Political philosophy?

That post just shows that you know absolutely nothing about Utilitarianism by Mills, Hayek and others. The entire premise is that individual liberty trumps all and certainly in the case of Mills and Hayek feeding anyone to the lions or forcing anyone to do anything against their will is a violation or personal rights. The only time the community can modify behavior is if an individual is posing a hazard to people around them.

I wish people would stop commenting on Libertarianism if they don't know anything about it.

 

You claimed that based on utilitarianism a society would sacrifice people to lions to maximise happiness and that would be acceptable to utilitarianism. That claim runs contrary to two of the most cited authors in utilitarianism. If util. (I am sick of typing it so it will be shortened now) started and stopped at Bentham then maybe you could argue that point but other util. authors of note Locke and Mills, being the most cited, clearly said that could not be done in a society because in Locke's case it would be violating the individuals God given rights to live and in Mills he expanded on the idea of tyranny of the majority.

That is the part that you claim that pisses me off because I have seen this all to often with proponents Marx (yes, believe it or not there were some students that were all pro Marx in my classes even in this day and age) or one of the other schools of political thought that emphasized the good of the group over the individual. What you are doing is literally no different than saying that Star Trek the Next Generation was a horrible show because you saw the first two seasons..........well you would be correct if STNG stopped after season 2 but the entire series overall was good because the later seasons more than made up for it.

I am sorry if I sound emotional but I have found a lot of inspiration in Mills and others writings after years of reading the political clap trap nonsense that is being espoused to day by rank amateurs compared to people that died centuries ago. Especially people that have forgotten that you get 50 million deaths based on philosophies of putting the "good" of the community ahead of the individual.

Regarding Bentham as a required reading he is almost irrelevant at this point because as I said other people expounded on his ideas later on and fleshed out the util. philosophy. Yes he started it but he is not the best of the writers and his was the earliest most incomplete version of util. I would rather read the likes of Zhung Tsu sp?, Ghandi (who was a massive (*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)bag) and all the other others who I can't even remember the names of instead of rehashing the different and earlier less sophisticated version of a philosophy over and over again. Fortunately I had profs who liked to mix it up a bit and through in a variety of writings from all over.

Thank you for the information on Nozick as I was unaware of some of o that and have only read a couple of his pieces. From what I remember him and Rawls had a (*)(*)(*)(*)(*)fight over something in the 80s.

Regarding Mills I have found very little I disagree with. His views on challenging society and protecting minority opinions and especially his views on people should be allowed to do whatever they want without fear of coercion so long as they are not harming someone else are right in line with my views politically. In fact in all the readings I did of his I can only remember two or three things that I questioned at the time. Usually I find myself disagreeing with political writers more often than that.

 

The most glaring weakness of utilitarianism, many argue, is that it fails to respect individual rights. By caring only about the sum of satisfactions, it can run roughshod over individual people. It was a problem for Mill. It was a problem for Kant. It was a problem for Nozick. It's consequentialist morality, and it has an obvious flaw. For the utilitarian, individuals matter, but only in the sense that each person’s preferences should be counted along with everyone else’s. But this means that the utilitarian logic, if consistently applied, that logic could sanction ways of treating persons that violate what we think of as fundamental norms of decency and respect, as the following cases illustrate: Throwing Christians to lions In ancient Rome, they threw Chris tians to the lions in the Coliseum for the amusement of the crowd. Imagine how the utilitarian calculus would go: The justification is Yes, the Christian su ffers excruciating pain as the lion mauls and devours him. But think of the collective ecstasy of the cheering spectators packing the Coliseum. If enough Romans derive enough pleasure from the violent spectacle, are there any grounds on which a utilitarian can condemn it?

Take the argument; "Is torture ever justifed?"

A similar question arises in contemporary debates about whether torture is ever justifed in the interrogation of suspected terrorists. Consider the ticking time bomb scenario: Imagine that you are the head of the local CIA branch. You capture a terrorist suspect who you believe has information about a nuclear device set to go off in Manhattan later the same day. In fact, you have reason to suspect that he planted the bomb himself. As the clock ticks down, he refuses to admit to being a terrorist or to divulge the bomb’s location. Would it be right to torture him until he tells you where the bomb is and how to disarm it?

The argument for doing so begins with a utilitarian calculation. Torture inflicts pain on the suspect, greatly reducing his happiness or utility. But thousands of innocent lives will be lost if the bomb explodes. So you might argue, on utilitarian grounds, that it’s morally justified to inflict intense pain on one person if doing so will prevent death and suffering on a massive scale. Former Vice President Richard Cheney’s argument that the use of harsh interrogation techniques against suspected Al-Qaeda terrorists helped avert another terrorist attack on the United States rests on this utilitarian logic.
This is not to say that utilitarians necessarily favor torture. Some utilitarians oppose torture on practical grounds. They argue that it seldom works, since information extracted under duress is often unreliable. So pain is inflicted, but the community is not made any safer: there is no increase in the collective utility. Or they worry that if our country engages in torture, our soldiers will face harsher treatment if taken prisoner. This result could actually reduce the overall utility associated with our use of torture, all things considered.

These practical considerations may or may not be true. As reasons to oppose torture, however, they are entirely compatible with utilitarian thinking. They do not assert that torturing a human being is intrinsically wrong, only that practicing torture will have bad effects that, taken as a whole, will do more harm than good.

