defend the indefensible: utilitarianism

anyway i'm surprised to see this was recently bumped (i missed it in SNA, being tied up elsewhere)

i searched it up tonight because i saw on facebook a video of a man with down's syndrome presenting an argument against abortion at a congressional hearing. he was testifying about his personal quality of life (good, apparently) and also talking about how upset it made him feel when he imagined being aborted. it was really something.

anyway a lot of the argument on both sides of the discussion in the comment section was utilitarian in nature ... and yes it got around to the trolley problem ... and then i remembered this teacher dude and his bit about democracy ... so i came here etc etc

what do you guys think of that teacher guy's proposition that utilitarianism is essential to a properly functioning democracy?

he was a difficult colleague

quite a showboat

Utilitarianism relies on arguing from what is supposed to be an indisputably simple and uncontroversial premise, and walking us down the garden path to various conclusions about moral rules, and alleges that even if we find some of the conclusions violate our moral sensibilities we are stuck with them because we agreed to the premise, but like, if the conclusions violate an agent’s moral sensibilities, they have no particular reason not to reject the utilitarian premise as a result.

You can xref the Roko’s basilisk people for what happens when you decide an argument from first principles can’t possibly give you a reason to reject or modify your principles.

maybe i should just read the thread but i found it really difficult going last time (over my head)

personally as a practitioner, i think it should be okay for both types of trolley operators to exist, but that they should reflect on their core values and clearly state to their stakeholders (passengers) their professional orientation on the matter, while also gathering information on the stakeholder's position and providing working channels for feedback. then i guess you let the riders decide which trolley they prefer.

i have not heard of this basilisk, will investigate

thx

If “utilitarianism is essential to a properly functioning democracy” then that would sort of imply that a “properly functioning democracy” is a good in itself and utilitarianism good in a merely instrumental way to achieve the properly functioning democracy, which is not what a moral theory is supposed to be, so I find that kind of hilarious.

Representative democracy is just, like, a means of investing sovereign authority. The sovereign might make utilitarian decisions or it might not; surely a state that maximized global utility would be a totalitarian one.

totally over my head i'm afraid

back up a bit ... what's a moral theory supposed to be, anyway?

Well so I shall crib liberally and perhaps without direct citation from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. By morality in this discussion I don’t mean “a given set of rules for conduct put forward by an actual community in the actual world” but “a code of conduct that, given specified conditions, would be put forward by all rational persons”. (SEP, “Morality.) So a moral theory should give us an argument that a given code of conduct is a moral code in this second sense, by demonstrating that all rational persons would agree to it.

So the various utilitarianisms are normative theories that argue acts are deemed good only by their consequences. The one I mostly keep yelling about is “preference utilitarianism”, where good acts are those which (more or less) are those most preferred by all persons due moral consideration.

Leaving aside the questions of whether a normative morality can exist, or whether any moral theory could discover it if it could, I think my particular straw man of utilitarianism aggravates me in part because some of its proponents aren’t just doing philosophy, they actually want to get people to act in the ways their theory suggests is the right way to act. And this is going to sound absurd but I think moralizing is not really the proper domain of moral philosophy! Peter Singer or your ex-colleague or whomstever addressing the lay populace with a morality that they argue is straightforwardly logically necessary to accept is kind of sophistic boondoggle, trying to take the basically abstract and academic question of what a normative morality would be if we could derive one from first principles and try to use their answer to answer the question most people have about their behavior which is “how should I live and what should I do” which I think is largely orthogonal.

i felt he bullied his students but that's a whole other story

NB I’m a dilettante who hasn’t read nearly enough books to really justify yelling about all this but that’s my take right now.

can i just

our school was an alternative progressive school but unfortunately it was situated in a part of the county where suburbs blend into semi-rural land. a lot of kids of wingnut conservative people (owners of large semi-rural estates) in this area ended up sending their kids to our school because their parents were trying to segregate them from the general population in the district (the area has a lot of hispanic agricultural workers and many of them don't know how to access the charter school system)

long story short he got into a debate w/ a young 15 year old republican about veganism. the 15 year old argued that he should respect her cultural beliefs, so he proposed a thought experiment in which he cooked and ate her horse (she owned a pony or something). in front of the class. which made her cry.

