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Derek
 
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On Wed, 19 Jan 2005 17:32:15 GMT, wrote:
>On Wed, 19 Jan 2005 17:20:49 +0000, Derek > wrote:
>>On Wed, 19 Jan 2005 16:12:17 GMT, Rudy Canoza > wrote:
>>
>>> We are talking, and have ALWAYS been
>>>talking, about an existential requirement for any
>>>benefit to exist in anyone's mind.

>>
>>The only requirement for a benefit to exist is a benefactor.
>>A beneficiary doesn't need to exist before a benefit does.
>>
>>>No matter what the benefit or what the entity, the entity
>>>must ALREADY exist

>>
>>False. Benefits exits prior to existing beneficiaries. All
>>that's required for a benefit to exist is a benefactor.
>>You need to think this one through again, Jon.

>
> He can't. Time after time he proves that he can't.


[One way in which an impersonally formulated Principle
of Beneficence might lead to the Repugnant Conclusion
is if we thought that becoming actual was a benefit which
is conferred by parents on merely possible individuals.
Richard Hare seems to accept such a model in a notorious
paper 'Abortion and the Golden Rule'. Hare suggests that
a plausible extension of the "Golden Rule"—that we should
do to others as we wish them to do to us—is that "we should
do to others what we are glad was done to us" (Hare 1975: 208).
If we allow this extension, Hare suggests, there is a prima facie
obligation to produce more people. Indeed, alarmingly, "from my
gladness [at being born], in conjunction with the extended Golden
Rule, I derive not only a duty not to abort, but a duty not to abstain
from procreation." (Hare 1975: 212)]
http://www.uq.edu.au/~pdwgrey/pubs/posspersons.html

>The Gonad can't conceive of himself being wrong,
>much less learn what he's wrong about and correct
>it. No, when people like him are wrong, they stay
>that way.


"People like him", yes.