Ethics

Utilitarianistically speaking, is there any difference between forced population transfer and ethnic cleansing?

Comments

Yes, the two egregious actions would have different short and long term consequences. And the reasonably understood consequences are the bottom line for Utilitarianism.

I think the question is far too ill-defined to answer meaningfully. in some ways the two activities might be identical (if, say, the population you're transferring is all the members of some undesired ethnic group). Or of course one can ethnic cleanse w/o transferring (for example by genocide), so they're not identical -- but then (presumably) some kind of utilitarian would hold that transferring is 'better' than that form of ethnic cleansing at least (though how you calculate utility when mass death is involved is far from clear). On the other hand if you add up the increased utility of the (presumably evil) people DOING the cleansing, then it may turn out that ethnic cleansing of the genocidal sort is better than forced transfer. And when it comes to 'forced transfer' there are many different possible scenarios -- lots (millions, i think?) of refugees were transferred after WW2, and while it sounds horrible it may well have resulted in greater overall utility for the transferees once people are settled into new, better political arrangements. Or if you're thinking of forced transfer along the Nazi deportation lines, that was obviously pretty terrible from the perspective of the transferees (though who can calculate how the Nazi's utility increased thereby). Then there's 'forced transfer' of the 'persecution' variety etc..... so it seems to me (in short) the two key terms are subject to many different variations in denotation at least, and the idea of calculating various utilities so poorly defined, that the question itself does not offer itself as one capable of being answered ...

hope that's useful-

ap

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