prase comments on Virtue Ethics for Consequentialists - Less Wrong

33 Post author: Will_Newsome 04 June 2010 04:08PM

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Comment author: prase 05 June 2010 12:14:32AM 0 points [-]

I am clearly unable to express myself clearly today.

I haven't said that it's typical to value all life equally. I tried to say that set X of x deaths is typically worse than set Y of y deaths, if x>y. Almost always it holds when Y is a subset of X (that was the intended meaning of ceteris paribus), but if x>>y, it often holds even if the sets are disjoint.

Also, the context of the trolley scenario is that the fat man isn't your relative or friend; he's a random stranger, fully comparable with those on the track.