Monday, March 21, 2005

The straw wolf's bite

A comment I left on Right Reason:
It always amuses me when people object to a criticism of utilitarianism by saying that it might work against crudely hedonic forms of the theory, but not against versions incorporating more sophisticated accounts of well-being, and that it's attacking a straw man.

As a Benthamite, I look at myself and realize that I am a straw man! Aaaaaah!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Sometimes I try to bring up eliminative materialism. I feel like something of a straw man those days. Most materialists are subtle, suave reductionists who try to explain consciousness in terms of material phenomena. Then I bluster in, with little education in philosophy, and claim the whole thing's just smoke and mirrors. It's fun though.