How can anyone be a Utilitarian?

[Drogue]

Originally posted by Azazel
you find "happiness" ambigous but you think that "welfare" is a clear-cut definition?

No, but I think it is less ambiguous, as happiness leads to people believing that killing people to make others happy is a Utilitarian thing to do, whereas using welfare prevents this in my experience.

Instead of 'pleasure' and 'happiness' the word 'welfare' is also apt: the value of the consequences of an action is determined solely by the welfare of individuals.

Originally posted by Azazel
define welfare, then

Benefit to society and the individual, if you want a definition.

[Az]

No, but I think it is less ambiguous, as happiness leads to people believing that killing people to make others happy is a Utilitarian thing to do, whereas using welfare prevents this in my experience.

If all of the consequences of the act make people more happy than more sad, it is the Utilitarian thing to do. Welfare, esp. as you define it, "benefit", is completely incorrect, and does not follow the principle of Utilitarianism. Something that will benefit a human being will many times not make a person happier. If lollypops were banned, it would benefit humans. But would it make them happier? no.

[Zero]

gladiator games are then utilitarian?

[tinyp3nis]

aww crap

[Az]

Originally posted by Zero
gladiator games are then utilitarian?

1st things first: most gladiators weren't killed. They were wounded in different degrees. Getting your gladiators killed would be stupid, since training them costed lots of money, so they generally didn't die, unless these were some special occassions.

Now considering the ethical value of gladiatorial combat: Things to weigh into consideration:

Negative Utility:
-Gladiators' injuries.
-The fact that they weren't free men.
-The violent to which the society was open, which creates many negative effects, that are bound to lower Utility.

Positive Utility:
-The enjoyment of the game by the people, for a short period of time.
- The fact that most Gladiators volunteered, since the life of a gladiator was preferred BY FAR to the life of a slave, and even opened the road for freedom.

I'd place it's utility, as a part of the Roman system as positive, but overall, negative, in other words, it bettered the Emperial Roman system, but I wouldn't have it today.

[Giant_Squid]

Gladiator games again create the problem that it transforms society from a basically free and decent place to one where you can be snatched up and used as lion bait any time someone else wants, a possibility which hurts far more than the original gladiators (especially since in Rome their way around this problem was a slave system, which is DEFINITELY a utilitarian no-no) Besides, if you're a violent cretin who takes pleasure in watching the bloody pain of others, you can just flip to a boxing match

[Az]

GS: Since we're describing the Roman system, INSIDE that system, this was indeed utilitarian, but generally, it is not. The people would still be slaves in the Roman system, yet they would be treated much more cruelly. Slaves WANTED to be gladiators.

[Velociryx]

I like this theory!

Paying my house off will make me happy.

If I kill the richest person I know, I can increase my happiness (and it's much easier than working for the money).

+ to happiness, instant gratification....sign me up! (oh, and since the person I kill will definitely have a - to happiness, I'll split the money with someone....++ to happiness. Works!

[Az]

indeed.

[Giant_Squid]

I HOPE that was a troll, but the reasons why that would decrease happiness are:

1. Even if you and your friend did pay off your houses, it still wouldn't add up to the amount of pain you've caused our hypothetical rich person and his family and friends.

2. You would go to jail, which would cause a lot of suffering on your part and make that nice house of yours pretty useless. Yes, a utilitarian society WOULD still have laws! Why? Because laws maximize utility. Everyone in a society where murder is illegal is going to be happier than the people in a society where murder is legal, with the possible exception of criminal psychopaths, who in most states are not a majority of the population.

J.S. Mill says that utilitarianism, far from opposing individual rights such as the right to life, is in fact the only legitimate BASIS for such rights. It makes sense. If we live in a society where people can't go around killing each other, everyone will be happier. If we live in a society where we can't go stealing from one another, everyone will be happier. This way makes a lot more sense than saying that there's some cosmic anti-murder law that just exists "out there" and that our reasons for not murdering are that we don't want to break this rule rather than that we don't want to cause pain to the people we're murdering and to their families.

[Az]

"murder is illegal" is wrong.

[Velociryx]

So...if I didnt' get caught, and nobody liked him anyway, happiness would increase!

Uh huh.

-=Vel=-

[Az]

Originally posted by Velociryx
So...if I didnt' get caught, and nobody liked him anyway, happiness would increase!

Uh huh.

