Utilitarianism

I will simply repeat what I've said in the past: you and I have vastly different views of human nature.

If some people in a utilitarian society are abnormally displeased by the notion of maximizing the pleasure of others, are they relieved of any utilitarian moral obligation to maximize pleasure for others?

But as a utilitarian you should have a problem with a society consisting of six billion happy hedonists, because such a society would not necessarily be a utility maximizing society.

djbt wrote:

Well, you've skipped quite a lot else, too. Like a definition of the word 'equal' in this context, and an explanation of how exactly you make the logical leap from the first statement to the second.

You asked for an example of an "ought" statement derived from an "is" statement. I provided that. You didn't ask for the method by which the former was derived from the latter, and this thread is, in any event, not the place for that discussion. If you still question whether an "ought" can be derived from an "is," then explain the reason for your doubt rather than get sidetracked into irrelevant tangents....No doubt you heard someone say that once and now it has stuck in your mind, but you offer no evidence that suggests that you understand the proposition. For Hume, it was easy to contend that an "ought" cannot be derived from an "is," because Hume questioned all "ought" statements. But you describe yourself as a utilitarian, and, as I mentioned previously, utilitarianism is a theory of morality; therefore, utilitarians must believe that there are "ought" statements. Your task, then, is to explain why you adhere to Humean skepticism regarding the basis of morality yet still believe in it.

djbt wrote:

Well, I would say that all systems of morality have to be based on at least one unsupported ought premise, even if it is just 'one ought to be good', or 'one ought to care about the well-being of those other than his/herself'.

Then you would be begging the question. Didn't you read the link that I provided?

djbt wrote:

If something is 'to the detriment of system as a whole', then utilitarian calculus would not support it.

Then the selfish hedonists would not be allowed to avoid their obligations to maximize utility for others?

Your argument seems to be: 'A utilitarian government would follow utilitarian calculus and do x. The consequences of this would, in fact, be bad by utilitarian standards. Therefore there is a problem with utilitarian calculus'.

Clearly this is a ludicrous argument. All that is in error is your initial assumptions about what utilitarian calculus would support. Clearly, if you are capable of anticipating exploitation of a system, any BICUM would also anticipate this, and adjust any policy decisions accordingly.

That is easily possible, and I have no problem leaving the human-nature discussion to the anthropoligists. (Though I have to observe that oddly enough, our practical conduct in threads tends to look quite similar. While we are both opinionated, we both value civility, respect for different opinions, and rationality. However different our moral systems are, they seem to produce similar conduct in practice, at least within the small world where I can compare them. The only conspicuous difference I can make out is that you are always wrong and I am always right.)

Anyway, in terms of this discussion, my point was a much more narrow one, and maybe I didn't get it across as I should have. The point is that the hedonist you talked about in the past 2-3 pages, who behaves strategically and responds to incentives, is not the person you described when you said this:

joefromchicago wrote:

If some people in a utilitarian society are abnormally displeased by the notion of maximizing the pleasure of others, are they relieved of any utilitarian moral obligation to maximize pleasure for others?

A hedonist is someone who cares about his own happiness but not about other people's happiness. But he does not feel pain from helping.

You seem to think that the person you described when you used utilitarian language is the same as the person you described later when you used plain English. But it isn't -- so your perfectly astute observations about how hedonists behave tell us nothing about the hypothetical people you described, the ones who feel pain from making other people happy. (Or in your words: abnormal displeasure.) Hence, when the utilitarian calculus evaluates the latter category one way, and this evaluation makes no sense when applied to the former category, this does not test whether the utilitarian calculus does a good job evaluating.

Why should I have a problem? After all, I am not a missionary who wants people to be utilitarians.

I am a utilitarian who wants people to be happy, whether they are utilitarians or not. Therefore, if I observed a society of happy hedonists, the fact that they're happy would tell me that they must be doing a reasonably good job maximizing their own utility. (That's not a deep insight, mind you -- it follows directly from the definition of utility.)

Well, we've had this conversion before. As you well know, I agree with Hume, and question all ought statements.

I also have feelings of guilt and pride, which make me want to do good - specifically to reduce pain and increase pleasure. Therefore I am a utilitarian.

I do not hold, however, that I can persuade someone, using is-statements, that they must agree with my ought-premise. And, unless you can do rather better than your last lacklustre effort, I would recommend that you don't either.

As I've said many times, I see no way around the question-begging ought premise any moral system must have. Moral systems can, however, be judged by such things as their internal consistency.

By my standards, the world would be a better place if more people thought in utilitarian ways, and I think more people would be inclined think in utilitarian ways were it not for the stigma attached to utilitarianism. As I see it, a benevolent person must think that anything's pain is (or rather, weighs towards) bad, and anything's pleasure is (weighs towards) good.

