Peter wrote: "Ah, but surely a utilitarian could still say that their intentions were evil, because they intended to decrease the sum of human happiness. The fact that they didn't is irrelivent to them as human beings, because they did not believe they were acting in a positive manner according to the utilitarian ideal." Well, it doesn't seem safe to assume that they intended to decrease the sum of human happiness. Certainly they intended to kill millions and millions of people, but their perverse rationale (we can imagine) was that this was the only solution to the world's problems and that it would ultimately lead to a much better world. It's also clear that such a rationale is IRrational (but note that it is irrational only because there is no known way to predict the effects present actions, especially the big ones, will have), but sometimes we choose a course of action irrationally and later find that (by chance) it is the "right" course of action. For instance, we sometimes buy a CD because we like the name of one of the songs (I bought Sinister because I used to fancy myself a bit of a track star...I'd never heard B&S beforehand), and in doing so discover great music, song titles notwithstanding. The problem that my thought experiment raises for Utilitarianism is that such a theory seems to establish moral criteria on which we are forced to say that actions which lead to human happiness are good, even if they at some point involve the death of many humans. But, there are certainly many ways for Utilitarians to avoid this problem...I'm attacking a very crude form of Utilitarianism, I think. --Sam +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "peculiarly deranged fanbase" +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "frighteningly named Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +-+ Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+