/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.3027521]

Let's have a conversation about Utilitarianism.
If the goal is to create the happiness for the greatest amount of people, are any acts wrong?
Obvs not according to this logic, but I can't find myself getting behind things like gang rape where 4/5 people will leave happy. That would create the most happiness, but surely that's not right.

[Anonymous No.3027534]

>create aerosol form of high purity heroin
>create heroin explosives
>abduct 1 man and hook him up to an intravenous drug-cocktail, in a bomb shelter, he'll die in four hours
>kill everyone on Earth with the heroin bombs, as they enjoy it, you find a good way of making it so the 6 billion to 1 human step yields maximum happiness
>the last man dies content, drugged out his fucking head
>well done Mr. President, you've created a utilitarian paradise.

[Anonymous No.3027536]

>are any acts wrong?
Sure. Those acts that would decrease the happiness of the majority would be considered wrong. Like, I guess, putting everyone's children in labor camps and torturing them to death would probably lower the overall happiness.

[Anonymous No.3027537]

>>3027534
What are some more realistic examples of why utilitarianism isn't/is a good idea?

[Anonymous No.3027540]

>>3027534
Is the extent or duration of this happiness important?

[Anonymous No.3027541]

>>3027537
OP already gave one. Utilitarianism is just as prone to creating moral dilemmas as any other ethical framework. If you wanted, you could criticize the kind of utilitarianism described by the OP for being just one giant ad populum fallacy.

[Anonymous No.3027544]

>>3027541
So what's a viable alternative to Utilitarianism?

[Anonymous No.3027547]

>>3027537

Even though I made the ridiculous example, I do believe that utilitarianism is the best way to do things. For example, what I just said doesn't factor in potential humans. It makes sense for us to pollute and do whatever we please from a basic utilitarian standpoint, but it would be awful for the future generations, and is therefore logically flawed. So... essentially with utilitarianism, you have to factor in actual pain, potential pain, actual pleasure, and potential pleasure when deciding what to do.
You can't support gang-rape, because the overall pleasure received by the rapists doesn't cancel out the pain of the rapee. Also, the rapee's family and friends will also feel pain for the person. I find it best not to think in terms of the people who are happy, but the amount of happiness units per person too. Sure it sounds stupid, but makes sense.
Am I making sense?

[Anonymous No.3027553]

>>3027521
>If the goal is to create the happiness for the greatest amount of people

Utilitarianism
>An act is right if and only if it creates more overall happiness than any other act and wrong otherwise.

Utilitarianism isn't about making the most people happy; that's simple majority-rule. It's about creating the most net happiness, i.e. happiness minus sadness gives you net happiness. Utilitarianism doesn't care about how many people are happy nor does it particularly care about who is happy for that matter. This is the most common misunderstanding that I see on a consistent basis.

>I can't find myself getting behind things like gang rape where 4/5 people will leave happy
The idea is that the victim is several times more unhappy than all of the perpetrators combined. Also, we have to remember that the consequences of any one action stretch infinitely into the future, so that one act of gang rape can ruin someone's entire life while giving the perpetrators only temporary pleasure. So, if it's not optimific, then it's wrong.

>inb4 pretentious shit
Hopefully /lit/ isn't like that.

[Anonymous No.3027557]

>>3027547
>I find it best not to think in terms of the people who are happy, but the amount of happiness units per person too. Sure it sounds stupid, but makes sense.
This guy knows what's up. Problem is that happiness is not easily quantifiable. And hedonistic, desire-satisfaction, and objective-list views don't make it any easier.

[Anonymous No.3027558]

>>3027537

The main issue with utilitarianism does not lie within whether all acts are justifiable-- but rather the difficulty measuring which ones those would be. It's easy to adapt a utilitarian point of view in retro-perspective as the outcome has already been decided.

For instance OP's scenario of the gang rape. The issue isn't whether rape is right or wrong, but rather how you would measure at the time of action. There are many unknown variables such as the victims familyfriendsetc and their happiness, and whether the rapists will be truly happy with the act in the future etc. Those things can only be observed in the future-- and as such it is quite a fallible system when it comes to ethics-- though a convenient one.

[Anonymous No.3027559]

>>3027544
I don't know. I think utilitarianism is perfectly suitable (meaning: practical) for establishing general laws and codes of conduct, but not so much as a basis for morality.

I'm a relativist fuck, though, so I'm mostly about criticizing ethics systems without proposing any alternatives. I just don't think moral questions have definitive, absolute answers.

[Anonymous No.3027560]

this >>3027553

There's also some variants of utilitarianism wich stipulates that a "wrong" act can only be done as an inevitable consequence of a greater good. Emphasis in inevitable

[Anonymous No.3027579]

>>3027558
J.S. Mill answered this a long-ass time ago.

When we confront a fresh moral problem, utiltiarianism doesn't force us to stop right there, sit down, pull out a pen and paper, and write down all the pros and cons. We all know something about human history and the nature of human beings from having been alive long enough to carry rational discourse with one another. We know that people generally don't like to be murdered , raped, and so forth. We develop a set of general rules, or "rules of thumb", that we use for most situations and guard the utilitarian calculus for situations that appear to be serious dilemmas wherein it will be required. The utilitarian calculus has diminishing marginal utility.

