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Originally Posted by HighMike
its not that they would argue we have responsibility for only our self but the opposite.. a responsibility to EVERYONE equally. i.e. you cant kill iraqis to save americans...the argument is basically no life can be held over another because what reason you provide for doing so is a political reason that excludes and justifies extermination of others
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That is a good point. Using an 'ends justifies the means' argument means that we can always twist this so that our prejudices cloud our decision-making. Before and during the American Civil War, slavery was justified on the basis that America could not be economically powerful without it. America derived much of its economic might from the use of slavery. This has meant that lots and lots of people are able to live the American dream, but is it justifiable if it caused other people suffering? The same argument gets made today about sweatshop labour.
Appeals to rationality are problematic because rationality is always culturally-bound, and thus changes over time and in different contexts. Most people now agree that slavery is wrong. But at one point it was considered the rational solution to a problem.
Think of the things that we do now (sweatshop labour, child abuse, health care provision etc etc); how harshly will these things be judged by future generations with a different set of understandings of what is rational and right.