Some people reject torture on principle. (A Catagorical Imperative. They believe that it violates human rights and fails to respect the intrinsic dignity of human beings. Their case against torture does not depend on utilitarian considerations. They argue that human rights and human dignity have a moral basis that lies beyond utility. If they are right, then Bentham’s philosophy is wrong.

If the Utilitarian consequentialist morality is correct, then it doesn't matter who gets tortured as long as the bomb is prevented from going off and killing hundreds or thousands of people. Suppose the only way to induce the terrorist suspect to talk is to torture his young daughter (who has no knowledge of her father’s nefarious activities). Would it be morally permissible to do so? I suspect that even a hardened utilitarian would flinch at the notion. From a strictly utilitarian perspective, it doesn't matter who is tortured as long as the bomb doesn't kill hundreds of others.

Locke is never mentioned as a Utilitarian. I don't know where you come up with this. Mill is, however he is a Neo-Util, since he modified the idea to include the Harm Principle. Locke was a Contractarian and invoked the social contract which didn't exist prior.

I don't think you understand the principles of Utilitarianism. It states that "The right thing to do, the moral thing to do depends on the consequences that will result from your action. Consequentialist Moral Reasoning. It locates morality in the consequences of an act. Utilitarianism – Jeremy Bentham. 18th Century English political philosopher. Consequences of Utilitarianism – Bentham
The right thing to do, the just thing to do, is to maximize utility.
Utility = the balance of pleasure over pain, happiness over suffering. All of us are governed by two masters: Pain and Pleasure. We human beings like pleasure, and dislike pain. The right thing to do individually or collectively is to maximize the over-all level of happiness. “The greatest good for the greatest number”. Individual rights are not taken into account. That has nothing to do with Locke.

You seem to ignore the obvious facts that because we live in an organized society, we are compelled to accept those things that from a Utilitarian perspective must work to the benefit of society as a whole. We have traffic laws, for example. that we all must obey or face the consequences, and other laws that work to the benefit of all, and we sacrifice some of our individual desires to make the wheels turn as smoothly as possible so that everyone has the opportunity to participate in the social structure. Nobody gets to do everything they want. What we try to do is achieve a balance.

Marx, in opposition to Hegel, contended that the clue to history, even to the history of ideas, is to be found in the development of the relations between man and his natural environment, the material world; that is to say, in his economic life, and not in his spiritual life. If you believe that, then you have something in common with Marx.

There's nothing wrong with finding Mill inspiring. Jeremy Bentham’s (1748-1832) principle of utility is open to the objection that it may well sacrifice the rights of the minority for the sake of the happiness of the majority. John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), himself a utilitarian, sought to rescue utilitarianism from this and other objections. In his essay Utilitarianism, Mill argues that respect for individual rights as “the most sacred and binding part of morality” is compatible with the idea that justice rests ultimately on utilitarian considerations. But is Mill right to be confident? Can the principle of utility support the notion that some rights should be upheld even if doing so makes the majority very unhappy?

Mill tries to save utilitarianism the obvious moral objections. Unlike Bentham, Mill believes it is possible to distinguish between higher and lower pleasures—to assess the quality, not just the quantity or intensity, of our desires. And he thinks he can make this distinction without relying on any moral ideas other than utility itself. Mill begins by pledging allegiance to the utilitarian creed: “Actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness; wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain and the privation of plea sure.” He also affirms the “theory of life" on which this theory of morality is grounded—namely, that pleasure and freedom from
pain are the only things desirable as ends; and that all desirable things . . . are desirable either for plea sure inherent in themselves or as means to the promotion of plea sure and the prevention of pain. Despite insisting that plea sure and pain are all that matter, Mill acknowledges that “some kinds of plea sure are more desirable and more valuable than others.” How can we know which pleasures are qualitatively higher? Mill proposes a simple test: “Of two pleasures, if there be one to which all or almost all who have experience of both give a decided preference, irrespective of any feeling of moral obligation to prefer it, that is the more desirable pleasure. This test has one clear advantage: It does not depart from the utilitarian idea that morality rests wholly and simply on our actual desires.

“The sole evidence it is possible to produce that anything is desirable is that people actually desire it,” Mill writes. But as a way of arriving at qualitative distinctions among pleasures, his test seems open to an obvious objection: Isn’t it often the case that we prefer lower pleasures to higher ones? Don’t we sometimes prefer lying on the sofa watching sitcoms to reading Plato or going to the opera? And isn’t it possible to prefer these undemanding experiences without considering them to be particularly worthwhile?

Mill concedes that “occasionally, under the inuence of temptation,” even the best of us postpone higher pleasures to lower ones. Everyone gives in to the impulse to be a couch potato once in a while. But this does not mean we don’t know the difference between Rembrandt and reruns. Mill makes this point in a memorable passage: “It is better to be a human being dissatised than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question.”

This expression of faith in the appeal of the higher human faculties is compelling. But in relying on it, Mill strays from the utilitarian premise. No longer are de facto desires the sole basis for judging what is noble and what is base. Now the standard derives from an ideal of human dignity independent of our wants and desires. The higher pleasures are not higher because we prefer them; we prefer them because we recognize them as higher. We judge
Hamlet as great art not because we like it more than lesser entertainments, but because it engages our highest faculties and makes us more fully human.

Of the two great proponents of utilitarianism, Mill was the more humane philosopher, Bentham the more consistent one. Bentham died in 1832, at the age of eighty-four. But if you go to London, you can visit him today. He provided in his will that his body be preserved, embalmed, and displayed. And so he can be found at University College London, where he sits pensively in a glass case, dressed in his actual clothing.

