[C.J. Griffin]

The rights theory trumps utilitarianism, because the latter is a consequentialist moral theory that allows for the violation of the rights of individuals in the name of the greater good, i.e. noble ends justifying nefarious means. The rights theory says that NO, you cannot trample on some people to better the circumstances of a greater number of other people.

In his article "The Debate Over Utilitarianism," James Rachels provides this scenario:

Suppose a utilitarian were visiting an area in which there was racial strife, and that, during his visit, a Negro rapes a white woman, and that race riots occur as a result of the crime, white mobs, with the connivance of the police, bashing and killing Negroes, etc. Suppose too that our utilitarian is in the area of the crime when it is committed such that his testimony would would bring about the conviction of a particular Negro. If he knows that a quick arrest will stop the riots and lynchings, surely, as a utilitarian, he must conclude that he has a duty to bear false witness in order to bring about the punishment of an innocent person.

Another scenario provided by Tom Regan in his article "The Case for Animal Rights":

My Aunt Bea is old, inactive, a cranky, sour person, though not physically ill. She prefers to go on living. She is also rather rich, I could make a fortune if I could get my hands on her money, money she intends to give me in any event, after she dies, but which she refuses to give me now. In order to avoid a huge tax bite, I plan to donate a handsome sum of my profits to a local children's hospital. Many, many children will benefit from my generosity, and much joy will be brought to their parents, relatives, and friends. If I don't get the money rather soon, all these ambitions will come to naught. The once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make a real killing will be gone. Why, then, not kill my Aunt Bea? Oh, of course I might get caught. But I'm no fool and, besides, her doctor can be counted on to cooperate (he has an eye for the same investment and I happen to know a good deal about his shady past). The deed can be done . . . professionally, shall we say. There is very little chance of getting caught. And as for my conscience being guilt ridden, I am a resourceful sort of fellow and will take more than sufficient comfort -- as I lie on the beach at Acapulco -- in contemplating the joy and health I have brought to so many others.

Suppose Aunt Bea is killed and the rest of the story comes out as told. Would I have done anything wrong? Anything immoral? One would have thought that I had. Not according to utilitarianism. Since what I have done has brought about the best balance between totaled satisfaction and frustration for all those affected by the outcome, my action is not wrong. Indeed, in killing Aunt Bea the physician and I did what duty required.

This same kind of argument can be repeated in all sorts of cases, illustrating, time after time, how the utilitarian's position leads to results that impartial people find morally callous. It is wrong to kill my Aunt Bea in the name of bringing about the best results for others. A good end does not justify an evil means. Any adequate moral theory will have to explain why this is so. Utilitarianism fails in this respect and so cannot be the theory we seek.

The belief that ends justify means has lead to some of the worst atrocities in human history. It was Maximilian Robespierre, who sent thousands of innocent people to the guillotine without blinking for the triumph of the revolution and "liberté, égalité, fraternité" for all, who stated "Omelettes are not made without breaking eggs."

[The Clockwork Rat]

Just saying "No" does not a refutation make.

[SecretSquirrel]

there is nothing "ethical" about utilitarianism. Utilitarianism is fucking evil, and is only used to justify evil.

[The Clockwork Rat]

I am convinced!

[JohnRawls]

So do you deny social justice then SS also ?

[Bertram]

In ulilitarianism, note that the sacrafice that is made is not necisarily good.
In utilitarianism, actions are to be judged right or wrong soley by virtue of their consequences: nothing else matters. In assenssing consequences the only thing that matters is the amount of happiness or unhappiness is that is created; everything else is irrelevant. Each Person's happiness counts the same.

Rights based ethcics sounds very much like Kant's catagorical Imperative, am I correct?

[eugenekop]

there is nothing "ethical" about utilitarianism. Utilitarianism is fucking evil, and is only used to justify evil.

Libertarianism can also be approached from a utilitarian perspective. After all Libertarians believe that in a Libertarian society more people will be happy.

I think I am myself a utilitarian. That is if someone showed my a model of society that has zero freedom but it makes the people happy I'd probably vote for it. I just don't think such model exists, because people are usually happy when they are free.

[SecretSquirrel]

you aren't libertarian Eugene. Shut up about it already. You can't be libertarian if you support your illegitimate, apartheid, national socialist expansionist state.

And true libertarianism is 100% based upon classical liberal notions of INALIENABLE RIGHTS, aka not utilitarianism at all.

[Varrick]

Ethics in what context?

The individual? Relationships? National government? International politics?

Arguing about ethics in purely abstract terms is pointless.

[ThomasNewton]

If people are interested in reading more about Utilitarianism, Wikipedia is not a bad place to start.

Utilitarianism is ultimately a form of relativism, and therefore suffers from the same flaws. Namely, relativistically there is no such thing as right or wrong.

