Does the means justify the ends?

Do the means justify the ends? No. Even if you kill someone 'humanely', you're still violating their preference to live. Means and motives are somewhat irrelevant - consequences are largely what matter.

This is why the reverse of the question, 'do the ends justify the means?' is true for me. If I had to murder one person to save one million, I would. The ends would be that 999,999 net people live, which justifies the means - the use of violence and the act of murder.

I wouldn't. You can't quantify life like that.

You wouldn't kill even one person to save 1 million, 1 billion, the entire planet Earth? An interesting view - you're probably in the minority there, although I am in the minority when I apply such utilitarian calculations to a situation in which one person would have to be killed to save five people. Your view is probably the most consistent non-utilitarian one, as opposed to believing that it is justifiable to kill one person to save many at an arbitrary point when the 'many' really becomes 'too many', but not below this point.

Are you a follower of Kant?

Not intentionally, I don't believe in the categorical imperative although I think duty is important. Really I think it's a question of the value of human life, to quantify human life like that I think it negates what it means to be human, the question of how many people does not come into it for me because whether or not we talk about 1 or 50000 people each and everyone of them will suffer individually, to say for example that killing 50 people would cause more suffering than 1 I think misses the point that 1 person has to suffer at the expense of 50 people who would have all felt what that 1 person would have felt.

I might not have clarified that well...

Suffering is personal to the individual, so whether it is 1 or 100 they all suffer individually. It is unfair for me to decide to make someone suffer to stop the suffering of others.

Do the means justify the ends? No. Even if you kill someone 'humanely', you're still violating their preference to live. Means and motives are somewhat irrelevant - consequences are largely what matter.

This is why the reverse of the question, 'do the ends justify the means?' is true for me. If I had to murder one person to save one million, I would. The ends would be that 999,999 net people live, which justifies the means - the use of violence and the act of murder.

You worte : ''consequences are largely what matter.''
Why?? what is the logic when bad impact is more important than a good intent or a good reason??

People can have all the good intentions they want, but it wouldn't make a difference in the end. If someone has a terminal illness, and they are in pain and want to die, they should be allowed to, in my opinion, and if someone stops them from doing so, however good their intentions are, they've still caused the unnecessary suffering of someone.

This is just my opinion, others may think that motives are more important, but it's the consequences that we deal with and have to live with at the end of the day. In any case, plenty of people have probably thought that their actions were justified simply because their motives were good - Hitler believed in the superiority of the Aryan race, so to him, he was perfectly justified in what he did - he probably believed that his motives were pure, and used them to justify the ends.

Never. And utilitarianism, in that context, makes a nice home for psychopaths.

Why never?

Never. And utilitarianism, in that context, makes a nice home for psychopaths.

What do you mean by it wouldn't make a difference in the end?

People's good intentions won't change the outcome of an act.