I don't know who you consider to be rank amateurs on this subject. I have a certificate of Mastery from Harvard on this very subject. My Professor was Michael Sandel who was educated at Oxford and lectures at Harvard. It's not like I'm tossing out uninformed views, but rather historical fact on the chronological development of moral justice.

You're invoking self interest as your moral compass. You live in a community. What makes you think that your individual wants precede the needs of the community? Where did you come to the idea that your individual wants are more important then the requirements of the society that you participate in? You can think or believe whatever you want, but that doesn't mean that you have some right to act on those thoughts or beliefs to the detriment of the rest of the society that you're a part of. Are you someone that is a subscriber to the Ayn Rand Virtue of Selfishness? Kant invoked the Catagorical Imperative as the approach to morality. If you owned a store, and a young boy came in to your store to buy a loaf of bread, and you knew that you could short change him and he wouldn't know it...would you do it? You might reason that it would be best not to do that, because if it got around, you might lose some customers and your business would be damaged. So you give him the correct change. Was there any moral worth in your actions? Kant, and I would say no. You did the right thing, but for all the wrong reasons. You give the boy the correct change, because it's the right thing to do. You are doing the right thing for reasons that are not about self-interest. You do them out of duty. You do them out of respect for the boy as another rational being that is deserving of your respect. To find the moral worth of any action, you must look beyond your own self-interest.

That of course is totally mistaken. That's like starting a book from the middle. In doing so, you invoke Mill completely out of context and fail to recognize what made his views different from the original. You can't understand Mill, without understanding Bentham, since Mill drew from Bentham.

You're going to criticize Benthams writing ability? His version of Utilitarianism is totally complete. Since you haven't read Principles of Morals and Legislation (1780) your criticism is without merit. You're injecting nonsense. If you were the least bit interested in the Truth, you wouldn't make such a comment.

Ghandi?? Now you want to go after Ghandi? On what basis are you attacking Ghandi? I suppose you would attack Mandela and ML King as well. So, are you a fan of Colonialism. Apartheid, and Segregation? If we’re as member of a minority, we don’t want to be oppressed. So we reject Utilitarianism. FIRST PRICIPLE…equal basic Liberties. Fundamental rights to freedom of speech, assembly, religious freedom etc. We don’t want to take the chance of being members of an oppressed minority living under majority tyranny. Utilitarianism is rejected. It makes no distinction between persons. We don’t trade off our rights for economic advantages. If we're a member of the majority and being oppressed by a minority such as the case in India and South Africa, it's even worse.

Yes, Nozick and Rawls held different views. They also shared some. Milton Friedman writes; in Free to Choose,” Life is not fair. It is tempting to think that government can rectify what nature has spawned.” The only way to try to rectify that is to have leveling equality of outcome. Everyone finishing the race at the same point at the same time, and that would be a disaster. This is an easy argument to answer. Rawls answers it in one of the most powerful passages of the Theory of Justice.
“The natural distribution is neither just nor unjust; nor is it unjust that persons are born into society at some particular position. These are simply natural facts. What is just and unjust is the way that institutions deal with these facts.”
That’s his answer to laissez faire economists like Friedman who say, Life if unfair, but get over it and let’s see if we can maximize the benefits that flow from it.

What I like most about Mill is that he was a fallibalist and recognized that the concept of verification in science was wrong, and the falsification was correct. He was right, and that changed how we view our approach to science. I don't think very many people grasp how important that is. They tend to try to prove their ideas, by looking for evidence to support their theories, rather than look for the things that will disprove them. If you're interested in Truth, then that is the right approach. We're all fallible, so work toward Eliminating error.

 

I think you are getting your info from Sandel who is nothing but nonsensical claptrap. We read an article at the end of my last poli sci class and I shredded that idiocy faster than grain in a mini-wheats factory. He is the one that claimed that Mills would support throwing Christians to the lions. This is simply not true if Sandel would have bothered to actually read his works. This is as clear as it gets. According to JS Mills no one can be coerced to do anything unless they are doing something that harms someone else. You are not even allowed to interfere with them if it harms just the individual. Even if someone is doing something that other people disagree with or find distasteful, if it isn't actually causing any harm you are only allowed to argue with him and try to make clear why it is disagreeable.

"The object of this Essay is to assert one very simple principle, as entitled to govern absolutely the dealings of society with the individual in the way of compulsion and control, whether the means used be physical force in the form of legal penalties, or the moral coercion of public opinion. That principle is, that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or even right. These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil in case he do otherwise. To justify that, the conduct from which it is desired to deter him, must be calculated to produce evil to some one else. The only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign."

Sandel is a lying (*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*) who deliberately lied about what JS Mills positions were.

I honestly doubt you have actually read On Liberty which is one of JS MILL's most popular work because this is the core theme of his writing. Stop reading the Marxist, Sandel group think communitarian/communist ideology only and read the actual sources.

 

Amazing. Instead of any critique of what I posted, you choose to attack Michael Sandel?? It's a Red Herring. It is a fallacy of distraction, and is committed when a listener attempts to divert an arguer from his argument by introducing another topic. So...that's it? You concoct this false accusation of the man by entirely misrepresenting what he said, rather than addressing a single thing that I said. Is that a common trait among those of your thinking, or is it a defense mechanism and a lame attempt to justify your lack of knowledge about your own ideology?

