defend the indefensible: utilitarianism

Its counterintuitive conclusions are counterintuitive because they are stupid.

christianity for managers

yeah i got nothing, pretty much the worst school of philosophy honestly

did you ever meet a utilitarian who actually seemed to believe in experiments in living rather than exercises in optimization

or who believed more in the value of self-culture than in the value of trying to manipulate the behavior of others

anything to do with utility data can't be all bad.

seems like the reductio ad absurdem of the idea that life can be ordered entirely according to simple, logical, universal principles that are determinable by reason.

one day you will be piloting a speeding train and you will have to decide whether to run over a bum on the tracks or derail the entire train, and that day you will love utilitarianism

what kind of a cretin needs a moral theory to tell them not to derail the entire train

as a general principle, perfectly sensible. as a rule-bound system of mechanical arbitration, absurd.

i too went to college

Every normative theory that I'm aware of has some counter-intuitive implications. I think utilitarianism, or some version of it, is the most defensible among them.

so defend it

and no wack bullshit about 'spooky metaphysics'

Off the top of my head, I can't think of a reason for "spooky metaphysics" to enter into it.

To be as concise as possible: I think utilitarianism captures something substantial about common-sense morality, which is an important thing for a normative theory to do; I think it's plausible that the factors given priority by other normative theories are best thought of as drawing their value from being conducive to utility; and I think that a lot of the main proposed counter-examples to utilitarianism involve implausible scenarios that elicit intuitions I don't think we can trust.

That's not likely to satisfy anyone in this thread, but I think it's the best I can do without a specific objection to work with, and without writing a long post no one will want to read.

I have a lot of specific objections to utilitarianism, and consequentialist theories in general (and even normative ethics in general) but I don't actually know much about (meta-)ethics so I worry that outlining them makes me seem stupid.

Not knowing much didn't stop me from chiming in, so I say go for it.

hoping some of the philosophers will jump into this thread and set me straight at some point but here are some issues I have

- the nerdy objection: it is pretty much impossible to act in the way that will provide the most overall utility, just computationally. A perfectly utilitarian computer would take [expected lifetime of the universe] to make a decision in a trolley problem.
- bizarro results like the repugnant conclusion (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/repugnant-conclusion/) lead supposedly-pure utilitarians to look for lame outs from the purity of their theories, making the whole project seem misguided
- Peter Singer is a prick

Utilitarianism only demands that people do the best that they can. If the best you can do in a given situation falls short of providing the most overall utility, then you're not obligated to provide the most overall utility.

The repugnant conclusion is definitely a tough one, but it's also one of the cases I was referring to when I mentioned implausible scenarios that deliver suspect intuitions. The SEP article goes into this some. It also mentions that the repgunant conclusion isn't just a problem for utilitarians. It's a problem for anyone who thinks that well-being is morally significant and something you can aggregate. Denying these things invites other counter-intuitive conclusions.

It's the backbone of every "this doesn't harm anyone, especially you, so why dont you leave them alone" and "more people would benefit under this policy, even if the means are a bit problematic, so lets do it" principle we encounter in the modern world. We use it all the time.

There's a couple of examples from Bernard Williams that suggest anyone who truly and fully subscribed to utilitarianism would be a moral monster. Firstly the idea of one thought too many:

If an agent is in a situation where he has to choose which of two people to rescue from some catastrophe, and chooses the one of the two people who is his wife, then “it might have been hoped by some people (for instance, by his wife) that his motivating thought, fully spelled out, would be the thought that it was his wife, not that it was his wife and that in situations of this kind it is permissible to save one's wife.”

Secondly the idea of agent regret:

Suppose for example that I, an officer of a wrecked ship, take the hard decision to actively prevent further castaways from climbing onto my already dangerously overcrowded lifeboat. Afterwards, I am tormented when I remember how I smashed the spare oar repeatedly over the heads and hands of desperate, drowning people. Yet what I did certainly brought it about that as many people as possible were saved from the shipwreck, so that a utilitarian would say that I brought about the best consequences, and anyone might agree that I found the only practicable way of avoiding a dramatically worse outcome. Moreover, as a Kantian might point out, there was nothing unfair or malicious about what I did in using the minimum force necessary to repel further boarders: my aim, since I could not save every life, was to save those who by no choice of mine just happened to be in the lifeboat already; this was an aim that I properly had, given my role as a ship's officer; and it was absolutely not my intention to kill or (perhaps) even to injure anyone.

So what will typical advocates of the morality system have to say to me afterwards about my dreadful sense of regret? If they are—as perhaps they had better not be—totally consistent and totally honest with me, what they will have to say is simply “Don't give it a second thought; you did what morality required, so your deep anguish about it is irrational.” And that, surely, cannot be the right thing for anyone to say. My anguish is not irrational but entirely justified.

(http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/williams-bernard/ )

These objections aren't really unique to utilitarianism, they apply to any system that tries to systematise ethical thinking. But they do have a particular force against it, as it's a theory that perhaps more than any other emphasises the general and impersonal approach.

There's a couple of examples from Bernard Williams that suggest anyone who truly and fully subscribed to utilitarianism would be a moral monster.

sure, but that's true of any ethical system built around a single way of framing problems. utilitarianism, however, needn't be so thoroughly systematic, or even consistent, to qualify for the name. like i said earlier, it can be a general rule of thumb, a guiding principle applied judiciously, with the understanding that not every situation can be sensibly framed in terms of greatest good for greatest number (or net happiness increase or whatever). such a "utilitarian" approach seems perfectly sensible to me. this is perhaps just to say that reasonable ethics are reasonable.

jrn otm

"...seems perfectly sensible reasonable to me."

That all sounds perfectly reasonable, yet I have my doubts. Firstly it's not clear that utilitarianism is coherent enough even to work as a rule of thumb - what kind of utility are we aiming for? Greatest good for greatest number (or net happiness increase or whatever) - the first is circular and the second leads to obvious and fundamental objections. Secondly I'm not sure anyone who claims to follow it as a general rule of thumb actually does any such thing. I think it's easy to assume, in discussions like this, that you follow it as a general principle, while ignoring all the other non-utilitarian considerations that actually (and legitimately) go into your normal ethical deliberations.

(I'm thinking here of morality as an personal matter; perhaps there are situations, e.g. provision of medical services in a national health care system, where a colder and more purely utilitarian approach is both possible and desirable.)

it certainly exists - possibility or desirability i don't know about. consider cost benefit analyses for putting up pelican crossings etc. maybe utilitarianism is the most functional form of ethical reasoning for large organizations?

Possible because the utility is clearly defined (e.g. 'quality-adjusted life years' for NICE), desirable because yes it's certainly functional, also impartial.

i've pondered this a bit when people get all campaign-y about local hospital cuts/closures. okay, there is a political element which we can put to one side, but in the end people as individuals tend to think in deontological terms whereas the only plausible way of running an NHS is in broadly utilitarian terms?

This is interesting, all the reading I've done in moral philosophy tends to approach it from the personal side of things, I can't immediately recall anything dealing with institionalised ethics. I'm not sure how to deal with the disjunction between criticising utilitarianism at the personal level but accepting it at the institutional.

Firstly it's not clear that utilitarianism is coherent enough even to work as a rule of thumb - what kind of utility are we aiming for? Greatest good for greatest number (or net happiness increase or whatever) - the first is circular and the second leads to obvious and fundamental objections. Secondly I'm not sure anyone who claims to follow it as a general rule of thumb actually does any such thing. I think it's easy to assume, in discussions like this, that you follow it as a general principle, while ignoring all the other non-utilitarian considerations that actually (and legitimately) go into your normal ethical deliberations.

― click here to start exploding (ledge), Friday, August 2, 2013 5:13 AM (14 minutes ago)

a few things. first utility is best defined individually and situationally, imo. it need not be rigorous to be valid. second, utilitarianism needn't preclude other considerations. you seem to criticize a pure utilitarianism that exists in isolation, which seems a bit absurd to me. most people don't operate on a single, pure principle. they consider many different factors and principles. tbh, this is the only context in which i think you can reasonably critique any ethical method, even if its proponents present it as The Answer.

i'm careful about my consumption (space, power, food, packaging, water, etc.) because i think it's unethical to ignore the implications of human and especially western overconsumption. by consuming less and more responsibly, i hope to do a tiny bit less damage in the long run. my motivation there is about as close to purely utilitarian as i think you can get. similarly, i think a lot about the likely effect of my actions, even when prodded by moral outrage. it's not enough to simply satisfy the moral urge. it's important to me that my actions actually accomplish what i think of as good ends, often considered in terms of most for most.

I'm not sure how to deal with the disjunction between criticising utilitarianism at the personal level but accepting it at the institutional.

― click here to start exploding (ledge), Friday, August 2, 2013 5:44 AM (3 minutes ago)

i think it's similar to the way we approach "fairness" where institutions are concerned. i don't insist that individuals be fair and equitable in all their actions (it'd be nice), but i am willing to demand that of institutions, especially public institutions.

I'm careful about my consumption too, but I also think that the actual difference to the world that my choices make is entirely negligible. So if I'm being honest with myself my motivation is probably more deontological than consequential. That aside, I don't really disagree with your position - I mean I certainly don't disagree with your actions, but I'm not sure that what you're doing can usefully be described as utilitarian. You're essentially saying "I consider the impact of my actions on the world and on other people", which is well and good, but the point about utilitarianism is that it is a rigid systematisation of that principle.

I think the large organizations angke is key. More so than individuals, governments and other large scale entities are in positions where their decisions affect many people, and might harm some at the same time they are helping others. In these situations deontological notions about what is simply " right" no longer make a whole lot of sense, as you really need to be looking at what decision will be the best "overall."

lol, every drop is negligible, but then, the sea

as i see it, a specific critique of pure utilitarianism is unnecessary because the claim that any single approach can satisfactorily solve all ethical problems is intrinsically false, even foolish. therefore, i'm only concerned with whether or not "utilitarian" thinking has value in day-to-day ethical considerations.

i guess i'm pushing relativism more than honestly engaging with utilitarianism, so i'll bow out.

xp

Although, we definitely don't want our government to use utilitarianism to justify horrifying actions, which happens so often both in scifi and irl. Utilitarianism is one factor to consider, i guess, and an indispensible one in a large, complex world where actions have mixed consequences.

Sorry my last post was xpost to myself. I agree with contenderizer basically.

vulgar utilitarianism at work

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/02/us/theory-on-pain-is-driving-rules-for-abortions.html?hp&_r=0

Ms. Balch, the Right to Life official, who is also a lawyer, said she had been considering fetal pain as a way to draw attention to “the humanity of the unborn child” since she heard President Ronald Reagan speak about it stirringly in 1984. In a speech to religious broadcasters that year, he said, “Medical science doctors confirm that when the lives of the unborn are snuffed out, they often feel pain — pain that is long and agonizing.”

Medical science doctors!

utilitarian diet

http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2013/08/press-release-ethical-meat/

The development of artificial meat is a triumph for both science and ethics. Current meat production involves inflicting significant suffering on animals. It also causes environmental damage (see the FAO report, Livestock’s Long Shadow) and is hugely inefficient because limited food resources have used to keep a large animal alive. Intensive farming of chickens and pigs is also a breeding ground for the emergence of new strains of flu, causing pandemics that could kill tens of millions. Artificial meat production will almost entirely avoid these issues.

