Look up mill instead--his theory is the form that's genrally used today; Benthem's was a start but, like Aristotle's theories in physics in comparison to Einstein's...

Benthem and Aristotle got the ball rolling but their theories today are, for the most part, very much debunked, whereas Einstein's theories and Mill's take on Uiltilitarianism is a later version, but really the versions that work far, FAR better.

Benthem's take on Utility can be shot to holes easily; for example, he treats all pleasures equally and famously said that "poetry is as worthwhile as pushpin provided thy both provide happiness."

Essentially, Benthem's theory would allow you to live a good, moral life by stuffing yourself with chocolate cake 24/7 and not harming anyone--you are producing some happiness and causing no pain.

However, most of us would NOT be prepared to call a 400lb behemoth and glutton "moral" for eating cake all day. :)

MILL is the one who says that there are higher and lower pleasures and that higehr counts more than lower, and says famously "it is better to be a dissatisfied Socrates than a satisfied pig," which I personally find very wise and try to remember to live by...

Part of the reason I post here and write in my free time and study English and Philosophy and try my beest to find truth and reason and literary worth--

Better to be a dissatisfied, failed Socrates than a satisfied forum troller like... ;)

A Mozart is worth more because he can bring a greater QUALITY of good, definitely, at least in the confines of this theory.

Again, Mill's idea of higher and lower pleasures: a Mozart, we presume, will enlighten and help people mentally, spiritually, cognitively, etc., and so allow them to live a greater quality of life, whereas the workers can only give a greater quantity of food and goods to live in this life, but it will still be this quality of life.

In a purely HISTORICAL sense we can say a Mozart will also GENERALLY have a greater impact quantitively, but only because people generally remember Mozarts and not the workers, and so more people will be reached and helped by a Mozart or an Einstein than by a worker.

But, again, the main difference comes in the QUALITY of life they offer:

To put it one way...

A worker can make you very comfortable with great quantities of food--but you'll still be blind to whatever greater possibilities you can be in life and as a person.

A Mozart will allow you, through his work, one way or another, to reach another plateau and allow you to see, he will help your blindness--but being cured of the blindness may sting, and it is ultimately up to YOU to repay that gift of losing blindness by DOING something with your newfound sight.

But surely the other point is true. If it can be simply a matter of numbers, Mozart can bring good to more people than a thousand workers can bring. Does this not, in itself, fulfill the Utilitarian goal?
And if it is a matter of quality, maybe the workers can bring more quality individual people. Perhaps they are farmers, and without food you can't live to enjoy music. Thus the worker could win on quality but Mozart wins on quantity due to the reach of his actions.
But then again if we define quality in terms of the uniqueness of the experience then Mozart wins.
I don't know. I am speculating.

Typo... More quality *to individual people (per capita).

That is, gain, why the gold coin is not necessarily better or worse than the silver coin, but rather the two work off one another.

The gold coin is HIGHER, and the silver LOWER, but for there to BE higher and lower you need one of each, and, like you say, for a Mozart to inspire you need him fed by the lower, and as a result he can raise up that lower to a greater height.

The goal is to have the low become the high and for the high to move ever higher, and in that way the lowest of society comes better and better, it grows to take the place of greatness today, and great figures grow even GREATER, and move to another level, almost to Nietzsche's Ubermensch level.

In the same waythat if you have a baseball league where the best team hits 100 home runs and the worst team hits 10, with this Greater Figure/Worker relaitionship that would, metaphorically, move in a quantitive sense to 1,000 for the best team and 100 for the worst--the worst teams/people of tomorrow should be as good as the best teams/people of today, and the best teams/people of tomorrow must reach a new plateau.



THT, however, is ONLY for the quantitive sense of it all; the qualitiative differences are fixed in that goild is always gold and sivler always silver--we may heve better Mozarts and better workers but they will still be, in the end, Mozarts and workers UNLESS we evolve to Nietzsche's Ubermensch point, where ALL are Mozarts and the need for worker-level people is gone, OR if we degenerate and blow our society to bits due to pettiness, in which case man moves DOWN the ladder, as then we have no time, no ability to sustain the Mozarts that elevate mankind and instead must have solely workers to rebuild the landscape until such a time as we can once again support Mozarts.

