Thought provoking, Dr. Scott, but then I have come to expect nothing less. I love the imagery of the old coots wheeling mummified Jeremy Bentham into faculty meetings. Reminds me of the restored renaissance haunts we visited in Italy where status was measured by the percentage of the body of this or that saint your family owned; a finger bone ranks near the bottom (even if jewel encrusted), the entire saint wrapped like an oversized Italian tamale under glass at the top. Ew.
If I may be so bold as to venture a humble opinion, I think the problem with the utilitarians is not that they get it wrong, per se, but that they have grossly oversimplified it. In order to define "happiness" in a way that makes their theories valid or justifiable, you end up with a concept almost as complex and subtle as the entire study of philosophy itself, a far cry from the colloquial term. Also, the problem with seeking to maximize happiness though government action is that - while one can conceive of a benevolent and omniscient state in theory - no government that has ever existed has come very close. In a handful of isolated cases (like postwar Scandinavia, at least until the latest tensions over immigration erupted) where you have a well-educated, homogeneous society with a high regard for values of tolerance and personal responsibility, it can work to a degree. Otherwise, less is more, I agree.
I think the observation on the importance of relative status is right on.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2006-02-13 09:30 pm (UTC)If I may be so bold as to venture a humble opinion, I think the problem with the utilitarians is not that they get it wrong, per se, but that they have grossly oversimplified it. In order to define "happiness" in a way that makes their theories valid or justifiable, you end up with a concept almost as complex and subtle as the entire study of philosophy itself, a far cry from the colloquial term. Also, the problem with seeking to maximize happiness though government action is that - while one can conceive of a benevolent and omniscient state in theory - no government that has ever existed has come very close. In a handful of isolated cases (like postwar Scandinavia, at least until the latest tensions over immigration erupted) where you have a well-educated, homogeneous society with a high regard for values of tolerance and personal responsibility, it can work to a degree. Otherwise, less is more, I agree.
I think the observation on the importance of relative status is right on.