Ethical veganism will become a much more palatable option, as one could avoid eating real meat without sacrificing an integral part of many people’s diet. Indeed, this may be a watershed moment for animal welfare – if artificial meat manages to catch on and take over a large portion of the market, many fewer animals will be cruelly raised and slaughtered through factory farming, a key goal of movements like PETA (who have, incidentally, wholly endorsed and promoted the development of artificial meat).

...

Perhaps the future of the fast food industry is ethical meat, instead of the unethical meat. Consumers would be hard pressed to tell the difference between an artificial Big Mac and the current one.

i wonder if it wouldnt be worth making a distinction between the actions of an individual and those of an aggregate of individuals (ie, the actions of communities or their government). i think utilitarianism can possibly be said to observe the ethical calculations that go into making up groups of diverse needs and desires, etc. just thinking out loud here.

of course the flip side of it is that it can be used to implicitly justify oppression and the like--what's the bit in the Brothers Karamazov? if the whole world could live in peace and happiness based on the unending torture of one small child...

sorry i am repeating things from upthread.

"greatest happiness for the greatest number" though strikes me as a more subtle formula that it is often given credit for--there's a way of interpreting it in which those two considerations are in mutual tension.

i think it's similar to the way we approach "fairness" where institutions are concerned. i don't insist that individuals be fair and equitable in all their actions (it'd be nice), but i am willing to demand that of institutions, especially public institutions.

Yeah, on reflection there's obviously no problem with holding people and institutions to different standards. Just like we might expect and understand strong negative feelings to the perpetrator from the victim of a crime, but demand completely unemotional and impartial judgement from our justice system.

I also often find that utilitarianism is used to justify the most "fair" outcomes that don't affect me, e.g. benevolent Davos types who pronounce that it's ok to increase poverty in the US if you're reducing it by more net in India, and meanwhile they will keep their luxurious lifestyles either way.

maybe we can boost their altruism with a mind virus?

Bernard Williams was weirdly hung up on this idea that utilitarians are committed to the view that certain kinds of emotional suffering are "irrational" and so, I guess, illegitimate. This has always seemed exactly wrong to me. Utilitarianism would condemn telling someone who is suffering deep post-traumatic regret over having made a horrible but ethically optimal decision to just "not give it a second thought", since that would probably just make them feel worse. Maybe that regret is irrational in some sense, but so what? Lots of emotions have little or nothing to do with rationality, but they exist, and they affect our lives, so from a utilitarian point of view, they count. They have to.

I think this gets at part of what attracts me to utilitarianism: it's a compassionate theory. It says that everyone's pleasure and everyone's pain counts, no matter who the person is or where their feelings come from. No other consideration, be it justice or fairness or rationality, matters more than the lived experiences of sentient beings. Granted, this cuts both way. It means that a serial killers' feelings have as much intrinsic significance as mine or yours. But it also means that any poor, marginalized person's suffering has as much intrinsic significance as that of the most powerful, influential person in the world. I think the implications of this are progressive.

I also think utilitarianism handles Williams's concerns about giving priority to close relationships pretty easily. I'll explain if someone is interested.

It's true that the rhetoric of the theory can be put to awful use, but that's true of every kind of moral justification. Consider again appeals to justice, fairness, and rationality.

It's also true that utilitarianism is tough to apply in practice. I think this is the most pressing type of objection to it. I have some thoughts about this, too.

First, it may be that the purpose of normative theory is more descriptive than pragmatically prescriptive. So utilitarianism would tell you what it is that makes actions right and wrong--and there is a prescriptive element to that--but not how to adjust your behavior to match. And faulting utilitarianism for this would be like faulting a physicists' explanation of a boxer's left hook for not teaching you how to throw one. That's a different task.

Second, this is a problem all normative theories face.

Third, by utilitarianism's own lights, any strategy that is most conducive to utility is the right one, even if it's is a mixed strategy that doesn't always involve consciously concerning yourself with utility. The best utilitarian agent may be one who, for example, prioritizes close relations without a second thought. In which case the best utilitarian approach to life would be to try to develop this quality, so that it becomes habitual. I don't think this is very far off from common-sense ideas about building character.

That all sounds perfectly reasonable, yet I have my doubts. Firstly it's not clear that utilitarianism is coherent enough even to work as a rule of thumb - what kind of utility are we aiming for? Greatest good for greatest number (or net happiness increase or whatever) - the first is circular and the second leads to obvious and fundamental objections.

Like what?

speaking to the radical compassion angle, I think bentham's famous quote about animals demonstrates that quite nicely: "The question is not, "Can they reason?" nor, "Can they talk?" but "Can they suffer"

I think this is important because its reverses talk about rights based on the ability to reason with a more radical form of compassion based on shared vulnerability.

and, further, it implies that a shared *vulnerability* grants access a community rather than some presumed positive characteristic (race or class or even species, say)

Yes! I think Bentham was right on about that.

Bernard Williams was weirdly hung up on this idea that utilitarians are committed to the view that certain kinds of emotional suffering are "irrational" and so, I guess, illegitimate. This has always seemed exactly wrong to me. Utilitarianism would condemn telling someone who is suffering deep post-traumatic regret over having made a horrible but ethically optimal decision to just "not give it a second thought", since that would probably just make them feel worse. Maybe that regret is irrational in some sense, but so what? Lots of emotions have little or nothing to do with rationality, but they exist, and they affect our lives, so from a utilitarian point of view, they count. They have to.

i think the idea is not that they're committed to a view that certain kinds of emotional suffering are irrational, but that the combination of (a) the principle of utility, (b) some degree of uncertainty/ignorance about what exactly it is human nature / in an individual's nature to feel given such-and-such circumstances, actions, histories, etc., and (c) a project of radically revising behaviors and institutions in order to mitigate suffering and promote the realization of the principle of utility in life, leaves room for certain questionable attitudes about the legitimacy (not immediately, but in the longer view) of a whole range of feelings as they currently happen to be experienced.

obvious and fundamental objections to happiness as the measure of utility: happiness is not the measure of a good life, a world in which everyone is deliriously happy as a result of enforced drug intake is not a good world.

doubtless this is one of those obvious objections to which there is an obvious rejoinder...

I also think utilitarianism handles Williams's concerns about giving priority to close relationships pretty easily. I'll explain if someone is interested.

i'm all ears.

I don't know about that. I just revisited the quote posted upthread:

<i>So what will typical advocates of the morality system have to say to me afterwards about my dreadful sense of regret? If they are—as perhaps they had better not be—totally consistent and totally honest with me, <b>what they will have to say is simply “Don't give it a second thought; you did what morality required, so your deep anguish about it is irrational.”</b> And that, surely, cannot be the right thing for anyone to say. My anguish is not irrational but entirely justified.</i>

To me, that doesn't read like Williams is saying that utilitarians are leaving room for questionable attitudes about the legitimacy of those feelings in the long run. He doesn't mention the long run. It reads like he's saying that utilitarians are committed to that view that those feelings are irrational and illegitimate today. Hence the discussion of what a committed, consistent utilitarian would "have to" say to a real suffering person now.

That being said, if that is his point, I concede that it isn't straightforwardly inaccurate. It's just insubstantial instead. Saying that utilitarianism might leave room for questionable attitudes in the long run isn't very damning. Until he says something about why utilitarianism doesn't just leave room for but actually produces or makes likely those attitudes, and why they are not just questionable but wrong, other than "surely this can't be right", it gets a big shrug from me.

Maybe those arguments are elsewhere in his work, I don't know. I've only read "A Critique of Utilitarianism". I don't remember them being in there.

I forgot to click the convert HTML to BBcode button }:^|

a world in which everyone is deliriously happy as a result of enforced drug intake is not a good world.

Sure it is. It'll never happen, though, and we all know that. I think resistance to this idea comes from tacit knowledge about how, in the real world, rigidly enforced social engineering leads to horrible outcomes, and drugs only make people deliriously happy on a temporary basis, with a crash often lurking on the other side. But a world in which, by stipulation, the ordinary rules don't apply and the whole scheme works out perfectly? Sign me up. That's utopia.

I think one way utilitarianism can endorse prioritizing your nearest and dearest is by noting that (a) forming and maintaining close personal bonds seems to be integral to the well-being of most people (b) this is not likely to change and (c) these bonds can't be maintained unless people prioritize them a lot of the time, which seems to come naturally anyway.

Williams is hung up on motivation, though. He finds it disturbing that a man, in saving his wife's life, would be motivated by something other than the fact that she is his wife. I have two responses to this.

One is to repeat my comments about utilitarian character-building from upthread. If it's most conducive to utility to develop a habit of prioritizing your wife without considering utility at the time of decision, then you should do this, on utilitarian grounds.

The second is to say that I just don't share Williams's discomfort with the idea being motivated by the thought that "it was his wife and . . . in situations of this kind it is permissible to save one's wife." It doesn't seem like a psychologically plausible in-the-moment motivation, but otherwise, I have no problem with the admission that there are some possible situations in which saving a loved one would not be the best decision.

I also want to note that close social bonds have to be part of utility calculations. When considering the foreseeable outcomes of a decision, you have to work with the information and feelings you have. You, the decision-maker, also count. If it would break your heart to save a stranger rather than your own wife, that counts. If you know for certain that many people depend on your wife, but know nothing about the stranger you could save instead, that's relevant. In other words, considering utility and prioritizing your loved ones are not mutually exclusive.

I'd go so far as to say that utilitarianism, properly construed, demands that individual agents give extra consideration to people about whom they have more knowledge, and with whom their lives are more intertwined.

Sign me up. That's utopia.

ok we have different value systems. why should yours trump mine?

as for it being ok to favour your family, it seems to me that to follow this route leads to the unravelling of utilitarianism. if we have to take account of regret, and favouring ones nearest and dearest, then surely we have to take account of all other thick ethical concepts in use in our normal everyday unsystematised morality. maybe sometimes people like to be selfish, or sometimes contrary and prefer someone else's lesser happiness to their greater, and to remove this right would lead to a decrease in happiness. if utilitarianism ends up having to track every single facet of our messy, often paradoxical everyday morality then it ain't really much of a system any more.

i'm getting what i said from my sense of his diagnosis of utilitarianism's shortcomings in 'ethics and the limits of philosophy' (this is from ch. 10):

In this respect, utilitarianism is a marginal member of the
morality system. It has a strong tradition of thinking that blame
and other social reactions should be allocated in a way that will be
socially useful, and while this might lead to their being directed to
the voluntary, equally it might not. This follows consistently from
applying the utilitarian criterion to all actions, including the social
actions of expressing blame and so forth. The same principle can be
extended to unexpressed blame and critical thoughts; indeed, at
another level, a utilitarian might well ask whether the most useful
policy might not be to forget that the point of blame, on utilitarian
grounds, was usefulness. These maneuvers do seem to receive a
check when it comes to self-reproach and the sense of moral obliga-
tion. Utilitarians are often immensely conscientious people, who
work for humanity and give up meat for the sake of the animals.
They think this is what they morally ought to do and feel guilty if
they do not live up to their own standards. They do not, and
perhaps could not, ask: How useful is it that I think and feel like
this? It is because of such motivations, and not only because of
logical features, that utilitarianism in most versions is a kind of
morality, if a marginal one.

i take it that williams calls the anguish in his example (from your quote) 'entirely justified' on the basis of some kind of thicker ethical concept taken from the existing ethical life which it is utilitarianism's claim to theorize and correct/perfect by making utility the basic principle of judgments about actions and reactions.

and i take it that he says a committed utilitarian would deem that anguish irrational because a committed utilitarian's attitude toward eliminable suffering brought about by justified actions would be that it would be rational to eliminate it, and irrational not to. and though the utilitarian might concede that it might be for the better in general that people's characters be such that they happen to experience such feelings of anguish, even when they issue from morally justified actions, the utilitarian would also have to think that in principle it would be better if people's characters were such that they felt anguish only in accordance with what was morally justified, since otherwise it would cause them undue suffering.

