>I mean, from a utilitarian point of view, you are still doing the correct action of not giving people grief because they’re a divorcee. You can have all the Utility Points you want. All I’m saying is that if you “forgive” something you don’t care about, you don’t earn any Virtue Points.
>(by way of illustration: a billionaire who gives $100 to charity gets as many Utility Points as an impoverished pensioner who donates the same amount, but the latter gets a lot more Virtue Points)
This is a great illustration of what I understand of Antisthenes' precept that Virtue is the only good.
I think that’s just another way of saying “rhetoric matters more than logic”. Greek philosophy was obsessed with this argument — which I think is still relevant today. I think the definition of Utility Points and Virtue Points map directly to “points acquired through logic” and “points acquired through rhetoric”.
In a democracy, it’s obvious that rhetoric does matter. The masses will always be too uneducated (even if only contextually) to understand or care about the logic, thus rhetoric wins out. It was true for Socrates, and it’s true today. I think it’s pretty easy to see the same divisions in worldview present themselves around the world.
>I think that’s just another way of saying “rhetoric matters more than logic”. Greek philosophy was obsessed with this argument — which I think is still relevant today. I think the definition of Utility Points and Virtue Points map directly to “points acquired through logic” and “points acquired through rhetoric”.
I might note that in the example of; a billionaire who gives $100 to charity gets as many Utility Points as an impoverished pensioner who donates the same amount, but the latter gets a lot more Virtue Points, no rhetoric is required.
edit - regarding; The masses will always be too uneducated (even if only contextually) to understand or care about the logic, thus rhetoric wins out. It was true for Socrates, and it’s true today. In Phaedrus, Socrates makes the point that knowledge of a subject beats rhetoric, by showing that to deceive with rhetoric consistently, requires knowledge of that which you are trying to misrepresent.
>(by way of illustration: a billionaire who gives $100 to charity gets as many Utility Points as an impoverished pensioner who donates the same amount, but the latter gets a lot more Virtue Points)
This is a great illustration of what I understand of Antisthenes' precept that Virtue is the only good.