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To: Centurion2000
"The ends justify the means"

That statement is, in itself, irrational. You can *never* achieve a worthy end by unworthy means, and anyone who believes that they can, is, not to put too fine a point on it, irrational...

the infowarrior

33 posted on 09/03/2008 12:44:00 AM PDT by infowarrior (“Let the voters decide if Palin is laughable.”-Tublecane)
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To: infowarrior; Tublecane; monday; Centurion2000; supercat
Hume's idea was that reason alone cannot give rise to moral judgments. Though it can show how best to achieve one's ends, it cannot determine what those ends should be.
“'Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger. ‘Tis not contrary to reason for me to chuse my total ruin, to prevent the least uneasiness of an Indian or person wholly unknown to me. ‘Tis as little contrary to reason to prefer even my own acknowledg'd lesser good to my greater, and have a more ardent affection for the former than for the latter.” (2.3.3.6)

"...Hume famously closes the section of the Treatise that argues against moral rationalism by observing that other systems of moral philosophy, proceeding in the ordinary way of reasoning, at some point make an unremarked transition from premises linked only by “is” to propositions linked by “ought” (expressing a new relation) — a deduction that seems to Hume “altogether inconceivable” (T3.1.1.27). Attention to this transition would “subvert all the vulgar systems of morality, and let us see, that the distinction of vice and virtue is not founded merely on the relations of objects, nor is perceiv'd by reason” (ibid.)."
David Hume
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume-moral/

Cordially,

55 posted on 09/03/2008 12:36:29 PM PDT by Diamond
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