is "good". I would argue that if you forsee a consequence to your actions that you know is bad, and you do commit the act anyway, then you intend the bad result as much as the good. It's a nicety, an intellectual abstraction, to say "I knew that x would happen, but I didn't intend for it to happen."
In essence, I would maintain that in order to take action, you need to be reasonably certain that the act itself is good, and that the consequence is good, else you have an obligation to in-action.
In sum, neither the ends nor the means can justify the other.