No. It also comes from Ian Shapiro at Yale, as well as the Philosophy Department at Standford. But what would they know?

That's funny, you've failed pretty miserably here. I would think you'd have done much better.

No. He didn't. He never said that. So if that's your idea of "shredding anything" it failed. Care to try again?

He specialized in this subject at Oxford, and teaches at Harvard. Where do you teach? You took a Poli Sci course?? bravo. Clearly you don't know what you're talking about since Sandel has never said anything of the sort about Mill. ( BTW...there's no S at the end. It's Mill. But you already knew that didn't you? )

Again, if you knew what you were talking about, Sandel already pointed that out. You're confused. What you're doing is building a Straw Man. A straw man argument is one that misrepresents a position in order to make it appear weaker than it actually is, refutes this misrepresentation of the position, and then concludes that the real position has been refuted. This, of course, is a fallacy, because the position that has been claimed to be refuted is different to that which has actually been refuted; the real target of the argument is untouched by it. Congratulations.

Wrong. Sandel isn't lying about Mill's position at all. What you're doing is lying about Sandels position. He has never denied any of that, or asserted that it was something else. So you're making a false claim about Sandel. That is well known to be Mill's position. However it is not the position of Jeremy Bentham; the man responsible for Utilitarianism. And Bentham's position did not account for individual rights. He didn't believe they existed. What you're doing is called bearing false witness. And "On Liberty" was required reading and part of the course was devoted to the difference that Mill introduced. The Harm Principle. For somebody devoted to Mill, it seems that you ignored one of his main essays; "Utilitarianism". It's a long essay Mill wrote shortly after On Liberty, where he tries to show that utilitarians can distinguish higher pleasures from lower ones. In his essay "Utilitarianism", Mill argues that respect for individual rights as “the most sacred and binding part of morality” is compatible with the idea that justice rests ultimately on utilitarian considerations. But is Mill right to be confident? Can the principle of utility support the notion that some rights should be upheld even if doing so makes the majority very unhappy? It's a legitimate question. One you should have asked yourself.. That is if Truth actually mattered to you. It's a contradiction and forces you to hold opposing positions at the same time. If you accept the Principle of Non-Contradiction that goes back to Aristotle, then you've got a problem. Mill says that in the long run if we respect justice and individual rights, society as a whole will be better off. Intrinsic respect for the individual. If that reason matters, morally, then it’s not so clear that Mill’s utilitarianism is correct from a moral position. That reason alone interferes with the strict calculus of Utility. It's like calling yourself a conservative, yet having no respect for tradition.

BTW... Sandel is not a communist, so you should restrain yourself from hurling insults at those you have no understanding of. Sandel is a Communitarian, but that has nothing to do with Communism. If you understood any of this you'd know that. It should also be understood that he doesn't impose his philosophical beliefs on his students. That's not how it's done at Harvard. The history of philosophy is what it is, and the facts of Bentham, and Mill, and Nozick, and Locke, and Kant, and Rawls and even Aristotle are what they are. Their views are all open to criticism. The fact is that you know nothing of the man. What you're doing is offering a lame defense of something that doesn't need defending, and that you actually have little knowledge of. In your mind Utilitarianism begins with Mill. You're factually wrong. Demonstrably wrong. Which proves the point that you know nothing of Utilitarianism.

There is another issue you should be aware of. If you are calling yourself a Libertarian, how is that not "group think"? You're identifying with an ideology. The fact is that you call yourself Libertarian and didn't even know who Robert Nozick was. You had to be told. Do you know what a dilettante is?

The most amusing thing that I find on these forums are those claiming to be something without even understanding the origins of their own thinking.

 

I pointed out that Sandel was a communitarian. I am sorry if you have no reading comprehension. Sandel is the one that proposed the question about lions being fed to christians. http://www.justiceharvard.org/2011/02/episode-two/

There it is.....he posited the question. And I will defend him because actually it was YOU that said that it was ok according to utilitarianism to feed Christians to lions. According to that page it looks like he was asking the question. You didn't even plagiarize your professor accurately. All you did was regurgitate a question by Sandel that popped up online when I searched for him so you don't even have any original thoughts......you just repeat whatever is spoon fed to you.

You claimed that it would be OK to throw christians to lions according to utilitarianism. I proved you completely wrong as Mills is a utilitarianist and also he clearly specified that you cannot just feed people to the lions. You continually keep going back to Bentham all the time and acting as if he is the end all and be all of utilitarianism. You never said the earliest version of utilitarianism nor did you specify Bentham's utilitarianism you just said utilitarianism repeatedly which has had many authors over hundreds of years.

The reason you are doing this is because Locke and Mills (both utilitarianists) both say that violating someone's personal liberties is wrong. You can't defend your flat out lie about utilitarianism as a whole you you have to keep focusing on one author. This would be like be judging today's Democrat party based on JFK or the Republican party entirely off of Lincoln. You clearly have been proven a liar and ill informed and your degree is completely wasted, once again assuming you have a degree because at this point I seriously doubt it based on you comparing Ghandi to MLK and the other idiocy you keep spouting. If I say that Republicans enjoy a majority of support among blacks that would only be accurate if I specified blacks prior to the 1960s. If I didn't mention "prior to the 1960s" then everyone would assume I was either lying, didn't know what I was talking about or completely bonkers. You don't seem crazy so I am just assuming that you lie and make (*)(*)(*)(*) up and frankly don't know what the hell you are talking about.

