[lbo-talk] Revolutionary preferences & pathways (was "pointing finger of the neighbourhood")

[Michael McIntyre]

Yes on both counts.  My only point is that one can coherently  
understand "better" without reference to one's own parochial views of  
what is "better".  One can, of course, prefer to mean "better" in  
some strong moral sense.  I'm more worried about adaptive  
preferences, though - that the criterion I've specified would make  
count as "better" a society which satisfies people's few felt needs,  
as opposed to a society that satisfies more felt needs, but generates  
far more.
MM

On Mar 26, 2008, at 8:14 AM, Chris Doss wrote:


> But isn't the judgment that a society is better that
> more fully satisfies the prefences it engenders itself
> a value judgment? It's anathema (no pun intended) to
> many religious worldviews, and thus societies built on
> them, or to essentially antidemocratic (in a strong
> sense of the term) worldviews.
>
> Also, I don't see why a priori one could exclude the
> possibility that such a society would contain features
> we (the royal we :) ) find repugnant.
>
> --- Michael McIntyre <mcintyremichael at mac.com> wrote:
> One need not understand "better" in the sense Chris
> does here.  One
> could imagine a quasi-Rawlsian "veil of ignorance" in
> which the those
> choosing the best society  know, among other things,
> the distribution
> of preferences in these alternative societies.  The
> "better" society
> - the one preferred behind this veil of ignorance,
> would presumably
> be the one which satisfies best the preferences it
> engenders.  No
> system of values need attach to this choice - one is
> amoral with
> respect to the moral goodness or badness of the
> preferences themselves.
>
>
> Mataiotes mataioteton, eipen ho Ekklasiastes,
> mataiotes mataioteton, ta panta mataiotes.
>
>
>        
> ______________________________________________________________________ 
> ______________
> Never miss a thing.  Make Yahoo your home page.
> http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk