mirh t1_jcg3oer wrote on March 16, 2023 at 4:11 PM

Reply to comment by MordunnDregath in Bentham’s Mugging: A dialogue on how to exploit utilitarians by JohanEGustafsson

There's absolutely nothing wrong with thought experiments, and even with spherical cows (to the extent that the approximation is still usable).

The problem comes up when you try to focus monolithically on just a single facet of a topic (like this article), forgetting not just the common grounds and results of a discipline.. but even omitting the most basic common sense that even a random joe would have.

MordunnDregath t1_jcg5n6m wrote on March 16, 2023 at 4:23 PM

But that's the point, isn't it? A dialogue like this hinges on a few assumptions about the characters involved, including the contradictory position that the author expects from the audience: that we will treat these characters as both facsimiles and accurate representations of the philosophies under discussion.

Yet it all falls apart when we go "Why wouldn't the Utilitarian simply respond to the Deontologist with 'I don't believe you?'" There's no point in continuing this conversation past that realization.

mirh t1_jcl7lvw wrote on March 17, 2023 at 5:12 PM

I wasn't trying to redeem this fruitless article.

It's just that I wanted to avoid another kind of debacle too.