I think a system that failed to take account of the thick ethical concepts in use in our normal everyday unsystematized morality would be seriously deficient. Utilitarianism doesn't necessarily endorse those concepts, though. It just acknowledges that they affect people's lives in ways that matter. Utility is still the only thing of intrinsic value.

maybe sometimes people like to be selfish, or sometimes contrary and prefer someone else's lesser happiness to their greater, and to remove this right would lead to a decrease in happiness.

I don't see the problem. Maybe sometimes a little selfishness is OK. Isn't this common sense? One of the most common criticisms of utilitarianism is that it seems to demand constant altruistic self-sacrifice. You've hit on the fact that my interpretation of it doesn't seem to lead to this conclusion. I think that's a good thing!

and though the utilitarian might concede that it might be for the better in general that people's characters be such that they happen to experience such feelings of anguish, even when they issue from morally justified actions, the utilitarian would also have to think that in principle it would be better if people's characters were such that they felt anguish only in accordance with what was morally justified, since otherwise it would cause them undue suffering.

I swear I'm not trying to be flippant or obtuse, but again, I don't see the problem! Nor do I think the part I bolded is any kind of concession.

I'm a bit lost - what should a utilitarian actually say to the captain who saved as many crew as he could by letting the others drown?

That could be complicated by specific details, but it's the right sort of thing to do.

I think a system that failed to take account of the thick ethical concepts in use in our normal everyday unsystematized morality would be seriously deficient. Utilitarianism doesn't necessarily endorse those concepts, though. It just acknowledges that they affect people's lives in ways that matter. Utility is still the only thing of intrinsic value.

i think the issue is how it can have a stance toward those concepts which is both principled and pre-theoretically, ethically acceptable, given that it acknowledges only utility as being of intrinsic value and only the principle of utility as the basic principle of action and judgment.

If a utilitarian allows their common moral sense to outweigh their utility function, are they really a utilitarian?

Or alternately, if we admit that to live by the principle of utility 100% of the time is impossible or even undesirable, then what is the point of adopting the principle in the first place?

I should note that Peter Singer seems to think that leading a perfectly utilitarian life is not only possible but is in fact the Right Thing To Do, so it's not like that is a crazy stance nobody reasonable would support. (Though I think Peter Singer is kind of crazy.)

Also at least other moral theories have the good grace to more or less fess up to their dependency on God for authority. The utilitarian idea seems to be that since, definitionally, a world where utility is k+ε is better than a world where utility is k, therefore we must all necessarily act in such a way where we choose the former world over the latter.

But that therefore doesn't convince me. I might be misrepresenting the game here, but if I am, I'd like to know how it actually goes.

I don't see the problem. Maybe sometimes a little selfishness is OK. Isn't this common sense? One of the most common criticisms of utilitarianism is that it seems to demand constant altruistic self-sacrifice. You've hit on the fact that my interpretation of it doesn't seem to lead to this conclusion. I think that's a good thing!

But your interpretation doesn't give us any idea of how to live! I see the logic of it - "one should act to increase overall happiness except where the systematic adoption of such a way of acting would decrease overall happiness" I guess - but I think such a system is at best unworkable (how would you know which of our messy moral behaviours to keep and which to discard?) and at worst completely empty.

Or as Silby puts it: If a utilitarian allows their common moral sense to outweigh their utility function, are they really a utilitarian? - surely a proper utilitarian should be working towards a world in which no-one wants to be selfish, rather than contradictorily trying to shoehorn selfishness into their theory?

This is why institution utilitarianism does make sense, because it can be completely systematically calculating and impartial.

And I still find your idea of a blissed out utopia unpalatable. There would e.g. be no room for Shakespeare - how could you make sense of tragedy in a world where everyone is 100% happy all the time? And if such happiness isn't my goal, why should I be a utilitarian?

What's better than happiness, though? Or to put it another way, if all suffering was removed, what would the loss be that outweighed the gain?

(I would suggest 'the ability to go from worse to better' and even 'the ability to learn')

As paths towards happiness

Utilitarianism is first and foremost a theory about what makes things morally good/bad/right/wrong. Anyone who accepts a utilitarian position on that question is a utilitarian, regardless of how they actually conduct themselves as a moral agent. A person can fail to live up to their theoretical commitments, as we all know.

Most utilitarians do want to live up to their commitments though. There's a common caricature of how this is supposed to work, which is that it involves pausing to make impersonal utility calculations before every decision.

I don't think this caricature is accurate, though. I think a committed utilitarian can recognize that thinking carefully about the foreseeable consequences of actions is not always the right approach from a utilitarian perspective. There isn't always time for it, and even when there is, it can be hurtful to treat people in your life in this detached sort of way. I think a utilitarian can respond to this predicament by seeking to develop qualities of character that would be conducive to utility in these situations. Like a reflexive tendency toward compassion, for example.

This doesn't make someone any less of a utilitarian, since it's done for utilitarian reasons, in accordance with utilitarian theoretical commitments. I don't think this person is "living by the utility principle" any less for taking this approach. I also don't think they're allowing their moral sense to "outweigh their utility function". And I think taking this approach is highly desirable.

i think the issue is how it can have a stance toward those [thick ethical] concepts which is both principled and pre-theoretically, ethically acceptable

It can't. Every normative theory revises pre-theoretical judgments to some extent. That's a big part of what makes them interesting. And they probably need to, or else contradict themselves.

The utilitarian idea seems to be that since, definitionally, a world where utility is k+ε is better than a world where utility is k, therefore we must all necessarily act in such a way where we choose the former world over the latter.

But that therefore doesn't convince me. I might be misrepresenting the game here, but if I am, I'd like to know how it actually goes.

I think you are misinterpreting the game. All that follows from that premise is that utility is one thing of moral value.

But your interpretation doesn't give us any idea of how to live!

I don't think that's true. It doesn't give you a decision procedure for every situation, but it shouldn't. Life is too complicated for that. It does, however, give you a specific idea of what you should be aiming for. And this does, arguably, have some radical consequences. Singer is famous for some of these--about the use of animal products, about euthanasia, and about giving to charity, for example.

I also think focusing on utility offers a valuable, clarifying perspective on lots of issues. Take discussions about rape jokes, for example. Feminists tend to make utilitarian-type arguments on this subject, pointing out that rape jokes promote real emotional and physical harm. The arguments from the other side, however, tend to be about how unjust it is to expect comedians to be considerate, how this would infringe on their rights and on the very nature of the art form, and so on. I think utilitarianism helps you to see that, aside from often being confused or disingenuous, these arguments invoke considerations that are of no intrinsic standing. Which in turn helps you to see that the pro-rape-humor camp is just looking to rhetorically justify its enjoyment of hurting people.

surely a proper utilitarian should be working towards a world in which no-one wants to be selfish, rather than contradictorily trying to shoehorn selfishness into their theory?

I think a utilitarian can work towards a world in which no one wants to be selfish while acknowledging that selfish desires exist and need to be taken into account. Can you explain why you think this is contradictory?

Sorry if I missed someone's point, it's hard to keep all the objections straight.

What's better than happiness, though? Or to put it another way, if all suffering was removed, what would the loss be that outweighed the gain?

what if there were no suffering, no learning, no art, no beauty, no love, no friendship, no music, no science, no knowledge...

Again, in service of what though?

Are those things only valuable insofar as they produce happiness? Would a full of zombie-like humans 100% blissed out through having their pleasure centres directly stimulated be just as good as one full of humans leading happy, loving, enriched, artistic, enlightened lives?

Ah sure it depends on yr perspective i guess, we're all different and you cant please everyone!

but what if you could...

xxp i think the broad (and empirically supported) consensus of what happiness is includes emotions like excitement, curiosity, and passionate interpersonal connectedness. there's so much sci fi that warns us about a progression towards a completely opiated existence, but the objection being raised therein isn't actually that happiness isn't the most important thing worth pursuing: it's rather that an opiated existence wouldn't really make people happy in the long run, because it doesn't allow for those aforementioned emotions. if on some level that's a semantic distinction between "narrow-minded" and "broad-minded" happiness, it also has tangible consequences when people come to elide the two. like when people focus on their distrust of the opiated, shallow, short term kind of happiness--the kind ledge is talking about--they often throw out the broader definition with it, rationalized by other pursuits--esp. "ambition," careerist, artistic, or otherwise--that research suggests are not very important for a long term kind of happiness.

most objections to utilitarianism follow the same line of analysis: "utilitarianism is so macro-minded that it leads to horrible things being done to a group of people just because that group of people is relatively small." but you don't have to object to those situations from a non-utilitarian framework! that situation probably represents a false economy in the conclusion reached by utilitarian reasoning--one that doesn't account for people's values of freedom and non-intervention. "the most good for the most people" seems p innocuous to me, but the more difficult, nuanced, important work is figuring out what "good" actually means.

admittedly i haven't read through this thread completely, so sorry if i'm strawmanning (or repeating an argument that's already been made)!

http://blog.givewell.org/2013/11/26/change-in-against-malaria-foundation-recommendation-status-room-for-more-funding-related/

love when utilitarians refer to 'humans' (in the comments)

http://www.vox.com/2015/4/24/8457895/givewell-open-philanthropy-charity

I realize it might be a bit contradictory that I think Peter Singer is just horribly wrong and Nick Bostrom is enjoyable but Peter Singer clearly believes his own dumb conclusions whereas Nick Bostrom could plausibly just be fooling around. Though given Bostrom's involvement with the lesswrong crew that's maybe doubtful.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/06/what-is-the-greatest-good/395768/?utm_source=nextdraft&utm_medium=email

EA is like catnip for technocratic current-moment thinkpiecers

http://bostonreview.net/world/emily-clough-effective-altruism-ngos

Broadening the scope of what effective altruists deem the “best available evidence” is a good start. But from a consequentialist standpoint, it is not enough for effective altruists to simply tweak their approach to RCT design. They must contend with the fact that the state remains the primary provider of basic social welfare for most poor citizens in most poor countries, and that pumping money into a parallel set of providers—even good ones—without a plan for reaching the coverage or scale of a state may do serious harm to the poor who are left in the state system.