-=Vel=-

[tinyp3nis]

So...if I didnt' get caught, and nobody liked him anyway, happiness would increase!

It would increase? It would if everyone _hated_ him. I don't like lots of people but only hate few. And if everyone hated him... well don't you allready have the chair for those people in America, why not make some money on the side?

[Velociryx]

Sure it would increase. It would increase a lot more if EVERYONE hated him, but if he had no friends, and everybody who knew him was ambivalent about it, then it'd increase on the basis of my happiness increase--well, and for the person I split the money with. (for everybody who was neutral, it'd be a "push")

-=Vel=-

[Stefu]

Ian Montgomerie's Utilitarian Faq probably covers the most objections.

[tinyp3nis]

Originally posted by Velociryx
Sure it would increase. It would increase a lot more if EVERYONE hated him, but if he had no friends, and everybody who knew him was ambivalent about it, then it'd increase on the basis of my happiness increase--well, and for the person I split the money with. (for everybody who was neutral, it'd be a "push")

-=Vel=-

Only if you could live happily knowing you killed him.

[Az]

Originally posted by Velociryx
Sure it would increase. It would increase a lot more if EVERYONE hated him, but if he had no friends, and everybody who knew him was ambivalent about it, then it'd increase on the basis of my happiness increase--well, and for the person I split the money with. (for everybody who was neutral, it'd be a "push")

-=Vel=-

You're forgetting the dying person.

[Drogue]

Exactly, if that dying person hated themselves, along with everyone else, it could well be good. For instance, assisted suicide could be argued as being Utilitarian.

[Az]

But not just killing him. concent would have to be aquired, since otherwise, a court couldn't determine if the person's wishes were accepted.

Now one of my doubts, as a utilitarian, is abortion rights.

[Velociryx]

I'm not forgetting the dying person. I counted his - in happiness, but it was offset by my +, and by the + of the person I split the money with.

-=Vel=-

[Whaleboy]

*says to self* "Don't start Ben, don't start"

I believe that Utility has a point and a value, but then as it concerns the "pleasure" or the "good" of one person, multiplied by the number of persons in society, minus one (the person that suffers, or number of people), then it also has a limit.

I believe, as a relativist and a libertarian, that this point is the Mill Limit. This says that one can do anything but inhibit the rights of another to do the same. I also don't see that utilitarianism is the best model for a society (despite the name "Mill Limit "

Who is society to determine that though the act of making one suffer (or in this case, breach the Mill Limit, I'll ignore the obvious slippery slope implications too), in order to increase the happiness of millions? Fundamentally, it comes down to one subjective forcing its will onto an equally valid subjective, and as the relativist argument goes, that is unsatisfactory.

Drogue is familiar with my argument about psuedo-objectivity, and thus I wont waste words repeating what he will refute, also my argument is not dependant on that, but in the lack of some means of judging between the two subjectives, the utilitarian society and the one who would suffer, the act of forcing one equally valid subjective onto anothers "molehill" (figuratively speaking), would require a degree of absolutist thought among the utilitarianists, which as has been generally established, but I would be happy to do so upon request, as being a fundamentally flawed argument.

Wow, linking total utilitarianism with the existence of god . I'm on a roll tonight

[Drogue]

Vel: It also depends how big the +s and -s are, nut just the number. Dying is a big -, whereas money is a much smaller +, in most cases. It may take millions of small +s to make one big -, if you do it like that.

[Proteus_MST]

What about this?

You are a time-traveller from the future and you meet one man (lets call him Jim) whose Great-grandchild will one day commit a crime where 1000 innocent people die.
You meet him before he encountered the woman with whom he had his children (an event which eventually led to the birth of his Great-Grandchild who commited the crime).
You know that by killing Jim the timeline wouldn´t be altered very much (at least till the time where you come from) but the crime would be prevented.
You also don´t have the chance to travel to any time later with the intention kill Jims Son, or grandchildren or the Great-Grandchildren himself, so your only chance to prevent the crime would be to kill Jim.
So would you, as an utiliarian, kill Jim, despite he is absolutely innocent and is liked by many people of his time?

[Velociryx]

Drogue: So who can say what the value of a human life is? That seems to be a rather difficult thing to nail down, yes?

Further, it has already been put forth that it's "okay" in terms of aggregate happiness to sacrifice one man for a thousand (or more), but as we cannot peer into the future, would it still be okay if the man killed would have gone on to find and develop cures for the top ten diseases plaguing the world?

