Talk:Neuro-Linguistic Programming

Re: "utilitarianism" vs. "pragmatism" (see page history) -- it's true that "utilitarianism" is an ethical theory, but it's also a more common english word; one could speak of "utilitarian design principles," for example, and be referring to architectural and/or interior design, not ethics. And "pragmatism" isn't really a better choice, because "pragmatism" is also an ethical theory, most notably espoused by William James. --Delirium 19:25 14 Jul 2003 (UTC)

If only English were that easy. :) "Utilitarianism" is pretty much only an ethical theory. "utility" and "utilitarian" (as an adjective) are broader, so you'll see that I left those alone on the page. Now that you point it out, of course, I realize that "pragmatism" is also wrong. "Pragmatic" is a better word, so perhaps more changes are necessary to cover that. I certainly grant that many people use the word "utilitarianism" wrongly. --Tb 20:43 14 Jul 2003 (UTC)

There, I've just tweaked a bit that I think avoids the difficulty well. I left "utility", but I changed "pragmatic and utilitarian" into just "pragmatic" (the synonym wasn't doing any work anyhow, given that the page already explains so well just what is meant by this). I changed "pragmatism" to "practicality". --Tb 20:49 14 Jul 2003 (UTC)