Without irony I can say that I am grateful for this substack existing. There is something straightforward and unapologetic about the writings of the young (anyone under 25), but mostly young people don't write very well. This is a delightful exception, and clarifies the subject matter for me in a way I haven't seen elsewhere. Older, more cynical writers hedge and obfuscate and disguise with jokes and irony. That doesn't happen on this substack -- here are ideas that I've never been able to engage with fully due an inability to believe people really take them seriously. Utilitarianism and deontology have always seemed rather obviously absurd to me, and people who talk about them always seem to be pulling my leg. Even when writers I like and respect a great deal (e.g. Scott Alexander) talk about utilitarianism, it always feels like I'm reading science fiction. Instead of saying '"Ok hypothetically imagine that time travel is possible, what quirky scenarios (looking at you, Heinlein) follow?", we say "Hypothetically if we were going to try to maximize the good for society what would we do?". It's as much a thought experiment as when Kant tries to puzzle out what might make a thing good in itself -- it has no connection to actual humans and their so-called decision making, except as providing a verbal layer to whatever they were going to do anyway. Equally obviously, my intuition on the non-seriousness of this prevents me from engaging with the arguments as the authors would prefer.
So, thank you for this. I understand philosophy better than I did before reading it.
I'm not clear on why you say the doctor should not kill one to save five, or even if that is your view actually. I mean, you could argue that if doctors started pulling the lever, everyone would steer clear of them, but maybe the real problem there is that people are not educated into utilitarianism: if the society were utilitarian, that would be how medicine would work, and everyone would accept it. Is this your view, and if not, why not?
For most of my life I've been a (partially conflicted) believer in natural rights, but lately I've been pushed more and more toward utilitarianism and am now teetering on the brink -- and this post of yours contributed greatly to bringing me to this point.
However, there are a couple topics about which I am having trouble embracing the utilitarian viewpoint, which I would love to see you write a post about:
1. Just Deserts: (This example is from Huemer) You have a tasty cookie that will produce harmless pleasure with no other effects. You can give it to either serial killer Ted Bundy, or the saintly Mother Teresa. Bundy enjoys cookies slightly more than Teresa. Should you therefore give it to Bundy?
I suppose utilitarians might say that you could give the cookie to Teresa to avoid incentivizing serial killing, or because other people might see you give the cookie to Bundy and derive dissatisfaction from their sense of justice being violated (even if their conception of justice is incorrect), but these responses would dodge the point -- most people have the intuition that giving the cookie to Ted Bundy is fundamentally wrong beyond any downstream consequences simply because Ted Bundy doesn't *deserve* the cookie.
2. Restitution: Consider Abe, Bob, and Cindy. Abe owns a bike. However, Bob would get more utility from the bike than Abe. Bob steals the bike from Abe (with no intention of using the bike to aid in committing more crimes). Cindy is wealthy and could buy Abe a new bike with minimal utility loss to herself.
Putting aside the important deterrent effects of having laws against stealing and the fact that stealing is usually wrong, utilitarianism would seem to call for letting Bob keep the stolen bike and having Cindy buy Bob a new bike. Yet, this strikes most people as unfair -- Bob stole the bike so he should be required to return the bike to Abe (or buy him a new one that is just as good).
While I can appreciate that in other alleged counter-examples such as Organ Harvester we cannot so easily set aside our intuitions about the broader implications and our status quo and other biases, I'm not confident that response would be satisfactory in this example. Or is it?
Would you say that property rights are just a social construct and so Abe in fact had no greater moral claim to the bike than Bob did? Would our intuitions or the morally justified resolution change if we stipulated that Bob first asked Abe politely for the bike and Abe refused and only then did Bob take it?
^ I would be eager to read a post of yours addressing these two topics!
Lastly I would also be interested in reading your thoughts on a utilitiarian legal framework -- is private ownership of the means of production justified, and if so to what extent? What should the law require with respect to redistributive justice? I am aware that many utilitarians embrace common sense moral norms in many cases (https://utilitarianism.net/utilitarianism-and-practical-ethics/#respecting-commonsense-moral-norms), but I need more detail!
Thank you. By the way, you have helped convince me to go vegan.
On 4: Why see emotional influence as undermining? Why don't emotions stand to value as our senses stand to perceptible properties: i.e. typically we have negative emotions about bad things and positive emotions about good things. To some degree our emotions are stronger at worse/better things. Of course, our emotions don't *perfectly* track the underlying strength of reasons. But nor does perception perfectly track perceptible properties: illusions occur, and indeed occur pretty often at a minor level. I guess I'd probably say that the degree to which emotions actually track the relative importance of good/bad things is way noisier than perception.
