this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2022
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I hope so, and it's sort-of the aim.
Hume and Locke's writings are often on 'Philosophy of Mind' - a subject which wasn't at the time anything like a science. Nowadays, lots of the mind is squarely under the purview of neuroscience, or psychology.
Utilitarianism was always a branch hoping to involve science, and eventually become law. Bentham - the originator - stated this should be the methodology for writing laws. Instead of vague moral debates, we should answer the single question 'what would bring the most utility to people?'.
What makes you think moral debates are "vague"?
A master's degree in Philosophy, specializing in ethical theory.
Take for example, the statement "he didn't deserve that". How do we find out if that's true?
Or we can look at the lack of epistemological grounding. If I bet you โฌ5 that some building is taller than another, we can go online, find out who's right, and the money's paid out.
Now imagine I bet you that fur clothing is always morally wrong. How could the money get paid out? What evidence would make a publicly available conclusion?
Moralism and ethics is difficult, but isn't even the question "what would bring the most utility to people?" in the spirit of Bentham a subjective one depending on what one feels about something? What gives you happiness or benefit could cause me immense grief and put me at an disadvantage, no?
Right - the idea's not to conclude with 'tomatoes bring utility - let's make tomatoes'. The idea's to maximize total utility, given a population with different values.
I'm very interested in this topic, how would you define the maximal total utility for a group with different values? And is there a limit to optimization for a group before it starts coming at a cost for subgroups?
I understand that it's easy to revert to an argument of a homogeneous group, but unless everyone is identical - even the slightest difference could lead to large splits. In a global perspective, the difference between i.e. catholics and protestants are comperatively small yet some experience a large divide.
I'll try to condense what I've read with some bullet points:
Yes - every difference in someone's individual utility mappings can affect a given decision, but it's not all that crazy once you look at real-world examples.
Yes - and utilitarians won't add any suggestions on where to take the split.
5 people want to go to the cinema. 2 of them love Marvel, 1 hates Marvel. The currently playing films are ...Mathematically, this example threatens to become insanely challenging, but we make these decisions every day, so clearly we're making some attempt to maximize utility, even if we're not 100% successful.
This is an easy one - don't take global perspectives when making decisions, unless it's a question with a super-homogenous answer like 'should people get stabbed by rabbid monkeys?'.
I think no one is being vague except for you. Before even saying "he didn't deserve that", anyone from a philosophical background would ask a thousand questions to you, starting with "he who?", "what happened to him", "he did what?"
So you're saying speach about Ethics isn't vague, because someone who's studied philosophy would ask one thousand questions about the situation. Is that what you're saying?
Those were like three basic questions that naturally come to mind when someone suddenly talks about justice... Dude please dont ever work in politics, please dont, please okay?
Why all the hate?
Because I dont take authority appeal and bad faith arguments lightly
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