(March 5, 2011 at 9:21 am)DoubtVsFaith Wrote: Intriguing response Void. May I ask why you choose to evaluate the desires rather than the suffering involved?
Because pain and suffering are arbitrary conditions, Desires on the other hand are the source of all values and morality is a subset of value theory dealing with 'us' values, the values that have reach beyond our own experience and impact others.
For example:
To say you value equality is to say you desire a state of affairs in which the proposition "everyone is equal" is to be made or kept true.
To say you value a hammer (aside from sentimentally) is to say the hammer is something that is instrumental to bringing about your desire for a piece of furniture.
Quote:Also, when is the aggregation relevant to desirism, if ever? I, like you, would choose the pinpricks as preferable to the rapes regardless of how many pinpricks and how little rapes.
I disagree that aggregate is the right word, it's a comparative evaluation, they are subtly yet significantly different things. In Desirism we look at what desires tend to thwart or promote the most/strongest desires amongst all desires, in that sense it is the same as comparatively evaluating suffering/happiness or like/dislike, but we are taking into account the desires of all people and making an evaluation about what desire, if applied to everyone, would tend to thwart or promote more desires, what desires would tend to have the greatest increase or decrease in net value amongst the most people.
Quote:Although, we have different reasons. Yours seems to be to do with what a moral person would do and a moral person is someone who tends to promote more desires that promote more other desires and thwart more desires that thwart more other desires (have I got that right?). So it seems to have some virtue ethics in there because it is also about 'what a moral person would do'. Would you agree with that?
Yeah, that's dead right.
Quote:The reason I choose the pinpricks over the rapes regardless of the quantity on either side is simply because all pinpricks are only pinpricks to all that suffer from them (even if it was trillions of people or more), and the experience of being raped (which is obviously significantly worse) is much worse to all who suffer from it even if it's only one person.
Sure, I agree with that, it does not however mean that it is incorrect to say that the net suffering in the pinprick situation is greater - There is objectively more suffering in terms of pinpricks vs rape, but suffering/happiness is both a flawed and arbitrary evaluation for morality, and, although usually the two are closely aligned, when the situation is pushed to the extreme, which most dilemmas do, you can find examples of where these arbitrary constraints fall apart, very similar to the discussion we had about adopting/fostering children, the key is consistency rather than being arbitrary where it suits our intuitions or goals.
For instance my intuition towards consensual incest is that it is immoral, yet from the position of Desirism consensual incest is something that promotes far more desires than it thwarts, allowing consensual incest thwarts no great desires of non-incestuous relationships aside from their sheer dislike of it, and sheer like/dislike is one of the lowest rated value claims as it thwarts no other desires. Allowing consensual incest promotes the desire for people to live and love as they like, and that desire is one that is far stronger than disallowing people to live and love as they like simply because we dislike the proposition, a proposition that does not effect how we live and love ourselves - This allowing consensual choice of lifestyle and lovers trumps opinions others have about other lifestyles/lovelifes.
What specifically was the evaluation you used to determine that, morally, infinite pinpricks < finite rapes?
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