Utilitarianism

The system is intended to help one decide how to act. If you insist on apportioning blame...

So, my answer to your hypothetical would depend on these factors:
(a) Would being shot be a more or less painful way to die?
(b) Would the fact that B had been shot upset B's family more than if he'd just been killed?
(c) Is the waste of a bullet or two a bad thing?

In short, the more blameworthy act would be the one with the worst consequences, presuming A would be able to anticipate these consequences.

Note that (2) says: 'It is good for people to feel pleasure', not 'It is good for a person that they feel pleasure'. That someone's else pleasure is as important as one's own is part of the premise.

Of course, a hedonist would disagree with this. A sadist probably would, too. It seems to me impossible to conceive of a moral system that doesn't have premisses that someone would disagree with, if 'oughts' cannot be derived from 'is's.

Do you disagree with the premises? If so, why? Because you don't think that it is bad for people to suffer pain, or because you don't think pain is the only evil?

Joe, I'll answer to the rest of your post later, but wanted to get this first point out of the way immediately. Did you notice that "I am trying to argue that... " was explicitly not an assumption? If I simply assumed that some point is true, I wouldn't bother arguing that it is; and I would neither worry about the argument getting circular, nor look for an independent measure of morality to test utilitarianism against. Throughout the whole paragraph which you said was begging the question, I was trying to argue that a utility-maximizing doctor happens to act in an ethical way, without assuming that he does (which would have made the reasoning circular). Please re-read that paragraph a little bit slower than you read it the first time, which I think should make my intentions fairly clear.

Then let me rephrase my question as follows. Suppose the doctor does not wait for instructions from us and slaughters the healthy man to save the sick. In your opinion, a) would the doctor maximize utility throughout society, b) would he be acting immoral, and c) which connections exist between a and b, if any?

Society as a whole consists of two parts: This individual hedonist and everybody else. To the utilitarian, the maximand is the pleasure throughout society as a whole, so the hedonist's displeasure from helping others counts as a negative in the utilitarian calculus.

Less technically put, his displeasure is a reason for not obliging him to help others.

The reason becomes decicive when the total pleasure he can bring the rest of society comes at a higher cost in displeasure to him. (Because at this point it would begin to decrease the pleasure aggregated over society as a whole.) Which part of that argument do you think conflicts with traditional utilitarianism?

If the hedonist says this in order to state his philosophical position, he is only making clear that he is not a utilitarian (and that I am not a hedonist). If he is saying this to state his preferences, and the specific context for your discussion is that someone is drowning out there and he won't throw a rope, I advise you to do this: Pull out a hair of his and tell him you'll pull out the next in 15 seconds unless he throws that rope to this drowning person now. We'll see what he prefers...

-- and as a utilitarian I believe you would be acting ethically, as long as the pain you cause the hedonist from having a hair pulled outweighs the pain to the other person from drowning. (That's assuming, for this particular point, that neither of your and his actions has consequences for the rest of the world beyond the drowning guy.)

I fill this gap by assuming that society is only a ficticious person, a semantic shorthand for "every human in the world". It has no pleasure for us to consider in its own right, except as a semantic shorthand for "the pleasure of each of the six billion humans in the world, as judged by his own preferences, added up." There are people who disagree with this assumption, but this is a disagreement about what the word "society" means. It is a disagreement about hermeneutics, not ethics.

But utilitarians don't make this premise, except in the limit where maximizing ones own pleasure has no (harmful) effects on others, where it's simply a special case of the utlitarian calculus.

Why should it trouble me that the conclusion does not follow from a premise I did not make?

Wait a minute! Are you saying that hedonists get a "free pass" in a utilitarian society? That they don't have to be utility-maximizers if they get a lot of displeasure out of it?

It also assumes that I have a right to pull out the hedonist's hairs. But that leads us into an entirely different philosophical area.

As to "not saving someone's life", I think that it is morally wrong to not save someone's life when you can, but as to sacrificing an innocent person's life to save people's life, I'd say it is immoral.

djbt wrote:

So, my answer to your hypothetical would depend on these factors:
(a) Would being shot be a more or less painful way to die?
(b) Would the fact that B had been shot upset B's family more than if he'd just been killed?
(c) Is the waste of a bullet or two a bad thing?

