#antiutilitarian

[gahjouyooj]

Nice antiutilitarianism

If no...do tell me why.

[fierceawakening]

@medleymisty I know I'm commenting a lot but I just have a lot of Opinions - maybe I should start reblogging instead.

I like your Opinions, they remind me that I’m not crazy. Honestly this book makes me feel like I am, with all its “people don’t X Y Z”

I feel like I should go back to reading JJC Smart. I disagree with act utilitarian ethics a lot, but he at least doesn’t seem to do this... people don’t X Y A B C thing, he says “non utilitarians say x but I disagree bc y”

It’s no wonder that on tumblr a lot of people talk like consequentialism won the day if they’re reading books like this though. It sure talks like that question isn’t open.

Which is WEIRD. I mean, I was in grad school back in the oughts and it’s possible every philosophy department read one great essay and shook on it and I missed it cos so long motherfuckers but I would think I’d at least HEAR about it.

Also it certainly seems like pop culture is still broadly antiutilitarian, as shown by portraying characters like Thanos, who clearly believe they do the greatest good for the greatest number, not just as wrong about the math but as wrong about the STRATEGY ITSELF.

“They will resist.” “Your math sucks. Bro do you even Science?”

Vs the actual line

“They Will resist.” “Yeah, we’re all kinds of stubborn.”

What’s the stubborn? They say it themselves. “I keep trying to be okay with this but I’m not the kind of person who can.”

What’s the kind of person who can’t? Someone who misses their friends, and can’t override this with It Was Best.

That is, someone whose moral intuitions are more deontological than utilitarian.

Maybe utilitarianism is better! (Thanos is not a very good one. Read actual scholars if you want to know what people actually say. I keep thinking Smart and Harmon but it looks like Singer’s popular. Which is ODD AS FUCK to me bc that’s the dude who’s okay with infanticide of disabled babies, and back before 2010 the disability community hated him pretty universally.)

But the skinning it as Evil seems to me to show that this isn’t as settled as Bloom keeps assuming it is, so I’m smelling a lot of question begging.

Like a LOT.