Split from here - Arepo

HI guys

I think Ryan's number references were making it very difficult to track the points he was making but I can't see much to disagree with what he has written.

Now it occurs to me that this could be the basis for another sub-forum. Each thread could start with one of each of the 10 listed topics in this thread and individual discussed, although I would humbly suggest - even as part of the T&C for that sub-forum - that we instead each present our own utilitarian answer or just acknowledge agreement with previous arguments. If, OTOH we disagreed with an answer, then this is the sub-forum to take it to and discuss/debate adversarially or not

We could add classical (as well as new) utilitarian challenges one for each thread e.g. "killing an isolated village", "killing a healthy patient", "throwing and innocent prisoner to the mob" etc.

Three purposes - at least - would be served by this:

1. We could learn from each other standard ripostes - accelerating knowledge acquisition.
2. We could point new members to the relevant thread to avoid repeating standard queries - IOW this becomes the basis of a FAQ.
3. This can better help each of us understand the position of others within utilitarianism (we just track an individuals answers to all these challenges)

As an example of 2 I do not think the "kill the healthy patient" challenge, as popular as it is, is a real challenge to any form of utilitarianism. This is obviously a debatable point - to be done here in this sub-forum not the proposed one - but regardless does anyone think this will not come up repeatedly as we get in new members?

RyanCarey wrote:I just read an essay relevant to this topic, RM Hare’s How to Argue With an Anti-utilitarian. It taught me:
that RM Hare was adversarial in his defence of utilitarianism

RyanCarey wrote:that the first step in debunking an objection to utilitarianism is discovering whether we are thinking intuitively or critically.

Agreed.
This also, I think, roughly maps to what is called in the literature, IIRC, the "criterion of rightness (or goodness)" versus the "practical decision making". However Hare's characterisation is superior IMHO.

The article is good but other conversations here n "killing the healthy patient" had triggered me into writing a blog post, only half done, that this article will greatly help me with but not the way you might expect. Regardless thanks Ryan. It helps makes my point for which that I can now say Hare was wrong - about this particular example he used and that Singer - with the appropriate quote also recently made here - answers.

Will post the link once I have published it.

Look forward to it, FG. I'm reluctant to create a separate forum for more discussions of util, though, until it becomes obvious that people really are having categorisable conversations - the main piece of advice I was given about starting a forum is to tailor the structure to the posts, not the other way around.

Hare's idea is nice, but it's a shame his writing is so prosaic - I wouldn't want to link someone to that piece as a starting point.

I've added another objection that someone mentioned recently (I think it's Dennett's).

Cool Arepo, lets see how this forum evolves.

Anyway here is the post I mentioned I would publish Utilitarianism versus Common-sense Morality. Note sure if referencing Hare really helped but there it is.

PS the linking facility on this forum is really annoying and IMHO bad. Can this not be improved? I can never remember the syntax - no enclosing ' 'or " " required - and the URL button is not much help.

As far as I know the url setup is fundamental to phpBB, but Ryan will be able to confirm. I quite like it, though - it's a pretty standard setup for modern boards, and ultimately requires less keystrokes than the alternatives. vBulletin is probably the most user friendly software, but it's quite expensive to buy and keep up with updates (whereas phpBB is free).

Arepo wrote:As far as I know the url setup is fundamental to phpBB, but Ryan will be able to confirm. I quite like it, though - it's a pretty standard setup for modern boards, and ultimately requires less keystrokes than the alternatives. vBulletin is probably the most user friendly software, but it's quite expensive to buy and keep up with updates (whereas phpBB is free).

I am talking about [2.0.11] userfriendly URL-input while posting and [BETA] URL + IMG Prompt while posting (friendly bbcode)

PS this bit of thread needs to be moved?

Hmm, I split this post off separately from the others, meaning to merge them, but for some reason the 'merge' option isn't doing what I think it should. Meanwhile this seems the most sensible place for this post on its own - I'll try and fix the setup over the weekend. Sorry about that, FG.

I think with these URL code prompts, we should check out the feedback to them in some more detail and then see how they work on the forum. Thanks for the suggestion, faithlessgod. They are, however, one of a large range of mods that I'm looking to test soon.