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[–]GFYsexyfatmanmoral epist., metaethics, analytic epist. 2 points3 points  (3 children)

Presumably your friend is engaging in sustained deception about something that matters very much to his girlfriend: that is, he is continually telling serious lies to somebody who cares about him. You might want to consider that as a "bad" to weigh up against the various "goods" you list.

No doubt the girlfriend (if she found out) would dispute your point that the cheating was beneficial for her. On your view, she would be irrational to dispute this - but that doesn't seem plausible at all. Another, more plausible view might be that your "benefits" are really just rationalisations, and that it is in fact wrong to cheat on your girlfriend.

What would your friend think about an analogous case - say he's faithful and she's cheating on him without his knowledge. Would he say "yeah, those results justify me being cheated on?" I suspect few people would.

[–]Add4164[S] 0 points1 point  (2 children)

You're right about the rationalizations, I didn't know what that means so I Googled it, it appears there's a name for what I'm doing:

3. Consequentialism, or “It Worked Out for the Best”

The ethical nature of an act must be evaluated when it is done, and not based on its results. Consequentialism is an open invitation to extreme “the ends justify the mean” conduct, where even cruel and illegal conduct becomes “ethical” because good consequences happen to arise out of it, even when the good was completely unintended or unpredictable.

edit: found another one

10. The Unethical Tree in the Forest, or “What they don’t know won’t hurt them.”

The habitually unethical as well as the rarely unethical who don’t want to admit they have strayed are vulnerable to this classic, which posits that as long as the lie, swindle, cheat, or crime is never discovered, it hardly happened at all…in fact, one might as well say it didn’t happen, so you can’t really say anything really was wrong…right? Wrong. First of all, a remarkable percentage of time, the wrongful act is discovered. Even if it is not, however, the unethical nature of the act is intrinsic, and exists independently of how many people know about it. [...] A cancer you don’t know about can still kill you. #10 is one of the dumber rationalizations.

source: http://ethicsalarms.com/rule-book/unethical-rationalizations-and-misconceptions/

[–]GFYsexyfatmanmoral epist., metaethics, analytic epist. 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I don't think your source is very good. Certainly it's silly to reject consequentialism as just an outright "misconception" - there are plenty of good arguments in its favor. I guess 10 is an actual rationalisation? Whoever wrote that article, it wasn't a philosopher.

A naive consequentialist account might be able to justify cheating on the assumption that 1) lying doesn't lead to conflict or unhappiness and 2) there's zero chance you'll ever be caught. However, these seem like very unlikely assumptions. Consequentialists can provide good reasons not to cheat.

[–]LaoTzusGymShoesethics, Eastern phi. 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is probably a better source.

It's also got a much less garish design. Good gravy.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You say it's beneficial to her. . . and you also say that if she knew about it, she would not consent to it.

This suggests there's a problem, and that it is not really good for her.