Quote:
Originally Posted by jdlongmire  Got about 10 minutes before chow time, so, to empirically prove my point to my brother, since that is the only evidence he will accept (such a doubting Tom...  ):
~6000 ambulance services in the US - say they - in toto - only make make 5 life saving trips per week:
6000 X 5 X 52 = ~1,560,000
Total fatalities by auto in the US/year = ~40000
I have the references if you need them.  |
Your argument only works if you assign an equal amount of hedons all around. Or, if you view your facts in isolations from other facts.
Death could cost 50 hedons while life saving could reap 15 hedons.
When S suffers, for him, it costs 1,000,000,000,000 hedons. When S* gets pleasure it's worth 25 hedons.
How would you know about the above two? Where's the calculations. Gonna find that on your google search engine? Perhaps Wikipedia has an article on it?
Or, say those whose lives were saved went out and did more evils resulting in a net loss of 10,000,000 hedons. Say one became the next Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, and Amin rolled up into one.
Or, one of those who died by getting hit, counterfactually, happened to be the person who would have (had it not been for the car) invented a cure for cancer, thus saving untold millions of lives. Thus the end result puts you in the red. Negative hedon balance.
J.D. haven't you learned anything from Bahnsen, Frame, Helm, Byl, Oliphint, Rae, Moreland, Craig, Shaffer-Landeau, Pojman, Rachels, Adams, etc., etc., etc.,
YOU HAVE NO WAY TO CALCULATE THE MULTIFARIOUS FACTORS!!! How many times do you need to read that? You have no clue how much John X has to pay and how much John Y receives. No one has been able to do this. As Bahnsen has said, you'd have to be omniscient to be a Utilitarian.
Back to the drawing board for you....