The politics of state service provision for the poor is a messy business. The simplest thing for far-away philanthropists is to simply sidestep politics and fund programs that appear, on the surface, to be positioned outside the political arena. But it is clear that this neat separation between civil society and the state is a fiction. If the movement is to meet its own consequentialist standards, its leaders and philosophers must make room for the state and for the politics of service provision among its calculations for identifying recipients for its aid.

christianity for managers

― j., Friday, August 2, 2013 2:55 AM (1 year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

marry me

I slept on that tbh

recently finally read a couple things on moral antirealism; turns out I'm probably a moral error theorist

They must contend with the fact that the state remains the primary provider of basic social welfare for most poor citizens in most poor countries

is this is true? i was under the impression that states in poor countries were uh poor and didn't have much $ for social welfare programs

J-PAL are doing god's work imo

RCTs only capture a narrow view of impact. While they are good at measuring the proximate effects of a program on its immediate target subjects, RCTs are bad at detecting any unintended effects of a program, especially those effects that fall outside the population or timeframe that the organization or researchers had in mind. For example, an RCT might determine whether a bed net distribution program lowered the incidence of malaria among its target population. But it would be less likely to capture whether the program unintentionally demobilized political pressures on the government to build a more effective malaria eradication program, one that would ultimately affect more people.

this reads as grossly cynical to me. are the "political pressures" it is demobilizing people dying from malaria?

http://www.vox.com/2015/8/10/9124145/effective-altruism-global-ai

I identify as an effective altruist: I think it's important to do good with your life, and doing as much good as possible is a noble goal. I even think AI risk is a real challenge worth addressing. But speaking as a white male nerd on the autism spectrum, effective altruism can't just be for white male nerds on the autism spectrum. Declaring that global poverty is a "rounding error" and everyone really ought to be doing computer science research is a great way to ensure that the movement remains dangerously homogenous and, ultimately, irrelevant.

lol i peeped a facebook comment today from a onetime student of mine who went on to move in elite academic circles and became an EA mover/shaker, and it did the exact same thing - downplayed every single potential catastrophic threat to human existence EXCEPT POSSIBLY THE HOSTILE AI

these dorks and their ~rationality~ smh

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/2015-06-16/plunder-africa?cid=soc-tw-rdr

For those who insist that foreign aid to Africa compensates for the role that rich countries, big businesses, and international organizations play in plundering the continent’s resource wealth, Burgis has a ready rejoinder. “In 2010,” he writes, “fuel and mineral exports from Africa were worth $333 billion, more than seven times the value of the aid that went in the opposite direction.” And African countries generally receive only a small fraction of the value that their extractive industries produce, at least relative to the sums that states in other parts of the world earn from their resources. As Burgis reveals, that is because multilateral financial institutions, led by the World Bank and its International Finance Corporation (IFC), often put intense pressure on African countries to accept tiny royalties on the sales of their natural resources, warning them that otherwise, they will be labeled as “resource nationalists” and shunned by foreign investors. “The result,” Burgis writes, “is like an inverted auction, in which poor countries compete to sell the family silver at the lowest price.”

Man, I keep saying I need to get a foreign affairs subscription.

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/08/peter-singer-charity-effective-altruism/

Rather than asking how individual consumers can guarantee the basic sustenance of millions of people, we should be questioning an economic system that only halts misery and starvation if it is profitable. Rather than solely creating an individualized “culture of giving,” we should be challenging capitalism’s institutionalized taking.

oh god... don't give money to poor people, abolish capitalism! is almost self parody

otm

imo

they're both wrong probably

I mean the Jacobin critique doesn't even entertain the EA/preference utilitarian argument on its own terms so it's kinda useless, I mean like

Effective Altruists gloss over important social relations, obscuring the morality (and efficacy) of giving to charity, or commanding others to do so, in the first place.

this is just ignoring the consequentialist premise instead of attacking it, "obscuring the morality" is meaningless, Singer makes specific claims about what is moral, viz., it is moral to do things that reduce the suffering of other beings and to not do them is immoral.

The reason Singer is wrong is because consequentialism is wrong, not because his ethics don't direct him towards the overthrow of capital (whatever that's supposed to look like)

^yes agree

perhaps the argument takes the form it does because it's meant to address the utilitarian position re doing the most good

Well in that case it's still ridiculous because "doing the most good" is a vacuous idea. Like whatever reason. I mean it's not wrong that resources, human energy, and (lol) capital are limited and people effectively altruizing might not have time or inclination to overthrow capital. Jacobin's Official Premises always just seem hilarious to me as an outsider I guess.

haha for a vacuous idea it is proving surprisingly rhetorically effective at converting a bunch of college educated randos with disposable income

college educated randos are susceptible to some dumb ideas (cf. fascism, etc)

like of course lawyers, bankers, and programmers are gonna fall in for the social project that flatters their "rationality"

If I.E. is a dumb idea, it must be one of the most beneficial dumb ideas ever!

actually silby i was thinking that EA's vogue among my philosophy-teaching friends might have something to do with their burning shame/need to feel effective (teach a student to fish kind of thing)

Haha, jeez, I meant E.A. in my post of course. (Where did I get I.E. from?)

Ineffective egoism?

it is moral to do things that reduce the suffering of other beings and to not do them is immoral.

a strictly utilitarian approach to the reduction of suffering in others will do some marginal good, but it is almost bound to have consequences less effective than what one imagined and the good effects will likely come mixed with unintended consequences that merely substitute another kind of suffering for the suffering one was looking to reduce.

it's not worthless, for example, to provide clean drinking water to a village that lacked it. this charitable act should have benefits one can see and quantify in terms of improved health in that village, and most people would agree that improved health is good in and of itself. but suffering is far more complex than good or bad health, pain or lack of pain, hunger or satiety, and its source will not be touched by providing someone with clean water. so, if you make reducing others' suffering the touchstone of your morality, you'd better be prepared to think about the source of suffering more deeply than Effective Altruism or utilitarianism does, or you'll just be engaged in a Sisyphean task.

The observation that many efforts to reduce suffering will be less effective than expected, or will have unintended consequences, is consistent with utilitarianism.

I don't know how to respond to the second part because I don't know what you think utilitarianism says about the sources of suffering.

actually silby i was thinking that EA's vogue among my philosophy-teaching friends might have something to do with their burning shame/need to feel effective (teach a student to fish kind of thing)

― j., Tuesday, August 25, 2015 8:12 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

are they not able to soothe themselves with "teaching people how to think critically and systematically" anymore? bc like joking aside I think that's maybe a real thing and a totally reasonable reason to teach analytic philosophy. Though as Jacobin ably demonstrates it's not like Anglo-American analytic thinking will fly in every sphere. (I'm tired and talking out my butt but utilitarianism makes me angry).

no, i think that economic pressures within academia are disillusioning them about that - if it was ever real, and enough, it's not now, so they need to have a credible sale to make to institutions/students that they can deliver the change we so ardently need

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2015/08/heres-why-no-one-cares-about-modern-philosophy

http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2015/08/so-much-for-trying-to-bring-philosophy-to-the-public.html

gawd reading through this and masochistically skimming through tannsjo's 'understanding ethics' book makes me embarrassed to have any association with the thing called 'philosophy'

lol 'If I were feeling generous, I would describe the response as pathetically stupid.' our main PR guy folx

Imagine for a second that the Genesis story is actually true. Under the actualist view, Adam and Eve could have morally refrained from having children, even if, had they decided differently, billions of billions of happy persons would have been around!

Can't actualism make an exception for cases where you're the anointed progenitor of all mankind?

billions of billions of happy persons

nb: this is not an actual number

yes it is, it's quintillions

The reason Singer is wrong is because consequentialism is wrong...

― go hang a salami I'm a canal, adam (silby), Tuesday, August 25, 2015 8:47 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i never studied philosophy and would actually like to know what this means

here's the flopson defence of utilitarianism, plz tell me why its wrong

- quantities we care about in moral considerations are denoted in different units

- for example: having money makes me feel good, and having free time to do nothing also makes me feel good

- if you wanted to determine whether i was better off in two different states in the world, one in which i worked 12 hours a day and had lots of money, and one in which i worked 8 hours a day, had less money but more free time, you can't just do that by comparing money OR free time. if you do it comparing only money, the best world would be one where i work every waking hour. if you do it comparing only free time, the best world is one in which i sit on my ass all day. despite liking both things, i don't like either of those worlds

- the solution is to define some mapping (norm or ordering) from a 2-dimensional money-free time space to a 1-dimensional space... hey, why don't we call it utility? B-)

i don't see how you can make a moral statement in the context where you have quantities measured in different units without implicitly using utilitarianism.. but curious to find out

it's quintillions

it only falls in the range of quintillions for a determinate number of billions, between 1 billion billions and one thousand billion billions, but "billions of billions" leaves both terms indeterminate and so afaics it means only "some very big number".

why should there be some analysis of all existing moral practice into uniform terms in the first place, flopson? you need an existence proof first so that you're in a position to claim that there's any reason to think your mapping tracks the moral reality, otherwise it may just be a destructive, rationalizing overlay onto our actual lives

You guys have probably discussed this over and over and over, but I still don't believe there are any people out there who aren't consequentialists. Whenever I discuss things with a 'deontologist', she'll say something like 'Consequentialism is wrong, because it'll have this and this and this unintended consequence'....

On the other hand, I believe it could very well be, that it might bring about the best consequences, and therefore be the right thing to do for a consequentialist, to lie and claim to be a deontologist, because it's just that much simpler and easier for people to understand. But then if I say that to a 'consequentialist' he'll say 'oh, but lying is wrong'.

Of course, I do understand why so many philosophers fight against consequentialism, because there's no way in hell to morally defend wasting ones time speaking philosophically.

When asked about the trolley-problem, will you:

1) Answer that you allow the men to die
2) Answer that you'll kill the fat man
or
3) Answer that IT DOESN'T MATTER and do something more valuable than thinking about fucking trolleys.

Please don't think too much about it. The right answer is c.

consequentialism probably has enough malleability for it to be justified in all kinds of increasingly convoluted ways, but i think that reveals that the problem with being 'a consequentialist' is less about it being wrong as such than about it being a really not very useful lens to view practical ethics through

why should there be some analysis of all existing moral practice into uniform terms in the first place, flopson? you need an existence proof first so that you're in a position to claim that there's any reason to think your mapping tracks the moral reality, otherwise it may just be a destructive, rationalizing overlay onto our actual lives

― j., Thursday, August 27, 2015 8:12 PM (18 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you can prove existence in many cases, just prove there's a contraction (in my example that's just concave in both arguments, which is realistic), zap it with a fixed point theorem, boom.

but i don't think my argument is utilitarianism is useful in every case, it's just inevitable in an important subclass of cases. i think that's a strong enough claim

my suspiscion has always been that all ethics is consequentialist; it is the precondition for anything having any moral weight & the difference between the hypothetical and real actions

flopson (et al) as I've alluded upthread I think consequentialist theories fail to correctly specify what actions are moral b/c I am basically a moral error theorist (based on my limited reading), i.e. moral propositions are all false. In my particular case my not-well-developed intuition is that moral propositions are all false because, for a moral proposition ("It is moral to do X") to be true, it would have to derive the authority to obligate me from somewhere, and I don't think that there are any such things from which authority can be derived.

Even leaving that aside, I think Singer and his adherents basically are sophists in their more popularized arguments about reducing suffering. Leading people by the nose by getting them to agree that they'd save a child drowning in a pond and then arguing that they therefore, to be consistent, must agree that effective altruism is a moral imperative is basically a political hoodwink, not a good argument.

