Yet it’s typically considered worse to murder a very old person than a young adult.
I think that’s because the elderly are more likely to be defenceless and murdering someone defenceless is considered bad for virtue ethics reasons. But if you could save either an elder’s life or a young adult’s life I’d guess most people would say you had better save the latter.
It would make me (and perhaps others) a happier person if people saying things like “it’s worse to do X than Y” would distinguish between
doing X is a greater harm to the world than doing Y, and
doing X is better evidence that the person doing it is a Bad Person than doing Y.
[EDITED to add: Oh, and “actions that broadly resemble X tend to do greater harm to the world than actions that broadly resemble Y”. And perhaps it’s worth remarking that if you cash out “Bad Person” as “person liable to do net harm to the world”, these three correspond to a typical consequentialist’s analysis of consequentialism, virtue ethics, and deontology respectively. I am not claiming that this observation is in any way original.]
By “had better” with no qualification I meant the former and by “bad for virtue ethics reasons” I meant the latter, but yes, I should make the distinction even more explicit.
I think that’s because the elderly are more likely to be defenceless and murdering someone defenceless is considered bad for virtue ethics reasons. But if you could save either an elder’s life or a young adult’s life I’d guess most people would say you had better save the latter.
It would make me (and perhaps others) a happier person if people saying things like “it’s worse to do X than Y” would distinguish between
doing X is a greater harm to the world than doing Y, and
doing X is better evidence that the person doing it is a Bad Person than doing Y.
[EDITED to add: Oh, and “actions that broadly resemble X tend to do greater harm to the world than actions that broadly resemble Y”. And perhaps it’s worth remarking that if you cash out “Bad Person” as “person liable to do net harm to the world”, these three correspond to a typical consequentialist’s analysis of consequentialism, virtue ethics, and deontology respectively. I am not claiming that this observation is in any way original.]
By “had better” with no qualification I meant the former and by “bad for virtue ethics reasons” I meant the latter, but yes, I should make the distinction even more explicit.