In other words, who decides which action has any given value of utility? Take foilist13's example in which you can shoot one child and save ten. He proposes that you should shoot the child since that would have the most positive utility. However, let's say I consider overpopulation the biggest problem the world is facing-I will say that having ten children die has the higher utility. And so forth and so on, for every possible situation.

The term "rights-based ethics" is also vague and not mutually exclusive with utilitarianism, making the entire argument an example of the false dichotomy fallacy anyways.

[Obversity]

The rights theory trumps utilitarianism, because the latter is a consequentialist moral theory that allows for the violation of the rights of individuals in the name of the greater good, i.e. noble ends justifying nefarious means. The rights theory says that NO, you cannot trample on some people to better the circumstances of a greater number of other people.

Let me distil -- and perhaps deride -- your argument: "The theory of rights is correct, because consequentialism allows for a violation of rights".

Suffice it to say, I am amused. But then circles always did fascinate me.

there is nothing "ethical" about utilitarianism. Utilitarianism is fucking evil, and is only used to justify evil.

I'm noticing a distinct lack of argument from Squirrel in this thread. "Evil" is precisely the topic of debate here. Describing something thusly does not an argument make.

___

Amusement aside, here's my take:

Utilitarianism is often misunderstood and misused. By its nature, it cannot be refuted by describing the bad consequences it purportedly produced. To say that utilitarianism produced bad consequences is a direct contradiction.

It is, however, possibly to say that utilitarian arguments have been used to induce actions that have produced bad consequences. This does not invalidate utilitarianism, though. It merely means the user's grip on reality was poor, and that they incorrectly calculated the consequences.

As an example, and just because I'm a sucker for Godwin's Law, Hitler thought he was doing the world a favour by ridding it of Jews. Let us suppose that ridding the world of Jews is a rational utilitarian goal -- that a Jew-less world would be an optimal world (which, of course, is silly, but bear with me). Was his method, then, utilitarian? No, it was not. He failed to predict that he would lose the war, and thus his strategy was not utilitarian, as it failed to accomplish this (apparently) laudable goal. Remember, an action is only utilitarian if it produced the best consequences.

Let's take a slightly more complex situation. Marx, for all his effort, never got to see the state he inadvertently fathered. Do we think he would have been happy with Communist Russia, even at the pinnacle of its success? I have my doubts, but I'll let you decide. Marx himself agreed that the utilitarian principle was so obvious, so platitudinal, as to be hardly worth noting; as such, communism as an pure idea seems to embody utilitarianism. However, does that make it utilitarian in practice? No, not necessarily. Communism is only utilitarian if it succeeds: if it doesn't, then it fails the criteria. The rest, as they say, is history. Communism failed, for a multitude of reasons, but its utilitarian principle was not one of them -- indeed, it failed to make people happy.

From this, it is often said against Utilitarianism that its criteria for fulfilment are highly unattainable, and that it is thus an utterly -- and ironically -- useless theory when applied. That still doesn't invalidate utilitarianism as a theory, though. It just makes it difficult to practice.

To my knowledge, the best salve for this is an education in history. What political systems have we observed in which people generally prosper and can be happy? Does history show a revolution in favour of a different system to be worth the short term costs in utility? Or does history show that small, progressive steps in the right direction work better?

Interestingly for this debate, such queries have lead people, myself included, to posit 'rights' as being quite congruent with utilitarianism, though there are exceptions. Put more plainly, I believe that 'rights' encoded and enshrined by a judicial body are consequentially positive.

___


Now, to all those nay-sayers, I have a question: on what do you predicate your 'rights'? Because I've had a hard time finding foundations.

Natural 'god given' rights are a no-go for a secular government, and are open to ridicule for the atheist.

And natural rights of a secular kind are equally curious. What are they, exactly? How did we get them? Do animals have them? Do trees? Or does it have something to do with self awareness? -- and if so, how do we know animals aren't self aware? Maybe it has something to do with pain and pleasure. But that sounds utilitarian to me. Are they inviolable, these rights of yours? Are consequences irrelevant?

[Obversity]

Utilitarianism is ultimately a form of relativism, and therefore suffers from the same flaws. Namely, relativistically there is no such thing as right or wrong.

In other words, who decides which action has any given value of utility? Take foilist13's example in which you can shoot one child and save ten. He proposes that you should shoot the child since that would have the most positive utility. However, let's say I consider overpopulation the biggest problem the world is facing-I will say that having ten children die has the higher utility. And so forth and so on, for every possible situation.

Actually, this is quite wrong. Utilitarianism holds that it is objective, and I'll attempt to explain why.

Each individual at any point in time has an emotional state ranging between downright depressed, and ecstatically happy. For those people, this state of mind is an objective fact. When I am happy, I am happy; when I'm not, I'm not. Yes, it's a mental state, but that mental state exists, and every sane person who has ever lived can verify the existence of positive and negative emotions.