Again, I can see no explanation for you writing this other than deliberate misunderstanding. But in case you are genuinely as confused as you sound:

Everyone would be obliged to maximise utility. Someone who experienced greater pain from an act of helping another than they reduced by the act of helping would be reducing overall utility by performing the act. Therefore they should not perform the act, because they are obliged (like everyone else) to maximise utility.

joefromchicago, as we have discussed at length before, I agree that there is a huge, and unreconcilable, contradiction between seeing no rational support for the idea of universal moral obligations, and the desire for such obligations to be felt.

You claim not to face this contradiction, because you say that ought statements can be derived from is statements (presumably, as point of fact, is-statements support your own ought-statements), and now seem to suggest that you want people to conform to morality for some reason other than because your conscience desires this.

However, though I've challenged you in numerous threads to explain how you derive your ought statements from is statements, you have thus far failed to provided any support for your position. Believe me, I want you to be right. I want you to be able to explain clearly just why Hume, and all the moral relativists are wrong.

We are dealing with the question 'why should one be obliged to maximise utility?'. I think a good way to explore this would be examine the question 'why should one be obliged to do good?' or rather 'where does moral obligation come from?'.

If you, joefromchicago, or anyone else, can show that there are unquestionable moral obligations on everyone that are not utilitarian, you will have successfully brought down utilitarianism as a moral theory, which is the point of this thread.

djbt wrote:

We are dealing with the question 'why should one be obliged to maximise utility?'. I think a good way to explore this would be examine the question 'why should one be obliged to do good?' or rather 'where does moral obligation come from?'.

More question-begging. The only reason why someone would be obliged to maximize utility would be if "utility" were equated with "good." And that would pre-suppose the existence of a utilitarian system of morality.

djbt wrote:

If you, joefromchicago, or anyone else, can show that there are unquestionable moral obligations on everyone that are not utilitarian, you will have successfully brought down utilitarianism as a moral theory, which is the point of this thread.

Why would I need to do that? After all, you claim to be a Humean skeptic when it comes to morality -- your position is already directly opposed to utilitarianism.

We've previously had discussions along these lines in the 'should ethics apply to other conscious animals' thread, where I was arguing along utilitarian lines, but explained that I thought my position was vulnerable to moral relativism to which you referred me to a moral relativism thread, your position in which I then challenged in one of the 'is there an objective morality?' type threads (the name escapes me), where you went on to argue that Kant's ethics were an example of a moral system that, to use the terminology we are using now, does not require an ought-premise (as it can be deduced), while I was arguing that it does.

As I remember, you concluded that, if I didn't believe in a universal morality defendable by reason (i.e. one that requires no ought-premise), then I didn't believe in morality at all and (if I remember correctly) must therefore be a sociopath, to which my reply then was, I think, the same as it is now - I want to believe, show me why you do.

Yes, we agree that such an argument would be question-begging. But, as a guideline perhaps for the kind of argument one could make for a certain obligation, I would be interested in discussing how one might define an obligation without question-begging.

Surely any statement like 'one is obliged to do x' is only defendable if either x is equated with good (question-begging), or by reference to another moral obligation, which would face the same problem.

Or do you have up your sleeve a moral obligation that escapes this pitfall?

Be a sport, after all, you are not a Humean skeptic. You seem to believe that there is no reason to accept that one has an obligation to maximise utility, but that there are reasons to accept other moral obligations. If you can't show why, then the sword we are using to cut down utilitarianism is cutting down every other moral system with it.

You should not attempt to rely upon your memory for these kinds of things: it is obviously faulty. I have never called you a "sociopath," nor would I, for that reason alone, call anyone who didn't believe in morality at all a "sociopath."

You'll be happy to know, djbt, that A2K has a really useful search feature, which can be accessed by clicking "search" at the top of the page. Had you used it, you would have found that I have used the word "sociopath" in only four posts, none of which were directed to you.

djbt wrote:

Well... where can we go from here? Apart from morality not existing making discussion of morality fairly pointless, do you have any other reasons for believing that morality exists, or at least working under the assumption that it does? (I had high hopes that you would convince me to abandon the position that moral law does not exist, but rather you seem to be confirming it)

I operate under the assumption that morality exists because I believe that most people operate under the same assumption. Indeed, people who genuinely believe that there is no such thing as right or wrong are commonly regarded as sociopaths.

For some unknown reason, you persistently cling to the notion that all moral theories are based on "ought" premises, despite repeatedly being told that that's simply not the case.

*EDIT: I should note that, in this post, I made the following statement: "people who genuinely believe that there is no such thing as right or wrong are commonly regarded as sociopaths." I will only add that in no way did I imply that you, djbt, genuinely believed that there is no such thing as right or wrong. From what I can gather, you may doubt the existence of morality, but you don't doubt the existence of right and wrong.

Elsewhere, I'm being repeatedly told that evolution is a conspiracy, and that the world is in fact only 6000 years old. I'm similarly obstinate there. There, as here, I'm holding out for some evidence to support the position.

