Re: The ASSA leads to a unique utilitarism

From: <marc.geddes.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2007 09:00:46 -0000

Make sure you get the spelling right ;) - Utilitarianism

The trouble with Utilitarianism is that it's only concerned with one
aspect of values - relations between rational agents. Further,
although it's a good approach for practical calculation , it fails to
deal with the explanatory abstraction underlying values. The actual
abstraction that Utiliarianism is concerned with is 'Liberty' (or
Volition), and a theory of morality at the deepest level deals
directly with Volition, not Utility. Utility is a secondary concept
and Utilitarianism a derivative calculational tool.

Volition per se is not the final basis for value by the way. Beauty
is. You heard it here first. Aesthetics is the deepest level of
value theory and the theory of Liberty (Volition) is merely a sub-set
of this.

In defense of Beauty as the ultimate basis of value, I present to you:
Natasha Vita More :)

---
"When I think about the decline of the values America was built upon,
stemming from The Bill of Rights and the world of Thomas Paine, I
long for the underlying essence of beauty.  (When one thinks of Naomi
Wolf, it is almost impossible not to think about her writings on
beauty (thus the connection))  You might say, "What the hell does
beauty have to do with human behavior, tryanny and politics?!"
Beauty, according to Le Corbusier, stemming from Pythagoras, is
mathematical in symmetry and proportion.  Beauty, according to
Benjamin Franklin, is found in simple yet carefully orchestrated
musical tunes. According to Thomas Jefferson "The beauty of the
second amendment is that it will not be needed until they try to take
it."  According to Simone Weil, "Justice, truth, and beauty are
sisters and comrades."
"Beauty, throughout history, generally has been associated with that
which is good. Likewise, the polar opposite of beauty is generally
considered to be ugly and is often associated with evil. ... This
contrast is epitomized by classic stories such as Sleeping Beauty.
Likewise, beauty according to Goethe, from his 1809 Elective
Affinities, is 'everywhere a welcome guest'. Moreover, human beauty
"acts with far greater force on both inner and outer senses, so that
he who beholds it is exempt from evil and feels in harmony with
himself and with the world."(Wakjawa 2007)
"An Occasional Letter On The Female Sex" (Thomas Paine, August 1775)
reflects on bondage and suffering at the cost of beauty."   But isn't
beauty a deeply valued sense of life that begets the desire for
freedom to express and experience?   Paine was a "[c]hampion of the
chaos of change and the beauty of unrestrained libertarianism"
(Rushton 2006)  The London Chronicle reprinted Ben Franklin's Causes
of the American Discontents before 1768 (1774).  Paine was distressed
and wanted to revolt against what he thought was a completely corrupt
state.  He thought of America as a land were the lovers of freedom
were uniting against the tyranny.  And that tyranny was an illness, a
sickness in human behavior.  An unwelcome guest."
Ref:  http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/2007-September/037813.html
Of course it's  all in my top-level domain model of reality here:
http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list/web/mcrt-domain-model-eternity
Just code that design and consult it for the answers to all
questions ;)
Look at the Platonic classes in the center - first Virtue , then
Morality (concerned with Volition) and finally Beauty at the deepest
level of abstraction.  It's beauty that's at the core of it all, not
Volition.
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Received on Tue Oct 02 2007 - 05:00:58 PDT