The Ends Justify the Means
Assume that the "ends justify the means." Well. You just assumed what is not true.
A 1500 word essay that summarizes and evaluates the proposition that “the ends justify the means.” Despite its prevalence in politics and daily life, this “principle” is not compossible; commits several logical fallacies; violates the Law of Identity; relies on the false idea that “might makes right”; denies the concept of self-ownership; and substitutes force for persuasion.
The idea that the “ends justify the means” is a profoundly unjust, immoral, and illogical position to maintain and should be expunged from all human considerations and interactions.
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Originally published July 12, 2013, as “Ends and Means II.”
A more informal discussion of this issue is available here:
The implicit or explicit basis for virtually all political actions in the modern world is the idea that “the ends justify the means.” In other words, as long as one examines only the goal/purpose/reason/ends that one desires/wishes to accomplish, and as long as someone, somewhere benefits from that result, then one not need examine or justify the means/process/actions used to obtain those “positive” results.
The idea that “the ends justify the means" is a profoundly unjust, immoral, and illogical position to maintain and should be expunged from all human considerations and interactions.
1. This principle is not compossible. Not everyone can practice it at the same time and in the same manner. For example, if I murder you for end X, you cannot subsequently murder me for end Y.
2. An implicit premise underlying this principle is that an individual and/or a group and/or a majority of individuals is the standard for determining whether action set X is proper or improper, i.e., true or false, correct or incorrect. An appeal to majority—that X is true because most people believe X—as a justification for X is a logical fallacy. Truth is not determined by any individual or group but by correspondence with reality, i.e., reality is the standard by which we determine if our identification of X is true or false (the Correspondence Theory of Truth). If the “majority” were the standard, the result would be that people are infallible, incapable of error. Infallibility renders logic irrelevant as a means for humans to gain knowledge. Relativism is another species of an appeal to majority fallacy and is thus rendered equally wrong as a guide to truth.
3. This principle—that a consideration/evaluation of means is irrelevant—would also lead to both X and not-X being “true” at the same time, e.g., Group A and Group B both want end C. Group A: It is okay to murder members of group B for benefit C; Group B: It is wrong to murder us, i.e., we need to be alive, to obtain benefit C. Both situations lead to the same result but use opposite means to get there. But there are no contradictions in reality. As axioms, the Law of Noncontradiction and the Law of Identity reveal that metaphysical contradictions are an impossibility. The only contradictions that exist are those in the identifications a person or persons might make in regard to reality. (Again, cf. to the “Correspondence Theory of Truth.”)
4. The premise in point 2—an appeal to majority is proper—is an extended example of subjectivism, another logical fallacy, i.e., that X is true simply because person A wants or believes X to be true. Reality—not a person, not people, not a group, not society, not a nation, not humanity—is the standard for determining whether X is true. Subjectivism with its attendant infallibility—if X is true simply because “I” believe X, I must always be “right” simply because I believe X—renders any and all knowledge or truth claims meaningless since anything and everything is “true” and “not-true” at the same time and in the same respect. (If A believes X and B believes not-X, then both propositions have to be “true.” But this results in yet another contradiction.) Subjectivism rejects the very concept of “objectivity,” i.e., the idea that a standard exists outside an individual for judging truth or morality.
5. This alleged principle is an example of the “tyranny of the majority.” The “majority” is never a proper standard for determining the propriety of any action or belief. A group, society, nation, or humanity is nothing more than a shorthand way of describing the relationships among a number of individuals. Only individual people are entities and primaries. No grouping of humans is an entity or can ever be a primary, i.e., exist separate and apart from the individuals who comprise it. The “tyranny of the majority” is a result of relying on pure “democracy,” i.e., the rule of the majority, i.e., the dictatorship of 50% + 1 over the rest of society, as a standard for determining what should or should not be done, what is or is not right or moral.
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