"If we had a time machine, what should we do?"
"The greatest happiness will be caused if you go back in time and kill the first fish to step onto the land."
"The greatest happiness will be caused if you go back in time and kill the first fish to step onto the land."
A "utilitarian calculus" is the idea that the ideal possible world could be calculated in a systematic way by adding up units of "utility" (which is usually some kind of pleasurable state, or ability to satisfy desires). Consequentialist utilitarians believe that morality entirely consists of satisfying, or moving towards this ideal world. In theory, a computer that was sophisticated enough could determine exactly what we should or should not do in any given circumstance.
Peter Singer is a utilitarian, who believes that some kind of calculation is possible of the best possible state of affairs, by adding up brain states or something similar to see what produces the most pleasure. He believes that the only moral good is moving towards a world that experiences more "positive" mental states, like pleasure, and less "negative" ones, like suffering and unhappiness (note that he hasn't always been a hedonist utilitarian, but was earlier in his career more of a "preference utilitarian", meaning that people should have their preferences maximized).
David Benatar shares all the basic premises that Peter Singer does - that maximizing pleasure and minimizing suffer is all that we should be doing. However, he is sort of like the super-villain version of Peter Singer. Instead of saying we shouldn't kill animals and we should give our money to charity, he says that we should end the human species. He believes that the calculation does not come up in our favor. Not only do humans generally suffer more than they are happy, so should therefore not exist at all, but we all cause immense suffering in other animals (by destroying the enviroment, and you...killing and eating them). Simply put, it would be better if we never existed, so we should stop having children and end humanity forever.
Peter Singer is a utilitarian, who believes that some kind of calculation is possible of the best possible state of affairs, by adding up brain states or something similar to see what produces the most pleasure. He believes that the only moral good is moving towards a world that experiences more "positive" mental states, like pleasure, and less "negative" ones, like suffering and unhappiness (note that he hasn't always been a hedonist utilitarian, but was earlier in his career more of a "preference utilitarian", meaning that people should have their preferences maximized).
David Benatar shares all the basic premises that Peter Singer does - that maximizing pleasure and minimizing suffer is all that we should be doing. However, he is sort of like the super-villain version of Peter Singer. Instead of saying we shouldn't kill animals and we should give our money to charity, he says that we should end the human species. He believes that the calculation does not come up in our favor. Not only do humans generally suffer more than they are happy, so should therefore not exist at all, but we all cause immense suffering in other animals (by destroying the enviroment, and you...killing and eating them). Simply put, it would be better if we never existed, so we should stop having children and end humanity forever.
Exisentialism is the most punk rock philosophy, but Diogenes is the most punk rock philosopher.
This comic is 100% accurate to both Freud's overall philosophy, and his historical therapy sessions.
Turns out Heraclitus was right. Like he said, fire is awesome, or something like that.
The Frankfurt School was a group of philosophers and social critics in Germany that rose to prominance after the War. They worked on Marxist and Hegelian thought, and along with Derrida and the "postmodernists" have been subject to various conspiracies that they were "destroying western civilization", often even being lumped together, even though they had little in common.
One thing Derrida in particular is accused of is making everything "subjective", the Frankfurt School might even get accused of this themselves, even though a lot of their work is directly opposed to this. They, in fact, pointed out the under modern capialism "reason" had taken on a meaning of technical reason, or subjective reason. "Rationality" was using your intellence to achieve your aims, rather than participating in a sort of broad Hegelian rationality, where we advance human thought in general. So a game theorist, for example, might point out that there are instances where everyone is behaving "rationally", but it culminates in an irrational result. For people like Marcuse, this kind of thing has lost the grander meaning of the term "rationality". Under Capitialism in America, everyone became isolated and encouraged to be "rational" by using their intelligence to succeed by making as much money as possible. People will even say stuff like that the Media is only behaving rationally by maximizing their profits by running clickbait articles to get the most traffic, rather than actually reporting serious news and informing the population. Well, this is a very odd sense of what rationality is, and would have been very foreign to how people like Kant and Hegel used the term. Reducing rationality to an instrumental and subject force creates a society where random, chaotic market forces of "rational" consumers drives the entire society, with no human rationality being applied to what we should be doing in the larger sense. So you have rationality itself responsible for the quite irrational actions of our society, such as consuming so much that we destroy the planet.
Rick Roderick has a good lecture series that is accessible on some of these thinkers, on YouTube.
One thing Derrida in particular is accused of is making everything "subjective", the Frankfurt School might even get accused of this themselves, even though a lot of their work is directly opposed to this. They, in fact, pointed out the under modern capialism "reason" had taken on a meaning of technical reason, or subjective reason. "Rationality" was using your intellence to achieve your aims, rather than participating in a sort of broad Hegelian rationality, where we advance human thought in general. So a game theorist, for example, might point out that there are instances where everyone is behaving "rationally", but it culminates in an irrational result. For people like Marcuse, this kind of thing has lost the grander meaning of the term "rationality". Under Capitialism in America, everyone became isolated and encouraged to be "rational" by using their intelligence to succeed by making as much money as possible. People will even say stuff like that the Media is only behaving rationally by maximizing their profits by running clickbait articles to get the most traffic, rather than actually reporting serious news and informing the population. Well, this is a very odd sense of what rationality is, and would have been very foreign to how people like Kant and Hegel used the term. Reducing rationality to an instrumental and subject force creates a society where random, chaotic market forces of "rational" consumers drives the entire society, with no human rationality being applied to what we should be doing in the larger sense. So you have rationality itself responsible for the quite irrational actions of our society, such as consuming so much that we destroy the planet.
Rick Roderick has a good lecture series that is accessible on some of these thinkers, on YouTube.