Without irony I can say that I am grateful for this substack existing. There is something straightforward and unapologetic about the writings of the young (anyone under 25), but mostly young people don't write very well. This is a delightful exception, and clarifies the subject matter for me in a way I haven't seen elsewhere. Older, more cynical writers hedge and obfuscate and disguise with jokes and irony. That doesn't happen on this substack -- here are ideas that I've never been able to engage with fully due an inability to believe people really take them seriously. Utilitarianism and deontology have always seemed rather obviously absurd to me, and people who talk about them always seem to be pulling my leg. Even when writers I like and respect a great deal (e.g. Scott Alexander) talk about utilitarianism, it always feels like I'm reading science fiction. Instead of saying '"Ok hypothetically imagine that time travel is possible, what quirky scenarios (looking at you, Heinlein) follow?", we say "Hypothetically if we were going to try to maximize the good for society what would we do?". It's as much a thought experiment as when Kant tries to puzzle out what might make a thing good in itself -- it has no connection to actual humans and their so-called decision making, except as providing a verbal layer to whatever they were going to do anyway. Equally obviously, my intuition on the non-seriousness of this prevents me from engaging with the arguments as the authors would prefer.
So, thank you for this. I understand philosophy better than I did before reading it.
I'm not clear on why you say the doctor should not kill one to save five, or even if that is your view actually. I mean, you could argue that if doctors started pulling the lever, everyone would steer clear of them, but maybe the real problem there is that people are not educated into utilitarianism: if the society were utilitarian, that would be how medicine would work, and everyone would accept it. Is this your view, and if not, why not?
Bulldog,
For most of my life I've been a (partially conflicted) believer in natural rights, but lately I've been pushed more and more toward utilitarianism and am now teetering on the brink -- and this post of yours contributed greatly to bringing me to this point.
However, there are a couple topics about which I am having trouble embracing the utilitarian viewpoint, which I would love to see you write a post about:
1. Just Deserts: (This example is from Huemer) You have a tasty cookie that will produce harmless pleasure with no other effects. You can give it to either serial killer Ted Bundy, or the saintly Mother Teresa. Bundy enjoys cookies slightly more than Teresa. Should you therefore give it to Bundy?
I suppose utilitarians might say that you could give the cookie to Teresa to avoid incentivizing serial killing, or because other people might see you give the cookie to Bundy and derive dissatisfaction from their sense of justice being violated (even if their conception of justice is incorrect), but these responses would dodge the point -- most people have the intuition that giving the cookie to Ted Bundy is fundamentally wrong beyond any downstream consequences simply because Ted Bundy doesn't *deserve* the cookie.
I've heard of "desert-adjusted" utilitarianism (DAU) (https://utilitarianism.net/near-utilitarian-alternatives/#desert-adjusted-views), which seems to address the issue head-on. Do you think DAU is the correct framework?
2. Restitution: Consider Abe, Bob, and Cindy. Abe owns a bike. However, Bob would get more utility from the bike than Abe. Bob steals the bike from Abe (with no intention of using the bike to aid in committing more crimes). Cindy is wealthy and could buy Abe a new bike with minimal utility loss to herself.
Putting aside the important deterrent effects of having laws against stealing and the fact that stealing is usually wrong, utilitarianism would seem to call for letting Bob keep the stolen bike and having Cindy buy Bob a new bike. Yet, this strikes most people as unfair -- Bob stole the bike so he should be required to return the bike to Abe (or buy him a new one that is just as good).
While I can appreciate that in other alleged counter-examples such as Organ Harvester we cannot so easily set aside our intuitions about the broader implications and our status quo and other biases, I'm not confident that response would be satisfactory in this example. Or is it?
Would you say that property rights are just a social construct and so Abe in fact had no greater moral claim to the bike than Bob did? Would our intuitions or the morally justified resolution change if we stipulated that Bob first asked Abe politely for the bike and Abe refused and only then did Bob take it?
^ I would be eager to read a post of yours addressing these two topics!
Lastly I would also be interested in reading your thoughts on a utilitiarian legal framework -- is private ownership of the means of production justified, and if so to what extent? What should the law require with respect to redistributive justice? I am aware that many utilitarians embrace common sense moral norms in many cases (https://utilitarianism.net/utilitarianism-and-practical-ethics/#respecting-commonsense-moral-norms), but I need more detail!
Thank you. By the way, you have helped convince me to go vegan.
On 4: Why see emotional influence as undermining? Why don't emotions stand to value as our senses stand to perceptible properties: i.e. typically we have negative emotions about bad things and positive emotions about good things. To some degree our emotions are stronger at worse/better things. Of course, our emotions don't *perfectly* track the underlying strength of reasons. But nor does perception perfectly track perceptible properties: illusions occur, and indeed occur pretty often at a minor level. I guess I'd probably say that the degree to which emotions actually track the relative importance of good/bad things is way noisier than perception.