[SirJamesIII]

woops totally meant sadistic when i said masochistic

[nettneu]

Originally Posted by Isol8 To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

Yeah I've heard this one before. I get the feeling that most paradoxes (in general) are kinda dumb. In the example you gave, I'd say the money thing becomes misleading, but if we assume that if money is exactly equal to utility then both actions are preferable - do either, it doesn't matter. In reality, it could go either way - if you're giving the 1000 to someone who really needs it, to pay rent, feed kids etc, that's probably better than affording 100 people a free lunch. But if it's giving the 1000 to a rich guy as opposed to giving 100 homeless people a fiver, then the latter is the best option. The phrase "greatest good for the greatest number" entails a problem, I cede that. But the point is maximizing 'goodness' - not just for one ̶p̶e̶r̶s̶o̶n̶ sentient being, but for as many sentient beings as possible. The weigh-ups that entails is up to the do-gooder's discretion, but the idea is hardly worth abandoning because it originally wasn't perfectly stated. It's as distinct as it can be in a single, unconvoluted sentence.

In that case it seems to me that just saying "the greatest good" and dropping the bit about numbers would make it an even less convoluted sentence and would actually be clearer. If you do some good thing to each of 2 people this obviously adds up to greater good than if you had only done it to 1 of them. Specifying it in the requirement therefore adds nothing, it only misleads people (or me, at least) into thinking that it must be trying to imply something less obvious or it wouldn't have been considered worth saying.

[paleoeco]

I think I'm going to swoon - two other posters who know and reference Rawls.

A Theory of Justice is probably one of my favorite pieces of moral philosophy. The "original position" is, IMO, the best tool to realize that most people act from a position of privilege and behave in a way to maintain that privilege more often than behave in a way to be morally good.

That being said, Theory does have some shortcomings. Primarily it acts as if the society in which morality functions is homogenous, which in fact, is not the case. Political Liberalism is arguably the single most definitive philosophical basis for modern Western democracies. PL asks the question: how do we construct a morally good civil/legal framework for a society of people who hold entirely reasonable & consistent, yet mutually exclusive, religious/ethical/philosophical systems?

[Disillusioned]

	Originally Posted by paleoeco To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	I think I'm going to swoon - two other posters who know and reference Rawls. A Theory of Justice is probably one of my favorite pieces of moral philosophy. The "original position" is, IMO, the best tool to realize that most people act from a position of privilege and behave in a way to maintain that privilege more often than behave in a way to be morally good.

Rawls A Theory of Justice is one of the most famous works in philosophy, however it is more often considered political philosophy than ethics. That is, in the realm of ethics, Rawls is for the most part a Kantian. The fundamental moral principles for which he establishes his theory of justice can be found in Kantian ethics.