/lit/ - Literature

"A lot of the critiques of Utilitarianism, the doctrine that we should try to create a world that maximizes happiness, point out the bizarre and inhuman actions that we would seemingly have to accept if we accepted the theory. For example, we can imagine that if we wanted to maximize happiness, it would be morally justified, and perhaps even required, to murder a healthy person and harvest their organs in order to save five people. After all, five lives are more valuable than one, so even if it doesn't seem like justice, we should kill one person to save the five. However, as the comic points out, you don't even need to get five people involved. It seems as though a single happy person is intrinsically "worth" more than a sad one, so we should even kill one person who is sad to save one that is happy. All in all, utilitarianism usually sounds great when people first hear about it, and the theory really only suffers from one minor flaw - no one wants to live in a world where we actually believe it is true."

>WORDS WORDS WORDS WORDS WORDS WORDS WORDS WORDS WORDS WORDS WORDS WORDS WORDS WORDS WORDS WORDS WORDS WORDS WORDS WORDS WORDS WORDS WORDS WORDS WORDS WORDS WORDS WORDS WORDS WORDS WORDS WORDS WORDS WORDS WORDS WORDS WORDS WORDS _tl;dr__
Comics are a visual medium.

>>14585793
>complaining about having to read on /lit/

Why are incel-types so self-loathing? Like, holy shit, man.

>>14585803
If it's a """comic""" that consists of nothing but panels of someone standing there doing nothing with text taking up half the space, then yes.

>>14585768
I think the a big failure of utilitarians and their critics alike is their overlooking of the relativity of value. An individual is capable of valuing their own life to an infinite degree — it is quite literally their "everything". Thus, losing their life leaves them with nothing, which the loss of any other persons life, from this perspective, could never compete with. As soon as you change perspective, you are met with an entirely different equation. In the webcomic, the host sees a simple mathematical equation which is easy to solve. Obviously, he and the audience would think, the sad sods ought to die so the happy lads can live. But this is like saying a passenger in a bus is correct in determining the signs on the road are moving and he is stationary. And he is correct. And so is the host and audience in the comic. The rub is that the street signs perspective that the bud passenger is the one who is moving is ALSO correct. The same applies to your depressed college students: they are equally valid in saying that their own life is more valuable than the chadaholic.
This realization greatly complicates the utilitarian perspective but can also compliment it in such cases as the one described in the webcomic. One has to begin their weighing of values with realization that value is relative.

That's just another variation of a trolley argument. Specifically the one variation where you have to push an innocent fat man on the tracks to stop the trolley. You can reformulate the situation in such a way that people reading the comic would support killing the kids (as in: now the fat man is already on the tracks and all you have to do is pull a lever - now killing a fat man doesn't seem like such a bad idea, does it?). You can also make it so that people from China would have one opinion and people from US would have another.

You can't prove anything with these analogies besides that fact that our psyche behaves in funny ways.

>>14586242
I think it's more of a gotcha for utilitarians. It's supposed to show that if one follows through with utilitarian thinking then there will be situations which yield outrageous solutions. Like how the "Nazi knocking on your door" analogy is used as a gotcha for Kantians.

>>14586152
>This realization greatly complicates the utilitarian perspective

As in points out it is a completely unusable and counter-productive moral framework for actual human beings.

>>14586152
but utilitarianism isnt built on how an individual values themselves, its built on the 3rd party view. Obviously both would be infinitely sad to lose their life, but as one would die anyway the one who dies should, by the utilitarian perspective, result in maximum happiness gained after the death. Fun social handsome people aren't worth more on their own, its that them + people getting happiness from them that edges out depressed loner guy.
Being handsome isn't a plus if both men are going to live off the grid alone, but it is a gain when it makes women who see him happy.

>>14586411
Utilitarians are literally subhuman though, they dont understand why killing children for the greater good would be wrong

>>14585768
Negative utilitarianism solves this. Kill all 4 of them and the host until there are no more humans left to suffer.

