In my ongoing debate with Lewis Ungit, I was hoping that the many arguments I gave in my post would be grappled with. Sadly, most of them were not in Ungit’s rebuttal to my argument, and the ones that were responded to totally missed the boat.
In my article I began by pointing out several theoretical virtues including simplicity, explanatory power, explanatory scope, and intuitiveness. Utilitarianism does well in terms of these, which counts in favor of it.
Mr. Bulldog says that the philosophy has some “theoretical virtues.” Among these, he states that simplicity is an important virtue. He likes that the theory requires only a single moral maxim: “saying one should maximize the positive mental states of conscious creatures, explains all of ethics, applies to all of ethics, and has perfect clarity.” He also likes that it is “intuitive,” stating that, “It just seems obvious that ethics should be about making everyone’s life as good as possible.”
Both of these theoretical virtues are profoundly flawed. First, the simplicity of the idea is an illusion. While it is true that it has a single maxim, the application of it is complex beyond any other ethical framework requiring a new calculation for every moral decision. Let’s take an example. Let’s compare a person that takes the 10 Commandments as their moral guide and the person that takes just the single command of Utilitarianism as their guide (maximizing happiness). Let’s suppose one of your neighbors is on trial for murder. You know this man is a monster. He has already confessed to multiple depraved and violent acts. You are quite confident that the world would be much safer without him in on the streets. And everyone is very sure that he is guilty of the murder. You were in the area and saw someone do the murder. It might have been him but honestly you didn’t get the best look. Do you lie and say you got a good look and it was definitely him or do you tell the truth? If you are a follower of the 10 Commandments, you have the minor complication of having to sort through 10 commandments to find one that applies. You get to the ninth commandment “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor” and that clearly applies. Based on that, you tell the truth and hope that the police find other evidence. But if you are a follower of Utilitarianism the decision is not so simple. You have to do a calculation: would lying bring more happiness into the world? And the answer to that question is not obvious at all. By lying you could help get a dangerous man off the streets. You could potentially save lives. You could bring justice to a murderer. By telling the truth, you could endanger your neighborhood. Of course there are risks the other way. If you lie and get caught you could go to jail (unhappy). You could be wrong and some other murderer could get away as a result (unhappy). Etc etc. What should you do? As you can see a fairly simple question: should I lie in court against my neighbor becomes very complicated with the supposedly simple Utilitarianism and it becomes very simple with the supposedly complicated Christian ethics.
For one, none of the other explanatory virtues were addressed at all, so it has been functionally conceded that these favor utilitarianism. The response to simplicity is a total confusion. The claim is not that utilitarianism is easy to apply in the real world—it’s that it’s ontologically simple. Ockam’s razor means we should posit the fewest needed entities, so to the extent that a theory requires positing a wide array of complex moral maxims that counts against it. How complex utilitarianism is in the real world is not relevant in the slightest to analyzing its theoretical virtues.
The point about framing an innocent person has already been addressed by me in print here. I’ll post that article in full at the bottom because I have the word count to do so.
Secondly, as I discussed in my post, Against Utilitarianism, Mr. Bulldog is wrong that “It just seems obvious that ethics should be about making everyone’s life as good as possible.” It seems strange that we would call something obvious that so few people in history have believed. Most people look out for themselves and their own family. Some have loyalty to their tribe or race. But in the whole history of humanity precious few have ever sincerely stated that they cared about “everyone” in the whole world.
People often reject utilitarianism when they hear about its other implications. However, when people first hear about utilitarianism a very common first reaction is “hmm, that does sound reasonable.” Most people don’t end up as utilitarians, but it has lots of prima facie plausibility.
Ungit then explains the is ought problem and accuses me of running afoul of it.
How does the Is / Ought problem apply to Mr. Bulldog’s argument? Even if he were right and everyone thought it was obvious that we should maximize wellbeing, that would not tell us if we should maximize wellbeing. The IS (we all want to do something) doesn’t justify the OUGHT (we should want to do that thing). It is very easy to conceive of us all wanting to do something bad. Hatred and violence are qualities that we all are born with some propensity towards. They are the IS. But we all agree that hatred and violence OUGHT not be. So just because we are born with the capacity to have empathy towards others (wanting their happiness) doesn’t make that a good thing. In order to determine it if is good we need some other law to appeal to. But with Utilitarianism there is no other law.
This totally misrepresents my argument. The claim is not that its truth ontologically hinges on many people thinking it. The claim is merely that lots of people finding it intuitive counts in favor of believing its true. While you can’t get an ought from an is, if it is the case that lots of people think x is wrong, that is evidence that x is wrong. My opponent would presumably hold that one thing favoring Christian ethics is that it seems plausible upon reflection, yet that doesn’t run afoul of the is ought problem.
