it’s . . . so beautiful
Couldn’t agree more.
My eyes have longed for a post in which I do not have to scroll to see the whole of it
Conciseness is underrated.
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fr, there’s no need for long essays unless it’s an official essay (also I didn’t know we were locked into a position?m?)
Lol
Locked?
burden of proof
It would further utilitarian goals to release a murderer who’s very unlikely to continue murdering others but is very likely to contribute to society if released. You believe society can judge some mentally ill people to be capable of future good and release them for that reason and then when I give the example of a person who murdered someone out of revenge but is unlikely to ever repeat it for whatever reason, you turn around and say
Not necessarily. If you’re an adult and you murdered your former caregiver for a reason that could only happen because they were your caregiver, then it may or may not be reasonable, depending on the specific details of that situation, to assume they won’t just keep murdering people. It can’t be proven with certainty but it can be proven beyond a certain amount of doubt that would be acceptable for the purpose of informing the decision to imprison them or let them go
You’re telling me that if the chances of the prisoner causing more harm than good or more good than harm if released are equal and the net gain of inaction is 0 then you should choose the option with the net gain of 0. In that example, the option with the net gain of 0 was not releasing the prisoner. However, if the chances of the prisoner being more beneficial or more harmful are still the same but this time the action being considered is whether or not to imprison the prisoner in the first place, then by the same logic we should do nothing
Okay. The point still stands
That’s not a valid basis. I can compress your list of possibilities even more and make something like this:
- You release the prisoner and fewer people are harmed than benefitted
- You releasing the prisoner and more people are harmed than benefitted
- You don’t release the prisoner
I could even converge all of this into one possibility and call it a logical whole but speaking of logical holes,
Am I supposed to believe you didn’t split the possibility of attempting something into attempting that thing and failing and attempting it and succeeding?
You could’ve made it into
- more people are lost from the attempt than are saved
- less people are lost from the attempt than are saved
Relevance?
People under the poverty line in america can still have a much higher standard of living than the vast majority of native americans could before our expansion. We do see a lack of access to some modern medicines but this would still be much worse if the americas remained relatively underdeveloped which is what would have to come from us not being able to use force to extend our influence there
but this does not follow. A consequentialist would only care based on the effects of these things. These actions wouldn’t be inherently bad for utilitarian goals which is why I said the people who decry our invasion of the americas have the understanding that people will recognize the invasion as unjust without referencing a cost-benefit analysis or denying that much improvement has resulted from it. In addition, in the case of our expansion to the pacific, we did have utilitarian goals in mind when we invaded which you can see in the doctrine of manifest destiny. This is obvious from the iconic painting associated with manifest destiny, “american progress”.
It wasn’t. For the most part, the people who got land benefitted
This isn’t much of a counterargument but I’m sure you already know that, as you’ve already admitted you don’t believe any of this
I’ve tried interpreting this different ways and I can’t see how you got that conclusion
I’m bored.
People don’t understand what I’m talking about, so now I’m going to reiterate for everyone’s benefit. I write stories, so I’m making this one.
Imagine we, like the philosophers of yore, were sitting at a table. A third person asks us “Are good and evil subjective?”
You respond, “Certainly. Everyone views good and evil differently, and thus good and evil are subjective.”
I ask you then. “What’s good, what’s evil, and what’s subjective?”
You look at me and say “What does that have to do with it?”
“Well, obviously you can’t say something is something unless we know what the somethings are,” I respond.
“Very well then,” you say. “Good and evil are concepts created by humans, and subjectivity is when something has a different meaning depending on who is talking about it.”
“Well I disagree. Good is when existence is furthered, evil is when it is not. Subjectivity is when something cannot be measured or quantified.”
You look at me, confused. “But that’s not what good and evil are!”
“But that is what good and evil are.” I sigh. “Here, tell me this. If something exists, does it have a value?”
“What does that have to do with this?” you ask.
“Just answer me.”
“Well, if something exists and doesn’t have a value…”
“Then that means that nothing that exists has value,” I finish. “And if nothing that exists has value, then it means that everything is pointless and we should be plowing fields instead of debating philosophy.”
“I suppose,” you respond.
“Doesn’t that show that everything has value then?” I ask. “Or at least, that we should pretend everything has value so we can keep sitting here and debating?”
You nod.
“Well then, if everything has a value because it exists, then aren’t good and evil simply that value?” I ask. “Think about it. The value is determined by existence. Thus, if something makes something else stop existing, then the first something loses value, because it has removed another thing’s existence.”
You look at me, confused.
I plow on. “If losing value is caused by making things stop existing, then evil must be when you lose value. For example, if a man kills another for money, the first is decried as evil. This is because he has killed another man, and thus stopped the other man from existing.”
“That’s not how it works!” you protest. “He’s evil because he did it for money!”
“Why then,” I ask, “is he not evil if he didn’t do it for money?”
You pause. “Well, not necessarily.”
“But still, killing someone is usually evil, is it not?”
“That depends on who is viewing it,” you counter.
“But you see, it has to be justified, right?” I ask.
“Yes…”
“Then doesn’t that mean that it’s innately evil, due to the fact that you have to justify it to make it good?”
“That’s…”
“Thus, ending an existence must be evil, if it has to be justified. Which means, by corollary, keeping things existing must be good. If you save a person’s life, it’s usually good right?”
“Depends on who’s viewing it,” you respond. “If you saved a killer’s life, their family would think you’re evil.”
“Well…” I respond. “Aren’t you using circumstance to make my example evil? If you have to make it evil, it’s like justifying that it’s good. Doesn’t that mean that it’s innately good to prolong existence?”
“But wait,” you respond. “Couldn’t you do the same? Aren’t you just justifying the act of saving someone by saying that the people being saved aren’t usually killers?”
“That’s different. You’re arguing that saving a person could be evil. Those two don’t equate,” I explain.
You seem unconvinced.
“Let’s take a look,” I say. “In one case, a person you saved could be a killer. In the other, a person you saved could be not a killer. That’s what you’re driving at right? But you see, they’re very different. In the first one, the person is already defined, the question is whether the person is a killer. In the second, you attempt to make the already defined subject “a killer”, which isn’t what the example states.”
“That’s confusing,” you say.
“Think of it intuitively then,” I respond, tired of explaining this countless times to countless people. “Saving an existence is good, destroying one is evil.”
“Well let’s go back to the question,” you say. “How would your definitions show that good and evil are not subjective?”
“Well, I said that subjectivity was something that couldn’t be measured or quantified, right?”
“Yes,” you respond.
“Well, if all of existence has a value for existing, and if that value can change depending on whether good or evil was done, by my definition of the two, then doesn’t that mean that the value shows whether something is good or evil?”
“Huh?”
“Let’s make an example. A person has a value of one-and-a-half. Another person has a value of one. If the person with the value of one-and-a-half saves the person with a value of one, doesn’t that mean that the first person should have their value increased? And by one?”
“But why?” you ask.
“Well, because existence has value. By prolonging another existing object’s existence, you are increasing your own value,” I say yet again.
You still seem confused, but I can’t figure out how to better explain it.
“Either way, by my reasoning, doesn’t that mean that the person now has two-and-a-half for their value?”
“Yes,” you respond.
“Doesn’t that show that they are good? Because their value is higher, it shows that they have prolonged something’s existence, which is doing good,” I say. “Haven’t I quantified how good this person is?”
“But that’s just the value you gave them! Other people have different values for those people,” you argue.
“Ah, but you see,” I begin. “That’s because I chose to start big. If I started from atoms, that is, with each atom having a worth determined by their potential future good, and then began to build up, using atoms to measure the worth of molecules, using molecules to measure the worth of mixtures, using mixtures to measure the worth of, say, a bacterium, using those to measure the worth of plants, for example, and then animals, and then people, I could find the actual worth of a person, couldn’t I?”
“Yes, but how do you know how much potential future good an atom has?” you ask.
“I don’t,” I respond. “I would have to be omniscient to know.”
“But doesn’t that mean that good and evil are subjective, because you can’t actually know the values of things?”
“Smart of you to think of that, but not by my definition of subjective,” I respond. “Remember? It’s subjective if it can’t be measured or quantified. I just showed how exactly I could quantify or measure it. That makes it objective, doesn’t it?”
“But that’s not my definition of subjective,” you respond. “I defined it as varying depending on a person’s viewpoint.”
I shrug. “That’s why definitions are important.”
That just about sums up the entire argument.
holy heck
The sum of the argument is that you don’t know the definitions of the words good, evil, and subjective? Neither does the other guy actually.
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yo can someone tell me wat subjective and objective means 
No, I’m defining them differently than everyone else is.
It’s scarcely fair to define them as “things created by people” because that makes it obviously subjective.
On the other hand, I can actually prove to you what you think is good is good actually because of its objective value and the way society has evolved to try to get that objective value without knowing what said objective value actually is, but that’s boring.
I’ll do an example, but Imma hide it as a detail since it’s boring.
Example
“Helping a homeless man is viewed as good even though they might do bad for the society in the long-run.”
This is a classic argument against utilitarian values of the “greater good” driving society.
I counter that a homeless man might do good in the future so society is willing to give them another chance, thus society attempts to do what I defined as “good”, which is increasing total value of the entire system (the society). They don’t know whether a person is good or not, but they understand that they could be, so they are willing to spend the resources to help a homeless man.
However, once the amount of resources is too much, the society begins drawing back on aid, so as to prevent the sheer amount of resources lost and harm done from overwhelming the potential benefits.
Thus, my definitions are accurate in this case.
That literally means you’re defining it wrong, I don’t need a fucking essay to tell you that.
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Did you have fun writing that?
Yo wtf I already explained it in a short way both of you @lookingforabargain and @Danny_Zou shut.
If you go on any longer we’re gonna reach the longest comment on discourse world record
I can simplify the argument in 2 words
“Skill issue”
Alright he said skill issue arguement over both of you shut