Argumentum ad Consequentiam and Ethics

[lennybound]

An Appeal to Consequences is a logical fallacy that can take either of the following forms:

If P, then Q will occur.
Q is desirable.
Therefore, P is true.

If P, then Q will occur.
Q is undesirable.
Therefore, P is false.
 Such an appeal is considered fallacious because no matter how desirable or undesirable the outcomes of a belief are, that has no

Comments

[ww0308]

I'm afraid this reply may sound colossally stupid, but what the hell, I'll post on the off-chance anyone cares.

I've always approached philosophy with a sort of utopia in mind, a hypothetical world where all people are physically healthy and safe, mentally content, doing work they're proud of, and not restrained by any laws or other restrictions they consider gratuitious and arbitrary. So ethics, to me, has always been about the varying behavioral, political, and legal means to that end. Which entirely sidesteps the much thornier philosophical questions of the nature of reality, human perception, and illusion versus reality-- I'm just sort of casually working on the assumption that consensus reality is what it seems to be.

(It also raises the problem of whether you can brainwash a large population into believing that some horrible police state is not gratuitious and arbitrary, and then kill anyone who wasn't successfully brainwashed, but leave that for now, I guess.)

And so the question of whether an appeal to consequences is valid seems to me to depend on whether you consider ethics the study of ends, or the study of means to some already fairly well-defined utopian end.

[ww0308]

Addendum: As for logical fallacies that should be considered valid within certain fields of study, all logical fallacies can sometimes be useful in rhetoric, courtroom law, and politics, in theater, film, and literature, and in advertising, sales, and marketing, but I imagine that's not what you meant. Non-Euclidean geometry is a useful historical example of how treating "fallacies" as assumptions led to the discovery of new areas of math and science, and I can explain that more thoroughly if you like. But other than that, I can't think of any logical fallacies that would be considered valid within certain fields of study.

And the question of whether ethical theories are truth-apt also seems to depend on whether you already have a goal in mind for your ethics.

[lennybound]

Word.

Wikipedia (which is a very reliable source, I know) says that an Appeal to Consequences is valid in ethics, especially concerning consequentialist ethical theories (like you pointed out). However, if we accept this it seems that we’re forced into an extremely strange situation.

Let us imagine a world in which (for the sake of argument) there is no X, but the majority of people think that there is an X. Now, let’s say that there is a small minority (for the sake of argument) that knows for certain that there is no such X, and eventually convinces everyone else in the world to stop believing in X. Now, let’s imagine that the masses can’t handle this new lack of belief, and nuclear holocaust ensues slaughtering all living things.

Now, it appears that in such a world we would be forced to say that while the statement “There is an X” is epistemically FALSE, it is ethically TRUE because of the undesirable consequences that would be brought about if it were not believed.

A bifurcation of truth-values! Ahh! WTF?!

So yeah… I think the easier option is to just say that an Appeal to Consequences is a logical fallacy in all fields (including ethics), and that consequently all consequentialist ethical theories are fallacious. Yeah?

[ww0308]

Hmm, yeah, that does make sense.

To nitpick, I'd say that "there is an X" is simply false, and it's just "we should claim there is an X" or more broadly "we should lie sometimes" that's ethically true, but your point still stands just fine.

Maybe I could harden up my ideal utopia by specifying that all the inhabitants seek truth fearlessly. That could conflict with the other goals, but the other goals are already going to be conflicting with each other and need some balancing. Truth seeking would also fix the question of what is and isn't gratuitous.

Giving up the search for truth to attain safety, comfort, and the other goals would be awful. Same goes for giving up various other values-- music, say, or painting, or romantic love. I see now that my idea of utopia is more complex than is immediately apparent, and I'm more wedded to the nice things about the world as it is than is immediately apparent, too. Three cheers for discourse increasing self-knowledge!