I doubt you even went to Harvard as you claim because after reading Ghandi's rightings virtually everyone in the class concluded that he was a self righteous, technophobe with deep resentment issues with anything British to the point of even believing that it was in the best interest of farmers to not use any technology developed in the West. He was an arrogant ass filled with bitterness and resentment. Thankfully India ignored his plea to go back to the stone ages and they kept their parliamentary system instead of regressing to a complete autocracy again.

 

There's nothing wrong with my reading comprehension. This is what you said; "Stop reading the Marxist, Sandel group think communitarian/communist ideology only and read the actual sources. You went a bit further then stating he was a Communitarian. You called him a Marxist and a Communist as well. Are you incapable of reading your own writing?

Yes. But it had nothing to do with Mill. It had to do with Bentham's Utilitarianism. According to Bentham's logic, the scenario is exactly as he stated it, which is why Utilitarianism came under attack, and why Mill took a different approach. In fact, in the very link that you posted, which apparently you didn't bother to read, Sandel offers this: "5.John Stuart Mill, a utilitarian, says that we should protect individual rights because, in the long run, that is the best way to increase the sum of happiness. Is that true? Is that really the reason why you shouldn’t imprison and torture innocent people? (Episode 2 – Discussion Guide (Beginner).

Yes. He did. And you've leaped to the conclusion that he suggested that Mill would approve of throwing Christians to the lions. You've missed the entire point.

So now you're defending the Marxist Communist? Really?? According to Utilitarianism it would be ok to feed Christians to lions if that meant the greatest pleasure for the greatest number. One familiar way to think about the right thing to do is to ask what will produce the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number of people. This way of thinking about morality finds its clearest expression in the philosophy of Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832). In his Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1780), Bentham argues that the principle of utility should be the basis of morality and law, and by utility he understands whatever promotes pleasure and prevents pain. Is the principle of utility the right guide to all questions of right and wrong? If you follow that principle to its logical conclusion then if throwing Christians to Lions results in the greatest pleasure for the greatest number, then it is morally acceptable. BTW...I have never said that it was ok to do that. I'm not a Utilitarian. I don't believe in consequentialist morality.

He asks a lot of questions. That's what philosophy is all about. It's supposed to make you think. It's called education. You should try it sometime.

I didn't plagiarize him. I took the course. And lots of notes. You're looking at the "Cliffs Notes" version.

It's a question. Why does it make any difference who asks it? You still can't deal with it.

It would. If you objected to it, it wouldn't be on Utilitarian grounds, but on other moral grounds.

You proved nothing, other than Mill (without the s) was a Neo-Utilitarian. He proposed the Harm Principle. The question then becomes how does that fit with the idea of Utilitarianism? How can you inject individual rights into a doctrine that relies on strict calculus. The calculus doesn't admit individual rights. You're claiming to be two different things at the same time. Have you ever heard of the Principle of Non-Contradiction? It goes back to Aristotle.

I go back to Bentham, because that's the original source and you can't discuss Utilitarianism without beginning with Bentham. You can't talk about Conservatism without looking at Russell Kirk, and even further to Edmund Burke, and you can't talk Libertarianism without knowing who Robart Nozick is. Utilitarianism didn't begin with Mill. You are attempting to pull Mill out of context, and as a result you have a totally false reading of Utilitarianism, which you've illustrated time and again.

I shouldn't have to. Anybody that understands what it is, would already have read and known about Bentham. That's classical Utilitarianism. If you don't know that, then you know nothing about it.

Mill is a Neo-Utilitarian. Locke was not a Utilitarian. Locke was a theologian, and gave us the concept of the social contract. There is NOTHING in his philosophy from his First or Second Treatise of Government, or his Limits of Human Understanding that offers Utilitarianism which didn't arrive on the scene until long after Locke was gone. He died in 1704. Bentham wasn't even born until 1748. Utilitarianism wasn't even a concept when Locke was around. This philosophy of utilitarianism took for its "fundamental axiom, it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong". The "greatest happiness principle", or the principle of utility, forms the cornerstone of all Bentham's thought. By "happiness", he understood a predominance of "pleasure" over "pain". He wrote in The Principles of Morals and Legislation:

Utilitarianism was revised and expanded by Bentham's student John Stuart Mill. In Mill's hands, "Benthamism" became a major element in the liberal conception of state policy objectives. It exists today. We don't ignore individual human rights. Classical Utilitarianism did. Your assertion that Locke was a Utilitarian is completely false. It didn't exist in Locke's day. You're claiming that a philosophy existed prior to the man that brought it into existence.

I don't have to defend a lie (like your assertion about Locke). It's a fact. What I'm focusing on is your ignorance of your own philosophy. You can't understand Utilitarianism without understanding Bentham. You've proved that.

And you'd be correct. You could very easily judge the Republican Party by looking at Lincoln. He was the beginning of it. You can't very accurately judge the party by today's standards without comparing it with it's origins. However, the Democratic Party didn't begin with JFK, so the analogy is wrong. If you want to look at the American political system regarding Parties, you'd go back to Jefferson and the split from Federalism.