The is ought problem as a meta-ethical stopping point to dispel with any normative claim is a total nonstarter. One who is a moral realist is either a moral naturalist, in which they think that moral claims are a type of is claim so we can get them from other is claims, or non naturalists in which case they won’t get an ought from an is because they think it’s non natural. Either way, it’s fully impotent.
Another claim Mr. Bulldog’s argument makes is that Utilitarianism holds up well in the light of history. He says that atrocities were “generally opposed by Utilitarians”. I don’t know what sort of survey he has done to try to validate this claim but it seems obviously wrong to me. Every one of the worst dictators in the past 100 years has pointed to some greater good as their justification for doing what they did. Famously, Aristotle used a very Utilitarian argument to support slavery arguing that it was for the greater good of all (including the slaves) that some of the best men have leisure time to think about good government, agriculture, and higher ideas. Taking away the institution of slavery would make everyone less happy. Interestingly, in the US Old South these sorts of arguments were quite common. And when we look at historic reforms such as the end of slavery, the introduction of welfare programs for the poor, the establishment of schools for the public, etc, most of those reforms came from deeply religious people (often Christian) living by a religious ethical standard not a utilitarian one.
Pointing to people who were not utilitarians does not negate the point that utilitarians were generally on the right side of history. All of the early utilitarians were very progressive and ahead of their time—Bentham supported legal homosexuality in 1798. The amorphous greater good claims were not utilitarian, and the utilitarians tended to be far ahead of their time. I actually ahd a citation for this (obviously not a poll result) from utilitarianism.net. My interlocutor was unable to produce a single utilitarian who supported slavery, Jim Crow, or the holocaust, while numerous Christians did and used Christianity to justify it. There was also no response to the expanding moral circle argument which says that every attrocity in history has come through a contracted moral circle, so utilitarianism is better because it expands our moral circle to everyone.
Mr. Bulldog argument then makes a syllogism with a list of 12 premises to attempt to prove Utilitarianism. In the interest of space, I am not going to go through every premise but I will note that his very first premise seems very wrong (thereby undermining the entire syllogism). He writes, “A rational egoist is defined as someone who does only what produces the most good for themselves.” But is this right? If a soldier dies for his country (not for himself) is he acting irrationally? If this premise is correct, then no one should ever be willing to die for any cause. And yet don’t we view the martyr as the most moral person?
This was the entire response to the syllogism that I spent several thousand words defending. I would assume that this was not really an objection to premise 1, but instead to premise 2, given that premise 1 was a definition of a word that defined how it was used in the rest of the syllogism.
Premise 2, which I offered a dozen arguments for in a thousand or so words, which was totally ignored. So we have the only objection to this logically valid syllogism be a defense of premise two, while ignoring all 11 arguments for premise 2. Thus, even if I totally ignored this response, it would still favor utilitarianism based on the sheer quantity of argument.
The question about the soldier is totally confused. The claim is not that one is only rational if they do what’s best for themselves. The claim is that they’re a rational egoists if they do what’s best for themselves. This is true by definition. Now note, this doesn’t get us to utilitarianism. We need the other 11 premises to do that, ones which were totally ignored in the response.
He then provides an argument from economist and philosopher John Harsanyi. Harsanyi’s argument the beginning of the argument is as follows:
“Ethics should be impartial—it should be a realm of rational choice that would be undertaken if one was making decisions for a group, but was equally likely to be any member of the group. This seems to capture what we mean by ethics. If a person does what benefits themselves merely because they don’t care about others, that wouldn’t be an ethical view, for it wouldn’t be impartial.”
Do you notice anything strange about that introduction? Look at this claim: “Ethics should be impartial.” Really? Says who? How do we form an ethical framework by starting with a giant unsupported ethical claim? How is that not a circular argument?
Ungit would do well to read the second sentence. “This seems to capture what we mean by ethics. If a person does what benefits themselves merely because they don’t care about others, that wouldn’t be an ethical view, for it wouldn’t be impartial.” Given that this is what we mean by morality, the question is merely whether utilitarianism describes how we’d act if we were rational and impartial. If you think this is not what we mean by it, can you name one example of someone calling someone else immoral where they aren’t claiming the other person is failing to be either impartial or rational?
He then says, “If a person does what benefits themselves merely because they don’t care about others, that wouldn’t be an ethical view, for it wouldn’t be impartial.” But I thought we were basing Utilitarianism on an inherent desire for happiness? But now it seems there is some other good (the desire to be impartial) that should supersede our desire to be happy? Why does this not undermine the entire Utilitarian thought experiment?