So, assuming that this is correct, there is a possible world in which everyone is happy, or everyone is sad, or 50% is ecstatic and the other 50% is depressed -- etc., with infinite (?) possible combinations. Whatever the combination, however, these emotions exist, and are theoretically calculable. What utilitarianism would, in theory, wish to do, is actualise that possible world where everyone is happy -- and if that isn't plausible, actualise the world in which most people are generally happy (and if that's not plausible, slightly lower on our happiness curve, until plausible, as determined by our current world).

Think of it this way. Theoretically, there MUST be a path of human action, from this point, that produces the most happiness. Utilitarianism demands that we take this path. To apply this to your examples, either shooting the child or not shooting the child would objectively create more or less overall happiness.

This is taking 'happiness' as the standard of value, and not all consequentialists agree on that, however all consequentialists believe that their goal must be objective.

Lastly, In the portion I quoted, you are almost right: Sometimes, in practice (and not 'ultimately'), applying utilitarianism can be relativistic, in that with our limited predictive powers and finite access to information, we might as well be cavemen taking on quantum math with our fingers toes.

[Eran]

Now, to all those nay-sayers, I have a question: on what do you predicate your 'rights'? Because I've had a hard time finding foundations.

You have just the same problem arguing for having one set of consequences be better than another. No moral theory can avoid having difficult-to-justify moral foundations.

One interesting basis for rights theory is Argumentation Ethics. It is not perfect, but presents an interesting way of breaking the deadlock of unprovable assertions.

In brief, it points out that ethics can only be justified in the process of Argumentation. Argumentation, in turn, requires certain undeniable precepts. For example, each person participating in the Argument must be able alive, and control themselves sufficiently to express their views. Adding the essential feature of Universalizability as an essential feature of every ethical theory, we find that if the participants in an Argument are to be able to control themselves, so should every person.

I have my doubts about how far those arguments can take us, but some people firmly believe it can be used to prove the basic tenets of libertarianism - self-ownership and private property acquisition through homesteading.

[KPres]

This is taking 'happiness' as the standard of value, and not all consequentialists agree on that, however all consequentialists believe that their goal must be objective.

But how do you determine the objective standard of value? By definition, you can't, unless you already understand what is "good" and "bad". It doesn't matter whether its objective/subjective/relative/whatever, the fact that you're "taking" anything as a standard of value means you're begging the question.

Not that I support a "rights" based theory, either. I've never found a consistent ethical philosophy. It seems that I always act hedonistically, though.

[ThomasNewton]

Obversity, of course Utilitarianism maintains that it is objective, but that doesn't necessarily make it true. Your argument begs the question, you assume there exists a most moral possible world and conclude it is moral to follow the most moral world. That's fallacious logic.

Your assumption that all people equally experience emotions is also false. Not only is it provable that people to not equally experience emotions (depression, anti-social disorder, and I tried to find the article about the woman who burned out her serotonin receptors with ecstasy and can't experience happiness normally) but you also can't assume that happiness is moral. Brave New World is a good example of why. It is not necessarily true that actions which cause the most happiness are also the most moral. Utilitarianism assumes this premise, which is also its conclusion, and is therefore fallacious.

If it is possible that Utilitarianism is correct, there has not yet been a logical argument written to demonstrate it as such.

[KPres]

Let's take a slightly more complex situation. Marx, for all his effort, never got to see the state he inadvertently fathered. Do we think he would have been happy with Communist Russia, even at the pinnacle of its success? I have my doubts, but I'll let you decide. Marx himself agreed that the utilitarian principle was so obvious, so platitudinal, as to be hardly worth noting; as such, communism as an pure idea seems to embody utilitarianism. However, does that make it utilitarian in practice? No, not necessarily. Communism is only utilitarian if it succeeds: if it doesn't, then it fails the criteria. The rest, as they say, is history. Communism failed, for a multitude of reasons, but its utilitarian principle was not one of them -- indeed, it failed to make people happy.

Huh? Communism is rights-based, ie, the worker is assumed to have an a-priori "right" to the full value of the product of his labor without extraction. There really is no form of social organization that fits utilitarianism exactly. All would be open, so long as they maximize total utility (whatever that means). Assuming I use your example of happiness as the standard of value, I imagine a "system" where everybody is put in little bio-pods and have serotonin-inducing drugs pumped into them all day would be best.

[Obversity]

Assuming I use your example of happiness as the standard of value, I imagine a "system" where everybody is put in little bio-pods and have serotonin-inducing drugs pumped into them all day would be best.

That made me giggle. I've toyed with the idea before, asked myself whether I would 'take the pill', so to speak.

About the standard of value and my 'begging the question':

Your argument begs the question, you assume there exists a most moral possible world and conclude it is moral to follow the most moral world.

