[Mazhi]

Utilitarianism is the ethical doctrine that the moral worth of an action is solely determined by its contribution to overall utility. It is thus a form of consequentialism, meaning that the moral worth of an action is determined by its outcome—the ends justify the means. Utility — the good to be maximized — has been defined by various thinkers as happiness or pleasure (versus suffering or pain), though preference utilitarians like Peter Singer define it as the satisfaction of preferences. In simpler terms, it's for the greatest good for the greatest number of people. And interestingly, perhaps like most thoughtful ethical theories, utilitarianism primarily evaluates proposed actions and courses of action, rather than directly evaluating whether a person is virtuous or has good character.

What do you think of Utilitarianism?

[Potemkin]

What do you think of Utilitarianism?

Bourgeois rationalism taken to its logical conclusion.

[Drowning My Sorrows]

What do you think of Utilitarianism?

It's too easy to justify slavery using Utilitarianism... Ultimately, it breaks down and isn't an effective moral guide.

[galactus]

It's too easy to justify slavery using Utilitarianism.

How would you go about doing that?

[Korimyr the Rat]

Utilitarianism is, unfortunately, too rational of an ethical philosophy... as it does not account for the fact that humans are driven by irrational impulses.

It doesn't address the fact that human beings operate according to habitual, conditioned behaviors and that the majority of these behaviors originated through imitation. Utilitarian ethics do not provide for the concept of "setting an example" or establish a system of imitable virtues that act in support of the utilitarian goals.

[Rancid]

I think it's ok in some situations, you can't subscribe to a specific philosophy 100% of the time.. you're a jackass if you do..

[Noumenon]

Utilitarianism does not take into account the distribution of well-being: if the happiness of all is increased by the brutal torture of one person, then according to utilitarianism, that torture is not only okay, but our moral duty.

It tries to reduce all the various good things to one measure of goodness. In fact, there is plurality of good things, like freedom, equality, pleasure, virtue, and community, which are incommensurable. We can't calculate how many utils one more unit of equality will result in, and decide that it generates more utils than one more unit of freedom. Like Potemkin said, its is an excess of rationalism, assuming that everything can be calculated and reason can decide on one correct course of action. But moreover, even if we could calculate the utils resulting from the different good things, it is not necessarily good to decide on one versus the other based on that. For there is no reason to suppose that utils are the supreme good in the world - and utilitarians just assume that without argument.

[QatzelOk]

it does not account for the fact that humans are driven by irrational impulses.

And it doesn't recognise that some seemingly irrational behavior is actually very utilitarian. It is just beyond our understanding of what is useful or rational.

For a person who doesn't understand obesity, over-eating seems very rational. More food = more life.

[Rancid]

Utilitarianism does not take into account the distribution of well-being: if the happiness of all is increased by the brutal torture of one person, then according to utilitarianism, that torture is not only okay, but our moral duty.

True, but where it can work, is in a situation where there are clearly only say, a set of feasible solutions to the issue at hand.

you can pick the best solution by the one that brings about more good than bad compared to the other solutions no? That is, if you're forced to pick a solution from a set, you might as well pick the one that brings about the least amount of "bad."

I think this is the kind of situation where Utilitarianism works. however, you can't use this for every problem in the universe. Utilitarianism is a very "engineering" way to pick a solution to a problem.

But of course "engineering" doesn't work for everything, and can make things worse as well...

So i think it's okay to sometimes take a Utilitarian approach to an issue. Perhaps it's best in situations that don't really affect the well-being of people.. dunno

[Potemkin]

So i think it's okay to sometimes take a Utilitarian approach to an issue. Perhaps it's best in situations that don't really affect the well-being of people.. dunno

This suggests that utilitarianism should only be employed in a very ad hoc way. This is contrary to the entire spirit of utilitarianism, which is based on the rationalisation of ethics, just as industrial capitalism is based on the rationalisation of production. The most progressive thinkers of the late 18th and early 19th centuries had an almost unlimited faith in the power of instrumental reasoning, and attempted to apply it to all aspects of human life. Bentham's philosophy of ethics therefore corresponds almost exactly with the development of early industrial capitalism, with its rational maximisation of profit, with the trivial difference that it is 'good' which is being maximised in utilitarianism rather than profit.

Just like industrial capitalism, utilitarianism represented a progressive step forward in its time - a rationalised ethics, for all its flaws, is preferable to an ethics rooted in irrational religious superstition. But we should seek to ultimately transcend it, just as we (or the socialists among us, at least) seek to transcend industrial capitalism. Instrumental rationalism is no longer the progressive force it was back in Jeremy Bentham's time.

[Rancid]

I guess.. i don't like to lock into "systems" of thought.

I need to design a style of practical ethics and philosophy that is dynamic and adaptive.

I will revolutionize the world!!!

I'll called it "Adaptive philosophism" (something like that probably already exists i'm sure)

[ingliz]

I think it is the most practical philosophy, in principle, for good governance; but the end justifies the means seems to smack of pragmatism.I think utilitarianism should be tempered with humanism if as you say it is so essentially amoral.You are right but 'the greatest good for the greatest number' is so beguiling and unlike much philosophy deceptively simple.

[Wellsy]

The core issue I've seen with utilitarianism is that it tries to reduce all things to a quantity with no regard for the effect of such because it merely reflects the actuality of capitalist production to abstract everything down to price.
http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/10867/1/VWills_ETD_2011.pdf

The core of Bentham's Utilitarian theory is what has come to be known as the “Greatest Happiness Principle,” the doctrine that a moral action is good or bad according to the extent to which it maximizes utility, bringing about the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people78. According to Marx, Utilitarianism obliterates the unique aspects of different products and different relations between people and reduces them to one thing: utility, or “usefulness”. Utilitarianism, he argues, is tailor-made for a society based on capitalist exchange, in which the particularity of specific products and of the needs of specific persons is dissolved into one mode of expression, that of money. Marx writes:

The apparent absurdity of merging all the manifold relationships of people in the one relation of usefulness, this apparently metaphysical abstraction arises from the fact that in modern bourgeois society all relations are subordinated in practice to the one abstract monetary-commercial relation. […] In Helvétius and Holbach one can already find an idealisation of this doctrine, which fully corresponds to the attitude of opposition adopted by the French bourgeoisie before the revolution. Holbach depicts the entire activity of individuals in their mutual intercourse, e. g., speech, love, etc., as a relation of utility and utilisation. Hence the actual relations that are presupposed here are speech, love, definite manifestations of definite qualities of individuals. Now these relations are supposed not to have the meaning peculiar to them but to be the expression and manifestation of some third relation attributed to them, the relation of utility or utilisation. This paraphrasing ceases to be meaningless and arbitrary only when these relations have validity for the individual not on their own account, not as spontaneous activity, but rather as disguises, though by no means disguises of the category of Utilisation, but of an actual third aim and relation which is called the relation of utility. (The German Ideology, MECW 5:409)

Whether utility can really act as a third term that allows comparison such as weight is dubious.
https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/pdfs/social.pdf

At the very foundation of the idea of social relations as a form of capital, capable of generating other forms of capital and wealth, is its conception in quantitative terms. However, the more “social capital” is used as a basis for academic research, the more problematic becomes this idea of a simple quantity of “social capital,” the more the need is being voiced to distinguish, for example, between “social capital” which contributes to the capacity of a community to meet challenges, and forms of “social capital” which exacerbate social problems or actually constitute social problems in themselves. But if the quantity of social capital cannot be taken as an indicator of anything in itself, without breaking it down into its component parts, then the whole rationale for the concept of “social capital” is gone. Measuring “social capital” is actually destroying useful information, rather than constructing a useful indicator.
...
The process of mentally creating a measure of something, if it corresponds to anything in reality and is not a mental fiction, must be a real process of abstraction, quantification and quantitative aggregation. “You can’t add apples and oranges” so the saying goes, and nor can you add grapes and watermelons, unless by weight, calories, price or some other real abstraction. It is in this precise sense that we can say that capital is abstract.

https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/pdfs/social.pdf

The process of mentally creating a measure of something, if it corresponds to anything in reality and is not a mental fiction, must be a real process of abstraction, quantification and quantitative aggregation. “You can’t add apples and oranges” so the saying goes, and nor can you add grapes and watermelons, unless by weight, calories, price or some other real abstraction.

It is in this precise sense that we can say that capital is abstract.

And this abstraction is the very point in contention, that it doesn't reflect anything except to the extent it reflects the real relations of capital subsuming life.
As an ethical theory it isn't able to guide one's actions as readily as some might think without assigning the value between like things.
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/fdc2/446bb0d1d660df15c3eea2698e3681163945.pdf

'But which pleasure, which happiness ought to guide me?' For there are too many different kinds of enjoyable activity, too many different modes in which happiness is achieved. And pleasure or happiness are not states of mind for the production of which these activities and modes are merely alternative means. The pleasure-of-drinking-Guinness is not the pleasure-of-swimming-at-Crane's-Beach, and the swimming and the drinking are not two different means for providing the same end-state. The happiness which belongs peculiarly to the way of life of the cloister is not the same happiness as that which belongs peculiarly to the military life. For different pleasures and different happinesses are to a large degree incommensurable: there are no scales of quality or quantity on which to weigh them. Consequently appeal to the criteria of pleasure will not tell me whether to drink or swim and appeal to those of happiness cannot decide for me between the life of a monk and that of a soldier.