Actually, for those who like science, while it's not totally the same, it's a BIT like the natural biological world:

You need lower life forms, like grass, to support higher life forms, like animals and humans--change is the one constant in all the universe, and so there WILL come a point of evolution, and the question is whether that will be due to a great happening or even accident (ie, Homo Habilis to Homo Erectus to Homo Sapien) or, if life is devestated like, say, by the forces that cause mass extinctions, it's often the most basic life that survives (ie, the grass and cellular organisms) and the more complex organisms (ie, the dinosaurs) die off.

But you cannot treat grass the same as you would a Tyrannosaurus, and you cannot treat gold the same way as silver, and so you cannot treat Mozarts the same was you would workers.

"The gold coin is HIGHER, and the silver LOWER, but for there to BE higher and lower you need one of each, and, like you say, for a Mozart to inspire you need him fed by the lower, and as a result he can raise up that lower to a greater height."

I think this is an almost meaningless argument, and is tangental to the question of which is worth more, gold or silver. That is one could still make a case without delving deeply into the semantics of the words higher or lower, or the construction of language.

Granted, I AM relying on the idea of gold being higher than silver, I just take that as a given.

I'm just using that as a euphamism, though, for "higher/lower," the same way as I use "a Moart/a worker."

But you didn't answer my question. Can not Mozarts value be compared simply in terms of reach (that is, quantifiably rather than qualitatively) regardless of which is "higher", food or music?

Too illustrate, imagine comparing a genius composer, whose music no one will ever hear (not Mozart but Mozart like), with the output of a thousand workers. The former's output may be "higher" but the reach would be zero, while the workers individual output maybe "lower" but with the reach would be greater.
Perhaps in that case the genius would not have more worth than the workers.

Yes, it can, but I don't think it's relevant for two reasons:

-First and foremost, qualitative good trumps quantitative good necessarily, again, to paraphrase Mill, it's better to be a dissatisfied Socrates than a satisfied pig." Thus, it's better to have the qualitative good--a Mozart's goods--and be hungry yet enlightened, at least, to the need for enlightenment, than the quantitative good--a worker's goods--and have a full belly but an empty mind and spirit.

-Secondly, if we DO just want to speak quantity rather than quality, again I think the Mozarts win out due to their memorable nature, whereas a worker will be forgotten. Mozart's music lives on forever; the worker who fashioned his harpsichord is long forgotten to time, or at least his influence has stopped, since no one else plays the harpsichord he made for Mozart but people still play and study and lsiten to Mozart's music, and will continue to do so, and so over time the Mozart is the clear winner in quantity as well.

Ah.

REACH...

Yes, I DO mean by "a Mozart" someone who has the reach as well as an ability, as you are quite right in suggesting that a house well-built and well-used is more useful than a "Hamlet" that is never read by a single person and decays in solitude.

You need both quantity and quality, after all quality multiplied by zero equals zero.
Thus if you want to compare worth you need to consider both the quality of the output and its quantity.

Ah
We are on the same page then :-)

Before I red the discussion between you and Spyman you once against failed to answer my question.
"Obi, you said you don't see the point in killing a few to save many, so in that case would you let the many die?"

I want a simple 1 sentence answer, instead of giving a 500 liner that mostly avoids the question. Stop trying to ramble on to defend your belief and state your belief in its fact. That you believe in killing the many to save the few, its in the ends vs means debate the other side. Yes a life doesn't equal another life, but fate doesn't care, we all live for about the same time, we all work for about the same amount of time. In the grand scheme of things a great man such as Mozart, or Einstein or anyone else would equal 20 men at the most. and I would much rather kill Einstein, then watch 1000 people get killed.

...

Well, when you read the discussion between spyman and myself and see that I believe a Mozart is...well, I'll leave that for you to read if you wish.

To give a SIMPLE answer:

It depends.

I'm a situationalist; I said what I said about not wanting to kill a few to save many in the context of, say, not wanting to kill 600 to save 1000, to me the action of committing mass murder would overshadown any "good" in saving a somewhat larger number.

If it's 1 vs. 1,000,000 then yes--UNLESS THAT PERSON IS "A MOZART."

I can't get around that, if you're getting annoyed with that point, I'm sorry, but as you will see if you read the discourse between spyman and myself, I hold that a Mozart is incommensurable with a worker, and so there could be 1,000,000 workers about to die:

A Mozart figure is still NECESSARILY, QUALITATIVELY better in the same way I argue for the Gold/Silver analogy in that discussion with spyman.

I cannot say any amount of people would "outweigh" the life of "a Mozart" figure as the latter is of a higher quality than the first, it would be like asking how many oranges are worth sacrificing before you'd sacrifice and apple instead.

