[lbo-talk] Philip Mirowski - Social Physicist

[Chris Doss]

I think we might be confusing "pleasure maximizing" and "pain minimizing." Increasing pleasure and reducing suffering are not the same thing.
 
(All ethical systems that rely on calculus of the results of actions also run into the problem of the fact that any action has an infinite amount of results of indeterminate nature and thus the calculus cannot be completed.)

----- Original Message ----
From: Somebody Somebody <philos_case at yahoo.com>

Somebody: It's pretty disappointing to see you give in to the traditional slippery slope argument. There are definitely some sophisticated philosophical critiques out there, but at the end of the day, a pleasure maximizing ethic is a more humane way of life than one which seeks to justify various forms of suffering as natural and excusable, because that's just the way things are. 

Luckily, liberal capitalist society is willy-nilly guided by pleasure maximization via the profit motive, which in the long run will produce the same goals as a society guided by Benthamite philosopher kings. It'll just take longer to get there.

      
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