He's not a bum. He's an upright citizen

The bum was a metaphor.  I was thinking of being kind to one's fellow man, of doing unto others as you would have others do unto you, I just picked the bum as a handy metaphor because I see them every day on the street.  Let's replace them by a totally deserving, totally upright citizen who through no fault of his own, some disease, some accident, falls on hard times and all he wants is one lousy buck so that his son, Timmy, can get a bus pass to go to school and learn a trade and not be a burden on society.  Do you give this guy a buck?

And of course it was always about motivation.  One guy gives the buck out of the kindness of his heart, and the other guy does so because he thinks he will be rewarded for it.  Is one guy a better man than the other?

Likewise in the second example, Old Dog gives that unfortunate but true-at-heart guy a buck because he is an amiable guy, Beagles gives him a buck because he thinks it will please his deist god.  Uncle Ken gives him a buck because he believes this will make a better world.  Are any of these three better than the others or are they all the same?

And in the third, Beagles doesn't give this same unfortunate man a buck because he believes it would sap his self-reliance.  Old Dog doesn't  give him a buck because he doesn't think the guy really needs it,.  Uncle Ken doesn't give him a buck because he is in a bad mood because he thinks his colleagues don't understand metaphors.  Are any of these three better than the others?  How do they stand in relation to their actions in the second example?

What do you guys think?  Myself, I tend to go along with your tv proverb.  "The morality of an action is solely judged on its consequences."  I might quibble with solely, but  for now I will let it stand. So I would say the guys are equally good in all three examples, and the guys in the second are better than the guys in the third.  How do you guys feel about that?

That proverb does open up a bit of a can of worms though.  There is one form of ethics, let;s call it stoicism, though it isn't really, but it's close, anyway it believes a sin is a sin.  Okay I can't say sin, because I can hear the bible opening from here.  Let's say it  believes that certain acts are bad in and of themselves.  It doesn't matter what the motivation is.  The other form of ethics is utilitarianism, and it believes that the outcome is what counts.  They both have their weaknesses, the first in that choosing which acts are bad regardless of consequences is arbitrary and the second in how do you know what the consequences of your acts are going to be?

Myself I prefer utilitarianism because it gives you something to talk about.  Do you guys have a preference?

And let's leave religion out of it.  Ethics is bigger than religion.


And the whole point  of the tree in Ken's backyard is whether it is there or not.  We can have all kinds of discussions on the merit of the tree, but that is all beside the point of Objective Reality.  The reason we can have discussions about the tree is because we all agree that it exists,  If one of the guys claims the tree doesn't exist, even though we can all see it, than we can't discuss the tree with him,.  That is why Objective Reality is important.