[QUOTE=Gmod4ever;32876011]Of course, there's a major difference between idealistic utilitarianism and practical utilitarianism. I was, of course, assessing the faults of idealistic utilitarianism.
In a practical context, the future-projection counter becomes nullified, because in practice, the projection is limited to a very short timespan - rarely more than a few days.
Likewise, the "decisions taking too long to make a difference" is largely eliminated when using utilitarianism in a practical manner - when making a utilitarian decision, people tend to only really judge the major and most-obvious outcomes, rather than pursue every possible scenario.
On a practical level, utilitarianism really is one of the best philosophies, in my opinion. Though Kant isn't that bad, either.
When you blow utilitarianism (and Kant's theory, for that matter) up to its idealistic extreme, the flaws become inherently obvious, and more than a bit concerning. It's all a matter of how harshly you want to analyze it. On a practical scale, it's a very solid theory. And idealistically... well, one could safely argue that things very rarely approach their idealistic form, so there is little value in analyzing it, beyond a thought exercise.
Just for the record, I am a practical utilitarianist.[/QUOTE]
Ugh, I can't stand kantian ethics. It's based off such silly, unfounded assumptions. For an attempt at deriving morality from reason, I think it's incredibly unreasonable. It's logic and practical application is deeply flawed.
The only flaws I really see with utilitarianism are (A) it's lack of analytical justification - but this is inherent in absolutely every single moral theory (I support this claim with the is-ought problem) (B) the repugnant conclusion. The latter, I think, can be resolved, it's just really hard to cash it out coherently.
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