Favorite Philosophers?

[Edwardo Piet]

A bit of a digression: what are your thoughts on virtue ethics?

Other ethical systems like virtue ethics and deontology can only possibly be relevant insofar as they cause positive as opposed to negative consequences. If following virtue ethics leads to good consequences, then it's a good moral theory, if not then it's a bad moral theory. So basically consequentialism trumps everything when it comes to what is actually moral . . . but it itself can't figure out what the good and bad consequences are. So perhaps other moral theories can help with that.

Like literally, if anyone thinks something is moral or immoral in spite of the consequences I have no idea what they're talking about.

The fact I come across as cold is irrelevant. The only relevant part is what the right thing to do is. This is about being moral not about being nice or compassionate. I often choose to be compassionate and nice even when doing so is not the moral thing to do. In fact I almost always choose the easy option. Because I am usually too selfish and not a good enough person to want to be moral. I care about friendship and family and my own survival and my own pleasure more than I care about being moral, for entirely selfish reasons, ultimately. I choose being social and obeying the law over being a good person. Although by most people's standards I'm a good person. If I could choose between being a better person and getting laid I'd choose getting laid. Although maybe this is why I can't get laid. (I doubt it lol. I don't tell people that and there are many guys a lot worse than me who can get sex just fine. It's probably more likely to do with me rarely leaving the house lol).

I also think it's a morally bad thing that the universe exists in the first place. And many of us would be better off if we were never born.

And no, I am not a utilitarian. AFAIK all utilitarians aggregate utility in some way. Whether it's total utilitarianism or average utilitarianism, or some other form of calculating utility. I'm with John Taurek on this one. I also think that it's a bad thing that the universe exists in the first place.:

The philosopher John Taurek also argued that the idea of adding happiness or pleasures across persons is quite unintelligible and that the numbers of persons involved in a situation are morally irrelevant. Taurek's basic concern comes down to this: we cannot explain what it means to say that things would be five times worse if five people die than if one person dies. "I cannot give a satisfactory account of the meaning of judgments of this kind," he wrote (p. 304). He argues that each person can only lose one person's happiness or pleasures. There isn't five times more loss of happiness or pleasure when five die: who would be feeling this happiness or pleasure? "Each person's potential loss has the same significance to me, only as a loss to that person alone. because, by hypothesis, I have an equal concern for each person involved, I am moved to give each of them an equal chance to be spared his loss"

By the way what is your response? Do you think that it would be morally unjustifiable to shoot a person in the head and kill them if they tried to rape you? And more importantly, why is it unjustifiable to you?