From: John Wilkins (j.wilkins1@uq.edu.au)
Date: Mon 13 Feb 2006 - 22:07:08 GMT
Well it might be a more restricted utilitarianism, or it might be
that the reference class for evaluating acts is the universal of
Muslims.
On 14/02/2006, at 4:53 AM, Wade Allsopp wrote:
> I think its got zero to do with Benthan and utlilitarianism. The
> key tenet of
> utilitarianism is universalism - the idea that it doesn't matter
> who you make happy or sad,
> you just need to add up all the happyness/sadness or utility.
>
> Whatever is going through their mind, I think we can be pretty
> sure that the bombers attribute little
> or no value to the suffering and pain they cause to their victims
> and their families, indeed the general
> presumption seems to be the more Jews or non Muslims that are
> killed the better.
>
> I'm also pretty sure that they believe they are acting highly
> morally. It's just that (I would guesss) 99%
> of non muslims would disagree and maybe 80% (?) of muslims too.
>
> Wade
>
>
>
>
>
> On 2/13/06, Chris Taylor <chris.taylor@ebi.ac.uk> wrote: > Virgins
> or not, a few folks, even adults, seem to think blowing yourself
> > up and killing innocents is a good thing to do. To me, that
> sounds like
> > not knowing right from wrong, which qualifies as crazy in many
> Western
> > jurisdictions.
>
> This is just a Bentham-style maximised benefit thing surely, not
> immoral, just amoral..? Certainly not crazy (although I'd assert
> rather misled).
>
> Cheers, Chris.
>
> ~~
>
-- John S. Wilkins, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Biohumanities Project University of Queensland - Blog: evolvethought.blogspot.com "Darwin's theory has no more to do with philosophy than any other hypothesis in natural science." Tractatus 4.1122 =============================================================== This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing) see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
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