In short, the more blameworthy act would be the one with the worst consequences, presuming A would be able to anticipate these consequences.

You previously wrote: "To not save someone is to act in a way that results in that person's death. To kill someone is to act in a way that results in that person's death. So killing and not saving are morally equivalent action." If killing and not saving are morally equivalent, then your factors are useless: A is equally culpable regardless of what he does.

Now, if you want to argue that the factors you've identified establish that A was more blameworthy for murdering B than for watching him die, then you'll have to explain your previous remark regarding the moral equivalency of the two.

djbt wrote:

Note that (2) says: 'It is good for people to feel pleasure', not 'It is good for a person that they feel pleasure'. That someone's else pleasure is as important as one's own is part of the premise.

Why should anyone accept that premise?

djbt wrote:

Do you disagree with the premises? If so, why? Because you don't think that it is bad for people to suffer pain, or because you don't think pain is the only evil?

Because I can't see how you go from saying that pleasure is good to concluding that one should act to maximize someone else's pleasure.

djbt has explicitly stated this for his version of utilitarianism already. He said "all things that experience have the same claim to happiness". For admittedly non-utilitarian reasons, I am not as sure as he is about animals.

Thomas wrote:

djbt has explicitly stated this for his version of utilitarianism already. He said "all things that experience have the same claim to happiness". For admittedly non-utilitarian reasons, I am not as sure as he is about animals.

What are these non-utilitarian reasons?

djbt wrote:

Note that (2) says: 'It is good for people to feel pleasure', not 'It is good for a person that they feel pleasure'. That someone's else pleasure is as important as one's own is part of the premise.

Why should anyone accept that premise?

djbt wrote:

Thomas wrote:

djbt has explicitly stated this for his version of utilitarianism already. He said "all things that experience have the same claim to happiness". For admittedly non-utilitarian reasons, I am not as sure as he is about animals.

What are these non-utilitarian reasons?

Homo-sapiens-centrism, chauvinism, and prejudices I guess. Nothing an armchair ethicist could be proud of. I just don't happen to think that animals have ethical claims on my behavior equal to those my fellow humans have. And eating a hamburger just does not happen to trouble my conscience much. It's more an observation about myself than something I could defend on principle.

I just don't happen to think that animals have ethical claims on my behavior equal to those my fellow humans have.

I just don't happen to think that women have ethical claims on my behavior equal to those my fellow men have.

I just don't happen to think that blacks have ethical claims on my behavior equal to those my fellow whites have.

But really, do you have any reason at all for thinking that the opinion:

[opinions snipped, Thomas]

...is any more justified than saying;

Quote:

I just don't happen to think that women have ethical claims on my behavior equal to those my fellow men have.

or;

Quote:

I just don't happen to think that blacks have ethical claims on my behavior equal to those my fellow whites have.

?

Joe: Let me address your last point first. I agree you have spotted an implicit assumption I have made, and that I have to append my premise accordingly. djbt has explicitly stated this for his version of utilitarianism already. He said "all things that experience have the same claim to happiness". For admittedly non-utilitarian reasons, I am not as sure as he is about animals. But at least as far as humans are concerned I would agree with him and thus rephrase my premis as "pleasure is good, no matter who feels it". (Note that a hedonist would not say that) Or, more quantitatively put: "Other things equal, when two people feel a unit of pleasure each, that is as good as if one person feels two units, and twice as good as when one person feels one unit and the other feels none. I'm sure one could state it more rigorously, but this should be good enough to distinguish between utilitarians and hedonists. I think it is also good enough to justify the conclusion that pleasure ought to be maximized throughout society.

No, I am saying that they ought to be maximizers of pleasure as defined by the utilitarian calculus -- and that the utilitarian calculus counts as a negative any displeasure they may experience as a side effect of their increasing other people's pleasure.

I disagree. At least on the level of first principles, the utilitarian calculus doesn't know the first thing about rights and duties, so has no basis for making assumptions about them. As it may turn out, defining and defending rights tends to make people happy, so utilitarians believe it ought to be done. But on the fundamental level, total ignorance of rights and duties.

