The Moral Murderer: A (more) Effective Counterexample to Consecuentialism

My aim in this paper is to provide an affective counterexample to consequentialism. I assume that traditional counterexamples, like Transplant (A doctor should kill one person and transplant her organs to five terminal patients, thereby saving their lives) and Judge (A judge should sentence to death...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor: Rivera López, Eduardo Enrique
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2012
País:Argentina
Institución:Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas
Repositorio:CONICET Digital (CONICET)
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:ri.conicet.gov.ar:11336/197674
Acceso en línea:http://hdl.handle.net/11336/197674
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:ETHICS
CONSEQUENTIALISM
DEONTOLOGISM
DEATH PENALTY
https://purl.org/becyt/ford/6.3
https://purl.org/becyt/ford/6
Descripción
Sumario:My aim in this paper is to provide an affective counterexample to consequentialism. I assume that traditional counterexamples, like Transplant (A doctor should kill one person and transplant her organs to five terminal patients, thereby saving their lives) and Judge (A judge should sentence to death an innocent person if he knows that an outraged mob will otherwise kill many innocent persons) are not effective, for two reasons: first, they make unrealistic assumptions and, second, they do not pass the rule-consequentialist institutional test. My example (The Moral Murderer), instead, assumes a realistic empirical framework and the relevant action does not undermine basic social institutions. On the contrary, it reinforces them. In The Moral Murderer, Tom (an adult male) should murder a person (preferably a woman) in order to be punished to death.