>mfw I'm a non-consequentialist in utilitarian thread.

[Anonymous No.3027586]

>>3027521
>mfw Utilitarianism is for pathetic anglo saxon shopkeerpers who don't aspire to anything greater than comfort and safety

[Anonymous No.3027646]

Just read Ayn Rand, OP, she's got it all nailed

>“The greatest good for the greatest number” is one of the most vicious slogans ever foisted on humanity.
>This slogan has no concrete, specific meaning. There is no way to interpret it benevolently, but a great many ways in which it can be used to justify the most vicious actions.
>What is the definition of “the good” in this slogan? None, except: whatever is good for the greatest number. Who, in any particular issue, decides what is good for the greatest number? Why, the greatest number.
>If you consider this moral, you would have to approve of the following examples, which are exact applications of this slogan in practice: fifty-one percent of humanity enslaving the other forty-nine; nine hungry cannibals eating the tenth one; a lynching mob murdering a man whom they consider dangerous to the community.
>There were seventy million Germans in Germany and six hundred thousand Jews. The greatest number (the Germans) supported the Nazi government which told them that their greatest good would be served by exterminating the smaller number (the Jews) and grabbing their property. This was the horror achieved in practice by a vicious slogan accepted in theory.
>But, you might say, the majority in all these examples did not achieve any real good for itself either? No. It didn’t. Because “the good” is not determined by counting numbers and is not achieved by the sacrifice of anyone to anyone.

[Anonymous No.3027655]

>>3027521
>If the goal is to create the happiness for the greatest amount of people, are any acts wrong?

Well obviously. Any acts that don't create the greatest utility.

[Anonymous No.3027660]

>>3027646
>>If you consider this moral, you would have to approve of the following examples, which are exact applications of this slogan in practice: fifty-one percent of humanity enslaving the other forty-nine; nine hungry cannibals eating the tenth one; a lynching mob murdering a man whom they consider dangerous to the community.
>>There were seventy million Germans in Germany and six hundred thousand Jews. The greatest number (the Germans) supported the Nazi government which told them that their greatest good would be served by exterminating the smaller number (the Jews) and grabbing their property. This was the horror achieved in practice by a vicious slogan accepted in theory.

terrible arguments. these just assume utilitarianism is about majority voting rather than, you know, actual utility.

[Anonymous No.3027666]

>>3027660
>actual utility
how do you measure 'actual utility'?

[Anonymous No.3027682]

>>3027666
Personally I've always considered that the biggest problem with utilitarianism. To avoid the trap of the tyranny of the majority you have to find some metric for "happiness" or "utility" or however you wish to define that crap. But ultimately doing so is just abstracting the basic ethical question of "the good" or "the good life" one step back.

[Anonymous No.3027686]

I've literally just come out of my first Utilitarianism lecture ever. Creepy.

[Anonymous No.3027703]

>>3027534
I'm okay with this.

[Anonymous No.3027711]

Ask yourself this: Would you sacrifice, say, one of your closest, most beloved family members, for the lives of 100 000 others?

But you have to remember, Bentham wrote this as a contrast to the strange, hardcore-principles/laws that were in England in his time. Utilitarianism breaks with this, stating that everyone's happiness should count more than a single few's (how I've interpeted it, if someone disagrees with this conclusion, explain why). Bentham was an amimal rights-activist too, which is linked to this. John Stuart Mill had a more liberal view on women's right (and they make up quite a big percentage of the population, hence utilitarianism is to be aimed at all).

Also, the problem with utilitarianism is that it ignores feels and some of the most humane aspects of us -- everything is to be measured in happiness (I think Mill actually has a measuring system for it), and well, some say Bentham was an autist, so the whole emotional aspect may be different for him than for some others. And besides, who is to judge an overall happiness?

[Anonymous No.3027717]

>Would you sacrifice, say, one of your closest, most beloved family members, for the lives of 100 000 others?
My family members are good people and would not want to survive at the expense of thousands of other people.

[Anonymous No.3027720]

>>3027717
> My family members are good people and would not want to survive at the expense of thousands of other people.

Newsflash: they already are doing just that.

You only live because thousands of brown people in shithole countries died for you.

[Anonymous No.3027733]

>>3027720
Yes, but it's easy to pretend otherwise because the same applies to everyone and we can't really do much about it as individuals. Here I could actually do something to prevent death on a massive scale.

[Anonymous No.3028657]

OP, the type of Utilitarianism you are talking about is Jeremy Bentham's.

Try reading some of J.S Mill's ideas on "higher" and "lower" pleasures.

Sex would be classified as a lower pleasure therefore gang rape would not be justified.

[Anonymous No.3028686]

>>3028657
Haha. Fucking philosophy. It's like playing Calvinball.

[Anonymous No.3028689]

>>3028657
the high-low distinction is itself an ethical one and thus defeats the purpose of utilitarianism.