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    Carmelics

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    Made withinDC&Austin
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    Perspectives
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    Home/Original/inverse
    See Original
    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Spencer's deductive hedonism fails as a moral system

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

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.Deductive hedonism requires a general science of the causes of pleasure and pain
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    • 2.No general science of the causes of pleasure and pain exists
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    • 3.Without such a science, universal and indefeasible moral rules for promoting happiness cannot be formulated
      ?

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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Spencer grounds moral rules in evolutionary adaptation, but evolution selects for reproductive fitness, not hedonic experience, making pleasure epiphenomenal to his own foundational mechanism.
      ?

      Think about whether this reason is strong or weak

    • 2.G.E. Moore's open question argument demonstrates that identifying 'good' with 'pleasurable' commits a naturalistic fallacy, undermining Spencer's deductive bridge from evolutionary facts to hedonic norms.
      ?

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    • 3.A deductive system deriving ought from is cannot survive Hume's guillotine; Spencer's derivation of pleasure-maximizing duties from biological facts inherits this foundational logical gap.
      ?

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    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Sidgwick demonstrated in Methods of Ethics that hedonism requires interpersonal utility comparisons that cannot be resolved without an independent standard Spencer's system lacks.
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    • 2.Spencer's absolute moral rules presuppose static human nature, but his own evolutionary framework entails that human psychology and hedonic responses are perpetually in flux, making permanent rules self-defeating.
      ?

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