A) On being the target of disgust, and being pitied for alienation I’m a pluralist consequentialist. I believe many things are good. Beauty, friendships, joy, freedom, dignity and so on. I believe that to act rightly is to maximize the good, where the amount of the good is some complex function of those things that are good.
Williams also had this following thought experiment: Jim, a botanist doing research in a South American military junta, finds himself in a small town facing 20 rebels captured by a captain of the army. The captain hands Jim a rifle and tells him that if he kills one of them the other 19 will be spared in honour of his status as a guest of the caudillo, but if he doesn't, all of them will be executed. Williams' argument is basically this: act utilitarianism, for instance, which recommends Jim shoot the one so that the others go free, fails to recognise the captain as himself a moral actor with his own intentions properly responsible for whatever deaths occur, and not merely the medium of an effect Jim is having on the world—i.e., it reduces people to vessels by which consequences enter the world, shorn of rich experience.
To which I'd reply: sure, but as soon as Jim understands what's going on, he's in the fabric of the situation either way. The captain may have his own intentions, projects, and acts, but so does Jim, and so do the captives. He has, albeit through no fault of his own, entered into a negotiation with the rest of the actors, and cannot reasonably profess to be neutral or innocent whichever way it goes; he doesn't only become culpable if and once he takes the rifle and shoots, he's culpable even if he washes his hands and runs away.
(As for my response: this isn't a rigidly deterministic either/or dilemma like a trolley problem, so there should be a way for Jim to make it look like he's killed a rebel without doing so. Perhaps acting real bloodthirsty, playing up how much he hates those damn ungrateful commies and is so happy to finally get his hands on one of them, then insisting he'll do the deed at a distance from the captain so as to savour his killing in private satisfaction and take the body for private research on the effects of native plants on flesh, and then marching the rebel off several yards so the captain can't see clearly, telling the rebel to play dead when he hears the gunshot, firing a few inches away from his head—maybe even grazing his shoulder or ear in order to produce blood, and dragging him off to safety.)
People also want to consider what is good, or ethical. After living nearly 80 years on this earth, I have determined the strive towards goodness creates more immorality to anyone who determines a different frame of ethical values.
Is it moral to be wealthy and give away the wealth or would it have been moral to not collect the wealth to give away, allowing more to share longer in the wealth that is only given later as philanthropy. Is collecting wealth moral at all? Should it be shared equally and never collected? Would that lead to a greater shared morality of the wealth? Can we ever determine the "best" path, which would need to be a path of shared moral vision?
I do know, however, that every moral path that might be better for some leads to disputes that the chosen moral path is inadequate and deprives others who may not benefit by any moral persuasion, thus all moral paths create immorality which does seem to exist. Since you chose to go biblical, let me d the same. If we accept the fall as symbolic of the immoral, what we find is not a contrast between good behaviour and bad and man chose bad when he fell. Actually genesis 1 is about the good of creation with no evil and genesis 2, in the fall man defines good and evil, therefore giving moral determinations to good behaviour and bad behaviour---but the fall in genesis is making the moral decision in the first place and all attempts at defining the moral path are ethically deficient, it is the choice of ethical determinants that are the reason of the fall, thus all moral determinants are the very causes of all immorality.
Williams also had this following thought experiment: Jim, a botanist doing research in a South American military junta, finds himself in a small town facing 20 rebels captured by a captain of the army. The captain hands Jim a rifle and tells him that if he kills one of them the other 19 will be spared in honour of his status as a guest of the caudillo, but if he doesn't, all of them will be executed. Williams' argument is basically this: act utilitarianism, for instance, which recommends Jim shoot the one so that the others go free, fails to recognise the captain as himself a moral actor with his own intentions properly responsible for whatever deaths occur, and not merely the medium of an effect Jim is having on the world—i.e., it reduces people to vessels by which consequences enter the world, shorn of rich experience.
To which I'd reply: sure, but as soon as Jim understands what's going on, he's in the fabric of the situation either way. The captain may have his own intentions, projects, and acts, but so does Jim, and so do the captives. He has, albeit through no fault of his own, entered into a negotiation with the rest of the actors, and cannot reasonably profess to be neutral or innocent whichever way it goes; he doesn't only become culpable if and once he takes the rifle and shoots, he's culpable even if he washes his hands and runs away.
(As for my response: this isn't a rigidly deterministic either/or dilemma like a trolley problem, so there should be a way for Jim to make it look like he's killed a rebel without doing so. Perhaps acting real bloodthirsty, playing up how much he hates those damn ungrateful commies and is so happy to finally get his hands on one of them, then insisting he'll do the deed at a distance from the captain so as to savour his killing in private satisfaction and take the body for private research on the effects of native plants on flesh, and then marching the rebel off several yards so the captain can't see clearly, telling the rebel to play dead when he hears the gunshot, firing a few inches away from his head—maybe even grazing his shoulder or ear in order to produce blood, and dragging him off to safety.)
People also want to consider what is good, or ethical. After living nearly 80 years on this earth, I have determined the strive towards goodness creates more immorality to anyone who determines a different frame of ethical values.
Is it moral to be wealthy and give away the wealth or would it have been moral to not collect the wealth to give away, allowing more to share longer in the wealth that is only given later as philanthropy. Is collecting wealth moral at all? Should it be shared equally and never collected? Would that lead to a greater shared morality of the wealth? Can we ever determine the "best" path, which would need to be a path of shared moral vision?
I do know, however, that every moral path that might be better for some leads to disputes that the chosen moral path is inadequate and deprives others who may not benefit by any moral persuasion, thus all moral paths create immorality which does seem to exist. Since you chose to go biblical, let me d the same. If we accept the fall as symbolic of the immoral, what we find is not a contrast between good behaviour and bad and man chose bad when he fell. Actually genesis 1 is about the good of creation with no evil and genesis 2, in the fall man defines good and evil, therefore giving moral determinations to good behaviour and bad behaviour---but the fall in genesis is making the moral decision in the first place and all attempts at defining the moral path are ethically deficient, it is the choice of ethical determinants that are the reason of the fall, thus all moral determinants are the very causes of all immorality.