sorry, JS MILL.

I'm a pragmatism and I appreciate a straight-forward style of thinking, especially when I'm thinking theoretically. I think it's because the realm of morality is so weighty and impossible to quantify, that when I theorize, it's nice to take a break from it. This meant, in college, I was a realist, not a flaky international institutionalist.

Now Staple's conversation has turned to Utilitarianism (basically the idea of 'consequentialism' discussed in the previous session) and this is a concept I can appreciate. I read John Stuart Mill a couple years ago and I really enjoyed it. It's straight-forward.

The problem with it is that it's not really useful for making decisions. Take the example of the internment camps that the US rounded up the Japanese into during WWII. The thought at the time was that this would keep many people safe while hurting a few: utility maximization. But it could also be argued, again using utilitarianism, that detaining families in the name of prevention in fact harmed the overall society by making its laws unstable, or whatever you wanted to argue-- even that it bound the people outside the camps in fear or racism. The point is, you still need some sort of standard for what utility IS.

So while utilitarianism is a helpful framework, it's not useful for making decisions on its own. Because what standard do we use to rank benefits?