My further and even less-well-developed intuition is that in point of fact people do not engage in moral reasoning all that often when making decisions; I suspect that they do whatever it is they do for some uncomputable collection of reasons and then pattern-match it after the fact to the collection of moral propositions they want to believe they adhere to. Which even if moral theories were ever true would make them of dubious use.

also Brian Leiter is a twit

yeah despite my explanation above that's what i don't get - where the fuck did the inbuilt philosophical hostility toward sophistry go?!? singerism is clearly an attempt to manipulate people into moral compliance, yet so many argumentatively hygienic people are total subscribers

(maybe in fact they maintain principled reservations for academic purposes but this is their little bit of cynicism, to profess what's good for the masses)

actually, once a very pro-singer philosopher i know contacted me while working on a piece for one of those 'just the arguments hard and fast' commercial books, and asked me how to formalize an argument correctly (something we had learned plenty about in school, this one no less than anyone else). i was aghast, the task was so rudimentary…

thx silby

for a moral proposition ("It is moral to do X") to be true, it would have to derive the authority to obligate me from somewhere, and I don't think that there are any such things from which authority can be derived

philosophers seem to always thirst for another deeper thing behind the thing in question... but it never ends... i had to ban myself from thinking that way after getting spending a whole acid trip in a recursive loop. good luck though.

people do not engage in moral reasoning all that often when making decisions; I suspect that they do whatever it is they do for some uncomputable collection of reasons and then pattern-match it after the fact to the collection of moral propositions they want to believe they adhere to

this is probably literally true, but idk... it's kind of like austrian economists being like "the market is too complex to understand, submit to it and let the price vector take a whizz all over you." like we still need some shitty model of ethics to help us understand what to do when stuff gets fucked up

when i was in high school i saw peter singer in an astra taylor documentary where she interviews celeb philosophers, and i remember being pretty into his part and telling my friend about it the next day, "hey, there's this philosopher who says we should give all our money to oxfam, crazy shit" and he was like "pfft... you needed a philosopher to tell you that bro?"

i think my problem with the jacobin piece upthread is you can apply the argument in that piece to anything that is not uh, single-handedly overthrowing capitalism, or whatever. the only exception is the author says at one point that philantrophy subsidizes capitalism which is what put the person in the ditch in the first place, but that's an unbacked empirical claim whereas vicious cycle of poverty is extremely well documented as well as fact that a random income shock can often snap you out of it. as i said upthread, this EA stuff only exists J-PAL has done the best empirical social science work ever and we have some strong results about poverty now

also, like, i don't even think EA is necessarily at odds with orthodox marxism... if having a revolution is the best thing poors can do with their money send them an unconditional cash transfer maybe they'll use it to have a revolution who knows

j. presumably you agree that the state should redistribute wealth from rich people to poor people... what other argument exists for that other than utility is concave in wealth?

they don't deserve it and we do

interesting.... so if an unequal distribution were deserved (hypothetical), no problem? even if you could make poors better off by taking away just desserts from rich?

why would the poors want to take away desserts that the rich ppl deserved, esp. considering they would also have whatever they deserved

right now someone is currently getting either more or less than their both desserts, yet seemingly everyone thinks they're getting less. plausible that even if everyone were getting their just desserts, they would still feel that way.

maybe in a society where everybody is dependent on many other people there's no such thing as individual dessert

is no one going to make a dessert joke here? OUTRAGEOUS

tbh i wasn't sure people already weren't

you're right in the middle of it!!!

http://img.tesco.com/Groceries/pi/586/5051399720586/IDShot_540x540.jpg

maybe in a society where everybody is dependent on many other people there's no such thing as individual dessert

― MC Whistler (Noodle Vague), Friday, August 28, 2015 10:17 AM (21 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

j was the one who said "deserve" in the first place. i don't personally think it's a good way to think about distribution... i mean, greg mankiw thinks we shouldn't redistribute money to poors because they don't deserve it, ilx poster j thinks the opposite. if it's hard to figure out just desserts, so everyone just goes home with their priors. whereas in a utilitarian perspective, i show you a poor person suffering and a rich person spending his marginal dollars on trifles, and we're done. maybe consequences don't really exist maan *takes bong rip* or whatever but that seems like an unavoidably useful framework for anyone with strong egalitarian priors

i've said elsewhere, maybe upthread, that consequentialism might make more sense (or have more utility, lol) in the context of political action

but i'm not, instinctively, a consequentialist and i don't think political beliefs are analogous to ethical theory - i think there's a gap between programmatic or ideological types of thinking and ethics as it applies to individual action and interrelationships. if you could somehow demonstrate to me that e.g. capitalism was the form of economic organization that maximized "happiness" for the greatest number of people, i'd still believe it was a Bad Thing

sorry i shd've expanded on that first sentence - something along the lines of "the nature of managing expenditure on infrastructure for supporting large numbers of people might mean it's most effectively considered thru some kind of consequentialist lens"

flopson, I too think it is a useful framework, but what people don't like about utilitarianism is that utility is seen as more than a framework. E.G. to say "a dollar has more value to a poor person than a rich person and that argues it should be seen as a good when money flows from the rich to the poor" is a soft form of utilitarianism indeed, and not the form in which people find it indefensible.

I think a concave real-valued function is a great metaphor for this argument but that doesn't mean I think there literally IS a real-valued function lying around whose concavity is the issue. Let alone any talk about fixed point theorems.

^ my point

Just a thought, but if "the greatest good for the greatest number" is a correct formulation of the highest morality, then how would this highest morality not endorse selectively euthanizing the least healthy and most unproductive members of society, starting with the most disabled and extremely elderly, so as to redirect the resources they consume toward creating a better life for the much younger and healthier, but impoverished, members of society?

Because it's ludicrous?

I'm pretty sure there are still a few million eugenicists out there who would consider it ludicrous not to euthanize the weakest members of society and who'd justify it on purely utilitarian grounds. Is there anything inherent in utilitarianism that precludes that justification?

Anyone considering where to get resources for the poor should start with the wealthy, rather than the disabled and elderly. And throughout history, that does seem to be what people do. And even at times, violent uprisings has taken property, and at times even lifes, from the rich in order to give to the poor. The empirical evidence don't really support that this actually ends up in happiness and goodness. That's a different discussion, though.

Also, that is a prime example of dismissing consequentialism because the consequences of it are perceived to be bad ;)

You sidestepped my question very neatly, but your answer doesn't answer it. Is there anything inherent in utilitarianism that precludes its application to justify eugenics?

if you could somehow demonstrate to me that e.g. capitalism was the form of economic organization that maximized "happiness" for the greatest number of people

i think good (no doubt controversial) case can be made for this (with proviso that definitions of ‘capitalism’ & ‘happiness’ not unproblematic givens)

this is prob dumb-obv thing to say, but my problem with utilitarianism/ consequentialism is problem with any totalizing ethical system/ theory

irl (as opposed to academic philosophy), ethical considerations, criteria, calculations involve complex, heterogeneous, mixed set of language-games, engaging with abstraction/ generalization, analogies & disanalogies, yet also attuned to dense web (context) of particulars

in ‘pure’ form or as totalizing theory, consequentialism & deontology both are inhuman & absurd, alien to ways humans actually ‘reason’ morally— ways much more sophisticated than philosophy’s gedanken-parables capture or allow for (ways not easily schematized by philosophy)

imo everyone (sociopaths aside) is consequentialist and deontologist, i.e. these are primordial ethical perspectives/ arguments/ language-games, most useful & essential as correctives, checks & balances on each other

philosophers like singer seem to me like children, frustrated at illogicalities & apparent paradoxes of e.g. english language, adamantly insisting others shd adopt their own invented wd-be ‘rational’ language
i don’t begrudge anyone that choice of personal ethics (especially if it induces ethical action), but ultimately— in pure form— it’s no more ‘rational’ (its normative power no more secured by ‘logic’) than e.g. ethics based on religion
the complexity of ethical thought prob best elucidated through narrative, not abstract theory or some input-output algorithm for action

nb theories, algorithms, gedanken-experiments, schematizations of philosophy (e.g. of utilitarian philosophy) are useful— insofar as they contribute to diverse toolbox of ethical-political reasoning, argumentation, persuasion, evaluation (e.g. of policy)
but imo they don’t in themselves provide any answers

i agree it can be argued, it frequently is argued! by "demonstrate" i meant "proved to a reasonable degree of certainty".

not all consequentialism is utilitarianism, obv, but the problem they both have at the macro and micro level is fundamentally one of time - of consequences, even. an action that benefits me in the short term might do me greater harm as it's consequences unfold. a policy that benefits x number of people over a year might harm 100x people over 10.

this isn't to say consequentialism can't be a good way of taking decisions on how to behave, but it does mean that to call those decisions "moral" requires a lot of qualification of what "good", "right" and "consequence" mean

i think the language of ethics as commonly used is far closer to a deontological position. consequentialism feels closer to the language of government.

which is to say yeah i broadly agree with you drash, to insist on either position dogmatically is only sane in the realm of philosophy...the same might be true of a rigid belief in the field of ethics as a guide to how to live tho

x-post: No I can't. In the same way I can't find anything inherent in modern science to preclude it's application to proving that the world is flat. Nobody in their right mind, and in good faith, could argue that it would be utilitarian to kill a bunch of grandfathers and -mothers. But somebody might lie and manipulate to say such a thing, sure. However, the risk of something like that happening - due to utilitarianism - are so little that it simply doesn't matter, consequentialistically speaking. When speaking consequentially, what matters are not 'inherent' things, what matters is not 'being', but 'doing'.

As I said upthread, I fully accept if people think that the moral philosophy with the best consequences are anti-consequentialist. I cannot argue against lying and saying that you're not a consequentialist, even though consequentialist argumenation brought you to that conclusion. But what I would need to hear to consider deontology, for instance, would be a convincing argument based on deontological reasoning, instead of utilitarian.

Also, crash mostly otm.

Also, Noodle Vague also tom that 'the language of ethics' is closer to deontology, which is obviously why it's a worthless waste of time ;)

Also also also, late Wittgenstein rules! Language games forever.

Sorry, drash not crash. Stupid auto-correct.

children, frustrated at illogicalities & apparent paradoxes of e.g. english language, adamantly insisting others shd adopt their own invented wd-be ‘rational’ language

Have to admit that I am irrationally sympathetic with those people

xps yr points otm nv

Also also also, late Wittgenstein rules! Language games forever.

:) with you there (waving my lighter in the air)

Have to admit that I am irrationally sympathetic with those people

am sympathetic too. funny thing is, temperamentally wittgenstein was like epitome of this, keenly felt & suffered from this frustration/perplexity
that’s always one of the voices in his (dialogic) texts (a voice in himself)
all his late philosophy is like therapeutically trying to work through this, let go of that obsessiveness/ demand/ delusion, demystify ‘rule-following’

Singer distinguishes between involuntary and nonvoluntary euthanasia and argues the latter is defensible whereas the former is basically not http://utilitarianism.net/singer/by/1993----.htm

This is twenty years ago now though so maybe he's gotten weirder. Euthanasia is probably the topic of his that has sparked the most lay outrage iirc

imo everyone (sociopaths aside) is consequentialist and deontologist,

macintyre_shed_tear.gif

utilitarians of many non-horrific stripes routinely repudiate dumm consequences drawn from their main doctrine by e.g. claiming that the basic moral standards (inclusive of duties, rights, liberties, autonomy, what have you) are to be observed in some fashion or other when applying the principle of utility. mill did so. whether or not their theoretical refinements or their official stance toward existing moral practices hold up is another matter (esp. e.g. in view of their generally wide-open attitude toward the revision of any existent practice that could be improved utility-wise), but their official view excludes 'let's kill all the babies' etc.

xp aw & virtue ethicist too (i.e. everyone is)
(<3 aristotle)

(though not v aristotelian irl myself)
(think aristotle wd be first to criticize utilitarians & deontologists, strict dogmatic ones anyway, for reasons related to discussion above)

i think it's straightforward to maintain lots of inalienable human rights & other rules on utilitarian grounds esp when allowing for the lack of omniscience/consensus on individual decisions

Gawker ended up publishing the piece: http://gawker.com/heres-the-philosophy-essay-vox-found-too-upsetting-to-p-1727243459

Furthermore, it’s difficult to get a grasp of what Big Bad World would be like. But the way people live there may be similar to the way we live. There are ups and downs in our lives. Perhaps a typical human life often ends up with only a little happiness as its net sum. Perhaps many lives end up with a negative sum. But then, is the Big Bad World so bad as one may at first have thought? It’s quite possible that people in Big Bad World aren’t living in abject poverty and misery, but instead have lives similar those of many affluent people living in rich, developed countries today.

