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This is the most famous argument against negative utilitarianism, [7] and it is directed against sufficiently strong versions of negative utilitarianism. [31] Many authors have endorsed this argument, [32] and some have presented counterarguments against it. Below are replies to this argument that have been presented and discussed.
The Peterson–Žižek debate, officially titled Happiness: Capitalism vs. Marxism, was a debate between the Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson (a critic of Marxism) and the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek (a Marxist theorist and Hegelian) on the relationship between Marxism, capitalism, and happiness.
Happiness is often imprecisely equated with pleasure. If, for whatever reason, one does equate happiness with pleasure, then the paradox of hedonism arises. When one aims solely towards pleasure itself, one's aim is frustrated. Henry Sidgwick comments on such frustration after a discussion of self-love in the above-mentioned work:
In particular, he considers three alternative explanations of moral facts as: theological, (supernatural, the commands of God); non-natural (based on intuitions); or simply natural properties (such as leading to pleasure or to happiness). There are cogent arguments against each of these alternative accounts, he claims, and there has not been ...
The experience machine or pleasure machine is a thought experiment put forward by philosopher Robert Nozick in his 1974 book Anarchy, State, and Utopia. [1] It is an attempt to refute ethical hedonism by imagining a choice between everyday reality and an apparently preferable simulated reality.
Regarding procreation, the argument follows that coming into existence generates both good and bad experiences, pain and pleasure, whereas not coming into existence entails neither pain nor pleasure. The absence of pain is good, the absence of pleasure is not bad. Therefore, the ethical choice is weighed in favor of non-procreation.
[11]: 2 In scholarly and literary writings, various ethical arguments have been put forth in defense of antinatalism, probably the most prominent of which is the asymmetry argument, put forward by South African philosopher David Benatar. Robbert Zandbergen makes a distinction between so-called reactionary (or activist) antinatalism and its more ...
The argument from desire is an argument for the existence of the immortality of the soul. [1] The best-known defender of the argument is the Christian writer C. S. Lewis . Briefly and roughly, the argument states that humans' natural desire for eternal happiness must be capable of satisfaction, because all natural desires are capable of ...