So this morning I’m having breakfast at the hotel and a guy comes over to my table to greet me and shake my hand. At first I assume this is someone connected with the conference whose face I’ve forgotten. But no, he’s a complete stranger; he turns out to be a fire chief from Wetumpka, and he insists that I’m a celebrity that he’s seen interviewed on tv. The only thing I could think of was that he’d seen some Mises Institute webcast, but that didn’t ring a bell with him. Maybe he’s a skrull!
In other news: it turns out you shouldn’t hit your kids. Well, duh; we should hardly need a scientific consequentialist argument to tell us that.
Yeah, aside from having no upper bound on bad things one is allowed to do in order to get good consequences, one thing that scares me about consequentialism is when people try to rely on it for these simple, paradigmatic cases of moral virtue; it makes me wonder if they would just as easily believe it’s ok to beat your kids if a study seemed to indicate it.
What’s the deal with adults who claim they’re grateful they were beaten as children, that it disciplined them and toughened them up? Are they just wishfully excusing their own violence, is it a coping mechanism, or perhaps the need to forgive their dead or elderly parents?
I was even assured that being bullied was good for me.
smallylerned,
I’d say it’s a coping mechanism to rationalize away the abuse by inventing a false history. Same reason everybody claims to have really fond memories of high school.
Rod,
My best guess would be either cajun chef Paul Prudhomme or King Leonidas from “300”.
Re: Consequentialism,
I have the apprehension regarding upper limits of acceptable action myself. I hope Will Gillis will drop by some time and take up the challenge of addressing it, but he’s probably got better things to do.