I thought an assumption of the repugnant conclusion is that the people in Big Bad World live lives barely worth living. If in imagining such a world we imagine a world in which peoples' lives are pretty good, that just means we haven't thought about a big enough world, and we can reiterate the problem with respect to an even bigger world where individual standards of living are much worse but the net happiness is greater.

I think a concave real-valued function is a great metaphor for this argument but that doesn't mean I think there literally IS a real-valued function lying around whose concavity is the issue. Let alone any talk about fixed point theorems.

― Guayaquil (eephus!), Friday, August 28, 2015 11:27 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

all language is just metaphors, none of the things literally exist (although it's possible to observe these functions under very weak assumptions, just in rather banal settings). i think this is just bias against math, people take it more literally than they do other language for some reason. i just said concave real valued function as a shorthand to what we all understand and are familiar with as a real thing

Metaphors don't suffice for what's supposed to be (and claimed as by some of its proponents) a totalizing ethical theory. If philosophers in the anglophone tradition still want to make arguments about how we ought to live (which, for some reason, some of them do) resorting to analogy, sophistry, and appeals to common sense sorta seems like admitting the project is ridiculous.

utilitarianism isn't a philosophy, it's a tactic.

i think this is just bias against math, people take it more literally than they do other language for some reason.

for some reason?!?!

I mean I'm not trying to be difficult, just saying, as someone in math I'm keenly aware of the way that mathematical language is actually much more useful to take literally than other language, as long as you make sure only to take it literally when it's meant literally.

all language is just metaphors, none of the things literally exist

flopson comin out all nietzschean

Which is why I think it's cool to say "it's good when money flows from rich to poor because IT'S KIND OF LIKE there's a concave function" is cool but "I can't tell you what utility different actions have but there must be a consistent way to assign utilities to outcomes because fixed point theorem" is not OK; it takes what was a useful metaphor and promotes it to the kind of thing to which one can apply fixed-point theorems.

i think i see what you mean

/all language is just metaphors, none of the things literally exist/

flopson comin out all nietzschean
--j.

haha i love these threads cause i'm just pulling stuff outta my ass but you guys have actually studied thought hard about and know like the history of these ideas. thank you for putting up with me each time i load the thread im like oh god what crap did i post here last night and cringe

utilitarianism isn't a philosophy, it's a tactic.

― rushomancy, 29. august 2015 20:31 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

See, but what if, from a utilitarianist standpoint, in comparing language games, tactics are more moral than philosophy?

utilitarianism isn't a philosophy, it's a tactic.

― rushomancy, Saturday, August 29, 2015 11:31 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

That's ludicrous. I don't think Peter Singer is arguing in bad faith, using appealing intuitions about utility to achieve ends he doesn't think he could defend arguing from the utilitarian premise. I believe he really believes that what is good is to reduce suffering in the world as much as possible. His tactics are political.

good effective altruism smackdown by felix salmon http://t.co/aqXBa8UBEA

The same argument could be deployed about anything else that makes the world a better place without being a direct donation of money or time to charity, whether it’s founding Google, writing the novels of Judy Blume, or even working for a do-gooding nonprofit, if doing so pays you anything close to a market wage. Cooney’s admiration for check-writers is mirrored by his disdain for the people cashing those checks and doing the actual work: “Most non-profit staffers are not choosing the path that leads to the greatest good,” he writes.

gets at the self-hating dimension that must drive a lot of these people who i would wager predominantly HAVE social-benefit jobs in the first place

'i am so useless as a teacher, i submit my grades and my students leave and what impact have i even had on the world!??!'

and again with the arts

"My theater teacher saved my life" is definitely something nobody has ever said.

theater students say that all the time

theater students say that all the time

then have i got an altruistic social movement for you!!!

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n18/amia-srinivasan/stop-the-robot-apocalypse

Doing Good Better is a feel-good guide to getting good done. It doesn’t dwell much on the horrors of global inequality, and sidesteps any diagnosis of its causes. The word ‘oppression’ appears just once. This is surely by design, at least in part. According to MacAskill’s moral worldview, it is the consequences of one’s actions that really matter, and that’s as true of writing a book as it is of donating to charity. His patter is calculated for maximal effect: if the book weren’t so cheery, MacAskill couldn’t expect to inspire as much do-gooding, and by his own lights that would be a moral failure. (I’m not saying it doesn’t work. Halfway through reading the book I set up a regular donation to GiveDirectly, one of the charities MacAskill endorses for its proven efficacy. It gives unconditional direct cash transfers to poor households in Uganda and Kenya.)

But the book’s snappy style isn’t just a strategic choice. MacAskill is evidently comfortable with ways of talking that are familiar from the exponents of global capitalism: the will to quantify, the essential comparability of all goods and all evils, the obsession with productivity and efficiency, the conviction that there is a happy convergence between self-interest and morality, the seeming confidence that there is no crisis whose solution is beyond the ingenuity of man. He repeatedly talks about philanthropy as a deal too good to pass up: ‘It’s like a 99 per cent off sale, or buy one, get 99 free. It might be the most amazing deal you’ll see in your life.’ There is a seemingly unanswerable logic, at once natural and magical, simple and totalising, to both global capitalism and effective altruism. That he speaks in the proprietary language of the illness – global inequality – whose symptoms he proposes to mop up is an irony on which he doesn’t comment. Perhaps he senses that his potential followers – privileged, ambitious millennials – don’t want to hear about the iniquities of the system that has shaped their worldview. Or perhaps he thinks there’s no irony here at all: capitalism, as always, produces the means of its own correction, and effective altruism is just the latest instance.

otm from a theoretical standpoint but i just can't get on board the anti effective altruism bandwagon. alright they are totally up themselves, far too confident in their flawed models, all too keen to work within a system that is ultimately responsible for the harms they are trying to prevent, and inasmuch as they truly act according to utilitarian principles obviously inhuman monsters. but in terms of practical effects, what is the worst you can say about them? that they might dissuade others from thinking about more radical change? idk seems a stretch, or counterbalanced by the fact that they are unquestionably encouraging people to give more money to more effective (probably) charities.

i wont't defend the ones trying to prevent robot apocalypse though, they really are the worst.

yeah i p much agree. like, it's ok to want to know how to save most lives with your charity donation without writing a book on or even having an opinion of the causes of global inequality.

yeah this seems like one of those cases where i wouldn't want to make perfect the enemy of the good

i mean there's something inherently offensive about the branding, like they're the only people that actually give a shit about having an impact. i say this as someone who used to listen to "intelligent dance music".

http://inthesetimes.com/article/18407/helping-a-drowning-stranger

In the past few years, the “effective altruism” movement has entered the fray to help nascent do-gooders make this decision by ranking charities according to how much good they do, measured by “quality-adjusted life years” saved per dollar. Not surprisingly, the movement has proved particularly popular with those in the earn-more, give-more camp, whom MacFarquhar identifies as mostly “well-educated young, white men of technological background and rational disposition.”

Yet for many of us, effective altruism's urge to assign a calcuable value to human life feels alien, and the scientific rationalism so beloved of tech-minded young, white men seems reductive at best. We are not rational, perhaps, when we prefer to donate to a cause in our neighborhood rather than to more urgent disaster relief overseas. But there's a value in community that most of MacFarquhar's do gooders seem, quite painfully, not to understand. Although many of them have partners, with whom they plunged at young ages into relationships dominated by debates about how to save the world, few are connected to a wider human group. They do not pursue political or collective solutions to the world's ills, but are weighed down by an almost unbearable sense of individual responsibility. In several cases, despite MacFarquhar's sympathetic storytelling, that individualism starts to sound a lot like narcissism. Of those profiled, a pastor, a nurse and a Buddhist priest come closest to doing the type of good that doesn't merely save a life but tries to improve it, too, in its fullness. It's a complicated business that does not fit easily into a utilitarian schema, but it's what most of us know instictively to be true: Saving a life is just the beginning.

The idea that saving a life is just the beginning fits very easily into a utilitarian schema.

not gonna read the whole thing but from the pull-quote that seems like the worst yet...

i don't know how to better express it but the entire argument seems to boil down to 'calculating stuff feels icky'

Yet for many of us, effective altruism's urge to assign a calculable value to human life feels alien, and the scientific rationalism so beloved of tech-minded young, white men seems reductive at best.

calling the cost of saving a life by donating to charity "a calculable value to human life" is a pretty shitty rhetorical trick

We are not rational, perhaps, when we prefer to donate to a cause in our neighborhood rather than to more urgent disaster relief overseas. But there's a value in community that most of MacFarquhar's do gooders seem, quite painfully, not to understand. Although many of them have partners, with whom they plunged at young ages into relationships dominated by debates about how to save the world, few are connected to a wider human group. They do not pursue political or collective solutions to the world's ills, but are weighed down by an almost unbearable sense of individual responsibility.

it is rational to donate to a neighbourhood cause, just not if you are strictly altruistic. the author's argument for giving to a neighborhood cause rather than disaster relief overseas is that there's value in community... value for who? for the person donating? if we're talking about altruism that shouldn't matter. value for other members of the community? well, then does that outweigh saving a life of someone else? presumably that other person is also a member of a community... is it better to improve the value of a rich-world community than for a member of a poor-world community to die?

also... maybe people these cold rich rational calculating technology young men also pursue political or collective solutions... or maybe they don't because they don't think they're effective? there are obviously some famous examples of political or collective action working well, but there's also tonnes of self-righteous idiot activists not doing any good for anyone. it's complex, maybe these rich bros just figured the best thing they could do was stay out of it and cut a cheque

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/21/business/a-huge-overnight-increase-in-a-drugs-price-raises-protests.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=second-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

this guy is like an effective altruist with an evil spock beard

maybe there is a continuum between utilitarians and ultra-randian psychopaths but that doesn't mean white is black.

it turns INTO black in the other universe

so in this bizarro world there must be evil utilitarians who want to cause the most harm to the most people, and who are mocked by others for being overly rational and lacking the human touch in their malevolence...

whatever happened to just knifin a dude?????

