Ed has indirectly caused nuclear war and all sorts of other Bad Things. Let us praise him.
Wait, that doesn't sound right..
Ed has indirectly caused millions of deaths and various Bad Things, albeit accidentally. What a rotter!
Hmmm...that doesn't sound too nice either.
Ed did the wrong thing. He did a Bad thing. He started a global thermonuclear war. Nothing Ed has ever done resulted in anything good, but Ed tries to be good, thus Ed is good.
Question: Doesn't a moral theory have to result in Good if followed properly? A population of Eds could result in daily catastrophical disasters. Sounds like the Deontologial-character theory thinks this is good. If I support that theory, then I support all these Bad Happenings. (I seem to be stuck in a teleological mind-set)
"Gee, that was a good action."
"He just killed 50,000,000 innocent people!"
"Yeah, but he didn't mean to, so it's okay."
I'd like to say that everything Ed does is Bad, but Ed is still a Good Person. Is that permissible?
"Morally good, although instrumentally bad": Aren't we simply instruments for causing goodness? ("
moral agents")