Also, totally unrelated:

Anyone know how I can retrieve ALL my forum threads and posts? I looked at my profile and the threads there run from my start her in '07 to September of this year, and I'd really like to get some of these posts onto Microsoft Word to polish them...and I KNOW I have more posts since September...

Call it a hunch, but I just get the feeling I might've posted one or two or twenty more threads. :)

So--do you know how I can get threads from Sept. 2010-present?

But you can't tell that the person is a Mozart. And even so, I would kill 999 people to save 1000 people if we are assuming they are all lower class citizens. Would you?

I would not kill them, but i would allow them to die. And yes, there is a difference.

I know, but letting them die is almost as bad.

Not if the choice is "do A and save 999 or do B and save 1000".

its still a difference of one life.

Putting aside the trolley problem, if you can't tell who will be a 'Mozart' - in fact even after their life some people's works are not appreciated until after they die.

And since someone can have unforeseen impact for generations to come, you can estimate that each individual has the potential to provide infinite utility. (in that a worker's labour can feed a family who several generations later produces a single composer who's works decades later inspire a physicist...)

Plugging infinity into the utilitarian equation does nothing useful, basically it breaks down to become equivalent to 'every life is sacred'

In that case we should not choose A or B, if both A and B fail to save the other people, we should instead choose C where C invovles not allowing a situation where A or B will be the only options. (this is an ideal)

Practically we have to break the rules, ignore the ideal and choose the lesser evil.

ie, i reject utilitarianism as an ideal, and i reject using ideals to further decision making in practical situations...

Right, sorry for getting back late, New Years is my birthday and all, meaning...actually, I wound up spending most of the day having an argument with first my best friend and then her friend over a matter that you don't NEED to even contemplate philosophically or at all to see I'm right:

They think I should hitched with someone and be all nice and happy and "romantic' instead of the cold analytic, over-analyzing bastard I am!

It's like asking a bird to quit flying or a grizzly to stop being capable of fierceness!

To quote the philosopher Higgins: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6sb-vOFqCU

! XD

Anyway, back to the topic at hand...

When I say "a Mozart" I MEAN that such a person is recognizeable ALREADY.

I'm not saying that Person A is a Mozart and no one knows it and Person B a worker, but rather Person A IS ALREADY KNOWN TO BE a Mozart, and Person B is a worker.

I beliee, then, the BETTER question, and the only real sticking point, is, as has often been the case throughout history, not if greatness exists, but rather what we use to define something as great.

In that same vein I think we could all, ofr the most part, agree on the existence of "Mozart figures," and so we may assume, for the purposes of the train dilemma, that a Mozart does there exist, and so it is left to us to ask, rather, what makes Mozart Mozart and greatness greatness.

I would again point to the qualititative difference as a deciding point, namely, that workers deal in the finite and the utterly human and/or physical, whereas we may GENERALLY say, I believe, that a Mozart or an Einstein deals in that which is beyond the physical or merely human; where a worker might build homes, and these are but physical structures that WILL, over time, break down, and serve only the purpose of being hiomes until they break down, a Michaelangelo, say, may operate on TWO levels, the physical and the mental/spiritual/whatever else you may call it by sculpting his "David," which takes physical form but inspires mental and spiritual thoughts and ideas which the homes may not and which OUTLAST and OUTCLASS the homes.

For another, perhaps better example, take an instuction manual writer and Shakespeare.

The instuction manual deals only in the concrete, with a specific object, and will itself break down as its object breaks down, and so is limited ion its function and its influence and being in time--Shakespeare's writings, by contrast, have not one meaning but many (thus beating out the worker in Quantity) and are going to generally said to convey deeper meanings and these, in turn, inspire not merely "Take Object A and plug it into Peg A1" thinking, but the sort of free, deep thinking that we may say is Qualitatively better.

Seeing as how we may EASILY tell "Hamlet" from "How To Install Your Brewmaster 5000," I submit that we may easily tell the difference, at least in this case, between the Mozart and the Worker.

I sense one ready objection, that being "Suppose the instuction manual worker's name IS, in fact, Tennyson, obiwan--he's a Mozart figure, he simply hasn't shown it yet!"

To which I respond by pointing out the conclusion spyman and I reached together:

REACH IS KEY.

As we BOTH agreed, a worker's toils OUTWEIGH "Hamlet" if it is never read by a single person and decays having never been read or performed.