"Earning to take": instead of accepting a high-paying job on Wall Street, go work at a non-profit and do a half-assed job.

adopting the point of view of the youniverse

a contradiction between those last two that a regular white-hat utilitarian doesn't need to worry about. save the world and earn a huge salary, win-win!

and do a half-assed job. embezzle as much as you can

^ more rational

This puts a more human face on the topic du jour:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/22/extreme-altruism-should-you-care-for-strangers-as-much-as-family

more human you say

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/static/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2015/9/21/1442838990148/3403a5ae-8a66-42f2-b2ba-79c0939448ac-2060x1236.jpeg?w=1065&q=85&auto=format&sharp=10&s=19f5948049b5e547fee7a2aa118f2fe6

Facist.

i prefer my own kind, what can i say

Until she was 11, she was fervently religious. She believed that, since God had given her life, she owed him a debt so enormous that she could never repay it, but that it was her duty to try as hard as she could. Then, one weekend, it occurred to her that other people in the world believed in their holy books just as strongly as she believed in the Bible, so what reason did she have to believe that hers was true? She had never seen or felt any evidence of God’s presence. Quite suddenly, she lost her faith.

no she didn't

Okay, this is the best part:

He calculated that if the child gave away around 10% of its income, then they would likely break even – that is, the money their child would donate would be equal to the money they did not donate because they spent it instead on raising the child. Of course, this did not take into account that it was better to give money now rather than later, especially to urgent causes such as global warming and Aids, so some discounting would have to be factored into the calculation. All this made Julia feel better for a while, and even though she realised that it would be pretty weird to tell a child that they expected it to pay for its existence in the world with a certain percentage of its income, she figured she was going to be a weird mother anyway, and her child would probably be weird, too, and so perhaps to a child of hers all this would seem perfectly sensible.

they're going to have an incentive to put nietzsche on their home's list of prohibited books!!

xp aye, but i found a blog where she says Some have asked if we consider her a sort of recruit, hoping that her future donations will outweigh the cost of raising her. The answer is “definitely not.”.

I just like the idea that because, from their perspective, raising a child was an optional cost, they think their child should view it the same way. From one's own perspective, having been raised isn't an optional cost.

"Is it bad to discriminate against fertile women in employment?"

http://robertwiblin.com/2010/04/11/is-it-bad-to-discriminate-against-fertile-women-in-employment/

is some classic utilitarian "makes u think bro"

that is one of the major EA dudes btw, not just some bro w/ thoughtz

is there a difference

power

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03c2zw6

TBF I think Steve Landsburg remains the all time "makes u think bro" utilitarianism champ with

http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2013/04/03/steven_landsburg_rochester_professor_is_it_really_rape_if_the_victim_doesn.html

"Raping unconscious people: maybe not so bad"

http://thepointmag.com/2015/examined-life/effected

An idea is a kind of cartoon. Inhabiting one, we get that thrill of clarity: everything simple and certain, with sharp black borders. But at some point this cleaner world turns oppressive, like the grandparents’ condo after a few days’ visit, and we look to escape. That too is another sort of thrill. We get out, and the fuller world rushes back to meet us, in all its grubby confusion. Woosh.

The break was unexpected and decisive. We both got home one day, three or four weeks in, and instead of sitting down to practice building little virtual boxes, we picked up some book or other, Homer or Harry Potter or our own journals; and that was that. We canceled the remaining interviews and tests; David said goodbye to an already-guaranteed $90,000 job. Just a few days later it all seemed a bizarre and sort-of boring dream, a micro-group fantasy we’d witched ourselves into. One of us bumped the running chess game, which I was losing, and we never put the pieces back, leaving the crooked board on the table as a sort of monument to our stumble out of grace.

. I set up an interview with Google, and David began a series of trainings and tests for web-development boot camp.

How do you "set up an interview with google" when you don't know anything about web development?

connections my brother connections

That was a good piece. Not exactly another critique of EA, more about the experience of getting caught up in a brief spell of idealism before reverting to fecklessness.

http://bostonreview.net/forum/foundations-philanthropy-democracy

I'm not going to read the whole death penalty thread but I assume utilitarians are at it again

no it's a bunch of deontologists and catholics ruining everything, creating problems and suffering

nothing kantian, I promise

fairly huge absence of utilitarian arguments i'd say actually - maybe a little bit deems

i did espouse the utilitarian argument that executions should be carried out more efficiently and economically (i.e. shooting vs. the more expensive method of lethal injection)

http://www.publicbooks.org/the-problem-with-philanthropy/

In The Self Help Myth, Erica Kohl-Arenas shows how hundreds of millions of dollars of investment and decades of advocacy have failed to address the poverty and disenfranchisement of workers in the area.

In her richly told historical analysis, Kohl-Arenas interrogates the longstanding tension between philanthropic funders and their grantees: “Can the surplus of capitalist exploitation be used to aid those on whose backs this surplus is generated?” Considering the Central Valley as a test case, one would have to assume the answer is no. Farmworkers continue to face substandard housing, food insecurity, dangerous working conditions, underemployment and overwork, lack of health care, endemic racism, and the threat of deportation. While the lack of “outcomes” from philanthropic investments suggest a simple systems failure, Kohl-Arenas’s close examination of the negotiation of power over decades offers a deeper lesson, providing key insights into the nonprofit sector’s role in American society and beyond.

https://www.academia.edu/30350308/The_Lessons_of_Effective_Altruism

still noxious trash

one day you will be piloting a speeding train and you will have to decide whether to run over a bum on the tracks or derail the entire train, and that day you will love utilitarianism

― the late great, Thursday, August 1, 2013 8:07 PM (five years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

what kind of a cretin needs a moral theory to tell them not to derail the entire train

― j., Thursday, August 1, 2013 8:15 PM (five years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Still the best

so i had a colleague who taught civics and he always started with the trolley problem because he thought understanding utilitarianism was key to being a good citizen in a democracy

he was a vegan straightedge punk with tattoos everywhere and plugs, big thick glasses and a beard

this guy did everything from first principles. it is sometimes proposed that math and science teachers should teach from first principles. personally i think teaching math and science from first principles is a terrible way to teach math and science,

but beyond that i was opposed to his approach because i consider myself a practitioner, not a philosopher. i don't like thinking about the trolley problem because my job (like anyone's) is dilemmas all day long and even the smallest are hardly as clear cut as the stupid trolley, so it's a terrible principle to organize from

that's how i (was trying to) break it down to an extent

he won a bunch of awards in his first three years of high school teaching, then left the classroom in the middle of his fourth to become an academic

the substitute they got for his kids was terrible

i think he felt he could reach more people or something

Sounds like a prick honestly

“Reaching more people” is exactly the sort of dumb thing a utilitarian believes is important

anyway i'm surprised to see this was recently bumped (i missed it in SNA, being tied up elsewhere)

i searched it up tonight because i saw on facebook a video of a man with down's syndrome presenting an argument against abortion at a congressional hearing. he was testifying about his personal quality of life (good, apparently) and also talking about how upset it made him feel when he imagined being aborted. it was really something.

anyway a lot of the argument on both sides of the discussion in the comment section was utilitarian in nature ... and yes it got around to the trolley problem ... and then i remembered this teacher dude and his bit about democracy ... so i came here etc etc

what do you guys think of that teacher guy's proposition that utilitarianism is essential to a properly functioning democracy?

he was a difficult colleague

quite a showboat

Utilitarianism relies on arguing from what is supposed to be an indisputably simple and uncontroversial premise, and walking us down the garden path to various conclusions about moral rules, and alleges that even if we find some of the conclusions violate our moral sensibilities we are stuck with them because we agreed to the premise, but like, if the conclusions violate an agent’s moral sensibilities, they have no particular reason not to reject the utilitarian premise as a result.

You can xref the Roko’s basilisk people for what happens when you decide an argument from first principles can’t possibly give you a reason to reject or modify your principles.

maybe i should just read the thread but i found it really difficult going last time (over my head)

personally as a practitioner, i think it should be okay for both types of trolley operators to exist, but that they should reflect on their core values and clearly state to their stakeholders (passengers) their professional orientation on the matter, while also gathering information on the stakeholder's position and providing working channels for feedback. then i guess you let the riders decide which trolley they prefer.

i have not heard of this basilisk, will investigate

thx

If “utilitarianism is essential to a properly functioning democracy” then that would sort of imply that a “properly functioning democracy” is a good in itself and utilitarianism good in a merely instrumental way to achieve the properly functioning democracy, which is not what a moral theory is supposed to be, so I find that kind of hilarious.

Representative democracy is just, like, a means of investing sovereign authority. The sovereign might make utilitarian decisions or it might not; surely a state that maximized global utility would be a totalitarian one.

totally over my head i'm afraid

back up a bit ... what's a moral theory supposed to be, anyway?

Well so I shall crib liberally and perhaps without direct citation from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. By morality in this discussion I don’t mean “a given set of rules for conduct put forward by an actual community in the actual world” but “a code of conduct that, given specified conditions, would be put forward by all rational persons”. (SEP, “Morality.) So a moral theory should give us an argument that a given code of conduct is a moral code in this second sense, by demonstrating that all rational persons would agree to it.

So the various utilitarianisms are normative theories that argue acts are deemed good only by their consequences. The one I mostly keep yelling about is “preference utilitarianism”, where good acts are those which (more or less) are those most preferred by all persons due moral consideration.

Leaving aside the questions of whether a normative morality can exist, or whether any moral theory could discover it if it could, I think my particular straw man of utilitarianism aggravates me in part because some of its proponents aren’t just doing philosophy, they actually want to get people to act in the ways their theory suggests is the right way to act. And this is going to sound absurd but I think moralizing is not really the proper domain of moral philosophy! Peter Singer or your ex-colleague or whomstever addressing the lay populace with a morality that they argue is straightforwardly logically necessary to accept is kind of sophistic boondoggle, trying to take the basically abstract and academic question of what a normative morality would be if we could derive one from first principles and try to use their answer to answer the question most people have about their behavior which is “how should I live and what should I do” which I think is largely orthogonal.

i felt he bullied his students but that's a whole other story

NB I’m a dilettante who hasn’t read nearly enough books to really justify yelling about all this but that’s my take right now.

can i just

our school was an alternative progressive school but unfortunately it was situated in a part of the county where suburbs blend into semi-rural land. a lot of kids of wingnut conservative people (owners of large semi-rural estates) in this area ended up sending their kids to our school because their parents were trying to segregate them from the general population in the district (the area has a lot of hispanic agricultural workers and many of them don't know how to access the charter school system)

long story short he got into a debate w/ a young 15 year old republican about veganism. the 15 year old argued that he should respect her cultural beliefs, so he proposed a thought experiment in which he cooked and ate her horse (she owned a pony or something). in front of the class. which made her cry.

so tbf there was a high chance he wouldn't have been asked back for a 5th year anyway

jesus christ

afterward he was all "what if i told you i loved the cows you eat at in n out as much as you love your pony"

he did get reprimanded for that one

sorry for derail

i didn't witness this personally, but i heard all about it from the administrator (a friend of mine friend, totally righteous guy) who reprimanded him ... who, believe it or not, is also a tattooed vegan straightedge punk and part time bouncer at hardcore shows ... they had known each other from the scene which is how the first guy got hired

Utilitarianism relies on arguing from what is supposed to be an indisputably simple and uncontroversial premise, and walking us down the garden path to various conclusions about moral rules, and alleges that even if we find some of the conclusions violate our moral sensibilities we are stuck with them because we agreed to the premise, but like, if the conclusions violate an agent’s moral sensibilities, they have no particular reason not to reject the utilitarian premise as a result.

I'd put it a little differently. Utilitarians tend to say that the counter-intuitive results of applying utilitarianism in certain cases can be explained in ways that are consistent with the theory, and that these explanations are preferable, because they're plausible and they make for a simpler overall picture of how things work. This is suppose to give you a reason not to reject the utilitarian premise.