To have understood the polymorphous character of pleasure and happiness is of course to have rendered those concepts useless for utilitarian purposes; if the prospect of his or her own future pleasure or happiness cannot for the reasons which I have suggested provide criteria for solving the problems of action in the case of each individual, it follows that the notion of the greatest happiness of the greatest number is a notion without any clear content at all. It is indeed a pseudo-concept available for a variety of ideological uses, but no more than that. Hence when we encounter its use in practical life, it is always necessary to ask what actual project or purpose is being concealed by its use. To say this is not of course to deny that many of its uses have been in the service of socially beneficial ideals. Chadwick's radical reforms in the provision of public health measures, Mill's own suppon for the extension of the suffrage and for an end to the subjugation of women and a number of other nineteenth-century ideals and causes all invoked the standard of utility to some good purpose.

And though less familiar, I believe Bernard Williams makes a point of ethical theories of duty try to frame themselves as universal and assert the reasons as to why someone should do something but are often external to people's actual reasons for doing something.
To say that X is a good reason for someone to do a thing is different saying X has reason Y to do something.
The idea that these moral theories aren't reflected in actual life and have to be impotent oughts unlike Hegel's point against individual morality and emphasis instead on the real values of the existing community.
There is of course a real basis for utilitarianism, and also efforts to expand that basis.
https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/pdfs/flourishing.pdf

When Economics builds its science on the assumption of an independent, individual economic agent who makes decisions to maximise their own utility they take as given a society in which the norms of Utilitarianism are universal. In the event that the subjects of a community do not act as individuals maximising their own utility, then the science fails. But perhaps more importantly, governments and firms which make policy on the basis of economic science, and therefore Utilitarian ethics, are acting so as to foster this ethos in the community, with all the consequences in terms of inequality and social disintegration.

[Rancid]

I guess.. i don't like to lock into "systems" of thought.



I need to design a style of practical ethics and philosophy that is dynamic and adaptive.



I will revolutionize the world!!!



I'll called it "Adaptive philosophism" (something like that probably already exists i'm sure) :?:

I just want to point out, that I like my post from 12 years ago. I still haven't developed Adaptive philosophism yet.

[QatzelOk]

A lof of arguments on this page could be resolved by looking at the basic tenets of utilitarianism again.

the moral worth of an action is solely determined by its contribution to overall utility

I think the most problematic word here is the word "overall."

In my opinion, for utilitarianism to have a value, the word "overall" has to be interpreted in the most holistic way of everything-and-everyone.

Likewise, "overall" means that utilitarianism CAN NEVER trust unproven technology, because new tech ALWAYS leads to unexpected negatives in the future, which can't be calculated in the present.

Thus, there is no way of predicting the "overall" utility of unproven tech. (this includes all tech) So a true utilitarianism of "overall" utility would be extremely conservative.

We wouldn't have any technologies. Not even farming or irrigation.

Utilitarianism does not take into account the distribution of well-being: if the happiness of all is increased by the brutal torture of one person, then according to utilitarianism, that torture is not only okay, but our moral duty.

If one considers "overall" utility, then one doesn't torture because of the precedent this sets for future generations.

OVERALL includes them!

[Potemkin]

I just want to point out, that I like my post from 12 years ago. I still haven't developed Adaptive philosophism yet.

I think it's already been done, @Rancid. I believe they call it Pragmatism.

[Rancid]

I think it's already been done, @Rancid. I believe they call it Pragmatism.

Oh....

I guess I'm not the genius I thought I was.

[Rugoz]

We compare and weight pleasures all the time. The fact that they are not readily quantifiable doesn't mean utilitarianism is not of useful way to approach moral problems.

[Noumenon]

If one considers "overall" utility, then one doesn't torture because of the precedent this sets for future generations.

OVERALL includes them!

Not if the precedent is that you only torture when it maximizes overall utility.

[QatzelOk]

Not if the precedent is that you only torture when it maximizes overall utility.

By projecting into the future, you lose all credibility as to what will be "overall" in the utility. By claiming to know the overall utilty of the torture, you are saying that you KNOW that this act of violence will NOT create more misery in the future than it will create goodness. And this is impossible to know in the present.

Cars were seen to be "overall" a good thing in the 40s and 50s, but that was BEFORE we knew all the nasty side effects of their universalization. But a previous generation thought they had established a good precedent as well. They didn't. They got humanity addicted to a poison, and torture is the same kind of poison if a society gets addicted to it (without realizing that this is something that has negatives over time and with generalization).

The other weakness in the "overall"ness of torture, is that it obviously doesn't consider the side effects on the torture-victim or other humans of his class or race. Nor did the car industry consider the "overall"ness of their product - a kind of torture for our public roads.

Profit is made by shrinking what "overall" refers to. If a group of railway barons decide to genocide the First Nations, and they all agree with this plan, they can think that their plan is "overall" good because of how they have defined "overall." "Everyone in the room agrees, so it's overall good."

I think you will realize you are doing the same thing with torture if you think about how it could possibly be used for "overall" utility.