Being able to do more good than harm

Luke1i1

Hi all

I am new to this forum so please be kind!

This is probably a bit of a different question to which you are used to and may seem a bit basic but I'm struggling with finding the answer so some help would be greatly appreciated!

The question is this:

Is it possible to really do more good than harm to others in society when it may negatively effect those in the future?

Basically by using resources today to help others (e.g. equipment used to stop the elderly falling at home and medicines used in healthcare etc.) Won't this mean there is less resources in the future? In turn meaning that many people in years to come may not have access to such resources due to us using them now and as a result may not get the help they need? Overall resulting in us doing more harm then good by using these resources now?

Sorry if this sounds really basic but I have been struggling with finding the answer.

I appreciate that the most logical answer is that we don't know what resources that future people will benefit from but surely any resources used today would have an impact?

Thanks for taking the time to read this post.

Best wishes

Luke

Pseudonym

↪Luke1i1

In simplest terms then yes, this is true of non-renewable resources which is why people consider it unethical to make excessive use of them. It's not true of renewable resources though which are only denuded if they are used at a rate that is greater than their production, nor of recyclable resources.

The more complex issue is one of diminishing responsibility to future generations the further into the future they are. This is usually argued on the grounds you've already alluded to, that our knowledge of the needs of future generations becomes increasingly uncertain the further into the future they are and so the net risk (harm X certainty) is smaller even for relatively large harms, like resource depletion. How far into the future you place this will depend on how certain you are about humanity's needs.

Luke1i1

↪Pseudonym

Thanks for getting back to me Pseudonym.

So with this in mind is it really an act of "good" that what we do today (i.e. helping others) when it is causing harm to those in the future?

Thanks for taking the time to answer this :)

Luke

Pseudonym

↪Luke1i1

You could either answer that question from a utilitarian perspective or a deontological/virtue ethic (they would amount to the same thing here).

Essentially, if we're agreed that maximising the well-being of current and future society is our goal, we then have the task of dealing with the huge amount of uncertainty in our predictions. One way to do this is with virtue ethics, trusting to an instinct or intuition for the types of behaviour that generally lead to beneficial consequences. In that case you might well feel that indulging someone's trivial needs now at the expense of fundamental needs in the future 'feels' wrong and is not the sort of thing a virtuous person would do.

It is common in modern ethics to treat individual morality as best resolved by virtue ethics and the decisions of governments and authorities as best resolved with utilitarian approaches. So for government to allocate resources to helping individuals now at the expense of those in the future one might expect a more detailed weighing excersice with evidence brought and some acknowledgement of the hyperbolic discounting values being used.

Being able to do more good than harm

Welcome to The Philosophy Forum!

Categories

More Discussions