NO!!!! Let me make one thing very clear—I am not rehashing John Stuart Mill’s mediocre argument. I do not think it works. I do not think that happiness is all that’s desired. If Ungit responded to my argument rather than the replica of Mill living rent free in his head, this would be obvious.
This also totally misses the point. The claim is not that we’re in fact impartial. The claim is just that morality is about what we’d do if we were rational and impartial. This is a definition.
Another problem with Harsanyi’s is that the demand for impartial ethics is asking for something that never exists. There are no impartial people. We are all inclined to be biased. We might clothe our judgments in claims of impartiality but in reality we are always looking out for our own interests, the interests of people we love, and the interests of those that can advance our interests
This is a non sequitor. The claim is not that we’re in fact impartial, the claim is that morality is about what we’d do IF we were impartial. An analogy here can be given with rationality. If we’re trying to figure out whether it would be rational to believe in god, we’re asking whether if you were totally rational you’d believe in god. Obviously you won’t be totally rational, but the question is about what the views of a perfectly rational person would be?
“Suppose we have people in a circle each with two guns that will each shoot the person next to them. They have the ability to prevent two other people from being shot, with another person's gun, or to prevent their own gun from shooting one person. Morally, if we take the view that one's foremost duty is to avoid rights violation, then they would be obligated to prevent their gun from shooting the one person. However, if everyone prevents one of their guns from being shot, rather than two guns from other people from being shot, then everyone in the circle would end up being shot. If it’s more important, however, to save as many lives as possible, then each person would prevent two guns from being shot. World two would have no one shot, and world one would have everyone shot. World one seems clearly worse.”
Here I think it is worth noting that there is a major difference between Utilitarianism as a system of thought by which we get all morals and utility as a way of evaluating some moral judgments. Utilitarianism as Mr. Bulldog has noted starts off with a single premise (maximize happiness) while other ethical systems start off with a list of precepts (for example the 10 Commandments or the Sermon on the Mount). But it does not follow that the follower of the 10 Commandments cannot think about utility when trying to live out his life. If the Sermon on the Mount says, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God,” the precept is to be a peacemaker. But we can then evaluate which actions maximize making peace (do we do it at the political level, the social level, via poetry or art, etc). In the same way, as we think of Bulldog’s example, this is not actually a moral question about rights versus utility as it is a discussion on how to preserve the human rights of as many people as possible. If we could perfectly know that shooting two people would save lives, this would not be a rights violation so much as an effort to maximize the human rights preserved.
He just totally ignored the reason why it would be a rights violation. People who believe in rights think you shouldn’t violate a person’s rights to prevent 2 more rights violations. However, this is a counterexample.
“Suppose you stumble across a person who has just been wounded. They need to be rushed to the hospital if they are to survive. If they are rushed to the hospital, they will very likely survive. The person is currently unconscious and has not consented to being rushed to the hospital. Thus, on non utilitarian accounts, it’s difficult to provide an adequate account of why it’s morally permissible to rush a person to the hospital. They did not consent, and the rationale is purely about making them better off. “
But as in the case of the circle of shooters, this is not actually a question of utility versus precept but a question of practical application of a variety of precepts at the same time. Respecting their right to consent and the right to life are both good precepts and the person in that situation needs to weigh which of those are the higher precept. Most people would state that the right to life is more important the right not to be moved. Evaluating this question is not giving into Utilitarianism at all.
This is a different case from the one about the circle of shooters. And no account was provided of why this wasn’t an objectionable rights violation. The only adequate account is utilitarian.
However, Ungit had quite literally no response to dozens of argument for utilitarianism here. I provided 8 separate responses to rights. Only one of them was addressed. The response to the others was crickets. Reread my original article and see if you think he addressed it. It will be abundantly clear they were mostly ignored. There is a reason I included the other arguments, because they were worth addressing. I also provided 5 cases in part 6 where only utilitarianism can get the right answer. Only a single one was addressed. I won’t repeat the arguments, but just note, most of my article was totally 100% ignored.
In conclusion, having read Mr. Bulldog’s opening statement, I don’t think we are any closer to being able to support Utilitarianism. He rightly noted some situations where utility can be evaluated but he wrongly assumed that is only part of Utilitarian ethics and not a necessary part of all other ethical systems of thought.
Well, given that most of the arguments were ignored and the ones that were addressed were misrepresented, I think that we are closer to showing that utilitarianism wins outright.
Appendix, My Article About Framing Innocent People For Fun And For Profit
Michael Huemer has another objection to utilitarianism, thinking that it justifies framing innocent people to save lives, which he thinks is bad. Huemer writes “b. Framing the innocent
You’re the sheriff in a town where people are upset about a recent crime. If no one is punished, there will be riots. You can’t find the real criminal. Should you frame an innocent person, causing him to be unjustly punished, thus preventing the greater harm that would be caused by the riots?”
