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Full Idea
Everyone would prefer the second of two universes, if each had equal vice and virtue, and each had equal pleasure and pain, but in the first the virtuous were miserable and the vicious happy, while in the second universe it was the opposite.
Gist of Idea
All things being equal, we all prefer the virtuous to be happy, not the vicious
Source
W. David Ross (The Right and the Good [1930], §V)
Book Ref
Ross,W.David: 'The Right and the Good' [OUP 1930], p.138
A Reaction
This strikes me as a very good example of an intuition which it is hard to resist. Would some vile Mafia boss really want heaven to be full of murderers, while good-hearted and kind people all went to hell?
| 6227 | Keeping promises and contracts is an obligation of natural justice [Cudworth] |
| 24085 | For absolute morality a goal for mankind is needed [Nietzsche] |
| 18676 | We should ask what we would judge to be good if it existed in absolute isolation [Moore,GE] |
| 5918 | The thing is intrinsically good if it would be good when nothing else existed [Ross] |
| 5930 | All things being equal, we all prefer the virtuous to be happy, not the vicious [Ross] |
| 2942 | The sense of the world must lie outside the world [Wittgenstein] |
| 22447 | Saying something 'just is' right or wrong creates an illusion of fact and objectivity [Foot] |
| 3257 | Total objectivity can't see value, but it sees many people with values [Nagel] |
| 18672 | Values from reasons has the 'wrong kind of reason' problem - admiration arising from fear [Orsi] |