Destroy My Belief System, Please!

Perhaps I technically don't know it --- as Frank would say, it's not a fact, just a guess about a fact. But it's a guess I'm fairly confident about.

Whatever maximizes the expectancy value of the present discounted value of all future happiness . If this involves costs and benefits in the far future, discount their present value at the long-term market interest rate. In principle, the field of economics has a fairly standard procedure for this kind of tradeoff.

Perhaps. Do you know of any respectable ethic that doesn't have this problem?

joefromchicago wrote:

You'd be immobilized, unable to speak or hear or do anything, but you'd be conscious and you'd be supremely happy. Would you take that drug?

Sure!

It also means that you can't know your belief system is correct.

Therefore your belief system is useless because you can't know if it is more or less detrimental than not having your belief system

It is not worth maintaining it should be destroyed.

Why follow any system? Why not take each situation as it comes and try to make the best decision?

Haven't you read Kahneman and Tversky yet?

It's easy to believe your estimation of the future is more likely than not when it coincides with your inherent biases.

wandeljw wrote:

Why follow any system? Why not take each situation as it comes and try to make the best decision?

Define "best". Without using any kind of system, please.

Suppose the government said "you'll be guaranteed free replacement organs if you'll agree that, occasionally, somebody will have to be sacrificed to provide those organs." Is it so far-fetched to think that people would accept that trade-off, in the same way that they now accept that speed limits of 75 mph mean that more people will die in accidents?

You may be surprised to learn that your position [on the crippling happines drug] is not universal.

So if the problem of inherent biases frustrates my normative tenet (#2), why aren't you arguing that it's frustrating my factual tenet (#1) as well?

A system of absolute morality doesn't have that problem in the same way. For instance, when Kant said that it is always immoral to lie, he didn't leave a lot of leeway for someone to argue that, in this particular case, lying should be OK.

I didn't take your first tenet as a factual statement. It's a statement about facts, not a factual statement.

if aliens on a distant planet hired me as their ethical advisor, and if I was satisfied of the fact that the aliens' psychologies are wealth-maximizing and not risk-averse, I would advise that their government pursue such a policy. Wouldn't you, too?

Only because the scenario tricks you into making factual assumptions that are false. It comes just close enough to describing junkies that it triggers people's knee-jerk reflexes about the ethics of being a junkie.

But on closer examination, the stated facts are quite different. There is no hangover after the high, no crime to get money for the next fix, no desperate families and friends. If there was, I might well change my judgment. Conversely, if the story did not subtly mislead people about unstated facts, I bet my assessment would be much more mainstream.

So it seems to me that in practical situations like lying to prevent a murder, Kant's formalism just throws up it hands, avoids the question. "what am I suspposed to do now?" altogether, and retreats to the comfortable but useless position that sometimes we're damned no matter what we do. I doubt that this reduces the potential for corruption in by prejudice, bias, and ill-supported seat-of-the-pants judgments.

1.Believe in facts if the balance of the evidence supports them, and for no other reason.

2.Believe in values if acting on them will tend to increase the overall surplus of happiness over suffering, and for no other reason.

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I haven't read through all of the replies so this may be redundant, but it seems that if there is a flaw with #1 (and I believe this has been addressed) it is with the nature of the "balance of evidence." Presumably the balance of evidence consists solely of "facts;" otherwise what you consider a fact could be supported soley by your personal subjective take on things. Each one of these facts that constitute the "balance of evidence" would be subject to the same test, and in turn the "facts" that make of the "balance of evidence" that supports would be as well.

Unless you are prepared to subject each "fact" in the chain (It's turtles all the way down) to the test you've established for belief, at some point, it seems to me, you must be engaging in faith, if only to keep yourself from following the turtles all the way down.

Now, I don't have a problem with faith in Newtonian physics (for example). I don't have to test all the facts that have led to it to believe in it, but unless I duplicate Newton's process, aren't I exhibiting faith?

I don't think, by the way, that there is a substantive flaw in #1, but you've suggested that it is unassailable. If it is, you should be able to shred my assault.

I think #2 is a bit more assailable.

What is the scope of "tend?"

And it is hard to imagine that this formula doesn't lead to someone possessing values that butt up against each other.

I might say that I believe in freedom and acting on that belief has led me to kill someone. The killing of this person (at least in my mind) will tend to increase happiness over suffering. With him gone, there will, overall, be less suffering and more happiness.

I also believe in non-violence, and acting on that belief I don't kill the aforementioned horrible tyrant. My refusal to kill him could be supported by the happiness/suffering equation: Clearly he and those who if not love him, depend upon him will be happier (all though this may not outweigh the future suffering of his potential victims) but isn't there a chance that my non-violent reseponse to an opportunity for, arguably justified, violence will inform others and so increase happines and reduce suffering?

Additionally, for all I know, he may give up his horrible ways tomorrow and there will be no curent or future victims.

Retribution for past suffering doesn't seem to have a place in #2, unless of course I assume his death will be a warning to other horrible tyrants and thereby perhaps reduce suffering and increase happiness.

In the end, it's not a question of whether or not you should believe in facts etc, or values etc, but a recognition of the sponginess of #'s 1 and 2. Both depend largely on subjectivity and (I would argue) faith.

Whether or not this belief system of your is unassailable, I'll give you credit for having one, and even more is you are as consistent with it as possible.

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I try, and sometimes manage, to live my life by a minimalistic, two-tenet religion.

Obviously you're not suggesting that you live a life that it always in keeping with your stated belief system, but I wonder, to what extent, you appreciate that your failures may not be as much a flaw in you as they are in the system.

Personally, I would have a very hard time trying to reduce my beliefs and values into any number of bullet points, let alone two.

Not that I wouldn't like to be able to do so, but I just don't see life as so pat.

For the utilitarian, there's always a "better" choice

it's just that the person making the choice is also the one who is making the moral calculus.

Well, actually, it's just a variation on Robert Nozick's "experience machine." I could make it a hypothetical about being hooked up to a machine that reproduces happy experiences and that avoids any reference to drugs if that would help.

True. I consider this a feature, not a bug.

Not necessarily. I don't think there's anything wrong for a Utilitarian to outsource the calculating. That's what Act Utilitarians do when in practice they usually just follow ordinary common-sense rules such as don't lie, don't steal, don't throw sand at other kids, do as you would be done by, and so forth.

You're kidding. Robert Notzick (1974) plagiarized the orgasmotron from Woody Allen's Sleeper (1973)? I did not remember this section! No, it would not change my view. Each individual can freely spend the rest of their lives in the orgasmotron --- or not, if she prefers. It's an individual preference with no moral implications as far as I am concerned.

I think you're missing Nozick's point. It's not that there's any kind of moral implication in a person's decision to hook up to the experience machine, it's that the unwillingness of many to hook up to the experience machine demonstrates that hedonic systems of morality (including utilitarianism), based on the presumption of happiness as the greatest good, are inherently flawed.

Rule (not act - you have that backwards)