I think moralizing is not really the proper domain of moral philosophy! Peter Singer or your ex-colleague or whomstever addressing the lay populace with a morality that they argue is straightforwardly logically necessary to accept is kind of sophistic boondoggle, trying to take the basically abstract and academic question of what a normative morality would be if we could derive one from first principles and try to use their answer to answer the question most people have about their behavior which is “how should I live and what should I do” which I think is largely orthogonal.

That's funny--I usually hear the opposite sort of criticism, that moral philosophers are too obsessed with technical minutiae and should get back to practical theories of how to live. You really can't please everyone. (Utilitarians find this especially disappointing.)

sorry for derail

― the late great, Sunday, August 12, 2018 1:38 AM (thirty-six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

You should have just hit the bum on the tracks.

omfg

in a lot of his most popular writings singer doesn't do much theorizing, which is why his practical conclusions are so aggravating.

tlg, if you think of 'morality' as a set or system of mainly other-regarding (as opposed to self-regarding) prohibitions and recommendations for behavior (prohibitions to keep people from causing unjustified harm to others, recommendations to encourage them to improve conditions or alleviate harms), one that people generally do observe and seem to have some convergent beliefs about the rough content of, then you could think of moral theories as ways to justify those prohibitions and recommendations, often with the aim of hammering out inconsistencies or gaps in the de facto system (say, in order to help us be more morally perfect), or of idealizing from it with the aim of critique (say, of some instance of a needlessly enforced prohibition, like one against consensual sexual behavior that doesn't harm anyone).

long story short he got into a debate w/ a young 15 year old republican about veganism. the 15 year old argued that he should respect her cultural beliefs, so he proposed a thought experiment in which he cooked and ate her horse (she owned a pony or something). in front of the class. which made her cry.

― the late great, Sunday, August 12, 2018 1:33 AM (six hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is the kind of stuff i would argue as a new vegan at age like 19 with peers, but cant imagine doing as a grownup towards a student bc theres a time and place for thought experiments about eating ponies and its on message boards.

i think one of my problems isnt with utilitarianism per se, it's with self-identified utilitarians who'd use it as a flimsy pretext to do something immoral bc it's less immoral than some other option and then they frame the dilemma as if those are the only two choices.

which maybe is the problem with utilitarianism in general? the premise that "there are a limited set of options and they all require some harm to be done, so pick which does the least" kind of unnecessarily limits the imagination.

i didn't witness this personally, but i heard all about it from the administrator (a friend of mine friend, totally righteous guy) who reprimanded him ... who, believe it or not, is also a tattooed vegan straightedge punk and part time bouncer at hardcore shows ... they had known each other from the scene which is how the first guy got hired

― the late great, Sunday, August 12, 2018 1:44 AM (six hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

off topic but also...i will never understand schools in progressive-leaning parts of the country. bc how is this

what do you guys think of that teacher guy's proposition that utilitarianism is essential to a properly functioning democracy?

― the late great, Sunday, August 12, 2018 12:33 AM (seven hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

If “utilitarianism is essential to a properly functioning democracy” then that would sort of imply that a “properly functioning democracy” is a good in itself and utilitarianism good in a merely instrumental way to achieve the properly functioning democracy, which is not what a moral theory is supposed to be, so I find that kind of hilarious.

― faculty w1fe (silby), Sunday, August 12, 2018 12:39 AM (seven hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

right. if this was a lincoln-douglas style debate, it's as if democracy is the value and utilitarianism the criterion. which gets to my point about utilitarianism needlessly narrowing your moral choices.

to vegan punk showboat #1's point, utilitarianism is i guess useful insofar as explaining why we should vote. your choices are: a democrat, a republican, a slew of minor party candidates, and not voting. they all have potentially morally perilous consequences. if a majority of ppl don't vote, it isn't as if the seat is vacant and people get to see if their lives are better off without that office. so the state will grant authority to whomever gets more votes anyway and they will have some net effect on society, so choose the one who can do the most good for society (or does the least harm).

(and then you get into the problems of winner-take-all voting systems and how that tends towards a partisan duopoly and you should favor the least harmful of the two major parties bc voting for 3rd parties is scarcely better than not voting at all in terms of material impacts, etc)

The basilisk thing (from upthread) was new to me.

But it seems like a sexier update of what was taught to me in the 80s as "The Pleasure Monster."

IIRC, imagine a sadist/psychopath who really loves torturing, killing, and raping babies. Gets unbelievably stratospheric levels of happiness from the thought of raping a dead baby. But here's the thing. He's also incredibly deluded. He lives on an otherwise uninhabited island (sometimes a barren planet), and there aren't any actual babies there. So he's getting massive amounts of pleasure, and no one is actually being harmed.

Like a lot of thought experiments, it's ridic. You're meant to find the impulses repugnant, and deeply disapprove of the moral judgments being made by the PM. But because you can't identify the harm, you have to either reject hard consequentialism, or say no harm no foul.

At this late remove from my training in ethics, all I can really say is that it's a good thing most of us are not trolley drivers.

m bison's thing ("less immoral than some other option") reminds me of another one of the canonical objections to consequentialism: insignificance of agency. If an act is going to take place whether or not I do it, then I do no further harm by doing it myself, blah blah blah.

(Yeah I know objections to consequentialism are but one part of objections to utilitarianism, but I'm taking baby steps here.)

what are we being asked to do with this guy exactly

Judge him. it's silly, I know, but so is a trolley where there's always and only exactly two horrible options.

what kind of cretin needs a moral theory to tell them not to run over a bum

wait i said that wrong, what kind of cretin needs a moral theory to tell them to run over a bum

i hate it when i say the opposite of what i mean

although to be honest my takeaway from roko's basilisk is more "peter thiel is bad and wrong and everything he is involved with is also bad and wrong"

It's not about the bum specifically, rusho; it's about figuring out the most long-winded way to say "life sucks and sometimes you need to make hard choices."

i feel like the people who come up with such analogies are people who have run over bums and want to convince themselves it was ok

I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die, does that count?

that depends...if you didn't shoot him, would the sheriff then shoot 5 boys named sue?

he proposed a thought experiment in which he cooked and ate her horse

Dying at this.

to be clear, in this thought experiment, YOU are not dying; the horse is

It would be darkly hilarious if the horse were infected with CJD and the eater died.

Just sayin.

i have not heard of this basilisk, will investigate

we do have another thread for this; but the fact that a bunch of self-proclaimed rationalists were literally terrified that they might be tortured by an AI from the future is one of the internet's greatest achievements in lulz.

please tell me the instrument of torture was the internet itself

It was ilx

I for one welcome System as our new AI overlord in the coming singularity.

i feel like the people who come up with such analogies are people who have run over bums and want to convince themselves it was ok

― Arch Bacon (rushomancy)

yes!

off topic but also...i will never understand schools in progressive-leaning parts of the country. bc how is this

― 21st savagery fox (m bison)

did this sentence get finished?

how is this (implied)...a thing

not used to ppl from that line of subculture being in positions of authority in schools.

oh i thought you meant nepotism maybe

it's funny, they wore three piece suits at work because they had to cover their tattoos.

not sure why that required a vest but

lmao OF COURSE THEY DID

throughout my years of teaching i have only become more sloppy. untucked plaid shirts and slacks and sneakers is my current look at year 9; by year 20 itll be tshirts, cargo shorts, and chanclas and daring someone to say something.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/26/Higher_Learning_%28movie%29.jpg

i do wear a shirt and tie guy to keep up w my colleagues but since i am a lab teacher i get to wear carhartt shop pants and chore or coach jackets instead of a suit ... you know uh utilitarian clothing

we should probably take it to the teacher thread though

wasting time on moral philosophy is immoral

moral philosophy has great value until it attempts to establish absolutes. at that point it becomes a runaway trolley and something of intrinsic value is about to get smashed.

Rationalism/Real England crossover - effective altruists buying a Blackpool hotel and opening a sort of research centre/commune/monastery.
http://effective-altruism.com/ea/1pc/ea_hotel_with_free_accommodation_and_board_for/

terrifying thought that ILX might be shaping the world outside it like the faux conspiracists of Foucault's Pendulum

B&B altruists finding themselves inexplicably drawn to start a band with the swagger of Oasis.

The cellars could serve as a nuclear bunker of moderate protection. It will be relatively low cost to keep a stockpile of long lasting food down there, which could be slowly used and replenished by the kitchen over a 2-5 year cycle.

Also, growing the EA community in Northern England in general could be seen as a hedge against x-risk, i.e lessen the number of eggs (EAs) in the same, higher risk baskets (London and the South East). Blackpool might be hard to get to in the event of a catastrophe, but the flip side of this is that there would be a lower risk from hostile actors (mercenaries, milita), as well as lower direct damage from nukes and fallout.

Post-apocalyptic effective altruists! That is a cause I would donate to.

most EAs i know irl are really decent and kind people

the PDF j. posted back in March has some good stuff in it about how effective altruism is BS

As I discuss below, EA’s hidden curriculum includes at least four lessons: (1) Effective Altruists are heroic rescuers; (2) doing good is largely an individualistic project; (3) doing the most good does not require listening to those affected by the issues one is trying to address; and (4) anger is not an appropriate response to severe poverty. I am not suggesting that Effective Altruists consciously believe these lessons or teach them explicitly; nor can I offer here evidence about the extent to which they have been taken up. But I do think that EA conveys them. Moreover, these lessons are not mere window-dressing; they serve important functions in helping EA attract and retain members.

but it also contains stuff I vehemently disagree with like

Critics of charity will object that in a just world private individuals would not be able to accumulate enough money to make voluntary donating a significant driver of social change, and in the current (unjust) world the wealthy are unlikely to support reforms that would limit their ability to accumulate. I think this objection is overstated, both because an effective social practice of donating does not require the excessive accumulation that we associate with such megadonors as Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, and because individuals often donate to support political reforms that will reduce their own ability to accumulate.

Anyone still a consequentialist? If so, why?

everyone?

Clearly false.

every couple of years I google Peter Singer to see if he's still alive (currently: yes)

U think people voting for joe biden on deolontological principles?

no I think people vote for joe biden for no reason

I do not think people by and large engage in moral reasoning when they decide to vote or in advance of most other choices they make

silby i love u welcome back but that doesnt make sense at all

nor does utilitarianism

i don’t know what your definition of moral reasoning is and i am aware your very cool posting style is just to angrily say stuff without deigning to ever give reasons, but it seems to me that the consequences of donald trump being president for another four years were weighing on many people’s minds

I’ve lost track of my reasons if you want me tbrrwu

I don’t even know what a reason is anymore flopson

silbipsism

That’s where I believe everyone exists except me

Anyway first response hall of fame itt

I am still a utilitarian

Philpapers (though that was 2009) has

Normative ethics: deontology, consequentialism, or virtue ethics?
Other 301 / 931 (32.3%)
Accept or lean toward: deontology 241 / 931 (25.9%)
Accept or lean toward: consequentialism 220 / 931 (23.6%)
Accept or lean toward: virtue ethics 169 / 931 (18.2%)

https://philpapers.org/surveys/results.pl

I'm a consequentialist but not a utilitarian.

well I'm a moral sceptic really but inasmuch as we still can should be excellent to each other, consequentialism is the only game in town.

I reject ethical rationalism after Hume