wrongness flows backward from the shooting, as rightness flows backward from the button, and the wrongness outweighs the rightness.
I suppose you could say this, but if I understand you correctly, then it goes against common usage. Usually those who study ethics would say that rightness is not the type of thing that can add with wrongness to get net wrongness (or net rightness for that matter). That is, if they were talking about that kind of thing, they wouldn’t use the word ‘rightness’. The same goes for ‘should’ or ‘ought’. Terms used for this kind of stuff that can add together: [goodness / badness], [pro tanto reason for / pro tanto reason against].
If you merely meant that any wrong act on the chain trumps any right act further in the future, then I suppose these words would be (almost) normal usage, but in this case it doesn’t deal with ethical examples very well. For instance, in the consequentialist case above, we need to know the degree of goodness and badness in the two events to know whether the child-saving event outweighs the person-shooting event. Wrongness trumping rightness is not a useful explanation of what is going on if a consequentialist agent was considering whether to shoot the person. If you want the kind of additivity of value that is relevant in such a case, then call it goodness, not rightness/shouldness. And if this is the type of thing you are talking about, then why not just look at each path and sum the goodness in it, choosing the path with the highest sum. Why say that we sum the goodness in a path in reverse chronological order? How does this help?
Regarding the terms ‘ethics’ and ‘morality’, philosophers use them to mean the same thing. Thus, ‘metamorality’ would mean the same thing as ‘metaethics’, it is just that no-one else uses the former term (overcoming bias is the top page on google for that term). There is nothing stopping you from using ‘ethics’ and ‘morality’ to mean different things, but since it is not standard usage and it would lead to a lot of confusion when trying to explain your views.
wrongness flows backward from the shooting, as rightness flows backward from the button, and the wrongness outweighs the rightness.
I suppose you could say this, but if I understand you correctly, then it goes against common usage. Usually those who study ethics would say that rightness is not the type of thing that can add with wrongness to get net wrongness (or net rightness for that matter). That is, if they were talking about that kind of thing, they wouldn’t use the word ‘rightness’. The same goes for ‘should’ or ‘ought’. Terms used for this kind of stuff that can add together: [goodness / badness], [pro tanto reason for / pro tanto reason against].
If you merely meant that any wrong act on the chain trumps any right act further in the future, then I suppose these words would be (almost) normal usage, but in this case it doesn’t deal with ethical examples very well. For instance, in the consequentialist case above, we need to know the degree of goodness and badness in the two events to know whether the child-saving event outweighs the person-shooting event. Wrongness trumping rightness is not a useful explanation of what is going on if a consequentialist agent was considering whether to shoot the person. If you want the kind of additivity of value that is relevant in such a case, then call it goodness, not rightness/shouldness. And if this is the type of thing you are talking about, then why not just look at each path and sum the goodness in it, choosing the path with the highest sum. Why say that we sum the goodness in a path in reverse chronological order? How does this help?
Regarding the terms ‘ethics’ and ‘morality’, philosophers use them to mean the same thing. Thus, ‘metamorality’ would mean the same thing as ‘metaethics’, it is just that no-one else uses the former term (overcoming bias is the top page on google for that term). There is nothing stopping you from using ‘ethics’ and ‘morality’ to mean different things, but since it is not standard usage and it would lead to a lot of confusion when trying to explain your views.