I'm not so sure that I'm begging the question, but let me think it through.

p1. Happiness is irreducibly good
p2. Happiness can be felt by everyone
p3. A best possible world would be a world in which there exists the most good
c1. A best possible world would be a world in which the most possible people were the happiest possible
p4. We ought to seek a best possible world
c2. We ought to seek a world in which the most possible people are the happiest possible

That is essentially the argument.

The only way for a 'best possible (moral) world' to not exist would be if there is no objective standard of value -- that is, nothing to measure 'best' by. I've stated what I believe a sound standard of value to be: happiness. However, we can reduce this even further and just say "preference satisfaction", or something of the like.

It's true that I failed to substantiate a case for happiness being irreducibly good, so I may have begged the question.


(Again, bear with me if I'm a little slow. I'm here on these forums to learn, and I learn best through understanding my mistakes -- but to understand them, I must make them first. So my habit of being assertive won't change, but I appreciate the feedback. ^^ )

Brave New World is a good example of why.

This touches on an issue that I frequently disagree with people about. Fiction, I hold, should not be the medium through which to discuss morality. In writing fiction, one can take any situation, and mould the consequences to fit ones ideas of what is good or bad. That, however, does not mean to say that those consequences would actually arise from such a situation. Similarly, in writing fiction, one can take any character and express discontent or approval of something, without reasonable explanation or cause. Fiction employs the slipperiest of all slopes, and not only that, it gets to characterise it with as much positive and negative emotion as it wants. Brave New World is a good example of this, and while I don't reject his conclusions out of hand, I don't see the novel -- or any other novel -- as being particularly telling.

Forgive the hyperbole, but "Brave New World therefore not utilitarianism" doesn't stand to scrutiny.

Communism is rights-based

Yes, as a system Communism uses the language of rights, so you could be right, but the central idea of communism seems to me to be utilitarian, and I recall once reading something of marx that affirmed the utility principle, if not the conclusions some utilitarians have argued for.

The fact that you're "taking" anything as a standard of value means you're begging the question.

Unless we can find something irreducibly valuable to everyone to whom morality concerns, in which case, I'm not 'taking' a standard of value; I'm observing one. Preference utilitarianism tries to solve this, and I believe that it does. Preference utilitarianism might have other problems, though.

One interesting basis for rights theory is Argumentation Ethics.

Thanks, I'll look into it.

[The Clockwork Rat]

I imagine a "system" where everybody is put in little bio-pods and have serotonin-inducing drugs pumped into them all day would be best.

Same here.

[ThomasNewton]

Obversity, if you've never read Brave New World it describes a society where everyone is given drugs to make them happy. It's the exact same premise Kpres supposed. Unless you assume happiness is moral you have to show happiness is moral, and again assuming happiness is moral begs the question.

It is good to see you're familiar enough with Aristotelian to construct an argument, though. The problem is you must show the presuppositional statements that show your premises are true. For instance your p2, "Happiness can be felt by everyone" is provably false - depression is a mental disorder wherein people are incapable of feeling happiness for just one example.

Also, your p3 "A best possible world would be a world in which there exists the most good" is possibly false as well. Assume a universe where there exists the most good but also the most evil. Is this a better universe than one where less good and less evil exist?

Finally here is the conclusion I came using Utilitarian premises:

1) Under Utilitarianism death has a utility of 0 since a dead person does not feel happiness but does not feel sadness either. The only way death is bad is if it causes other people to be sad.

2) We live in a universe of scarcity. Since there exists only a limited amount of resources the opportunity cost of one individual using a resource affects everyone else in existence by denying them that resource. Therefore existence has an overall negative Utility.

Conclusion: Under Utilitarianism the morally justified thing to do is to wipe out humanity. If everyone is dead no one is left to be sad, and an overall utility of 0 is higher than a negative utility.

If that seems too far reaching for you, consider the following: It would make more people happy if 5 people waiting for organs were saved than if one person died, therefore we should kill organ donors/anyone off the street for their organs.

[pugsville]

The problem with Utilitarianism as a way of solving moral problems is that it's a slippery slope.

The Utilitarianism relies on knowing the sum total of ALL consequences for ones actions, the real world is rarely this simple or easy. In National Foreign policy it leads to propping up various pretty evil regimes. It tends to snowball once you decide that this or that person has no inherent rights and can be subjected to various evils for the greater good before you know it you have secret police, death squads, torture. Police especially secret/political police/security agencies have very few problems charging down this slippery slope.

Utilitarianism often does not provide clear answers, the ultimate results of ones actions in the real world are often murky. In many circumstances people with faced with choices that appear murky will choose the convenient gets the stuff they want done now option. (ie we need this information , we torture/abuse this individual) And once various abuses of rights are accepted as "necessary" further abuses follow to maintain the position (cover ups, pay offs, corruption).