Destroy My Belief System, Please!

True. But as an empathetic, convivial, and rational being, you acquiesce to some system of morality that gives equal weight to both our interests --- and pretty often you modify your behavior in the direction it points you to.

I'm not completely clear on what you mean by that. Can you give me some examples of goods that you consider to be moral but not economic?

Our preferences are a fact of life. We have no choice in having them, only in how we're acting on them. There is nothing moral or immoral about having the preferences we have.

I'm not married to the notion that money is the best unit of measurement for the intensity of our preferences. Instead, it might well be something like the hours you're willing to spent working for something. The choice between the two is an interesting one. But it would be between different versions of utilitarianism, not between utilitarianism and something else.

I disagree. The only thing it sets out rules for is what gets me into heaven and what gets me into hell. For a Biblical example, the god character's lie to Adam and Eve about that apple was bad, even though He got away with it because he was the CEO. The serpent character's truthful whistle-blowing in the same matter, as well as the Adam and Eve characters' civil disobedience to god's fraudulent command, were all good, and wouldn't be punished by any real CEO with any real sense of ethics. And that's just pages 2--4 of a 1500-page, ethically-despicable book.

Maybe so, but that doesn't mean that I'll acquiesce to your system of morality.

For utilitarians, happiness (or utility in general) is the good.

If an action is moral to the extent that it increases the likelihood of more preferences being met, then resorting to an "auction" in the event of a conflict seems unlikely to fulfill that criterion.

Then how do preferences fit into a system of morality if they are non-moral?

I think you're straying from utilitarianism more than you might imagine.

Is the greater good based on the belief that all humans are essentially worthy of receiving good, even though one might be a heinous criminal?

Whenever I hear of utilitarianism lately, it is from someone that is well educated and from a Catholic background. Isn't utilitarianism a secular version of Catholic doctrine regarding charity?

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

You cannot make a comprehensive list of all the consequences of your actions or values, and then weigh them objectively. You can't because one cannot predict the future.

Stuart Mill, in particular, was much more sympathetic to the socialist cause than you might think. I don't know how interested you are in pursuing this point. But if you are, you will find it interesting to check out his Chapters on Socialism and his economics textbook's (much shorter) chapter on [url]The Probable Futurity of the Laboring classes[/url]

So what? In ethical as in non-ethical contexts, we all make decisions under incomplete information all the time. Somehow, most of the time, most of us still manage to reach reasonably sound decisions by filling the gaps with experience, estimation, and rules of thumb. Why wouldn't that work in this context?

Hmm! I don't mean to bore you, but what is your touchstone for comparing what may appear to be conflicting moral choices?

This stuff is hard to discuss in the abstract. Can you pitch me an example?

I won't carry a grudge just because they advocate these policies for reasons that don't persuade me. (I seem to remember that you hold similar views on Richard Posner's concrete verdicts as a judge, as opposed to his legal philosophy underpinning them.)

It seems that the most straightforward translation is to analyze it in terms of indifference curves, which describe one consumer's options among consumer bundles. Preference maximization would then translate into the imperative to maximize the total number of options available in the economy. One thing that increases that number is an equal distribution of income. Another is to increase total income. The optimal tradeoff between the two could in principle be calculated and observed. In practice, it would be hard to do precisely because it involves millions of humans with a gazillion of options each, but I guess one could arrive at reasonable estimates.

In the same way that your happiness fits into a system of morality. Your preferences, just as your happiness, have a claim on my morals because of my empathy and goodwill for sentient beings, especially humans, and because of the way I use my reason to account for different individuals' preferences and how they affect each other.

Quite a few utilitarians in the 19th century used labor instead of gold for their calculations of effort and utility. It's called the labor theory of value.

If you were to say, "I prefer Alice over Betty as a girlfriend", and I asked "how much more money are you willing to pay for Alice?", you would probably get upset, and I wouldn't get a useful answer.

A guy who values security more than freedom would go for B, while a guy who values freedom more than security would go for A. The judgement is INFORMED by our values, not the other way around.

We can take an example if you wish, like say, about the value of respecting people's privacy. The US nowadays has made a mockery of that value, and says that this is necessary in order to fight terrorism. How would you assess the likely consequences of A) returning to a respect to people's privacy vs. B) accepting the glasshouse the US wants us to live into?

I think that's one of utilitarianism's weakest points, but there you have it. If you can't easily quantify utility (or preferences or whatever), then that's a problem with utilitarianism. It's a feature and a bug.

I'm not sure how Bentham or Mill directly addressed this problem, but I don't recall them advocating anything quite like that.

You can estimate the value people place on their privacy by observing their willingness to pay for anti-phishing software, or to work on changing their passwords regularly, and to take other measures to conceal information about themselves. Conversely, you can measure the harm from terrorism in human lives lost and material damage created. My general sense is that the so-called war on terror would not withstand a realistic cost-benefit analysis. But I'd be willing to change my mind if this evidence showed that the damage from terrorism is much greater than I currently think, or that people's willingness to protect their privacy much weaker.

Foofie wrote:

Is the greater good based on the belief that all humans are essentially worthy of receiving good, even though one might be a heinous criminal?

Yes. Utilitarians consider the punishment of anyone --- including criminals --- inherently bad. A consistent utilitarian will only approve of it if this bad thing is outweighed by a greater good. Punishment crosses the line into badness where the increased suffering of criminals from further punishment would outweigh the decreased suffering of non-victims from crime deterred by further punishment. In trying to find that point, utilitarians give equal weight to each side's happiness.