What are your guilty pleasures? I ask this question not (or not merely) for voyeuristic reasons, but to get ideas for new things to try. One of my guilty pleasures is watching 24. It comes on in 19 minutes. I'm trying to figure out whether Jack Bauer (the chief character or protagonist, played by Keifer Sutherland) is a consequentialist. He's either a consequentialist or a moderate deontologist. He's not an absolutist deontologist, because he's willing to torture people to save lives. If he believes that torture is intrinsically wrong, then he's a moderate deontologist. If he believes that torture is not intrinsically wrong, then he's a consequentialist. To date, there has been no "crucial experiment" that would allow me to determine what his normative ethical theory is. Maybe there will be tonight.
Addendum: A crucial experiment is an experiment that simultaneously confirms one theory and disconfirms (refutes) a rival theory. For this to occur, the theories must have contradictory consequences. If theory T predicts p and theory U predicts not-p, then, if p occurs, T is confirmed and U is refuted. If not-p occurs, then U is confirmed and T is refuted. Since either p occurs or not-p occurs, either U is refuted or T is refuted. All crucial experiments are experiments, but not all experiments are crucial experiments.
