Numbers and tragic cases

A tribute to Ernesto Garzón Valdés

Abstract

The present work expresses a tribute to the Argentinean philosopher Ernesto Garzón Valdés. With relation to this purpose, my research focuses on one of the essays of the Garzón Valdés: if they count the numbers in moral decisions. The steps of my paper will be as follows. In the first place, I will argue that Garzón Valdés underestimates the tragic character of the shooting down of airplanes (central theme of his article). Secondly, I will point out that, in the face of cases such as the shooting down of airplanes, a deontologism, like the one professed by Garzón Valdés, of the style "you can never sacrifice a few to save many" can be unreasonable. There are other forms of deontologism that do not have to be incompatible with a certain dose of consequentialism. I will add to this that, in cases such as the attack to airplanes, it is not so obvious that the "numerical calculation" is out of place or completely unjustified from a moral point of view.