I am rather tired.
It's strange how I haven't yet found a philosopher I feel had the "right idea." I've read/heard about lots of the greats--Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Kant, and Bentham, among others--but they all seem to offer something that just turns me off from them. I'm guessing that a conventional American ideology is really an amalgamation of lots of fundamentally contradictory philosophies, so in order to truly find a philosopher with whom I'll consistently agree, I'll first need to sort through lots of really deeply-rooted beliefs and be willing to question them objectively (well, as objectively as I can).
I at first really enjoyed Jeremy Bentham's philosophy that we are to take into consideration the desires of the many. We can arrive at the right decision by calculating in our heads what will bring the group (most often society) the most pleasure: in a way, it's what my professor calls "group hedonism," or the pursuit of maximal pleasure and minimal pain for a given group of people. It comes across as very democratic, right? The moral thing to do is always that which will be best for everyone.
But "best" needs to be qualified here, and that's the part that disturbs me. I brought up the question in class of whether there were any "wrong" desires according to Bentham. For example, when deciding to call the police on a rapist, are we to take into account the desire of the rapist to continue violating the victim--thereby potentially having his desire to rape and the victim's desire to be helped cancel out--or can we somehow dismiss his desire as impure and immoral?
Obviously the vast majority of modern American society would opt for the latter, but Bentham doesn't draw a clear distinction. As by "right" he only means "that which will bring pleasure to the most people," any kind of desire must be counted as a vote; by this logic, even something so repugnant as genecide can be justified so long as it is the fervent will of the majority. (I specify "fervent" because some people's desires do outweigh other people's desires; it's all about the intensity of a desire and how many people share that vote.)
Here, though, I'm drawing an absolute moral distinction and flat-out discounting the viewpoints of some people. In the process, I suppose you could say that I'm holding objective morality even higher than the desires of the people. It's always interesting to me to uncover things I believe, too, 'cos I can't just think about my beliefs and have them become apparent. They always seem to just kind of appear when I'm thinking through a complex matter.
I suppose what it comes down to is this: I believe that people have certain basic rights. The right to not be violently raped happens to be one of them, appropriately enough. It sounds like something from the Constitution, really, and it probably is in some way. Only in a more general way, being that our founding fathers almost assuredly didn't like the word "rape." But I like to relate it back to Kant's rule of thumb: if you question whether something is wrong, consider its potential effect on society if everyone were to do it--if it were to be considered okay. Obviously very few would want rape to be considered okay because it is, by its very nature, undesired. If rape were acceptable, you'd obviously be running a risk of being raped yourself, and that'd probably be unfortunate.
Now admittedly this is a bit more of a self-interested motivation than I'd like--I'm more a fan of something like, "Don't rape because it's not nice to cause pain to others," but I don't think Kant would buy that.
I had more than this, I'm pretty sure, and I think it was kind of insightful. Oh well. That's what I get for having a crazy tiring job.
I at first really enjoyed Jeremy Bentham's philosophy that we are to take into consideration the desires of the many. We can arrive at the right decision by calculating in our heads what will bring the group (most often society) the most pleasure: in a way, it's what my professor calls "group hedonism," or the pursuit of maximal pleasure and minimal pain for a given group of people. It comes across as very democratic, right? The moral thing to do is always that which will be best for everyone.
But "best" needs to be qualified here, and that's the part that disturbs me. I brought up the question in class of whether there were any "wrong" desires according to Bentham. For example, when deciding to call the police on a rapist, are we to take into account the desire of the rapist to continue violating the victim--thereby potentially having his desire to rape and the victim's desire to be helped cancel out--or can we somehow dismiss his desire as impure and immoral?
Obviously the vast majority of modern American society would opt for the latter, but Bentham doesn't draw a clear distinction. As by "right" he only means "that which will bring pleasure to the most people," any kind of desire must be counted as a vote; by this logic, even something so repugnant as genecide can be justified so long as it is the fervent will of the majority. (I specify "fervent" because some people's desires do outweigh other people's desires; it's all about the intensity of a desire and how many people share that vote.)
Here, though, I'm drawing an absolute moral distinction and flat-out discounting the viewpoints of some people. In the process, I suppose you could say that I'm holding objective morality even higher than the desires of the people. It's always interesting to me to uncover things I believe, too, 'cos I can't just think about my beliefs and have them become apparent. They always seem to just kind of appear when I'm thinking through a complex matter.
I suppose what it comes down to is this: I believe that people have certain basic rights. The right to not be violently raped happens to be one of them, appropriately enough. It sounds like something from the Constitution, really, and it probably is in some way. Only in a more general way, being that our founding fathers almost assuredly didn't like the word "rape." But I like to relate it back to Kant's rule of thumb: if you question whether something is wrong, consider its potential effect on society if everyone were to do it--if it were to be considered okay. Obviously very few would want rape to be considered okay because it is, by its very nature, undesired. If rape were acceptable, you'd obviously be running a risk of being raped yourself, and that'd probably be unfortunate.
Now admittedly this is a bit more of a self-interested motivation than I'd like--I'm more a fan of something like, "Don't rape because it's not nice to cause pain to others," but I don't think Kant would buy that.
I had more than this, I'm pretty sure, and I think it was kind of insightful. Oh well. That's what I get for having a crazy tiring job.