I don't want to establish this, I think the factors I put forward could swing it either way. The point I was trying to make about moral equivalency was that the known consequences of killing and not saving are equal - someone dies. So (and I should have added this earlier, apologies) other things being equal the acts are morally equivalent. Of course, one murder could be worse than another, one not-saving worse than another not-saving, etc.

joefromchicago wrote:

Why should anyone accept that premise?

I've no idea. I accept that premise because acting upon it seems to me to be the most likely way to achieve benevolent aims. But why ought one be benevolent? I don't know. That's the same as asking why ought one be good. Every moral system, surely, must have ought premises, and I can't see how anyone who disagreed with these could be convinced to accept them either. We're stumbling back towards moral relativism now...

I would say that 'one should act to maximise happiness for all' is not a conclusion, but a premise. If you dislike it as a premise, please explain why. (I see Thomas call it a conclusion, but then his assumption that two units of pleasure are better than one unit of pleasure, regardless of who feels them, is really exactly the same premise).

Another thought regarding why I accept this premise.

As a general guideline for deciding which moral system I support, I consider what moral system I would wish everyone to conform to if;

(a) I where to experience the lives of all things.

(b) Something devilishly malicious, which happened to detest me, got to choose the one thing I would get to live as.

Then you are, it would seem, a moral relativist, and as much as I'd like to, I have no argument to use against you. I think joefromchigago might, though...

djbt wrote:

I don't want to establish this, I think the factors I put forward could swing it either way. The point I was trying to make about moral equivalency was that the known consequences of killing and not saving are equal - someone dies. So (and I should have added this earlier, apologies) other things being equal the acts are morally equivalent. Of course, one murder could be worse than another, one not-saving worse than another not-saving, etc.

You are totally confused. On the one hand, you say that killing and not-saving are morally equivalent. On the other hand, you say that "one murder could be worse than another." Your "all things being equal" qualifier is useless here -- in effect, you're saying that killing and not-saving are morally equivalent unless they aren't. That's an exception that swallows the rule.

djbt wrote:

joefromchicago wrote:

Why should anyone accept that premise?

I've no idea. I accept that premise because acting upon it seems to me to be the most likely way to achieve benevolent aims. But why ought one be benevolent? I don't know. That's the same as asking why ought one be good. Every moral system, surely, must have ought premises, and I can't see how anyone who disagreed with these could be convinced to accept them either. We're stumbling back towards moral relativism now...

No, a moral system should not have any "ought premises." That would be question-begging. Any "ought" should be a conclusion, not a premise.

Thomas wrote:

No, I am saying that they ought to be maximizers of pleasure as defined by the utilitarian calculus -- and that the utilitarian calculus counts as a negative any displeasure they may experience as a side effect of their increasing other people's pleasure.

No doubt, but that doesn't address my question. 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?

djbt wrote:

Another thought regarding why I accept this premise.

As a general guideline for deciding which moral system I support, I consider what moral system I would wish everyone to conform to if;

(a) I where to experience the lives of all things.

That's watered down Kantianism.

djbt wrote:

(b) Something devilishly malicious, which happened to detest me, got to choose the one thing I would get to live as.

And so is that.

djbt wrote:

Then you are, it would seem, a moral relativist, and as much as I'd like to, I have no argument to use against you. I think joefromchigago might, though...

I don't see how that follows. My eyes, ears, nose and sense of taste may very well tell me something very different than what yours tell you. To take just the most obvious example, I am shortsighted and you may not be. Does my acknowledging this mean that I'm an epistemological relativist, and that we have no way of knowing anything about reality?

So, are you saying there is an objective morality that is discoverable by one's conscience,

If the former, how will we know which of our consciences isn't working properly?

Let's take my previous example: a person's many enemies would experience great pleasure in seeing that person commit suicide. Certainly, under your calculus, the pleasure of the many outweigh the pleasure of the one. So is the individual morally obliged to commit suicide in order to maximize society's pleasure?

No doubt, but that doesn't address my question. 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?