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    Human action is irreversible in a way that artifacts are ... — Carmelics
    Home/Moral Responsibility
    HistoryEditSee Inverse

    Human action is irreversible in a way that artifacts are not.

    ConsequentialismMoral Responsibility
    ?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.
    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.A faulty artifact can be destroyed and recreated, undoing the original act of making.
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    • 2.Action always takes place within an already existing web of human relationships where every action becomes a reaction and every deed a source of future deeds.
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    • 3.The processes started by action can neither be controlled nor reversed once set in motion.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Artifacts embedded in social practice—laws, institutions, currencies—resist destruction and recreation just as stubbornly as human actions resist reversal.
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    • 2.Arendt's distinction presupposes a sharp artifact/action divide that her own analysis of 'work' founding durable public realms already undermines.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Parfit's reductionist account of personal identity entails that the agent who acted and the agent who might 'reverse' the act are not numerically identical, making artifact-repair and action-reversal symmetrically impossible for the same agent.
      ?

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    • 2.If irreversibility is grounded in the persistence of causal chains rather than agent identity, then complex manufacturing processes—chemical reactions, demolitions, ecological interventions—generate equally uncontrollable downstream effects as human action does.
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    Topics

    Moral ResponsibilityConsequentialism

    Related

    A faulty artifact can be destroyed and recreated, undoing the original act of ma...Action always takes place within an already existing web of human relationships ...Arendt's distinction presupposes a sharp artifact/action divide that her own ana...Artifacts embedded in social practice—laws, institutions, currencies—resist dest...
    +3 moreShow less
    If irreversibility is grounded in the persistence of causal chains rather than a...Parfit's reductionist account of personal identity entails that the agent who ac...The processes started by action can neither be controlled nor reversed once set ...

    Similar

    The consequences of human action are both unpredictable and irreversib...79%A faulty artifact can be destroyed and recreated, undoing the original...79%Making an action unavoidable is not the same thing as bringing it abou...76%The processes started by action can neither be controlled nor reversed...71%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: arendt
    View source passageHide passage
    Closely connected to the boundlessness and unpredictability of action is its irreversibility. Every action sets off processes which cannot be undone or retrieved in the way, say, we are able to undo a faulty product of our hands. If one builds an artifact and is not satisfied with it, it can always be destroyed and recreated again. This is impossible where action is concerned, because action always takes place within an already existing web of human relationships, where every action becomes a re
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit