DISQUS

Glen · 3 years ago

"A crucial distinction that I’m willing to make over and over is the distinction between aggregative and coordinative conceptions of social goals."

That's an important distinction, but not one that fills all the available space. My own brand of utilitarianism is not driven not by a fetish for happiness as some kind of free-floating source of goodness independent of the people who experience it, but by the simple fact of scarcity (or more broadly, trade-offs). Focusing on coordination allows us to think about the opportunities for Pareto improvements, which by all means we should. But sometimes we just can't arrange for Pareto improvements, even at very high levels of abstraction, so we are forced to make trade-offs that favor some people's interests while disfavoring others'. And that is exactly where I find non-utilitarian, or at least non-consequentialist, approaches unsatisfying.

MPG · 3 years ago

Your post reminded me of a wonderful bit, though one perhaps a little overstated by Aldous Huxley from his introduction to a later edition of A Brave New World. He wrote:

The most important Manhatten Projects of the future will be vast government sponsored enquiries into what the politicians and participating scientists will call "The Problem of Happiness"--in other words, the problem of making people love their servitude.

ByTheBlackSea · 3 years ago

you are just dumb.we're not that little or slow into an era of degenerative human society..with poorly developed minds[as in anatomy,poorly fed,poorly exercised] and bodies aswell, each perhaps being cause for the other by case.a 1 percent schizophrenic population should raise some motivation not to be dumb anymore.i'm sorry..much to discuss about but i don't feel like ravaging like this.trust me..it's just stupid.maybe you should really do what you feel like doing instead of writing sh*t like this which trust me should be censored to underaged..it does harm to read such deceiving things.and if i'm not mistaking it was in the 1700s that someone stated that happiness shall not be a goal into life..with this being said..you should think about the fact that maybe overall the human population isn't as happy as it looks..meaning it should be happier if it were to be as happy as some think they see it today..and i'm not some kind of nostalgic weirdo..i see no psychology category in your menu here..well maybe extending your knowledge into more fields of science/ethics etc shouldn't be a goal either.it's just a bunch of dizzying nonsense..lack of motivation into it too..