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    Carmelics

    A reasoning platform. Break down any belief into clear reasons, explore both sides, and weigh the evidence honestly.

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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
    Home/Original/inverse
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    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Cultivating feelings that make people disregard happiness in particular cases is justified because doing so produces more happiness in the world overall.

    ?Set your confidence on the premises below to see your aggregate.

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.Cultivating feelings that systematically override happiness-calculations undermines the very standard by which the justification is supposed to be assessed.
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    • 2.If agents are trained to disregard happiness, they lose the epistemic access to consequences needed to verify that overall happiness is actually increased.
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    • 3.Bernard Williams argued that integrity-based motivations cannot be subordinated to utility without destroying the psychological coherence that makes moral agency possible.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
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    • 1.The argument assumes a reliable causal link between disregarding happiness in particular cases and producing greater aggregate happiness, but this empirical claim is systematically difficult to verify.
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    • 2.G.E. Moore's 'open question argument' establishes that no purely descriptive or causal fact about happiness-production can by itself constitute a moral justification without an independent normative premise.
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    • 3.Without an independent normative premise bridging the causal claim to the justification, the argument commits the naturalistic fallacy Mill himself was accused of in Utilitarianism chapter four.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
    ?
    • 1.Some virtuous actions sacrifice happiness in the particular instance, producing more pain than pleasure.
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    • 2.Conduct that sacrifices happiness in a particular case is justified only if it can be shown that more happiness will exist in the world as a result.
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    • 3.Cultivating feelings that make people disregard happiness in certain cases leads to more overall happiness in the world.
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