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May. 3rd, 2012 09:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
angelwolfgeekInspired by this boingboing post which references this comic, which makes fun of extreme utilitarianism, starship troopers and and this post by Jeff Atwood on coding horror .
In starship troopers, one of the aspects of the school system was that students would be taught lessions in moral philosophy - often by ex military personnel, and that the students would be asked to prove various moral points of view. Now, there's something many people miss here. It wasn't a subject that affected your grades. A student could easily turn in a halfassed piece of work and it wouldn't affect him much.*But* to get the full effect of it, you'd have to participate, and you'd get harangued into it
We had something similar in school called civics and moral education, or social studies or national education - basically political indoctrination sessions. They were pointless since you never had to defend your views.
The SST idea of MP wasn't to teach students to think in a certain way, it was to teach students to think and analyse the implications of their actions. Utilitarianism as a overarching political framework wouldn't work. Utilitarianism as a personal lifestyle choice would. I can break down the choices i've made in life in terms of the effect they have on others, and try to minimise the harm i'd do, and attempt to maximise the good. More importantly *thinking* about these things to an extent (but not overthinking them) .
I suppose one way to look at it is this question i was asked in class. There's one child playing on a misused train track, and 3 playing on one that was. There's a train coming. If you could switch the train tracks, which would you switch to? Would you sacrifice the one for the three?
I'll not give my reasoning or my answer here, that can come later. Being able to have an answer and to *defend it* is really the idea behind Utilitarianism. *Not* just maximising happiness in a almost economics like manner
In starship troopers, one of the aspects of the school system was that students would be taught lessions in moral philosophy - often by ex military personnel, and that the students would be asked to prove various moral points of view. Now, there's something many people miss here. It wasn't a subject that affected your grades. A student could easily turn in a halfassed piece of work and it wouldn't affect him much.*But* to get the full effect of it, you'd have to participate, and you'd get harangued into it
We had something similar in school called civics and moral education, or social studies or national education - basically political indoctrination sessions. They were pointless since you never had to defend your views.
The SST idea of MP wasn't to teach students to think in a certain way, it was to teach students to think and analyse the implications of their actions. Utilitarianism as a overarching political framework wouldn't work. Utilitarianism as a personal lifestyle choice would. I can break down the choices i've made in life in terms of the effect they have on others, and try to minimise the harm i'd do, and attempt to maximise the good. More importantly *thinking* about these things to an extent (but not overthinking them) .
I suppose one way to look at it is this question i was asked in class. There's one child playing on a misused train track, and 3 playing on one that was. There's a train coming. If you could switch the train tracks, which would you switch to? Would you sacrifice the one for the three?
I'll not give my reasoning or my answer here, that can come later. Being able to have an answer and to *defend it* is really the idea behind Utilitarianism. *Not* just maximising happiness in a almost economics like manner