Jophiel wrote:
gbaji wrote:
The conditions you've set really are addressing the issue of whether or not you get caught, not whether the action itself is wrong.
No, it also addresses the effect on the victim and whether or not the victim evem *is* a victim if the actions against them no longer exist.
But the choice did exist. You made it. You knew it was "wrong" when you made it. Thus, the choice was unethical. You're talking about the ends. But ethics doesn't care about what happens in the end. It cares about the specific action before the person making the choice.
By that logic I could argue that it's perfectly ok to kill someone because in a thousand years, he, I, and everyone who'd know about it will be dead anyway, so what's the difference?
The ultimate result isn't what makes something right or wrong. The action itself is either right or wrong. That's what makes it ethical or not.
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Which isn't to say that it's not unethical but I don't agree with the path you've chosen to get there.
I'm not sure what other path there is. I can kinda see your point from a "how do we decide things are unethical" point of view. Afterall, we condemn people who drink and drive, not because drinking is particularly bad, or driving, but because their actions might result in harm to someone else. You could argue that if you could absolutely guaranteed that no harm would come to someone else, it would change the nature of the action itself from ethical to non-ethical.
And I suppose you're right. To a point. Certainly, in the case of the drinking and driving situation, if we could somehow magically absolutely guarantee no harm, then the action wouldn't be unethical. But that might be a bad example, since that's specifically an action that's considered "bad" purely because of the chance of harm occuring. Drinking by itself is not "bad", nor driving.
Assaulting someone is always considered unethical. Not because of the harm specifically, but the action itself. You are intending harm on someone else. You're doing something hateful to someone else. And those motives exist whether harm actually occurs or not. It would be like saying that shooting at someone is perfectly ok as long as you don't actually hit him.
It might be that the intent of an action defines whether it's ethical or not? Dunno. That would seem to be the best determinant. Afterall, we do place great weight within our legal system on intention. If you accidentally do something that results in harm, it's a tragedy. If you intentionally do something that results in harm, you're a bad guy and need to be punished. I guess that's where I'm coming from with this situation. Regardless of your ability to erase the results of the action, the intent when performing the action remains unchanged. You presumably have some "evil" reason to desire to inflict harm on that person. Thus, the action is unethical.
Similar question, but taking the time traveling stuff out. Assume you had the ability to erase people's memories of events and completely repair damage done. So the action occured, but no one remembers it and there's no evidence that it ever happened. How is that different from the scenario you proposed? Does it change the ethical considerations at all?
