RE: What is goodness?
July 16, 2020 at 3:51 am
(This post was last modified: July 16, 2020 at 3:55 am by The Grand Nudger.)
Desire utilitarianism isn't an objective system. It refers to a fact of a subject, rather than the object, as the good or bad making property. That's not to say that it isn't useful, or that it isn't a coherent system, or that it isn't true. Simply that any desire fulfillment proposal is fundamentally subjective. Any utilitarian system is great for extracting motivation and deontology, imo. I would suggest that you think it's close to an objective system because the utilitarian metrics are a sort of functionary provision. There are objective systems, though. Not close, exactly what they say on the tin.
Let's propose that Janet's most earnest desire is to be harmed.
A realist system claims that moral statements purport to report facts, and insomuch as they accurately do report those facts, they would be true. A tremendously popular form of realism claims that good and bad making properties can be roughly summed up to harm and help. Now, we don't know how Janet's desire plays out as a causal factor in her life. Maybe it motivates her to succeed so that she can better position herself to acquire the desired good. We'll leave Janet's state of mind to Janet and assume that, for her, to be harmed is a situation of no moral import, or of positive moral import - which will provide the desired effect.
Could we still be in the wrong for being the individual who supplies that harm? The satisfaction of our desires may not align with the good. In an objective system, things are right or wrong regardless of whether we desire them (or desire to avoid them).
A non-cognitivist might ask whether desire utiliatarianism invites the reduction of moral statements to emotive outbursts. Does a statement "X is good" reduce to a set of cognitive assertions about the properties of x, or does it reduce to an emotive outburst of satisfaction?
Let's propose that Janet's most earnest desire is to be harmed.
A realist system claims that moral statements purport to report facts, and insomuch as they accurately do report those facts, they would be true. A tremendously popular form of realism claims that good and bad making properties can be roughly summed up to harm and help. Now, we don't know how Janet's desire plays out as a causal factor in her life. Maybe it motivates her to succeed so that she can better position herself to acquire the desired good. We'll leave Janet's state of mind to Janet and assume that, for her, to be harmed is a situation of no moral import, or of positive moral import - which will provide the desired effect.
Could we still be in the wrong for being the individual who supplies that harm? The satisfaction of our desires may not align with the good. In an objective system, things are right or wrong regardless of whether we desire them (or desire to avoid them).
A non-cognitivist might ask whether desire utiliatarianism invites the reduction of moral statements to emotive outbursts. Does a statement "X is good" reduce to a set of cognitive assertions about the properties of x, or does it reduce to an emotive outburst of satisfaction?
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