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DISCLAIMER

I love you Blaise.

Your argument was masterful, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The critique that I will level should not be taken as indicative of a lack of regard for your skills... You did at least as good a job with this as I could have.

With that being said, here are the spooks:

Your argument weakens substantially at point seven. Although certain instances of "to be" can, under certain circumstances, denote helping verbs, formulations such as "Can be construed as" are simply thinly-veiled versions of the pervasive essence of being that we are striving to avoid. To be more specific, when you say "the resultant benefits can be construed as immeasurably positive" you imply that "the resultant benefits are immeasurably positive." I'm not saying that it has to be that way... but in the context of your argument, it appears as such. Spooky!

Starting at point seven, you make another implication: namely that happiness is something that we should strive for. This is not necessarily a fatal flaw... but it is something that should probably be addressed during the course of the argument. Explain why happiness matters... because if what you are saying is just that happiness is good, then you'll find yourself snuggling up with a ghost. Spooky!

All of that being said, your basic formulation (i.e. Pascal's gamble) functions admirably well. Indeed, the logical gamble may actually be the only phenomenological way to address issues of morality.

In truth, I fear that moral discourse may be impossible to fully address in E-prime, since questions of morality seem to be based on the twin spooks of "is right" and "is wrong." Goblins, the both of them. =)










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