So now you resort to calling me a liar, because you've had your ass handed to you. And you were the one that went after Ghandi. It's pretty clear from that, that you support colonialism. Ghandi and MLK both opted for non-violence in leading their respective movements. In fact that's where MLK got the concept. They both succeeded. So you resort to name calling (liar, idiocy) because you've been shown to be wrong about something? You aren't the least bit interested in truth are you? What you're interested in is saving face because it's a disaster for you to be wrong about something. What's striking is that, despite the fact that you are infatuated with Mill, you ignore the main thing about him. He was a fallibalist. He was a fallible human being and He knew that he could be wrong. For a man that points to Mill as his guiding light, you seem to have missed that. Oh well...so much for JS Mill right?

Then specify it. Otherwise it's a Terrible analogy. An ideology such as Utilitarianism has nothing to do with voting trends. The one has absolutely nothing to do with the other. Blacks supported Republicans because they remember Lincoln and at the time Republicans didn't promote hate as they do today. Today's Republicans are not my fathers Republicans. That's why he left that party before he died. Same with my mother.

I only write about those things that I do know about. What I don't do is pretend to know what I don't know. I've posted facts. There's nothing made up here. Sh*t or otherwise. It's the history of your own philosophy of which you've shown that you're totally ignorant. You don't like me pointing that out, but I really could care less about that. I'm not here to find friends. You have leaped headfirst into something you're totally ignorant of, and when shown, you've freaked out. You now resort to name calling and insults which as most of us know is the mark of a losing argument. You can't critique what I've said, so you offer distractions (Red Herring's and Straw Men...showing that you can't offer a logical argument) and attacks on other people with credentials on this subject that you lack, calling them Marxists and Communists, and then deny that you said it. And because you are now shown with massive supporting evidence, from every major philosophy department, from every major University with a philosophy department, you can only offer name calling and insults. You are aware that you've lost this battle, right? I mean...you do have that much awareness, I'm sure.

In what class? You took a class? Very good. You should take a few more. You seem to have missed the most important thing. The British left. And that was the aim. However India would develop, it would be on their terms. Not England's. You've managed to present yourself as a person with very deep hostilities, and a deeper need to know that you're right about things. Instead of correcting your mistakes, you look for ways to justify them. You'd be better off taking Mill's advice and realizing that you could be wrong about a lot of things.

 

From Ghandi

"….When once asked ‘Do you hate machines?’ ‘No’, answered Gandhi ‘While my body on itself is nothing but a meticulous machinery How can I dismiss it? My spinning wheel or even this toothpick, for that matter, is a machine. I hate not the machines, but this growing passion for machines. I hate the passion for the machines which work upon diminishing man power. Some talk about machine which could spare man power when thousands of people are thrown jobless on the streets. Yes, I want the human toil and time to be spared not just for a sect of people but for the humanity. I want the wealth to be accumulated not just in few hands but for all the people in the world. Today machines favor putting handful of people on top thousands."

In other words as long as it was a machine could only assist individuals was it good. If it was large and displaced many workers (ie modern mining machines) then it was considered bad. Ghandi was a technophobe plain and simple. Ghandi's obsession with "cottage industry" ignored efficiency and progress brought by the industrial revolution. It also smacks of the same kind of idealistic garbage spewed by Mao that lead to 25 million people starving to death during the "Great Leap Forward" in China where he proclaimed that everyone should make their own tools for themselves. Its just pure idiocy.

John Locke heavily influenced utilitarianism. He is arguably the father of modern day classical liberalism. Gray collected his works and clearly showed that. Simply reading his works you see the remarkable similarities between Mills and Lock on many issues with exceptions such as majority influence and slave ownership (Lock felt slaves were not part of society since they owed no property).

Once again when making blanket statements like "utilitarians will throw Christians to lions to maximise happiness" you be definition have to specify which authors as I clearly showed that Mills completely and unequivicably forbids that from happening. You can put whatever prefix you want in front of utilitarianism ti doesn't change the fact that he was a ulitiarian author and expressly forbid actions by the state as such. Rehashing my old analogy if I said that Republicans oppose more military spending I would only be correct if I specified a certain time frame such as the Kennedy Nixon race. According to Mills you cannot cannot throw Christians to lions no matter what society wants... period. The only way would be if Christians were harming other people in which case that is the only time that society can use coercive force on an individual.

Just a quick lesson on writing when someone puts a / mark between two wards that usually means either or both such as and/or which could mean either or or both of them. By definition communist authors are commutarian to some degree because they focus on the collective over the individual. Communism is simply a form of economics not necessarily dealing with rights.

I know perfectly well about Libertarianism and your analogy to talking about Conservatism needing to focus on earlier authors is absurd. Today's Liberterianism has absolutely very little in common Jeremy Bentham's works and more with Locke's works but still not comparable. Mill's frankly is the true father of the Libertarian movement even though Nozick is considered the most recent figure head. Bentham was missing lots of components and Locke's assertion that people should conform to the majority go against Mills and the Libertarian philosophy.

Political movements and philosophies are always changing and I wouldn't be surprised if in anther 50 years Liberals and Conservatives look nothing like they do today. Goldwater has more influence on today's conservatives than the ones you mentioned.

I am however glad that we both agree though that Mills was by far the best political philosopher in all of history.

 

You avoid the very first comment. "There's nothing wrong with my reading comprehension. This is what you said; "Stop reading the Marxist, Sandel group think communitarian/communist ideology only and read the actual sources. You went a bit further then stating he was a Communitarian. You called him a Marxist and a Communist as well. Are you incapable of reading your own writing?" That leads to your avoiding the second comment."Yes. But it had nothing to do with Mill. It had to do with Bentham's Utilitarianism. According to Bentham's logic, the scenario is exactly as he stated it, which is why Utilitarianism came under attack, and why Mill took a different approach. In fact, in the very link that you posted, which apparently you didn't bother to read, Sandel offers this: "5.John Stuart Mill, a utilitarian, says that we should protect individual rights because, in the long run, that is the best way to increase the sum of happiness. Is that true? Is that really the reason why you shouldn’t imprison and torture innocent people? (Episode 2 – Discussion Guide (Beginner).