>>14586471
>ts built on the 3rd party view
Herein lies the fault. The problem isn't that there are other perspectives, it's that the other perspectives are equally valid. The third party is as much an individual as either of the concerned parties. There is no way to determine which is the most valid because they are all valid equally. At the end of the problem, entire worlds will be lost from some perspective, and only material lives will be lost from other perspectives. The third perspective is at fault for assuming on no grounds that their perspective is the right perspective. This is the complication.

>>14585766
So some situations don't have a clear outcome in what would make people happier, or humans are too biased to judge happiness in those scenarios.
How exactly does this disprove utilitarianism?

>>14586493
Yeah but then they all just reincarnate and are back at it again

>>14586551
If you kill every human what do they reincarnate as?

>>14585803
let's be honest, we're only on this board to avoid reading in the first place

>>14586515
>How exactly does this disprove utilitarianism?
It doesn't "disprove" it because this is philosophy, not science.

It just shows you why it's a totally fucking retarded and unworkable system of ethics.

People are basically attracted to philosophies that make them feel good, so when a philosophy that otherwise makes you feel good makes you feel bad in some circumstances you try and square the circle. Most philosophy seems to me to be these misguided attempts to square circles. The circle will never be square because the driving force for your preference in philosophy is fundamentally irrational, and so it creates situations that cannot be solved rationally.

The natural and God-tier solution to this is to simply grow a pair and embrace the parts of your philosophy that make you feel bad too. If your principles tell you to commit war crimes then commit those fucking war crimes, even if you're bawling your eyes out doing it. This kind of ironclad devotion to principles is the realm of the ubermensch.

Most people are too spineless for this, though. Hence, philosophy as we know it.

>>14586567
muslims reincarnate as dogs

>>14586515
Neither of those are unclear outcomes for a utilitarian. The problem is the outcome is clearly fucked for anybody with an IQ above single digits.

>>14585793
yes baste dept.?

>>14586781
The philosophy grad guy looks clearly unhappy. How does the utilitarian justify that his happiness is worth less than the Architect?
Pro-tip: The utilitarian doesn't. The utilitarian knows this type of situation is too subjective to be solved like this. This doesn't mean every other situation is like this.
You're just attacking a straw-man.
>>14586743
>This kind of ironclad devotion to principles is the realm of the ubermensch.
Holy cringe.

>>14586872
>protip, the utilitarian doesnt
correct, because the happiness of any one individual is equal to the happiness of another. Thats why the comic mentions that the grad student is slaving away to write a paper nobody will read while the handsome guy's architecture can be expected to bring happiness to far more people and that "other people get happy just from looking" at him. The scenario is incredibly cut and dry, the handsome guy brings more happiness into the world than the grad student does and thus killing the later to save the former is correct.

Human life has value only by the Grace of God. Happiness and utility mean nothing when it comes to assessing the value of human life. Utilitarianism is evil.

>>14585766
.

>>14585803
>reading
Pleb

>>14586574
please make this the new banner

>>14586768
>t. hindutva

>>14585768
Dunno man, the comic is pretty fucking based and the two people that got to live were more interesting that the depressed fucking faggots on the right

>>14586768
Muslims reincarnate as pigs.

>>14585793
This

What about rule utilitarianism?

Why do every moral philosophy read like a NEET thought experiment?

>>14588377
It's almost like all of the characters were caricatures and real life decisions involve greater complexity and an inexorable element of uncertainty and possibility

>>14586493
How about the proponents of negative utilitarianism start with themselves? Then there wouldn't be anyone left to perpetuate such malicious nonsense

>>14586929
fucking based

To be honest with you, I've read three different works by Jeremy Bentham and not one time did I see the mentality of modern day utilitarianism expounded within his works.

He is really more of a legislator, with an added emphasis on creating a state which encourages good morality through the motivations of money making.