so tbf there was a high chance he wouldn't have been asked back for a 5th year anyway

jesus christ

afterward he was all "what if i told you i loved the cows you eat at in n out as much as you love your pony"

he did get reprimanded for that one

sorry for derail

i didn't witness this personally, but i heard all about it from the administrator (a friend of mine friend, totally righteous guy) who reprimanded him ... who, believe it or not, is also a tattooed vegan straightedge punk and part time bouncer at hardcore shows ... they had known each other from the scene which is how the first guy got hired

Utilitarianism relies on arguing from what is supposed to be an indisputably simple and uncontroversial premise, and walking us down the garden path to various conclusions about moral rules, and alleges that even if we find some of the conclusions violate our moral sensibilities we are stuck with them because we agreed to the premise, but like, if the conclusions violate an agent’s moral sensibilities, they have no particular reason not to reject the utilitarian premise as a result.

I'd put it a little differently. Utilitarians tend to say that the counter-intuitive results of applying utilitarianism in certain cases can be explained in ways that are consistent with the theory, and that these explanations are preferable, because they're plausible and they make for a simpler overall picture of how things work. This is suppose to give you a reason not to reject the utilitarian premise.

I think moralizing is not really the proper domain of moral philosophy! Peter Singer or your ex-colleague or whomstever addressing the lay populace with a morality that they argue is straightforwardly logically necessary to accept is kind of sophistic boondoggle, trying to take the basically abstract and academic question of what a normative morality would be if we could derive one from first principles and try to use their answer to answer the question most people have about their behavior which is “how should I live and what should I do” which I think is largely orthogonal.

That's funny--I usually hear the opposite sort of criticism, that moral philosophers are too obsessed with technical minutiae and should get back to practical theories of how to live. You really can't please everyone. (Utilitarians find this especially disappointing.)

sorry for derail

― the late great, Sunday, August 12, 2018 1:38 AM (thirty-six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

You should have just hit the bum on the tracks.

omfg

in a lot of his most popular writings singer doesn't do much theorizing, which is why his practical conclusions are so aggravating.

tlg, if you think of 'morality' as a set or system of mainly other-regarding (as opposed to self-regarding) prohibitions and recommendations for behavior (prohibitions to keep people from causing unjustified harm to others, recommendations to encourage them to improve conditions or alleviate harms), one that people generally do observe and seem to have some convergent beliefs about the rough content of, then you could think of moral theories as ways to justify those prohibitions and recommendations, often with the aim of hammering out inconsistencies or gaps in the de facto system (say, in order to help us be more morally perfect), or of idealizing from it with the aim of critique (say, of some instance of a needlessly enforced prohibition, like one against consensual sexual behavior that doesn't harm anyone).

long story short he got into a debate w/ a young 15 year old republican about veganism. the 15 year old argued that he should respect her cultural beliefs, so he proposed a thought experiment in which he cooked and ate her horse (she owned a pony or something). in front of the class. which made her cry.

― the late great, Sunday, August 12, 2018 1:33 AM (six hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is the kind of stuff i would argue as a new vegan at age like 19 with peers, but cant imagine doing as a grownup towards a student bc theres a time and place for thought experiments about eating ponies and its on message boards.

i think one of my problems isnt with utilitarianism per se, it's with self-identified utilitarians who'd use it as a flimsy pretext to do something immoral bc it's less immoral than some other option and then they frame the dilemma as if those are the only two choices.

which maybe is the problem with utilitarianism in general? the premise that "there are a limited set of options and they all require some harm to be done, so pick which does the least" kind of unnecessarily limits the imagination.

i didn't witness this personally, but i heard all about it from the administrator (a friend of mine friend, totally righteous guy) who reprimanded him ... who, believe it or not, is also a tattooed vegan straightedge punk and part time bouncer at hardcore shows ... they had known each other from the scene which is how the first guy got hired

― the late great, Sunday, August 12, 2018 1:44 AM (six hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

off topic but also...i will never understand schools in progressive-leaning parts of the country. bc how is this

what do you guys think of that teacher guy's proposition that utilitarianism is essential to a properly functioning democracy?

