The Problem With Utilitarianism

I agree with you but unfortunately that's virtue ethics not utilitarianism. Since you agree that, even though I shot and killed a mountain lion thereby saving your life, it wasn't my intention to do so, therefore it wasn't a moral act.

Replace the words "Bruce Willis" with the words "competent police sniper" then I agree.

No, again you're trying to argue against the specifics of the situation rather than the principles.

By the principle of utility is meant that principle which approves or disapproves of every action whatsoever. according to the tendency it appears to have to augment or diminish the happiness of the party whose interest is in question [...] if that party be the community in general, then the happiness of the community: if a particular individual, then the happiness of that individual. [...] The community is a fictitious body, composed of the individual persons who are considered as constituting as it were its members. The interest of the community then is, what is it? — the sum of the interests of the several members who compose it.

Utility, or the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure.

My reasoning is that your act isn't moral because its statistically expected consequences, ex ante, increase suffering and decrease happiness.

And just to make sure we're on the same page: when you say "I agree" you agree that there should be some kind of consequences for the sniper.

Thomas wrote:

Your memory is incorrect, and it's not my job to correct it.

That's true, and I'm not interested enough to wade through the previous posts. No doubt, if he himself is sufficiently interested, he'll point out that your complaint about unattributed plagiarism was further evasion on your part. Come to think of it, didn't he point that out already?

I will have read over the last 24 hours about this grubby little excuse for the harm that is done to people known as utilitarianism.

Indeed, a strict adherence to utilitarian principles would render the condonement of the production of such product as a snuff movie as a moral imperative since it increases the sum of happiness in the wider population, overall.

XI. In whichever way then a past offense tends to pave the way for the commission of a future offence, whether by suggesting the idea of committing it, or by adding to the strength of the temptation, in both cases it may be said to operate by the force or influence of example.

Well, if you are going to argue that then you are arguing a strawman. The consequences matter but so does the intent leading up to the consequences according to Bentham.

Classic utilitarianism is consequentialist as opposed to deontological because of what it denies. It denies that moral rightness depends directly on anything other than consequences, such as whether the agent promised in the past to do the act now.

Consequentialism, as its name suggests, is the view that normative properties depend only on consequences. This general approach can be applied at different levels to different normative properties of different kinds of things, but the most prominent example is consequentialism about the moral rightness of acts, which holds that whether an act is morally right depends only on the consequences of that act or of something related to that act, such as the motive behind the act or a general rule requiring acts of the same kind.

Classic utilitarianism seems to require that agents calculate all consequences of each act for every person for all time.

One indirect version of consequentialism is motive consequentialism, which claims that the moral qualities of an act depend on the consequences of the motive of that act

Quote:

Consequentialism, as its name suggests, is the view that normative properties depend only on consequences. This general approach can be applied at different levels to different normative properties of different kinds of things, but the most prominent example is consequentialism about the moral rightness of acts, which holds that whether an act is morally right depends only on the consequences of that act or of something related to that act, such as the motive behind the act or a general rule requiring acts of the same kind.

Thank you for not reading the entire piece Night Ripper.

My reasoning is that your act isn't moral because its statistically expected consequences, ex ante, increase suffering and decrease happiness. It's irrelevant if, ex ante, you get lucky on a happiness-increasing statistical outlier.

In other words, it's not the actual outcome but the intended outcome.

The outcome needn't be intended as long as it's predictable. If you adopt a puppy because you feel sorry for the puppy, you're acting on your tender-hearted character. If you adopt a puppy get laid by a girl who likes dogs, your character may well be that of an opportunistic prick.

In both cases you're intending to adopt a puppy. How is that supposed to be a difference in intended outcome and actual outcome?

Like I said, the problem you're facing is, as soon as you jumped ship from the actual consequences to the intended consequences you are now taking up the same argument I am.