(March 12, 2014 at 12:16 pm)Rampant.A.I. Wrote: Jeremy Bentham tried "plugging in the numbers" with Hedonic Calculus, attempting to devise a system that would maximize the most good for the largest number of people.
Thank you. Utilitarianism proposed by Bentham is the closest I've seen to a method of crunching the numbers. Overall, I think he had a good grasp on what morality is. However, "the sum of pleasure in the universe" and "the sum of pain in the universe" are pretty abstract and impossible to measure in practice.
I really liked his thinking but there are exceptions to his rule. For example in the movie "Terminator 2", Sarah Conner went on a mission to murder Miles Bennet Dyson before he could invent the AI chip that would lead to the creation of Skynet. Were she to succeed, she would be murdering an innocent man (Dyson had no idea the monster he was going to create as he had commercial applications in mind). However, her action might avert the war, save three billion lives as well as human civilization.
Is murdering one innocent man to save human civilization and three billion lives a bargain? Strictly using Bentham's model, I can't see how the answer wouldn't be "yes" and yet I would have a problem with this.
Morality is a complex issue but that doesn't mean we don't try to understand it nor does it necessarily mean anything goes. Neither is it necessary nor helpful to have some deity do the thinking for us.
Atheist Forums Hall of Shame:
"The trinity can be equated to having your cake and eating it too."
... -Lucent, trying to defend the Trinity concept
"(Yahweh's) actions are good because (Yahweh) is the ultimate standard of goodness. That’s not begging the question"
... -Statler Waldorf, Christian apologist
"The trinity can be equated to having your cake and eating it too."
... -Lucent, trying to defend the Trinity concept
"(Yahweh's) actions are good because (Yahweh) is the ultimate standard of goodness. That’s not begging the question"
... -Statler Waldorf, Christian apologist