― the late great, Sunday, August 12, 2018 12:33 AM (seven hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

If “utilitarianism is essential to a properly functioning democracy” then that would sort of imply that a “properly functioning democracy” is a good in itself and utilitarianism good in a merely instrumental way to achieve the properly functioning democracy, which is not what a moral theory is supposed to be, so I find that kind of hilarious.

― faculty w1fe (silby), Sunday, August 12, 2018 12:39 AM (seven hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

right. if this was a lincoln-douglas style debate, it's as if democracy is the value and utilitarianism the criterion. which gets to my point about utilitarianism needlessly narrowing your moral choices.

to vegan punk showboat #1's point, utilitarianism is i guess useful insofar as explaining why we should vote. your choices are: a democrat, a republican, a slew of minor party candidates, and not voting. they all have potentially morally perilous consequences. if a majority of ppl don't vote, it isn't as if the seat is vacant and people get to see if their lives are better off without that office. so the state will grant authority to whomever gets more votes anyway and they will have some net effect on society, so choose the one who can do the most good for society (or does the least harm).

(and then you get into the problems of winner-take-all voting systems and how that tends towards a partisan duopoly and you should favor the least harmful of the two major parties bc voting for 3rd parties is scarcely better than not voting at all in terms of material impacts, etc)

The basilisk thing (from upthread) was new to me.

But it seems like a sexier update of what was taught to me in the 80s as "The Pleasure Monster."

IIRC, imagine a sadist/psychopath who really loves torturing, killing, and raping babies. Gets unbelievably stratospheric levels of happiness from the thought of raping a dead baby. But here's the thing. He's also incredibly deluded. He lives on an otherwise uninhabited island (sometimes a barren planet), and there aren't any actual babies there. So he's getting massive amounts of pleasure, and no one is actually being harmed.

Like a lot of thought experiments, it's ridic. You're meant to find the impulses repugnant, and deeply disapprove of the moral judgments being made by the PM. But because you can't identify the harm, you have to either reject hard consequentialism, or say no harm no foul.

At this late remove from my training in ethics, all I can really say is that it's a good thing most of us are not trolley drivers.

m bison's thing ("less immoral than some other option") reminds me of another one of the canonical objections to consequentialism: insignificance of agency. If an act is going to take place whether or not I do it, then I do no further harm by doing it myself, blah blah blah.

(Yeah I know objections to consequentialism are but one part of objections to utilitarianism, but I'm taking baby steps here.)

what are we being asked to do with this guy exactly

Judge him. it's silly, I know, but so is a trolley where there's always and only exactly two horrible options.

what kind of cretin needs a moral theory to tell them not to run over a bum

wait i said that wrong, what kind of cretin needs a moral theory to tell them to run over a bum

i hate it when i say the opposite of what i mean

although to be honest my takeaway from roko's basilisk is more "peter thiel is bad and wrong and everything he is involved with is also bad and wrong"

It's not about the bum specifically, rusho; it's about figuring out the most long-winded way to say "life sucks and sometimes you need to make hard choices."

i feel like the people who come up with such analogies are people who have run over bums and want to convince themselves it was ok

I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die, does that count?

that depends...if you didn't shoot him, would the sheriff then shoot 5 boys named sue?

he proposed a thought experiment in which he cooked and ate her horse

Dying at this.

to be clear, in this thought experiment, YOU are not dying; the horse is

It would be darkly hilarious if the horse were infected with CJD and the eater died.

Just sayin.

i have not heard of this basilisk, will investigate

we do have another thread for this; but the fact that a bunch of self-proclaimed rationalists were literally terrified that they might be tortured by an AI from the future is one of the internet's greatest achievements in lulz.

please tell me the instrument of torture was the internet itself

It was ilx

I for one welcome System as our new AI overlord in the coming singularity.

i feel like the people who come up with such analogies are people who have run over bums and want to convince themselves it was ok

― Arch Bacon (rushomancy)

yes!

off topic but also...i will never understand schools in progressive-leaning parts of the country. bc how is this

― 21st savagery fox (m bison)

did this sentence get finished?

how is this (implied)...a thing

not used to ppl from that line of subculture being in positions of authority in schools.

oh i thought you meant nepotism maybe

it's funny, they wore three piece suits at work because they had to cover their tattoos.

not sure why that required a vest but