Utilitiarianism is a hollow shell. We humans only just barely understand the world around us, and this strikes me as a clumsy attempt at value assignment to justify whatever acts or actions one desires.

Until we can see into the future, we have no real means of judging the value of human life. At best, we can wildly speculate.

-=Vel=-

[Drogue]

Ok, this would have the great answer of "it depends". You would have to know all the consequences to be able to decide properly, and weigh up pros against cons. Moreover, Time Travel is impossible, and even if it were possible, why could you travel tom one time and not another, slightly closer to home?

However, if it is a case of 1 innocent death vs 1000 innocent deaths, and by doing nothing the 1000 die, as I think you are trying to imply, then yes, I would choose the 1 death. If the consequences of killing him are better than the consequences of not killing him then it is a partly Utlitarian action. If the consequences of killing him are the best possible, then it is what a Utilitarian would do. However you ahve to make allowances for the fact that different people want different things, therefore not all Utilitarians want the same thing, since some believe more happiness is got from a different set of consequences.

[Whaleboy]

With time travel, the grandfather paradox is a four dimensional attempted solution that went horribly wrong, to a five dimensional problem, which is what happens when you mess about with time, you have to add another temporal constant, that being the fifth dimension. In that sense, the problem looks rather like the sum over histories, with the change in time branching off into a "parallel universe" of sorts, which the original now appearing curved to the news straight, and the original can carry on in the absense of the traveller.

Drogue, you are arguing beyond the Mill Limit, and thus for an absolute utilitarian system. However, that is an absolutist system, as subjective as those it would kill, and has no logically validity in doing so, as the logic used to back up its own desire to kill is as subjective as itself, and does not transfer across to the person who would be killed. Again, that falls down to the issue of "one can, thus one shall", and I dont believe that should be the case for any society. The barrier, the point where relativism should kick in over ones own utilitarian desires (and no-one is arguing against those desires, only whether they should be implimented in a util. society), I would argue would be the Mill Limit, although any other point of limit to societies powers would of course be applicable.

[Drogue]

Vel: The value of a human life is a human life, IMHO.

would it still be okay if the man killed would have gone on to find and develop cures for the top ten diseases plaguing the world?

No. Utilitarianism involves us knowing all the consequences. Thus we would know the benefit of that discovery. If that benefit is worth more than the benefit of those thousand lives, then it is a 'good' thing. What constitutes the greatest benefit or the most happiness is up to the person, everyone wants different consequences. Therefore different Utilitarians want different things.

We humans only just barely understand the world around us, and this strikes me as a clumsy attempt at value assignment to justify whatever acts or actions one desires.

Until we can see into the future, we have no real means of judging the value of human life. At best, we can wildly speculate

Exactly, which is why we cannot know what the Utilitarian action, the 'best' action, is. We must make judgements on the available information though, and we have to make judgements. I believe that a desire for the maximum happiness/welfare/utility is the best way to guide each action and it's consequences, making allowance for the fact that we do not know all the consequences. We can speculate the best cause with Utilitarianism, but without it we cannot even do that and we must leave it all up to chance. If we have to choose, we should do it aiming for what creates the most happiness/welfare/utility according to all information we have IMHO. That is if we have to choose. Thus if you hav to choose between 1000 people dying, and 1 person dying, all chosen at random, we should choose the 1 person. Yes a human life is invaluble, but would any person say that their life is worth more than the lives of 1000 other people? I doubt you would find many. Therefore, forced to choose, I would choose the one.

[Drogue]

Originally posted by elijah
Drogue, you are arguing beyond the Mill Limit, and thus for an absolute utilitarian system.

Not everything beyong the Mill Limit involves absolutism. Indeed, in imposing the Mill Limit on a nation regardless of democracy could be seen as absolutist. You are imposing that set of values on that society. Indeed, in giving certain rights, as they are below the Mill Limit, you are imposing it on peeople who may be indirectly affected, who want things such as harassment laws.

I am not saying what is best for everyone, I am saying the framework I use for deciding what is best. I am assuming that different people want different things, which they do. Therefore just because I am a Utilitarian, does not mean I am for or against any particular action. It just means I want to maximise total happiness/utility.

[Whaleboy]

No. Utilitarianism involves us knowing all the consequences

Thankyou for destroying the point about utilitarianism being inapplicable to a society to a complete degree jk