The Problem With Utilitarianism

@Thomas,

Thomas wrote:

Holocausts that cause more happiness than suffering are not part of the real world.

Again, you are narrowly focusing on specific scenarios instead of seeing how they apply generally. You are deluding yourself if you think that it will never be the case that the majority wishes to inflict some injustice on the minority. The fact you continue to deny reality is telling .

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@Night Ripper,

Quote:

Again, you are narrowly focusing on specific scenarios instead of seeing how they apply generally.

That doesn't even make sense Night. I can create scenarios for just about any philosophy that will be contradictory to that espoused philosophy. It doesn't make the scenario realistic nor does it prove the philosophy is without merit.

Quote:

You are deluding yourself if you think that it will never be the case that the majority wishes to inflict some injustice on the minority. The fact you continue to deny reality is telling

You are limiting your "majority" to a subset of the majority for your scenarios. You don't seem to understand that. 78 million Germans are not the majority in the holocaust scenario. It is your arbitrary attempt to limit the majority to create a scenario that doesn't exist in real life.

1 Reply

@Thomas,

Thomas wrote:

Night Ripper wrote:
Well, that's messed up. I think only a monster would approve of the Holocaust, no matter the circumstances.

Of course it's messed up! It's a messed-up conclusion following from a messed-up assumption. Garbage in, garbage out. That's what I've been trying to tell you all the time.

Or, to make the same point with a logical analogy of our conversation:

Thomas: When pigs fly, I'm going to vote for Sarah Palin for president.
Night Ripper: Well that's messed up. I think only an idiot would vote for Sarah Palin.
Thomas: Of course it's messed up---but only because you're making the messed-up assumption that pigs can fly.

I think you and Steve are stumbling over a counterintuitive but true fact of standard, Boolean logic: The statement "A=>B" is logically equivalent to "(not A) or B". This means that if the syllogism "A=>B" is true and the premise A is false, all bets are off on the conclusion B's truth value.

This, of course, is just another way of saying "garbage in, garbage out". But who knows? You guys claim to be interested in philophy, so perhaps an appeal to the rules of logic can persuade you where plain English alone can not.

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@Night Ripper,

Night Ripper wrote:

Then why espouse it?

I don't. I'll only expouse it when the factual premises you postulate are true---and they are always false. I asked you to present me a realistic scenario in which they are true, and even you weren't able to.

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@Night Ripper,

Night Ripper wrote:

Oh right, I forgot that what counts as just and fair are objective facts rather than just my subjective opinion. Of course, I assume that now you'll gladly tell me what is just and fair in such a way that it won't suffer from the same problem, namely that it's just whatever you want them to be. I find it amazing that you've solved the is-ought problem so tell me all about it. I'm holding my breath.

You want to impose your own definition of "justice" and "fairness" on utilitarians. That's a definitional problem. It's not the same thing as the "is-ought" problem.

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@parados,

parados wrote:

Quote:
Your utilitarian world view should hold up under any concievable circumstances, Not just the ones you arbitarily decide are "realistic"

Steve,

It isn't realistic to declare something that obviously doesn't create the most happiness does so. Continuing to argue that failure to accept a fantastical scenario means one isn't realistic shows you don't know what reality even is.

The Jews were far less than 50% of the population in 1930s Germany. The vast majority of the Germans, at the time, were more than happy to have them "dealt with" for the "greater good". At the other end of the left/right spectrum we get the likes of Stalin explicitly creating the Siberian camps for the utilitarian greater "good" of the soviet people.

Oh I get reality alright. The "greater good" is whatever a utilitarian dictator says it is isn't it? It doesn't matter what the people themselves decide is good for them is. The utilitatrian dictator decides both what is good/bad and who get to benefit/lose out.

Utiliarian philosophy is nothing mre than a tawdry little after the fact narrative used by every dictatorship of the last 100 years. The very best defense you could put up would be that such a system would be a beingn , paternalistic dictatorship.

But of course, such a defence would be complete b*llocks, since we all know what happens when the state assumes total authority to decide the fate of it's citizens. We get the blood-soaked, anti-human history of the twentieth century

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@Night Ripper,

Night Ripper wrote:

Again, you are narrowly focusing on specific scenarios instead of seeing how they apply generally.

