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16391326 No.16391326 [Reply] [Original]

Why is utilitarianism wrong? All the common objections to it are easily debunked

>> No.16391342

>>16391326
How do you debunk Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

>> No.16391356

it's a philosophy, not a science. there is no arguing whether it's right or wrong.

>> No.16391375

Okay let's do a little exercise
Lets say you are walking when you stumble and get stuck onto a train track. You become stuck and in your rush to get out, calling for help. There are five workers on another track next to yours, but they have noise cancelling earphones in. You also see a lever in front of you that presumably controls the track. You could reach the lever with enough effort. Then, you hear a train coming to the fork of the road. The fork is currently going towards the workers, but you could spare their lives by pulling the lever
What do you do?

>> No.16391385

>>16391375
If I pull the lever, who will unstuck me?

>> No.16391398

>>16391385
you ducked out of answering, pussy.

>> No.16391417

>>16391385
After the trains crashes or stops when it kills the workers, people will notice you and help.

>> No.16391435

The utilitarian monster is a pretty effective, if you had a creature's who utilitarian value was placed higher, it would take over.

Bezos is a pretty good example of that in real life

>> No.16391444

>>16391385
The train will stop after hitting the workers, and they will save you

>> No.16391458

>>16391444
I doubt that a pool of blood will be able to help me.

>> No.16391465

>>16391375
Why not just pick up a pebble and throw it at the lmfao

>> No.16391489

Hitler was right

>> No.16391493

>>16391465
That's not a part of the thought experiment.
The small details of the scenario are not important but the options are important.

>> No.16391494

>>16391458
The people in the train will survive. I don't see you answering either

>> No.16391502

>>16391465
He spent all his time researching utilitarianism and came to the conclusion that going to the gym was pointless. Instead he preferred doing cardio, hence why he was on the tracks to begin with.

>> No.16391533

>>16391375
If you were an utilitarian, the action would be based.on your value compared to the value of the workers. Am I the president? Am I a worker of equal value?

>> No.16391545

Utilitarianism could justify awful things being done to a minority of people as long as it increased the overall utility. For example, captives getting killed in the roman colosseum. A thought experiment I remember reading about was that if a society was happy but at the expense of a child who through its torture gave the society this happiness, could we call this a morally good society?

As well as this, utilitarianism is plagued with problems of defining happiness (are we talking about pleasure or contentness? Is the world of Brave New World a utopia under utilitarian philosophy?) Is there more to life than just pleasure seeking? It could be that happiness is suffering as buddha said.

I dunno, it just seems kinda ropey and way too easy to use as a justification to doing horrible things in the name of "the greater good"

>> No.16391546

>>16391326
It's obviously right in some situations, and in other situations it might take you too far. This true for every principle/truth. Even my principle that every principle can be taken too far can be taken too far.

>> No.16391553

>>16391533
You would have to guarantee that for the rest of their 5 lives combined you would have a better impact on the world than them. You can't guarantee that.

>> No.16391556

>>16391545
Also I forgot to say that it's a system of morality which judges the goodness of an action by the ultimate result rather than the intention which kinda fucks with our ideas of justice. Manslaughter and murder would both be considered crimes of equal severity under utilitarianism.

>> No.16391560

>>16391533
You are (you). For the sale of this thought experiment you are a worker of equal value, as this is meant to mimic the Trolley Problem

>> No.16391578

>>16391560
If I were a utilitarian, I'd pull the lever. But I'm not, so fuck them.

>> No.16391632

>>16391435
Utilitarianism leads to completely stupid scenarios, like an infanticidal rape that is so pleasurable for the rapist that you'd be the single most evil person on the planet if you stopped this infanticidal rape.

>>16391546
Isn't that Wittgenstein's big thing? That no system can perfectly describe itself, you need at minimum two systems? This would obviously extend to morality, wherein you need to use two sources of morality in order to to be coherent (say, divine command theory and teleology, or virtue ethics and utilitarianism, or whatever).

>> No.16392117

Utilitarianism can’t be “debunked” because its a theory of morality, something that can’t be objectively measured the way a theory of physics could be.
Rather, Utilitarianism can be argued to be a more useful or less useful theory of how people ought to make decisions.
I’ll try to use an example to illustrate this.
Take for example the question of whether human society should prefer having a numerically smaller amount of individuals who live happy, meaningful lives, or having a society of ten times as many people who live unhappier and less meaningful lives.
It would seem like most utiliatrians would have to say that the second society is the happier or “morally superior” of the two, in spite of the fact that the vast majority of people would likely choose to live in the second one if asked.

>> No.16392492

>>16391375
>wearing noise-cancelling headphones while working on a railroad
They deserve to die.