You have no answer for this: "You proved nothing, other than Mill (without the s) was a Neo-Utilitarian. He proposed the Harm Principle. The question then becomes how does that fit with the idea of Utilitarianism? How can you inject individual rights into a doctrine that relies on strict calculus. The calculus doesn't admit individual rights. You're claiming to be two different things at the same time. Have you ever heard of the Principle of Non-Contradiction? It goes back to Aristotle." You still haven't resolved that contradiction.

You fail on this: "Utilitarianism was revised and expanded by Bentham's student John Stuart Mill. In Mill's hands, "Benthamism" became a major element in the liberal conception of state policy objectives. It exists today. We don't ignore individual human rights. Classical Utilitarianism did. Your assertion that Locke was a Utilitarian is completely false. It didn't exist in Locke's day. You're claiming that a philosophy existed prior to the man that brought it into existence." Which illustrates clearly that Mill (without the s) followed Bentham.

You also fail on this: "Locke was not a Utilitarian. Locke was a theologian, and gave us the concept of the social contract. There is NOTHING in his philosophy from his First or Second Treatise of Government, or his Limits of Human Understanding that offers Utilitarianism which didn't arrive on the scene until long after Locke was gone. He died in 1704. Bentham wasn't even born until 1748. Utilitarianism wasn't even a concept when Locke was around. This philosophy of utilitarianism took for its "fundamental axiom, it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong". The "greatest happiness principle", or the principle of utility, forms the cornerstone of all Bentham's thought. By "happiness", he understood a predominance of "pleasure" over "pain". He wrote in The Principles of Morals and Legislation:"
Instead of recognizing the obvious; which is that Locke died before Bentham who gave us Utilitarianism, was even born, you continue to pound your square peg into the round hole. You give us a similarity between Lockes views on individual rights as similar to Mill, by deliberately leaving out Bentham, who is the author of Utilitarianism and skipping right over him, and going directly to Mill. Locke was NOT a Utilitarian. You won't find him among the Utilitarians in philosophy departments.

 

You keep dancing around that you said utilitarians would feed Christians to lions. I proved you completely wrong. Mills is a utilitarian and is the most often cited utilitarians and explicitly said the opposite of what you claimed. You were either completely wrong or you flat out lied about his position.

There is no conflict. It's very simple Mills stated specifically what scenario where individuals or groups of individuals could use coercive force against another individual. In no way shape or form is feeding Christians to lions anywhere in there at all.

Once again. Mills = utilitarianist Mills says no to coercive force except when someone is harming others thus utilitarianism does not mean you can feed people to the lions to maximise happiness.

Some people believe that Locke was indeed a utilitarian even if he didn't refer to himself as one. http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2379761?uid=3739976&uid=2&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21103139227077 For certain other authors including Locke were heavily influenced by his work. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck and looks like a duck than for all practical purposes its a duck.

You keep saying that I skip over Bentham and yet you were the one that completely ignored Mills who came AFTER Bentham. You cherry picked one author while ignoring the later and more fleshed out writings of utilitarianism. You deliberately tried to mislead people buy leaving out critical information.

All the rest of that stuff in complete nonsense you and know it. There is no contradiction to what Mills wrote versus Bentham's work. They are simply two different views on the same philosophy. It is literally no different than the difference between a East Coast Republican and a Southern Republican. They have differences of opinion in how politics should work but they are still both Republicans.

These were your words. "Did you find something admirable about Babylon? Or Rome? Feeding Christians to lions and entertaining people by killing some in an arena, ( a utilitarian and consequentialist morality on display. Maximizing the pleasure of the many at the cost of the few.) not to leave out slavery, and an imperialistic drive to conquer everything in the world doesn't strike me as a society that is admirable. The Greeks gave us logic and for that we owe them a debt of gratitude."

Mill states that clearly that cannot be done. " the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others."

Mill is utilitarian ergo you are completely wrong.

 

No I haven't. I didn't say that they would. I said that according to strict classical Utilitarianism they would be morally justified, and they would. If that's what they wanted to do, and they invoked Utilitarianism as created by Bentham, they would be justified in doing it. I've proven you wrong about this so many times, your head is spinning. I don't know how many times you need to be shown this. Bentham is the father of Utilitarianism. Can you not read English?? How many times do I have to post his own words?

Look. Engage your brain. I have no interest in dealing with your inability to read. I have not lied about Mill's position because I NEVER said that Mill would approve of it. I said that Bentham would not have a problem with it if that's what delivered the greatest happiness to the greatest number. As for Mill being quoted, you seriously need to Google Utilitarianism and see for yourself the Chronology of the philosophy. You cannot know utilitarianism without knowing who created it. You simply are ignorant of it's origins and skip over what you don't like about it, and jump to Mill. And unlike Mill you can't recognize your own fallibility. You're simply WRONG. History proves you wrong.

