This essay will deal with the problems and prospects for Utilitarianism, outlining the basic tenants of its philosophy and the problems that can occur while using it as a basis for moral living. It will outline, evaluate, and dismiss three different strands; act utilitarianism, rule utilitarianism and the last which is a combination of both. The history should be illustrated putting into context why utilitarianism was initially attractive; this will also demonstrate where the modern thought originated. This essay will prove that as a basis for moral living, utilitarianism is not a viable option as it currently stands. It is also advocated that one of the greatest thinker and writers of this movement, JS Mill, was not even utilitarian, despite his assertions to the contrary.
Jeremy Bentham was the modern father of utilitarianism, but he has his antecedents in the Epicureans, and influence from the writings John Hume, as well as his contemporary, William Paley. Paley advocated a type of Utilitarianism that was influenced by Christian theology. However Bentham was the first to bring all the theory together as a cohesive whole under the heading of act utilitarianism. “[the utilitarian movement was] essentially practical in outlook, orientated towards legal, penal, and political reform.”[1] Bentham started his career following his father at the Bar. It is noted by Coplestone that this was not the career he desired and what he preferred was “the life of reflection to that of a practicing lawyer.”[2] His interest was directed towards reform of the law with regard to the utility of the law in dealing with offenders; his reflection was directed towards the most desirable consequences in the penal system. Due to the opposition and rejection of his ideas he became convinced that the whole system needed a radical overhaul; therefore political reform was required.[3] As a result of opposition to his ideas act utilitarianism was codified. This led to a calculus moral system written by Bentham based on utility. [click to continue…]
I sometime wonder if I should be let out alone with my bank cards or even cash, but anyway today was a spending day. I have been going on for a while about buying a new netbook, something small and light to carry around with me.
My current lap top is heavier than most desktops with a big screen – I was having some problems with my eyes at the time and thought this would be a good idea. One operation later and the eyes are fine, mostly.
So today I went out to by a netbook and found out that I was going to have problems with the atom processor running the programs I wanted.
So I ended up buying a mini lat top with window 7. Now I have only been using it for a few hour and I can only see one thing that might cause issue going forward. When I move the lap top to fast it locks the hard drive, so either I will be driven a little crazy, get used to it, or end up breaking the disk – glad I backup often if the last comes to pass.
I am writing this post in window 7 live writer – I love this. I can write and add phtos all on my computer and not have to log into my blogs to post. I can see so many uses for having this running in the back ground all day for different sites, since I use WordPress for most of my sites now.
The photo is from a visit to caves just outside Brno in the Czech Republic a few years ago.
The busier life is the less I write here and since coming back from holiday it feels like work has been nonstop, so I thought I would try and write a round up every week, we’ll see..
This last weekend however I started to look at cars. I hate buying a car, until I get one I think it is going to be impossible to find something I like that will be reliable and all at a reasonable price. I had already got one type of car in my mind, when yesterday at lunch someone told me that it has a terrible record for breaking down – so off I went to start checking breakdown stats on Honest John – what a great site.
So it looks like I will be trying to find myself a Ford Focus sometime in the next few months – I am hoping it will be after Christmas – could do without car shopping before Christmas
My current car which has served me great for the last 3 plus years is going to be heading to car heaven. It will be 14 years old in Feb – which in car years must be well over 100… Anyway there has been too many things going wrong with it this year and it broke down on Saturday – not great, a dead battery. So to make sure the battery would still be working the next day I decided to unhook it on Saturday night when we got home – not a great idea in the dark – I ended up shorting the battery and it blew the top off it with car battery acid going everywhere – I was lucky to be okay – the bang a battery make when it explodes is quite something. Anna came running out of the house to see if I was still alive. Ah, cars…
Meanwhile I am now back at working promoting a few different websites this week as part of my search engine optimisation work. eSpatial are a web GIS company – and now I have learned a lot more about GIS, not hard as I knew nothing about it previously. PJ Boner are an instrumentation company, once again the same thing with the exception that I did know something about their products before. Macs a walking holiday company in the UK are doing well, but still waiting on Google update after a site rebuild and redirection, fun. Another that is doing really well is an astro turf company here in Ireland, the most I know about this is it can hurt much more than grass – but it is less muddy. And lastly for this week will be Inspiration a web development company here in Dublin.
While writing this post I have my ears on listening to music and Born Slippy by Underworld came on – just to have a bit more fun I turned it up full blast and kept typing, mistakes, mistakes, mistakes. I can type away with quiet music going on, not this – so I thought I would add it for you.
I came across these videos on Youtube due to mail from DECB LINK. They are a great inturuption a to over worked Tuesday afternoon. The first video has had more than four million views on Youtube so far so it really does make Sophie Merry an Irish Youtube phenomenon.