They do apply generally---to all situations that will ever occur in the real world. Happiness-maximizing Holocausts will never occur in the real world. There is no obligation on my worldview to apply to every crazy figment of your imagination.

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@parados,

parados wrote:

You are limiting your "majority" to a subset of the majority for your scenarios. You don't seem to understand that. 78 million Germans are not the majority in the holocaust scenario. It is your arbitrary attempt to limit the majority to create a scenario that doesn't exist in real life.

I have two objections.

1. While you're right that 78 million Germans aren't the majority of the population of Earth, there are examples I have provided where the majority of the population of Earth did agree, for example, the oppression of homosexuals. We're talking billions of religious people versus a handful of deviants and some natives that haven't much of an opinion either way. If you really think that the majority of the population of Earth hasn't wished for some injustice on the minority, you are being naive.

2. Even though 78 million Germans aren't the majority of the population of Earth, they still were the majority for enacting German laws. That's the level I'm talking about. If you think it's fine for the Germans to make horrible laws just because the rest of the world disagrees then you are missing the point. There should never be a time when a government has the support of a majority that wishes for injustice. You can say Germany isn't the entire Earth but as far as German laws go, they might as well be.

So, your criticism fails on both counts. There are examples of the majority OF EARTH wishing for injustice on the minority. Also, the fact that Germany isn't the majority of Earth's population is irrelevant when it comes to ENACTING GERMAN LAW.

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@stevecook172001,

Yawn...

It seems you can't even read simple English.

Quote:

Utiliarian philosophy is nothing mre than a tawdry little after the fact narrative used by every dictatorship of the last 100 years.

That statement no more denigrates Utilitarianism than pointing to Osama Bin Laden as proof that all religion is bad.

Of course there will be people that espouse something and don't use it the way others see it. It doesn't prove anything other then people will distort anything. You are proving that point quite well as you continue to argue the same "majority" that isn't really a majority.

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@stevecook172001,

stevecook172001 wrote:

I get it. The "greater good" is whatever a utilitarian ruler says it is isn't it? It doesn't matter what the people themselves decide is good for them is.

No, you aren't getting it. I just explained to you how Utilitarians would judge political processes. I explained to you that "the people themselves" are the "utilitarian ruler" in most cases. You're welcome to attack Utilitarianism, but I'm getting rather bored with your continuing attacks on strawmen.

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@Night Ripper,

Quote:

If you really think that the majority of the population of Earth hasn't wished for some injustice on the minority, you are being naive.

Until you can come up with some realistic instance, I see no reason to believe such a thing exists.

The oppression of homosexuals is your only example? Hell.. explain why that achieved happiness for the majority. Simply because something is doesn't create a happiness/misery index. The majority probably had no feelings at all about homosexuals let alone were happy they were being oppressed. A few may have been happy, a few miserable but most didn't care one way or the other. If anything it shows that other moral codes are silly since they support the oppression of homosexuals.

1 Reply

@parados,

parados wrote:

The majority probably had no feelings at all about homosexuals let alone were happy they were being oppressed. A few may have been happy, a few miserable but most didn't care one way or the other.

Can provide evidence for your assertion that most people didn't care one way or another about homosexual persecution?

1 Reply

@stevecook172001,

stevecook172001 wrote:

The Jews were far less than 50% of the population in 1930s Germany. The vast majority of the Germans, at the time, were more than happy to have them "dealt with" for the "greater good".

1) You don't know that that's true. The Nazis never got a majority of the vote in any fair election they ran in. And after they took over, any information about popular dissatisfaction would have been censored, and all information about popular satisfaction would have been overhyped. You don't really have any solid information on what Germans in the 1930 and 40s were happy to have.

2) It's not just about the number of people. It's also about the intensity of the suffering, as measured by revealed preference. So assuming that human lives are worth around $5 million to the people living them, you have to ask yourself the following question to debunk utilitarian judgment of the Holocaust: Would Germany have chosen to kill 6 million Jews if she had had to pay fair value for those lives? Would she have paid $30 trillion dollars? ($384,000 per non-Jewish German)?

