>>349
I think it's the 'easiest' ethical system to understand and to find somewhat appealing. But I also think it has a ton of problems. Though consequences aren't always easy to determine, they always result from actions and it makes sense to judge actions by them. Of course, this requires the assuption that every person is free to take any action (I don't mean in the 'free will' sense, but rather in the context of social possibility), is somewhat aware of their consequences and is willing to accept them. Different people might consider different outcomes worse than others so there's that as well to consider, since someone acting a certain way convinced it results in the best outcome possible can't be disuaded by a mere "no it's not". At this point, consequentialism takes a back seat to the assignment of attributes of good and bad to different circumstances or actions in the world. Consequentialism is a method, but it doesn't provide the direction (unless you are utilitarian or humanist or something like that in addition to being consequentialist). So the best way to put it is that consequentialism is incomplete and thus incompetent as an ethical system on its own.
>>354
There is no reason to accept the inverse of a majority. That's an additional clause which cannot be justified within the confines of consequentialism (arguably not even within utilitarianism).
>>360
>The Utilitarian conclusion must obviously be not to kill the redheads, since that leads to more suffering on net.
Death does not equal suffering. Even if you kill someone painfully, they, upon death, cease to be a factor and become neutral. If you don't kill them painfully, then you only lose potential (which can be both positive and negative). The only argument left is that people who are alive might suffer due to people dying. But aside from having little to do with 'utility', this argument is mute if there are more people who don't suffer due to these deaths. And that will always be the case, since most people aren't phazed by most other people's death - not even if they die horrificly. So it follows that if there is ANY kind of benefit to those people dying, the utilitarian is essentially obliged to axe them. Without appealing to the sanctity of life there is no way out of this.
>>361
>"You shouldn't follow the philosophy of doing whatever leads to the best consequences because that will lead to bad consequences!"
Realise that it's possible for "best consequences" to be bad for you. The natural cycle of life might benefit immensly when ridding itself of human life, yet we would hardly benefit from that. The poor might benefit hugely if the richest person on earth payed for all of them, but that person would not necessarily 'benefit' from that.
>>386
>I think it is correct to judge the moral worth of a human by their intentions rather than their outcomes as they have complete control of their intentions (though that is debatable).
Moral worth is a weird way to put it. Intentions precede actions, so it's still the actions that we judge. A murderer with begnin intentions we'll judge less harshly than a murderer with no good intentions whatsoever, but we'd still judge them harshly either way. Intention, even if it can be established clearly, is not a free pass. And if, as you say, control over intentions isn't a guarantee, then obviously it can't be 'correct' to judge people completely on the basis of it.
>>1638
>It would be best to have deontological ethics with the implicit notice that you can break the rules in extreme cases.
But what are extreme cases? What about them makes them exempt of the rules? This is yet another case where we feel inclined to give 'intuition' or something of the like a free pass. If we are going to do that, why even bother with deontological ethics in the first place?