Enjoy
Though I think this one is much better, it has fewer views. [click to continue…]
As usual I headed out on Monday to to watch and cheer the runners in this years Dublin Marathon. Fortunately it was another good day for running and didn’t rain during the “race”.
I find it motivating watching all these runner pass me, all shapes and sizes that have trained for a long time – it is great.
Today was just one of those days at work – I was working on websites that I don’t find very interesting so off I went wandering on the internet and came across My Charity.ie. Love to do something I though – but I have no time…
Not having time shouldn’t be a bar to raising money for charity I thought and below is the result of that thinking.
Yes I want your money for Oxfam – and I am prepared to do only one thing – I will list all the donors at the bottom of this page with your website or blog – so go on get that credit card out it is all for a good cause.
Today I put the Euros back in my pocket, for the last three weeks I have been spending Czech crowns, it has been fun.
For the first time in 15 years I am sad to be going home, strange I did not see this coming. When I lived in Glasgow I had this feeling for a few years before I left on a whim to live in Dublin – one of the best moves I have made in my life – Dublin, Ireland, and the Irish have been very good to me something I will never forget.
But as we sat outside in the garden this morning having breakfast I said “Imagine we just didn’t go back” – I am the one who is pron to this type of thinking more than Anna. This has been a very relaxing holiday even though I have started back on my internet stuff this past week already – just trying to head off the hard landing next week – well tomorrow actually. [click to continue…]
Like most Czech Hotels the service in Hotel Adam is fairly disappointing. The staff are not friendly and do not know how to smile with the exception of the female manager – who was the only one who managed to simile and be chatty.
There is good and bad to be said about this hotel – it has a great swimming pool with sun beds that can be taken out onto a sun terrace, as with most places in the Czech Republic it is clean. But I still come back to that service issue of friendliness – it just does not exist and that is a real problem for me.
The hotel is located in St Peters Valley in Spindleruv Mlyn, which is part of Krkonose National Park in the North of the Czech Republic – the area is beautiful and the hotel is located with great views across the valley – make sure you get a room facing the front of the hotel.
The food is highly changeable and not recommended in the hotel; it is also fairly expensive for what you get, there are much better places in the small town and in other hotels in the area. We ate two nights in the hotel, the first night was great, and the second night was awful. The waitress service does not help create any good will towards them either – inattentive.
The rooms are fine, the beds are comfortable, there was a TV in the rooms – however it had no English speaking TV channels – but I suppose it was a walking holiday. There was no telephone in the room and the internet connection was complete crap – it took minutes to connection and kept disconnecting – I mentioned this at the desk and got a shrug of the shoulders in response.
Today with two nights left in the hotel the elevator has broken down… it was down for two days.
Over all if you know what you are getting with your money it is fine – as many of the above problems are endemic in Czech hotels. The price for the week is fairly cheap at 7,700 Czech Crowns for two.
It is 9.25pm and we’re in bed already – me with laptop on my knees writing this. We are in Spindleruv Mlyn, which is in Krkonose National Park in the North of the Czech Republic.
We’re in bed already because we walked over 20km up in the mountains for about seven hours and then we had a brilliant meal at Bakchus the best restaurant in the area – so putting it simply we are done for the day.
The only reason for writing this post today is to put up the following photo. This is a children’s wellness home where people used to send their kids into the country for a while if they had been unwell. But to our surprise it is still used – this photo is for someone we know who was there for a while many years ago and says he is still traumatised from the event.
We both need a good long holiday. We haven’t really taken the time for one this year and one of the consequences is that we are getting a bit tired a lot of the time. So my bright idea last week was to get away for the long weekend to Connemara.
We have been to Connemara before and there is something about us and that side of the country – it rains – it rains a good deal. The last time we went we rented a cottage for the weekend and spent most of the weekend reading as the rain didn’t stop at all.
The time before was nowhere as bad – but we still had more than our fair share.
So going on previous experiences you think I would be expecting rain and be prepared for it. Well prepared for it I am, as I walk in Ireland quite a bit and the raingear is always with me – but I had it in my head that I would be out walking for two of the three days. It didn’t happen.
One day of a bit of walking and another touring round the area where they only speak Irish and only have the road sings in Irish – it is one very depressing place. Firstly I though it a bit rude not having the road signs in English – you can travel all round this country and the road signs are in Irish and English – but this one little bit takes away the language that most of the country speaks and almost 100% of the tourists.
It is a barren desolate place, the area stretches from near Westport to just about Galway and it is just a ribbon of land between the mountains and the sea, the kind of place that God forgot to make fertile. The only thing that can survive is sheep and a few cows, and this is where the middle classes send their kids to brush up on their Irish and be bored to tears.
