Reply To: Burn Baby Burn

[Simon Paynton]

@Davyd – “How does this (if it does) differ from utilitarian philosophy?”

– you could call it a form of utilitarianism, but not the simplistic utilitarianism of (I believe) Mill, Kant, and Pete Singer (the greatest good for the greatest number).  In this form, it’s simply inhuman, not to mention unnatural: it’s not what people actually do.  Presumably, in simple utilitarianism, it’s perfectly OK to leave some people out and not take care of them at all – as long as “the greatest number” is OK.

In the version I put forward, each person is considered, rather than just the lucky “greatest number”.  So it’s consistent with, for example, human rights, and the (very good) religious idea that “God loves everybody”.

When people seek to put simple utilitarianism into practice, such as within public policy (the only place where it has any useful validity) they always convert it to my version, because they’re human beings and not robots, as Pete Singer seems to see the world, in his wrong-in-the-head psychopathic way.