Psycho Economist

Over in this thread about the morality of single motherhood, yguy seems to want to be and not be a utilitarian at the same time.

If "right actions" are whatever ones "yeild right results", how are we to discern right actions, except by their results? It's okay... utilitarianism can be morally objectivist (assuming one has an objective standard of harm). But it is not transcendently objective system.

However, if you do insist that there is a list in Platonic ideaspace of things that are always right and always wrong, how can right actions necessarily yeild right results, except by tautology? Why try to blast Anna's choice based on the potential outcomes?

Note:
I am personally a subjectivist who leans towards Kantianism but generally just follows his own conscience. I'm kinda drifting away from my home base trying to advocate utilitarianism. Hope this doesn't get painful to read on my account.

(edited by moderator to get a text color with more contrast to make things easier for we old people to read)

yguy

If we tried to base our actions on the idea that it's impossible know an action is right before we take it, of course, we'd all be paralyzed. Reagan knew bombing Tripoli was the right thing to do, and the results have vindicated the unilateral action that the press thought was so outrageous.

You might want to ease up on the philosophical buzzwords just a tad, seeing how I never took a college philosophy course. I've never read Plato.

That aside, I don't get the point. If you are saying, for instance, that it's always wrong to lie, I don't buy that. If you're in Nazi Germany and hiding a Jew in your basement, lying to the SS is obviously OK, for example. In that case, telling the truth would be the wrong thing to do.

Because they're all bad. She is making a calculated decision to deprive her child of a father, damaging the development of masculinity in a boy, or damaging respect for it in a girl. It doesn't matter how much the child accomplishes in life as an adult, because it will pass that trace of selfishness on the the next generation, where one can only assume it will get worse. If her son grows up and leaves a girl barefoot and pregnant, she'll scratch her wooden head and wonder why, conveniently forgetting that she chose the boy's father in great part because he possessed the same mentality.

Dr. Retard

I'll just say to be careful not to confuse utilitarianism with consequentialism. Consequentialism says all that matters is consequences -- if you know the consequences, you can derive the moral facts. Utilitarianism says all that matters is utility -- if you know how everyone's utility gets affected, you can derive the moral facts. Summative utilitarianism (really strict utilitarianism) says that all that matters is the sum of everyone's utility.

Psycho Economist

First of all, I'm sorry that my response to yguy is so long in coming. This has turned into a pretty busy week for me.

Secondly, I'm trying to not mix the two, and considering the nature of the exchange in the other thread, I think it's specific enough to invoke utilitarianism specifically... How Anna's choice could effect her, her prospective child and possibly society at large, based on epidemiological evidence (all of which is potentially quantifiable). That's why I'm not focusing so much about yguy's opinion of the intrinsic worth "having a male role model". But I'll be the first to say the character of the discussion in this thread may end up being different.