Apparently your mind can't grasp a contradiction when it's staring you in the face. Why do you think that Mill changed it? He couldn't accept the idea of ignoring individual rights. However Bentham's philosophy isn't about individual rights. It's all about calculus. The greatest good for the greatest number. Period. Full Stop. Mill never spoke about feeding Christians to lions probably because the question was never put to him. Your mind is so literal that you can't understand that a hypothetical problem has been presented which forces a contradiction. If Utilitarianism is based on the Principle of the greatest good for the greatest number, and the pleasure for the greatest number is the desired goal, then individual rights are not part of that equation. They don't have anything to do with the consideration. If you're going to introduce the Harm Principle which Mill did, then you've altered the organizing principle. You can't be two things at the same time. Either you believe in individual rights at the expense of the greatest pleasure for the greatest number, or you don't. You can't have both and still claim that it's the same philosophy. And it isn't. It's called Neo-Utilitarianism. The obvious question is this: If enough Romans derive enough pleasure from the violent spectacle, are there any grounds on which a utilitarian can condemn it? If you say individual rights, then you are not condemning it on Utilitarian grounds.

There's another famous example: A short story by Ursula K. Le Guin. The story (“The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas&#8221 tells of a city called Omelas—a city of happiness and civic celebration, a place without kings or slaves, without advertisements or a stock exchange, a place without the atomic bomb. Lest we find this place too unrealistic to imagine, the author tells us one more thing about it: “In a basement under one of the beautiful public buildings of Omelas, or perhaps in the cellar of one of its spacious private homes, there is a room. It has one locked door, and no window.” And in this room sits a child. The child is feeble-minded, malnourished, and neglected. It lives out its days in wretched misery.

They all know it is there, all the people of Omelas . . . They all know that it has to be there . . . They all understand that their happiness, the beauty of their city, the tenderness of their friendships, the health of their children, . . . even the abundance of their harvest and the kindly weathers of their skies, depend wholly on this child’s abominable misery. . . . If the child were brought up into the sunlight out of the vile place, if it were cleaned and fed and comforted, that would be a good thing, indeed; but if it were done, in that day and hour all the prosperity and beauty and delight of Omelas would wither and be destroyed. Those are the terms.

Are those terms morally acceptable? The first objection to Bentham’s utilitarianism, the one that appeals to fundamental human rights, says they are not—even if they lead to a city of happiness. It would be wrong to violate the rights of the innocent child, even for the sake of the happiness of the multitude.

Bentham; The original Utilitarianist says you're wrong. He would know more about the subject, since he created it.

I don't skip over Mill. Like Mill, I cherry pick what I can use from him and move on. That's exactly what he did with Bentham. He took what he liked and added a twist that the original wouldn't have done. In the case of Mill, I agree with his Fallibalism, but I'm not a Utilitarian and neither is any Libertarian, including Nozick. The reason Nozick rejected it was because of its failure in addressing individual rights. According to Nozick, The most basic idea is that ; I own myself! Nozick says this is where utilitarianism goes wrong. We belong to ourselves.

Yeah...a few people like you looking to justify your philosophy and attempting to lay it on somebody that died before it existed. Locke had no interest in the concept of the greatest good for the greatest number. He didn't think that way. Locke was no Utilitarian.

Other authors "including Locke" were influenced by "his" work?? Who's work? Who's work are you talking about that Locke was influenced by? Now you're offering the "Duck analogy" as a philosophical answer? You offer an argument from Induction. It's like saying that All swans are white. Seriously? Inductive reasoning NEVER proves a theory. Didn't you know that. It's called the problem of induction and David Hume introduced it. We can't rationally justify our science through inductive reasoning. Furthermore, do you have any idea how many different people view individual rights as a major part of their philosophy that would never call themselves Utilitarians? Nozick, Kant, Walzer, Popper, how many would I need to post?

What's nonsense is your answer. You can't deal with it. And you ignore a contradiction when it's in front of your face. If there was no contradiction, between Mill and Bentham, then what makes Mill different from Bentham? Bentham is classical Utilitarianism. Mill is not. What is the difference between them? Go ahead...I'll wait. If there is no difference going on here, then what is Mill's purpose? Is he just regurgitating Bentham? You need to cultivate some intellectual honesty here. There is something different going on between them. What is it?

I've already told you; You can't know utilitarianism without knowing Bentham. If you ignore him, you're reading a book from the middle instead of the beginning. You don't know the story, and that's been evident.

Right. No contradiction at all. One says the greatest good for the greatest number is the only calculus to consider for morality. The other says individual rights are supreme. No contradiction there.

Wrong. Republican is a party. Not a philosophy or ideology. Conservatism is an ideology. You should know the difference. Today there are only conservatives. And they each challenge the other on how extreme their conservatism is. They all subscribe to orthodoxy and reject challenges to the status quo and the social structure.

Yeah...and you ignored the question. Did you find something admirable about Babylon? Or Rome? Your original comment had to do with the fall of Babylon and Rome. Do you find either of those admirable? And feeding Christians to lions is an example of utilitarian and consequentialist morality on display. If you had ever read Bentham, you'd know that. But of course you missed that part of the course, or slept through it. Too bad. You might have learned something.

So would Locke, Kant, Nozick, Rawls and most Enlightenment philosophers outside of Bentham. So what's your point. Mill didn't write the book on that, or Utilitarianism. Locke already promoted individual rights before Bentham, and Bentham already had presented Utilitarianism before Mill was even born.

Bentham is THE Utilitarian. That makes you wrong. And Libertarians aren't Utilitarians. So if you claim to be a Libertarian, you've got conflicts to resolve.