Contra Huemer on utilitarianism part 5 (Alternatively, a post to get out of being forced to be an electrician during a sports game)

Why sports are maybe better than torture is bad

Note: This argument only applies to non yankees games—Huemer is obviously right in the context of yankees games.

“I hate torture as much as the next guy.

That much is truer

(than other false things) But I shut up and multiply

Unlike Mike Huemer”

—Mark Twain

Michael Huemer has another objection to utilitarianism, based on it subordinating torture avoidance to sports games. He writes “d. Sports match

A sports match is being televised to a very large number of people. You’ve discovered that a person has somehow gotten caught in some machine used for broadcasting, which is torturing him. To release him requires interrupting the broadcast, which will decrease the entertainment of a very large number of people, thus overall decreasing the total pleasure in the universe. Should you leave the person there until the match is over?”

Say it with me now, yes!! Let’s call this person Jones, as Scanlon did.

In this case, we can apply a similar method to the one applied to the repugnant conclusion, or torture versus dust specks.  Suppose that we compare Jones’ situation to two people experiencing painful electric shocks that are only 90% as painful as Jones’ shocks.  Surely it would be better to prevent the shocks to the two people.  Now compare each of those two shocks to two more shocks, which are 60% as painful as Jones’ original one.  Surely the 4 shocks are worse than the two.  We can keep doing this process until the situation is reduced to a large number of barely painful shocks.  Surely a large number of people enjoying football can outweigh the badness of a large number of barely painful shocks.  A similar point has been made by (Norcross 2002).  

Additionally, as Norcross points out, we regularly make similar trade offs.  When we lower the speed limit, we recognize that some number of people will die, to increase the speed at which people can reach their destination.  

If every bad thing is just as bad as a few things that are a little bit less bad than it, then we can keep swapping out bad things for more slightly less bad things, until we get to a point of lots of barely bad things. However, lots of barely bad things can obviously be outweighed by lots of barely good things.

Huemer could argue that, while there are some number of football minutes viewed that would be worth one torture, utilitarianism identifies the number as being way too low. If there’s some number of football viewer-ships that can outweigh the badness of a torture, it ceases to be a persuasive objection. Maybe Huemer says the number required would actually be 3 million, but utilitarianism says it would be 1.1 million. However, if we know there’s some amount, it’s hard to maintain that our ethical intuitions are at all reliable relating to the exact number of inconveniences whose badness equals that of one torture.

Aaaaaaaaaaaand now, for an overwrought dialogue, as must be included in every post.

Huemer: “You utilitarians think that some number of football games being seen is good enough to outweigh a torture.”

Much cooler utilitarian Winston Churchill: “As per the above principle, surely you’d agree that it would be worth it to allow one torture to continue to prevent all football from being canceled in one hundred billion worlds.”

Huemer: “I suppose so.”

Churchill: “Would you do it for 300,000 football games.”

Huemer: “Of course not. What kind of philosopher do you think I am.”

Churchill: “We’ve already established what kind of philosopher you are, now we’re just haggling over the price.”

Huemer: “There’s a big difference between 300,000 and 300 quadrillion.”

Churchill: “Would you do if for 300 million.”

Huemer: “Hmm—not sure.”

Churchill: “It seems strange that you claim that our ethical system is incoherent when you don’t even have an order of magnitude estimation of the precise amount.”

Huemer: “Well, whatever the amount is intuitively it seems like yours is waaaaay too much.”

Churchill: “Well, given that we make tradeoffs like this all the time it seems to reflect people’s revealed preferences. Additionally, if your intuitions were already wrong here, why trust that they’d be right about the precise amount, if they got the question of whether there was an amount wrong.”

Huemer: “I think intuition favors opposition to torture for reasons beyond the mere pain it causes.”

Churchill: “Sure, but presumably you think that based on other cases—cases which will be discussed in future articles. This was just showing that continuing torture for a football game is sometimes worth it. The point at which you’re tolerating some torture for the sake of continuing football games, your view seems intuitively insane to the average person. It’s like a schizophrenic person who thinks he’s jesus making fun of another person who thinks he’s Gandhi.”