Utilitarianism wins outright part 4
Continuing to defend the syllogism laid out in part 3
Prelude
“really penetrating criticism, especially in ethics, requires a patient effort of sympathy which Mr Bradley has never learned to make, and a tranquillity of temper which he seems incapable of maintaining.”
“[The book] seems smashing, but he loses by being over-controversial. There should be at least an affectation of fairness in a damaging attack of this kind.”’
—Henry Sidgwick
Welcome back. Where we left off, I was defending the premises of the following syllogism.
1 A rational egoist is defined as someone who does only what produces the most good for themselves
2 A rational egoist would do only what produces the most happiness for themselves
3 Therefore only happiness is good (for selves who are rational egoists)
4 The types of things that are good for selves who are rational egoists are also good for selves who are not rational egoists unless they have unique benefits that only apply to rational egoists
5 happiness does not have unique benefits that only apply to rational egoists
6 Therefore only happiness is good for selves who are or are not rational egoists
7 All selves either are or are not rational egoists
8 Therefore, only happiness is good for selves
9 Something is good, if and only if it is good for selves
10 Therefore only happiness is good
11 We should maximize good
12 Therefore, we should maximize only happiness
Premises one and two have been defended. Onward
3 (I obviously know that I skipped one and two in this article—it’s a defense of premise three so I have it labeled 3)
Premise 3 says “Therefore only happiness is good (for selves who are rational egoists).” This follows deductively from 1 and 2.
4
Premise 4 says only the types of things that are good for selves who are rational egoists are good for selves who are not rational egoists unless they have unique benefits that only apply to rational egoists or unique benefits that apply to non rational egoists. This is trivial. Better is a synonym of more good, so this sentence is essentially the types of things that are good for selves who are rational egoists are also good for selves who are not rational egoists unless they are more good for rational egoists. We merely stipulate that rational egoists have a particular motive—being a non rational egoist does not bring intrinsic value to other non hedonic things.
5
Premise five says happiness does not have unique benefits that only apply to rational egoists. This premise is deeply intuitive. It makes no difference to our judgement that the joy of friendship, soup, and enlightenment whether we are a rational egoist.
6
Premise six says therefore only happiness is good for selves who are or are not rational egoists. This follows from the previous premises.
7
Premise seven says all selves either are or are not rational egoists. This premise is trivial.
8
Premise eight says therefore, only happiness is good for selves. This follows from the previous premises.
9
Premise nine says Something is good, if and only if it is good for selves.
This claim is hard to deny. It seems hard to imagine something being good, but being good for literally no one. If things can be good, while being good for no one, there would be several difficult entailments that one would have to accept.
1 A universe with no life could have moral value, given that things can be good or bad, while being good or bad for no one. The person who denies it could claim that things that are good must relate to people in some way, despite not being directly good for people, yet this would be ad hoc, and a surprising result, if one denied it.
2 If something could be bad, while being bad for no one, then it could be the case that galaxies full of people experiencing horrific suffering, for no ones benefit could be a good state of affairs, relative to one where everyone is happy and prosperous, but things that are bad for no one, yet bad, nonetheless are in vast quantities. For example, suppose we take the violation of rights to be bad, even if it’s bad for no one. A world where everyone violated everyone else's rights unfathomable numbers of times, in ways that harm literally no one, but where everyone prospers, based on the number of people affected, could be morally worse than a world in which everyone endures the most horrific forms of agony imaginable.
3 Those who deny this principle usually do so, not on the basis of the principle sounding implausible, but on the basis of the principle denying other things that they think matter—generally either desert or rights. I’ve argued those things don’t matter. If you’re read my full series responding to Huemer then you don’t need to read this part because the objections were expressed in parts 2, 6, and 7.
10
Premise 10 says Therefore only happiness is good. It follows from the previous premises.
11
Premise 11 says we should maximize good. First this can be supported through the following argument
1 If something is good this gives us a reason to pursue it
2 The most good thing gives us the most reason to pursue it
3 We should pursue what we have the most reason to pursue
Therefore, we should pursue the most good thing.
Second, this is deeply intuitive. When considering two options, it is better to make two people happy than one, because it is more good than merely making one person happy. Better is a synonym of more good, so if an action produces more good things it is better that it is done.
If there were other considerations that counted against doing things that were good, those would be bad, and thus would still relate to considerations of goodness
Third, as Parfit has in on what matters the thing that makes things go best, is the same as the thing that everyone could rationally consent to and that no person could reasonably reject. Parfit made this argument in the context of rules, but it applies equally to acts.
Fourth, an impartial observer should hope for the best state of the world to come into being. However, it seems clear that an impartial observer should not hope for people to act wrongly. Therefore, the right action should bring about the best world.
Fifth, as Yetter Chappel has argued, agency should be a force for good. Giving a perfectly moral agent control over whether some action happens shouldn’t make the world worse. In the trolley problem, for example, the world would be better if the switch flipped as a result of random chance, divorced from human action. However, if it is wrong to flip the switch, a perfectly moral person being given control over whether or not the flip switches by accident would make the world actively worse. Additionally, it would be better for a perfectly moral person to have muscle spasm which results in the switch flipping, than to have total control of their actions. It shouldn’t be better from the point of view of the universe for personally benevolent agents to have muscle spasms resulting in them taking actions that would have been wrong if they’d voluntarily taken them.
The other objections can be found in part 2 of my response to Huemer.
12
Premise 12 says therefore, we should maximize only happiness. This follows from the previous premises.
Conclusion
Each of these premises are very hard to deny. In conjunction, they justify utilitarianism. As we saw based on last post, our credence in utilitarianism was 60 to 19. I think that there being arguments this persuasive for utilitarianism, reasoning purely from first principles should shift are more likely if utilitarianism were correct by a factor of 5 to 1—so we move our credence to 300 to 19. This will obviously depend on the plausibility of the premises. That is up to you to decide, dear reader. However, there are plenty more plausible arguments for utilitarianism to come, so stay tuned. I’m not the first one who has been able to derive utilitarianism from plausible first principles and this is not the only way I’ve been able to derive it from plausible first principles.
But unlike other ethical systems that are attempted to be derived a priori—utilitarianism has plausible principles and doesn’t rely on equivocation. Additionally, reflection about specific cases verifies the general principles. Let these principles together settle the debate once and for all.
I’ve read timid utilitarians describe utilitarianism as a plausible contender—just as good as other theories, yet too hastily dismissed. No! Utilitarianism is not just as good as other theories. It is better. It is better like disbelief in homeopathy is better than belief in homeopathy. It is better like atheism is better than theism.
Those timid utilitarians often suggest that their papers are intending to level the playing field—establish utilitarianism as on par with other theories. This is far too modest. The leveling of the playing field should not be the kind that produces parity, but rather the type that produces utter destruction, the type that produces a razing of the opposing theories. Alternative theories should be leveled, reduced to rubble, placed upon the dustbin of history, considered as ludicrous as the theory before quantum mechanics that said that atoms are just bouncing billiard balls. Let the playing field be leveled the way Magnus Carlsen would level a 1300.
Yetter Chappel is right to be baffled by the number of non consequentialists. Other views don’t make any sense. They’re just fundamentally mistaken about what matters. Naming 5 unintuitive results of utilitarianism is not sufficient to justify dismissing a theory with this much support, especially when there’s always a powerful argument for the utilitarian conclusion in those thought experiments. The arc of moral theorizing is long, but it bends towards utilitarianism.