In addition, you will recall that I mentioned previously that I mentioned that we cannot treat the workers of the tracks as if they might be potential Mozarts, as to do so is to commit the fallacy of dealing in the present in a manner influenced by a future we do not know; we do not know them to be Mozarts and thus cannot treat them as such, logically, and so, logically, it follows that we cannot treat Shakespeare as Shakespeare until he writes "Titus Andronicus" and "Romeo and Juliet," his first tragedies, and thus shows at least SOME of the power and quality of a Mozart figure to us.

Without that reach, without their giving evidence, and so without us therefore knowing BECAUSE they have ESTABLISHED THEMSELVES as Mozart figures, we must treat the workers as workers and NOT Mozart figures, even if one of the workers names happens to be William Marlowe Steinbeck Jr.

However, the moment Mr. William Marlowe Steinbck Jr. writes for us his first book, "The Lementable Tragedie of Romeo and the Red Pony," and it is READ--thus establishing his reach and releasing his qualitative ideas--then we may treat him as a Mozart figure, and thus when we ssay "a Mozart figure" we are already presupposing that cuh a figure has already established himself as being such; if he has not he cannot be treated or seen as such, not until his reach is enabled and his ideas are released into the world.

@orathaic: "I reject utilitarianism as an ideal, and i reject using ideals to further decision making in practical situations..."

Is that not what utilitarianism is about? I thought that its orientation was purely practical. I am no expert, so I'll quote the Wikipedia definition:

"Utilitarianism (also: utilism) is the idea that the moral worth of an action is determined solely by its usefulness in maximizing utility/minimizing negative utility"

it is a practical ideal, however, i'm rejecting it's conclusions based on how i would value humans (by putting the infinities in i make the whole processes of calculating utility a waste of time, and argue that we can't distinguish between a mozart' and a worker whose work may eventually become more important than that 'mozart's' )

So i'm rejecting the 'idea' which utilitarianism is based on as flawed in it's value system.

as i'm sure for practical reasons i'm liable to reject all ideologies, except those which allow that they can't provide the best answer for every situation (like democracy, which allows that people will change laws for what suits the given situation...)

Utilitarianism IS supposed to be a purely practical way of thinking about ethics, as it doesn't involve nearly as many moral codes or categorical imperatives, it's very much a calculative form of ethics: 4 happy people against 3 harmed people equal a net gain of happiness, hence it's a good action, and vice versa.

Even if we were to use Rule Utilitarianism and say that some harms or some goods merit extra consideration adn weight, it's still merely calculative and very practical in that it deals with the stark reality rather than idealistic principles such as Kant's categorical imperative.

What he means, though, spyman--I think--is that aside from basic things like how to divide a pizza and how to distribute money in a will, as well as business applications, Utilitarianism IS notoriously difficult to use practically for the same reason it appears so practical--calculation.

It seems somehwat absurd to think that you CAN calculate quickly enough the "correct" ethical answer for 'the greater good," and especially if you take the more complex Mill-style Utilitarianism and Rule Utilitarianism, THEN you have extra calculations to do baed on higher and lower pleasures AND the possiblity of actions having a positive or negative bonus to their moral value intrinsically (ie, murder would generally be considered intrinsically bad.)

HOW, for instance, do you calculate who you must save from a burning building out of and elder widow who's also a Broadway singer and so brings joy to many, a mother of 15, and a businessman? And what if one of them started the fire, how does THAT affect your computations? And suppose two of the three indulge in lower pleasures and one in higher, but they have MORE lower pleasures than the other person has higher pleasures--what then? And for that matter how do you DECIDE what counts as lower and higher pleasure-wise; most would agree Shakespeare ranks higher than eating chocolate all day, but what if the physical--often held by Mill s the "lower"--leads to a greater good, say, what if physical workouts that don't stimulate any higher thinking ALSO enable that fireman to bel able to actually carry someone out of that burning building?

That and many more issues...THESE are why Utilitarianism is said to be both practical and impractical--the premise seems good, but once you get started, you realize that you need more advanced, complex forms of it, but THESE soon can become as unwieldy as the above example...it's a dilemma...

Orathaic: "it is a practical ideal, however, i'm rejecting it's conclusions based on how i would value humans (by putting the infinities in i make the whole processes of calculating utility a waste of time, and argue that we can't distinguish between a mozart' and a worker whose work may eventually become more important than that 'mozart's' )"

I think you might have utilitarianism confused with obiwanism :P