Utilitarianism

[African_Love]

What do you think of utilitarianism, as an ethical theory?

Utilitarianism is the idea that the worth of an action is determined exclusively by it's usefulness in maximizing utility (or minimizing negative utility). Different utilitarian schools have different definitions of 'utility'. Peter Singer and many contemporary utilitarians are preference utilitarians, they believe that utility (or 'good') is the maximization of one's preference. Jeremy Bentham (a hero of mine) and the classical utilitarians were hedonists, they defined utility as happiness (Bentham did not make a distinction between 'lower' and 'higher' pleasures, all pleasures were equal in quality to him and differed only in terms of quantity, that is, intensity and duration). Most people claim to be opposed to utilitarianism despite the fact that they employ utilitarian reasoning in at least some scenarios (I won't get into why I've come around to the idea of 'net pleasure/stress').

I'm starting to think of myself as a (hedonistic) negative utilitarian. Let's say that you could measure happiness on a scale of 0 (neutral) to 100 (extreme, unimaginable happiness, no stress at all) and -100 would be extreme, unimaginable suffering, no happiness whatsoever. Let's say that John is at 50 and Bob is at -50, if given the option of increasing John's well- being by 30 points and increasing Bob's well- being by 20 points, a (positive)/classical utilitarian would give the 30 points to John, a negative utilitarian would give the 20 points to Bob. If given the alternate option of giving John 30 points or Bob 30 points, a positive utilitarian could go either way but neither would be morally preferable from a PU point of view (although the positive utilitarian might give the points to Bob out of personal compassion), a negative utilitarian will always give the points to the worse off person. I'm not denying that happiness is of intrinsic, positive value or that it is ethical (kind) to increase the happiness of already well off people but the first objective of morality should be to minimize unbearable stress, minimizing suffering is morally urgent in a way that increasing happiness is not.

The problem with NU taken to it's extreme conclusion is that it could justify blowing up the world if this could be done without causing any physical or psychological stress to sentient beings (or at least not any stress that wouldn't be outweighed by the stress that would continue to exist if you did not blow up the world). The problem with PU is that it could justify recreating the Holocaust if doing so caused a greater amount of happiness for more people than it would suffering for the victims. The worst conclusions of NU are still a lot better than the worst conclusions of PU since, in the apocalypse scenario, nobody would be around to regret the fact that they no longer exist and will never again experience happiness. It's better to be happy than it is to be unconscious (dead) but it's better to be unconscious than it is to suffer and, when you consider the worst suffering in the world (starving children, the agony experienced by people in the final stages of cancer or AIDS, watching your family members be raped and murdered, being burned alive, major, clinical depression etc.), blowing up the world warrants serious consideration. Preventing relatively happy people from experiencing future happiness is bad but nowhere near as bad as allowing the tragedy of extreme, long-term suffering to continue.

Prioritarians also believe that it is more important to benefit worse off people than well off people, I'm not exactly sure where they differ from negative utilitarians.

[Dodo25]

I think utilitarianism is the best approach to ethics. I favor preference utilitarianism, my view is actually very similar to Singer's.

However, depending on how exactly you define happiness, the two varieties might be quite similar anyway.

[African_Love]

I think utilitarianism is the best approach to ethics. I favor preference utilitarianism, my view is actually very similar to Singer's.

However, depending on how exactly you define happiness, the two varieties might be quite similar anyway.

In my view, a preference is just an estimation as to what will cause pleasure. What matters (in my opinion) is not preference satisfaction but the pleasure that preference satisfaction causes. It's possible to experience pleasure from something you had no prior preference for (like reluctantly eating a new food someone offers you or having the nucleus accumbens and other 'pleasure centers' in your brain electrically stimulated by scientists). I might prefer to eat strawberries instead of blueberries because the idea of eating strawberries is more pleasurable than the idea of eating blueberries is but it may actually be that eating blueberries would make me happier.

Hedonism also appeals to me because it puts humans and non-human animals on the same level whereas a preference utilitarian could argue (as Singer does) that killing a pig is not morally equivalent to killing a psychologically normal human adult because pigs, presumably, do not have long-term goals that their death would frustrate.

[OrphanPip]

I also tend to support preference utilitarianism to an extent. However, for pragmatic reasons of maintaining a functional society, I would hedge it with some deontological concepts of inalienable rights that can guarantee protection against the abuse of utilitarian arguments that are much more vulnerable to human subjectivity. In the same train of thought, it is helpful for certain deontological ethical beliefs, like lying is wrong, because the existence of such a moral tendency in our society helps to make it easier to work with others.

[Dodo25]

Hedonism also appeals to me because it puts humans and non-human animals on the same level whereas a preference utilitarian could argue (as Singer does) that killing a pig is not morally equivalent to killing a psychologically normal human adult because pigs, presumably, do not have long-term goals that their death would frustrate.

That's the biggest problem I have with your view. I fully agree with Singer, pigs don't have long term interests, and thus killing them isn't bad as long as they don't suffer.

@OrphanPip, I tend to agree with your modifications, altough I would try to justify them on utilitarian grounds, as to preserve consistency. I'm still working on it though, especially the problem of 'truth' is bothering me. I've got a book on my reading list about it, so hopefully this will help me.

[Cunninglinguist]

Another hurdle for any consequentialist theory is that they do not in any way measure the morality of an action by the agent’s intents. If a man does something that proves to entail a beneficial state of affairs, yet then comes out to admit that his intent was malicious, does this not void, in some way, the actions morality?