You say that a moral system can be built upon statements of fact (is-statements) rather than statements of principle (ought-statements), or rather that statements of principle can be derived from statements of fact.

To me this seems as absurd as saying 2+2=5. I cannot see how any fact about how the world is can lead to a principle about how the world should be, or how any fact about what one does or is can lead to a statement of principle concerning what one should do or ought to be.

If you say that a statement of principle can be derived from a statement of fact, I do not think it is unreasonable to ask you to provide an example of this. If you feel this moves too far away from the topic of utilitarianism, I would be happy to discuss it in another thread.

What's the difference? Surely without morality there can be no right or wrong (in the moral sense of these words, which is, I assume, how you were using them)?

djbt wrote:

I cannot see how any fact about how the world is can lead to a principle about how the world should be, or how any fact about what one does or is can lead to a statement of principle concerning what one should do or ought to be.

Then why did you endorse utilitarianism? After all, it's built entirely on "is" statements. As John Stuart Mill said:

The only proof capable of being given that an object is visible, is that people actually see it. The only proof that a sound is audible, is that people hear it: and so of the other sources of our experience. In like manner, I apprehend, the sole evidence it is possible to produce that anything is desirable, is that people do actually desire it. If the end which the utilitarian doctrine proposes to itself were not, in theory and in practice, acknowledged to be an end, nothing could ever convince any person that it was so. No reason can be given why the general happiness is desirable, except that each person, so far as he believes it to be attainable, desires his own happiness. This, however, being a fact, we have not only all the proof which the case admits of, but all which it is possible to require, that happiness is a good: that each person's happiness is a good to that person, and the general happiness, therefore, a good to the aggregate of all persons. Happiness has made out its title as one of the ends of conduct, and consequently one of the criteria of morality.

Utilitarianism, chapter 4.

Put simply, utilitarianism stands for the proposition that "pleasure is desirable, therefore one should maximize pleasure." So the entire edifice of utilitarianism is built upon an "is" statement: "pleasure is desirable." Now, anyone who believes that an "ought" cannot be derived from an "is" will have no trouble saying that utilitarianism is constructed upon a false foundation. The puzzle, then, is not how someone can derive an "ought" from an "is," but rather how someone who claims that an "ought" cannot be derived from an "is" can nevertheless claim to be a utilitarian.

I've been trying to follow this debate but have not found it easy.

Gellner thought that Mill assumes the goodwill of his readers.Does his utilitarianism still stand if that goodwill is not present or if ill-will is present.

As long as it's a free choice. But when the hedonist is compelled to maximize the pleasure of others, I'm not so sure that we can state that the hedonist feels no pain (or, more accurately, displeasure).

Well, then we're back to an empirical question: are there more happy hedonists out there than there are people who experience abnormal displeasure when forced to help others?

Thomas wrote:

Why should I have a problem? After all, I am not a missionary who wants people to be utilitarians.

Why not? If you are indeed a utilitarian, then you believe that utilitarianism is the only correct moral theory. As such, the only way for someone to be "good" is to adhere to utilitarian ethics. Are you suggesting that there are other, equally valid moral theories that you would be willing to endorse?

You cannot, therefore, be a utilitarian and still be content with a society composed of happy self-maximizers, for such a society would not be acting in a moral fashion.

I believe we have discussed, earlier in this thread, the hidden ought here. It is 'one ought to be concerned about those other than oneself'.

Once that statement of principle is accepted (assumed), one can use the statements of fact ; all things desire happiness (note happiness not just pleasure - increase in happiness = increase in pleasure and/or decrease in pain) > happiness is desirable > happiness should be maximised.

But this all rests, as you illustrated well with your hedonist example, on the assumption that one ought to be concerned about those other that oneself.

Now, in theory I can see no argument I can use to convince someone that they ought to be concerned about those other than themselves - hence Humean skepticism. In practice it happens that I am concerned about those other than myself - hence being a utilitarian.

I guess I am suggesting that there are other moral theories that are almost as good as utilitarianism -- close enough that I don't have much of a beef with them.

Only if I take the maximizing thing very literally -- and as I said earlier, I'm not quite comfortable with this. I have no problem saying that if there are two alternatives, the one that makes people happier than the other is the better. But the notion that there are only utility-maximizing societies and wicked societies, and nothing in between, fills me with abnormal displeasure. I am a utilitarian -- but I am not a fanatic, and on top of that I'm lazy. If I saw a society of happy hedonists, I might well conclude that upgrading the hedonists to make them utilitarians is more trouble than it's worth.

Thomas wrote:

I guess I am suggesting that there are other moral theories that are almost as good as utilitarianism -- close enough that I don't have much of a beef with them.

If there are other moral theories that are "good enough," then there is no reason to prefer utilitarianism to them.

Then you are not a utilitarian. At best, you are a "what-the-hell-itarian."

Thomas, speaking as one happy hedonist to another, I have to say that I miss Paul Krugman--who is the new guy?