--On Monday, April 07, 2003 8:02 AM -0700 andie nachgeborenen <andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> I hate to be a bore about this, but it's not a tautology. The "ends
> justify the means' only if you are a consequentialist, and that's a
> controversial theory. Anyway, not even then. This is sloppy talk. People
> should reread the Trotsky-Dewey debate (Their Moral and Ours), in which
> two parties from different perspectives, both consequentialists who think
> that what makes an action right is that it promotes the good, agree that
> good ends do not justify any means whatsoever,
Perhaps the talk is sloppy because the dialectical terrain is vague. On a consequentialist account, the ends always do justify the means in the sense that any action (no matter how terrible it may appear) that on balance promotes the good is justified.
-- Luke