True, I didn’t mean that Utilitarians must agree on a weighting, but that each person who makes a Utilitarian-based argument for behavior change must have this weighting as part of their model. And that the conversion factor across individuals is a valid point of disagreement, even among those who share a general framework.
I am neither a utilitarian nor a deontologist (not sure precisely what I am, mostly a “muddled human mess”, with MANY of my actions and beliefs illegible, even to me). But I’m happy to discuss the effects of various frameworks, and I (perhaps mistakenly) took the post to be a utilitarian-like framework for recognizing one kind of suffering, presumably with the intent to reduce it.
I also have no idea what I am. Maybe something in the vein of something I think Hume proposed, where you are a kind of second-order utilitarian. (You use utilitarianism to determine a set of rules of thumb, you then follow those rules of thumb instead of actually being a utilitarian.)
True, I didn’t mean that Utilitarians must agree on a weighting, but that each person who makes a Utilitarian-based argument for behavior change must have this weighting as part of their model. And that the conversion factor across individuals is a valid point of disagreement, even among those who share a general framework.
I am neither a utilitarian nor a deontologist (not sure precisely what I am, mostly a “muddled human mess”, with MANY of my actions and beliefs illegible, even to me). But I’m happy to discuss the effects of various frameworks, and I (perhaps mistakenly) took the post to be a utilitarian-like framework for recognizing one kind of suffering, presumably with the intent to reduce it.
Thanks for clarifying, that makes sense.
I also have no idea what I am. Maybe something in the vein of something I think Hume proposed, where you are a kind of second-order utilitarian. (You use utilitarianism to determine a set of rules of thumb, you then follow those rules of thumb instead of actually being a utilitarian.)