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Re:Why Paul Graham is sort of wrong about philosophy by nardi on Monday May 26, 2014 @05:33PM (#7801730)
In the context of ethics, "right" and "wrong" as judgement calls on the "goodness" or "badness" of a choice are basically given. Depending on your ethical standpoint, there are different things in the "right" set and the "wrong" set, but all ethical viewpoints (such as utilitarianism or hedonism) have a "right" set and a "wrong" set. (The sole exception being moral nihilism.)
Re:Why Paul Graham is sort of wrong about philosophy by vdaniuk on Monday May 26, 2014 @05:39PM (#7801755)
Not really. When one thinks about ethics, one should take into account the existence of teleological ethics or consequentialism where "right" and "wrong" depends on the outcomes of the action.

As far as a person isn't aware of the outcomes of the action, he or she can't really judge if the action was "right" or "wrong".

Also due to the butterfly effects,in most cases a person is theoretically unable to produce objective judgement, thus leaving the judgement of the action in the "undefined" state.

Re:Why Paul Graham is sort of wrong about philosophy by csallen on Monday May 26, 2014 @05:56PM (#7801841)
Once you provide a constraint on what you mean by "good" or "bad" (in this case, an ethical viewpoint e.g. utilitarianism), doesn't the discussion immediately become uninteresting? At most, you can debate whether or not your understanding of utilitarianism (or whatever constraint you choose) is accurate, but you've made no progress as to whether or not the constraint itself is "better" or "worse" than any other arbitrarily-chosen constraint.