Utility

[Anonymous No.4772992]

How do we quantify utility/happiness/pleasure?

I've been thinking alot about Bentham and Mill's utilitarian ideas, and I agree with them on a hypothetical level. However, there seems to be a problem with actually measuring that happiness in a meaningful way.

Does /lit/ have any ideas?

[Anonymous No.4773000]

intensity of pleasure.

[Anonymous No.4773003]

>>4773000
How do you measure that though?

[Anonymous No.4773004]

By the amount of money the person is willing to spend to have a certain experience.

[Anonymous No.4773010]

>>4773003
sorry to break it to you dude, but with our knowledge of functional neuroscience increasing we can actually start to measure things normally falling under the domain of philosophic wankery like this

[Anonymous No.4773012]

Concentration of dopamine

[Anonymous No.4773013]

>>4773003
the amount of cum ejaculated

[Anonymous No.4773016]

Consult Yanis Varoufakis's "Foundations of Economics". Its a blow-by-blow of how utilitarian principles are the spinal column modern neoliberal economics. Naturally, when we use such a view to attempt to calculate the function of a society, there are...a variety of issues.

In any event, this is probably the perfect book. It talks almost exclusively about the problems of the word "utility".

[Anonymous No.4773017]

You can't, really. Add into that the fact that everyone has different pleasures (which can often be at odds with the pleasure of others) and that there's no way to tell whether a hypothetical 6/10 happiness for one person is the same as another's 6/10 and you get to realize why utilitarianism is worthless.

[Anonymous No.4773019]

>>4773013
lol

[Anonymous No.4773021]

>>4773017
not rule utilitarianism

[Anonymous No.4773024]

>2014
>even entertaining the idea that utility levels might be interpersonally comparable
>laughingwhores.jpg

[Anonymous No.4773027]

>>4773016
For the best analysis of everything concerning economics, of course, there's il kapital. You need nothing more, OP.

[Anonymous No.4773034]

>>4772992
I feel pleasure whenever I please my queen.

[Anonymous No.4773040]

>>4773024
Ok, so where do you derive your notion of right and wrong?

[Anonymous No.4773045]

>>4773040

deontology duh

[Anonymous No.4773049]

>How do we quantify utility/happiness/pleasure?

We don't. Happiness has nothing to do with emotions or neurotransmitters or material goods or being in a mechanical engineering program. Jesus tells us to circumcise our material desires and be happy when men persecute us and make us suffer and die because it is the way the world treats righteous men. Finding wisdom, denying our material desires, and sacrificing for others is what happiness is.

[Anonymous No.4773051]

>>4773045
>deontology

Oh shit here we go suckas

DEONTOLOGY
UTILITARIANISM
VIRTUE
FEMINIST
EXISTENTIALIST

THIS LATEST ROUND IN ETHICS BROUGHT TO YOU BY 4CHAN

[Anonymous No.4773057]

>>4773051
Did you come to /lit/ expecting to witness groundbreaking developments in normative ethics?

[Anonymous No.4773056]

>>4773051


virtue uber alles, it can do what the others do better, and can do what the others cant

[Anonymous No.4773083]

>>4773057

Maybe amoralism. Maybe.

[Anonymous No.4773160]

>>4773049
>tips crucifix

[Anonymous No.4774574]

>>4772992
>How do we quantify utility/happiness/pleasure?
u don't/can't

[Anonymous No.4774595]

happiness has been pulverized into meaning a perpetual state of mind, where you're content in your life and nothing bothers you..can you name a single fucking person like that? One that isn't schizo, that is

if you asked me, happiness is wasting your time and never regretting

[Anonymous No.4776716]

i dont care about this nerd shit

[Anonymous No.4779052]

There is no way to due to the subjective nature of the experience and the subjective nature of any interpretation of the idea or definition. It's similar to the problem of do you see the same blue as me ? Any definition no matter how perfect is subjectively interpreted by the person reading it using their own internal dictionary and even if both of you apply the exact same kinds of meaning to words there will be inconsistencies. This is a fundamental flaw of language or at least our language. To go back to the color thing it's the equivalent of having a language that would allow you to describe color to a blind man or put the image of a color someone has never seen in their head. Those experiences along with that of happiness or pleasure are too subjective to the individual to be properly defined.

You also have to address the context in which you need it defined. A general definition is kind of unachievable other than defining it as something people would call pleasurable you can't say much and recursive definitions aren't satisfying. If you're applying it to economics or any real world problem self reporting works fine most of the time because they need useful information not perfect information.

TLDR it's fucking subjective

[Anonymous No.4779120]

>>4773010
Erm, no actually. There's nowhere near a way of measuring that. The fact that we can lcate /where/ mentalese happens is a long way away from translating it.

Also, in my opinion you can't, and that's why I find utilitarianism bankrupt.

[Anonymous No.4779277]

>>4776716
Thanks for posting faggot.

[Anonymous No.4779322]

>>4772992

>quantify happiness
For people who need to quantify it? With a bank account.

Pro tip: You can't.

[Anonymous No.4779323]

>>4779052
That colour analogy comes up all the time, and drives me bonkers. Colour hasn't been subjective since the invention of cameras. It especially isn't subjective now, when we can feed the image into an image editing program and have the RGB values...

[Anonymous No.4779337]

>>4773017
Utilitarianism doesn't have to prioritize happiness. It can be used to prioritize health, wealth, self awareness... pretty much anything.

[Anonymous No.4779361]

>>4779323

A panic attack and an adrenaline rush are physioloically identical. However, they are entirely different experiences. The one is exhilarating, the other terrifying. There is an analogous situation with color. We might see the "same color," but my experience of that color will likely be different than your experience, due to our personal histories, disposition, mood, etc.

"Happiness" is not an *object* we possess and which we can devise some common measure. It is an experience, infinitely gradated and variable from each to each.

[Anonymous No.4779377]

>>4779361
>physioloically

A panic attack refers to semantics, adrenaline refers to a *real* substance. One is subject to linguistic, and psychosophical addenda, the other is subject to quantification.

[Anonymous No.4779439]

>>4779377

As a matter of fact, the presence of adrenaline can unleash a panic attack or...

[Anonymous No.4779547]

There is no way to measure it really. I guess it would be how close an emotion drives someone to an oceanic state.

[Anonymous No.4779577]

>>4772992
How do you justify adherence to a philosophical system that enforces the tyranny of the majority?

[Anonymous No.4779594]

>>4779377
I think he is referring to a fight or flight response. the introduction of adrenaline can cause two different psychological reactions.

[Anonymous No.4780527]

>>4779323
The color analogy refers to two things. Even if we know the wavelength of a color we don't know how it's interpreted by the person. For example blue has a set wavelength but it could be possible that my perception of blue is the opposite of yours without introducing any practical issues. As in what i see as blue you see as red and what i see as red you see as blue, as long as the hue shifts make some kinds of sense you then have a subjective color. This is because we see colors not as wavelengths or numbers or empirical values but as a color only we can ever see.

This also comes to the second issue color is exact and reproducible that's true but only with machines. You can't look at a paint swatch and give me the RGB hue and saturation levels of the paint. Just like you cant tell me those values and make me see the color, color is only accurate to machines and wavelengths but not to our own perception of it.