Yes!
One first point that can be made is that in most realistic situations, one ought not frame people. Thus we have strong reason to say no to the question of whether innocent people ought to be framed, even if we can imagine sparse situations in which it would maximize happiness to do so.
Second, we can explain away our revulsion sociologically, by appealing to the revulsion which we rightly feel for framing an innocent person.
Third, we can make modifications like the ones made in part five by making the people family members. Surely you would rather one family member was framed, rather than all your family members killed.
Fourth, suppose we could prevent either five murders from a lynch mob, or one innocent person from being framed and killed by a lynch mob. Surely we should prevent the former. One could appeal to the act omission distinction in this case. However, we can modify the case to avoid this.
Imagine a case in which a person (we’ll call him Tim) wrote an anonymous letter that would be delivered, which would frame an innocent person, who would be killed by the mob. However, after writing and mailing the letter, Tim had a change of heart, and decided to prevent the letter from being delivered. When he uncovered the stash where his letter was stored, it turned out to be in an iron box, with a robust security system, such that if two letters were taken out and destroyed, it would sound the alarm, and letters would be returned to their original location. As Tim is about to take out his letter, he sees another letter, which has the names of five people on it, who Tim knows are being framed, and will be killed by the mob. If Tim takes his letter out, he will not have framed an innocent person, and no one will be left worse off, as a result of Tim’s actions. However, if Tim takes out the letter containing five names, he will prevent a mob from killing five innocent people. In this case, it seems very intuitive to take out the letter with five names, yet it is very much like the earlier case. When one is taking out the letters, it should not matter who wrote the letter. Additionally, suppose one wrote the letter when they were asleep (sleep letter forging is considerably rarer than sleep walking, but not impossible). In that case, it seems even more bizarre to take out the letter, because it was written by them, rather than the five that would save more lives.
One could object that the cases are not parallel. However, the cases have been designed to be identical in morally relevant respects. In both cases, one is framing an innocent person to save five people. The only difference is that one framing is dragged out over a longer period of time, and is done over mail. Those, however, are not morally relevant differences.
Fifth, let’s imagine another parallel case. A mob is planning on killing a large number of people, because they think that they all conspired to do the crime. They believe that conspiring to do the crime is especially horrendous (they take a hardline stance against conspiracies), so if they believed that only one person committed the crime they would beat that person severely, but not kill that person. However, that person would otherwise be killed by the mob, along with everyone else. Thus, it would be better for literally everyone if that person is framed. In that case it seems intuitive that you should frame the person to reduce the severity of harm to them, and save everyone else’s life.
Sixth, we can consider a case similar to the case I appealed to when arguing against magic rights. Consider the following case.
There are 100 concentric circles, the first with one person, the second one with five, the third with 25, fourth with 125, etc. Each person has 5 corresponding people in the circle outside of them. (Eg, person 1 in circle one corresponds to all five people in circle 2, Jim in circle 2 corresponds to Mary, Sue, Edith, Rampampam, and Gulac in circle 3m etc.) The first 99 circles are comprised of perfectly moral people. Each person has two options.
They can either
1 Frame an innocent person
2 Give the five people corresponding to you the options you were given.
However, the people in the 100th circle will certainly frame the innocent person. If we hold that it’s not worth it to frame an innocent person to prevent 5 murders, presumably we’d hold that it’s not worth it to frame an innocent person to prevent five framings. However, if it’s not moral to frame an innocent person to prevent five framings then it seems clearly immoral to frame an innocent person to give a perfectly moral person two options, one of which is framing an innocent person. Giving perfectly moral people extra options can’t be bad, because if the extra option is worse than framing an innocent person they won’t take it. They’ll only take it if it’s better than framing an innocent person. Thus, we have the following conclusion.
If you should frame an innocent person to prevent 5 murders, you should frame an innocent person to prevent 5 framings. If you should frame an innocent person to prevent 5 framings then you should frame an innocent person to give a perfectly moral person two options, one of which is framing an innocent person. However, if this is true, then one ought to take option 2 always, because they should not frame an innocent person to prevent 5 perfectly moral people from having two options, one of which is framing an innocent person. Unfortunately, if everyone takes option 2, we’d have to stipulate that a ring of perfectly moral people acting rightly would result in 5^99 innocent people getting framed, when, had they acted differently, only one person would have been framed. This is far more unintuitive than the utilitarian conclusion.
Morality doesn’t care about who takes actions—it instead cares about what actions are taken. Our intuitions are wrong. This conclusion may seem repugnant. Fortunately, Huemer already accepts the repugnant conclusion.
Non utilitarians will have to do better than this rights nonsense in order to demonstrate a decisive counter-example.