this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2024
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i have a policy of voting only for candidates who i want to win. it's not a team sport for me. its not placing a bet for me. it's a matter of choosing the candidate i want to win.
I'm not looking at it as a team sport; I'm looking at "Of the candidates who can actually win, who would I rather be elected if my vote was the deciding vote?"
Deciding to vote for somebody who has too small a coalition to possibly be elected is a decision to make it easier for the candidate who could win, but whom I find the least attractive, to actually win.
that's one story, but it assumes a consequentialist ethic. a deontological ethic would dictate voting for the right person every time regardless of possible outcomes. in casting such a vote i'm voting against all the other candidates who i think should not win.
We have to live with the consequences, no matter out philosophical approaches. That's why I care about outcomes.
justify your approach all you like, it doesn't make it right.
Lol causing bad outcomes while lecturing about moral purity.
The ultimate in evil signaling
i can't be responsible for all the people who voted for biden in 2020. don't blame this on me
You've been:
That's literally putting your money in favor of a Trump win.
no, it's putting my money toward a cornel west win.
Except that he stands exactly zero chance of winning, but is instead going to function as a spoiler. So what you're doing is actively working to create a world where Trump is the President.
no, what i'm doing is funding a candidate whose candidacy i support because i want him to win.
be constructive: there is no need of another internet space full of competition, negativity, rage etc.;
be empathic: empathy is more rebellious than a middle finger;
I’d hardly call that comic a middle finger. Just a succinct way of expressing my disagreement. But since you asked, here’s the empathetic version:
Please appreciate that you’re not the only disappointed idealist. Everyone wants things to be better and I genuinely understand the desire to only vote for what you can defend to yourself morally. However, that’s not the framework we have to work within. The realities of American politics require pragmatism that is incompatible with stubborn idealism. My argument is that the deontological approach is unethical because it prioritizes how the voter feels about their vote over reducing total harm to the greatest number of people. Votes aren’t love letters and they aren’t prayers. To the extent that any of us as individuals have any influence on the mad, chaotic world that we all have to live in, consequences are more important than intentions.
you can believe that, but it's not objective fact. if you use this axiom to choose your actions, you run into a major epistemic problem: you can't know the future, so you can't actually know the consequences.
it's also not a fair characterization of what deontological ethics proposes: it's not that intention matters, it's that the ethics are in the act itself, not in the effects it may have or exclusively the intent of the actor.
That’s certainly not a flaw in the philosophy. As it pertains to the voter, you’re not expected to know the future, but you do have a civic duty to be informed when voting. If you have made a good faith effort to understand the context of the choice and the most likely outcomes of the options available, you can’t be faulted for not foreseeing the exact outcomes that unfold. If nothing else, because you can’t possibly know exactly what the outcomes of the alternatives would have been. Ignoring the most likely outcomes in favor of the most desired outcomes is what seems unethical. “Letting perfect be the enemy of good” and all that.
I genuinely “Kant” see how someone can justify a moral framework where only the action has intrinsic morality and the consequences are completely irrelevant. Sure, the morality of an action should be considered, but ultimately, real-world choices have to be made from a holistic consideration of the entire situation.
Similarly, I also reject the idea of perfectly objective morality. There are extreme shades of grey, but never black and white. No action can be said to be universally good regardless of both intent and context, except in religious moral frameworks.
honestly, though i have long thought of myself as a deontologist, i have begun to think that i'm actually just a cynic. or, rather, i have begun to approach ethics with cynicism.
i'm starting to think that people just do what they want and then justify it. and this plays nicely with hedonism, which i also find quite appealing.
me too. i don't believe i can prove i'm right or you're wrong, though i certainly believe that. you'll have to decide what to do for yourself, just as i have.
since you can't know what might cause the greatest harm in the future, the harm that occurs after you act cannot inform how you act. it's a well-trod objection to consequentialist ethics.