A collaborative search for wisdom, at Middle Tennessee State University and beyond... "The pluralistic form takes for me a stronger hold on reality than any other philosophy I know of, being essentially a social philosophy, a philosophy of 'co'"-William James
Monday, October 8, 2012
Hakuna Matata sec19 group3 MILL
We started our discussion talking about how Mill was raised. We started asking ourselves if he could really be a genius without any social interactions. Or how could he take perspective on pleasures without interacting with the pleasures of society? We then switched to his theory of individual pleasure unless it is going to harm other. We decided this theory was greatly flawed in practice. For example the scenerio of a husband and wife gettinga divorce. One wants to stay together, and the other wants to split up. The greatest pleasure for the one who wants to split up would be to leave, though this would hurt their spouse. What would you do according to Mill? We then all agreed that his levels of lower and upper pleasures(rolling in mud vs. reading) were a matter of opinion to himself personally. We then compared Bentham to Mill. Mill focused on more of an individual pleasure while Bentham was thinking of the society. Mill's opposition to paternalism sparked a conversation about why children were left out in his beliefs on the practice of paternalism. We came to the conclusion that it is different for children because they have developing minds that need to be taught basic morals.
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Our discussion brought up some interesting ideas on individual happiness and how we should approach that in our decisions.
ReplyDeleteQuestions on Marx: Factual- What type of society did Marx believe would create equality?
Answer: communism
Discussion- Why do we often relate Communism as such a bad form of government?
Our discussion on Mill was beneficial to me to understand his ideas on how to measure pain and how you should live.
ReplyDeleteFactual: What is an egalitarian?
Discussion: Could Marx's idea of communism and how the economy should be ever work in a positive way?
Megan White
I was not present for the discussion we had last class. It sounds as if my group hit all the things that I was wondering myself though.
ReplyDeleteFactual: What was the reason Marx gave for communism not working?
Discussion: Going off of the previous question, in an ideal society where the rules of Communism are followed to the T, could it work?
I also was not in attendance for the last discussion.
ReplyDeleteFQ: How was Marx an egalitarian?
A: He thought human beings should be treated equally.
DQ: Do you believe, as Marx, that all of human history can be explained as a class struggle?