Trayvon Martin Case

[JoeRedskin]

Originally Posted by Lotus

Some here have maintained that ethical decisions can be expressed as mathematical equations.

My question then is, what ethical theory gets used to produce such quantification? Deontology? Bergsonian emotivism? Rawlsian theory of justice? Utiltarianism? Kantian universalism? Aristotelian virtue ethics?

One cannot talk about quantifying ethics without taking a position on ethical theory. Please tell me which theory is in play and why we should choose that mode of quantification. Or stop naively talking about quantifying ethics. One or the other will do.

Actually, no human choice is necessary - science will solve those sticky little ethical problems for us. We simply have a representative of the various schools of ethics provide unbiased oversite to the judicial rules committee that is provideing oversite to the computer programmers creating the algorithm.

Well, I guess we should have multiple representatives from each school to cancel out the bias of any one human's bias instead -

Originally Posted by RedskinRat

We would use a consortium that had no larger picture of the end product that would enable them to game the system.

So we have a consortium of programmers designing an algorithm that will dispense justice consistent with the oversight of judicial rules committee and a representative consortium of various consortiums of ethical scholars. ... I thought this would stop being funny, but I was wrong.

Have faith lotus. Science will save us from ourselves. Just as with Icarus, we can touch the sun. Oh, wait ...

And, in the end, Trayvon Martin is still dead and a fallible jury of randomly selected humans, with all their foibles, emotions, rationality and irrationality, will adjudicate the facts and apply the law in the best way they can to decide the fate of Zimmerman.

I would have it no other way.