2 a) Or to state it in terms of real values, is there any world in which the following dinner-table convesation would actually take place over a real kitchen table? "Honey, we need to decide to do with those $384,000 in our bank account. We could buy a big house, or put our three children through college, or retire seven years earlier. Or---my personal favorite---we could donate the $384,000 to the Holocaust fund to help kill six million Jews. What do you think, sweety?"

Show me a world where scenario 2a even remotely makes sense, and I'm willing to explore the limits of my utilitarianism. But I'm not going to hold my breath for you to do that.

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Forget about homosexuals, how about persecution of the mentally ill?

1 Reply

@Night Ripper,

Night Ripper wrote:

parados wrote:
The majority probably had no feelings at all about homosexuals let alone were happy they were being oppressed. A few may have been happy, a few miserable but most didn't care one way or the other.

Can provide evidence for your assertion that most people didn't care one way or another about homosexual persecution?

Now, where is your support?

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@Night Ripper,

Night Ripper wrote:

1. While you're right that 78 million Germans aren't the majority of the population of Earth, there are examples I have provided where the majority of the population of Earth did agree, for example, the oppression of homosexuals.

Utilitarians don't approve of what the majority of the population agrees about. They approve of what increases the surplus of happiness over suffering for the whole population. Majorities can be wrong about what increases happiness and reduces suffering.

As it happens, oppression of homosexuals is an especially good case against your point: In 1785, Jeremy Bentham, widely considered the founder of Utilitarianism, was the first philosopher to demand the legalization of gay sex---or "buggery", as it was then known. On the historical evidence, then, Utilitarianism beat all of its competition in exposing this injustice.

1 Reply

@Thomas,

Thomas wrote:

Night Ripper wrote:
1. While you're right that 78 million Germans aren't the majority of the population of Earth, there are examples I have provided where the majority of the population of Earth did agree, for example, the oppression of homosexuals.

Utilitarians don't approve of what the majority of the population agrees about. They approve of what increases the surplus of happiness over suffering for the whole population. Majorities can be wrong about what increases happiness and reduces suffering.

As it happens, oppression of homosexuals is an especially good case against your point: In 1785, Jeremy Bentham, widely considered the founder of Utilitarianism, was the first philosopher to demand the legalization of gay sex---or "buggery", as it was then known. On the historical evidence, then, Utilitarianism beat all of its competition in exposing this injustice.

Oh I see, the wise old ultilitarians get to choose what is good for the rest of us since we can hardly be trusted to decude it for ourselves. Now where have we heard this kind of dangerous bullsh*t before? Oh yes, I remember, pretty much the majority of the twentieth cenury over and over and over again.

"It's not evil what is being done to you folks. It's for the good of the "workers..."

"It's not evil what is happening to you folks, we are condemning your grandchildren as yet to be born to a lifetime of debt as a result of bailing out the financial system becasue it's for the "greater good..."

"It's always for the greater "good" dont ya know...."

Over and over and over again. Different arseh*les, same bullsh*t.

You have already addmitted that there are circumstances (albeit you think they are "silly") where ultilitarianism can lead to direct harm to some in the name of the "greater good". Firstly, you tried to dismiss this little problem by arguing that such circumstances are most unlikely to occur in your utilitarian vision. When that's begun to look a bit shakey, you have now come full out and admitted that it's the utilitarian dictator who gets to decide what is for the greater "good" and what is not

And yet, you persist in the ridiculous assertion that utilitarianism is not anti libertarian.

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@stevecook172001,

You are arguing that every justification whether valid or not is utilitarian. That is false.

1 Reply

@parados,

parados wrote:

You are arguing that every justification whether valid or not is utilitarian. That is false.

Oh I see, only the "nice" one's (as defined by who?) are allowed to be called utilitarian. all the others were merely "masquerading" under the cloak of ultilitariansim.

If only people would accept the one true vision of utilitarianism the world would be so much better eh?.....

What a complete, ideologically driven joke.

1 Reply

@stevecook172001,

Quote:

Oh I see, only the "nice" one's (as defined by who?) are allowed to be called utilitarian.

Of the 3 examples you just provided.. who promoted them while claiming to be utilitarian? You are declaring all decision making to be utilitarian which clearly it is not.

Let me ask you steve, does your decision to be an idiot make more people happy? Why do you continue to make that decision? Are you a utilitarian?

1 Reply

The Problem With Utilitarianism

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