Desert

Luke Weiger lweiger at umich.edu
Fri Dec 6 14:17:18 PST 2002


Justin wrote:


> So you stipulate. I don't. And this is irrelevant to
> the point that your utilitarianism is indirectly
> self-defeating, because it requires you to hope that
> people will believe that you think to be false,

No, as I said, even if people believed on an intellectual level that moral responsibility doesn't exist, they would still feel and consequently act as though it did. So it appears that I don't need to hope that people believe something false (in this particular case) as an instrument towards to best attainable state of affairs. Besides, just how strong a response to consequentialism is it to raise the possibility that, if it were true, it may be the case that we would be better off if people believed something else? Seems like pretty weak tea to me.


> namely that people are responsible for their actions or, in
> your idiosyncratic sense, deserve to have cdertain
> things happen to them as a result of what they do.

At the very least, moral responsibility is a necessary condition for the existence of some form of deserts. I think it's also (apparently you disagree) a sufficient condition for actions being either objectively praiseworthy or blameworthy, which may or may not allow for a more robust notion of deserts where agents "deserve to have certain things happen to them as a result of what they do."

-- Luke


> jks



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