Don’t know if I am preaching to the choir, but with how much libs try to use the trolley problem to support their favorite war criminal, it got me thinking just how cringe utilitarianism is.
Whatever utilitarianism may be in theory, in practice, it just trains people to think like bureaucrats who belive themselves to be impartial observers of society (not true), holding power over the lives of others for the sake of the common good. It’s imo a perfect distillation of bourgeois ideology into a theory of ethics. It’s a theory of ethics from the pov of a statesman or a capitalist. Only those groups of people have the power and information necessary to actually act in a meaningfully utilitarian manner.
It’s also note worthy just how prone to creating false dichotomies and ignoring historical context utilitarians are. Although this might just be the result of the trolley problem being so popular.
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The problem with that stupid trolley problem meme is not that it implies utilitarianism, but that it’s myopic question-begging that very precisely controls what is and isn’t considered “relevant” information. Also it just plain lies even within that narrow scope about who is on the chopping block in a blue regime.
Love how the moral culpability is on the lever-puller and not the party who actually tied the people up in the tracks in the first place.
ethics philosophy in general is full of chuddery. if you have a conversation with one long enough they get to tell you it’s ok to torture one person if 8 billion people got a spec of dust in their eyes because of suffering points. deeply unserious field of philosophy.
Hold on before I post this let me just consider every ramification of it unto the end of time to see whether it’s good or not
But what about the utiles lost by taking the time to consider every possible ramification. MY PRECIOUS UTILES
I think utilitarianism is more good than bad. It’s one of the major ethical systems, and is often more satisfying than deontological systems or universalizing systems. I’ve seen Kantians get wrapped up in silly beliefs due to their categorical imperatives at least as much as utilitarian/consequentialist ethical floundering. The only meaningful alternative is virtue ethics, which focuses on the cultivation of the ethical agent, but that raises its own questions of how to ground the virtues in a generalizable way. I’m very interested in the attempts to revive virtue ethics.
Among the utilitarians are debates of what to min-max. For example, do we maximize pleasure and become hedonists? Do we minimize suffering like a Buddhist might? I think it’s an interesting question, defining the “utile” in our actions.
As a Buddhist, I’m drawn to negative utilitarianism or ‘suffering-focused ethics’. It gets memed on to a ridiculous degree though by people saying shit like “if you want to eliminate suffering, shouldn’t you just kill everyone so they can’t suffer anymore?”
and it makes the whole field of philosophy look like redditors.
RE the trolly problem itself and the application in voting, the libs are probably correct that a less bad thing is worse than a worse thing (tautological correctness being the best kind of correctness).
The way to side step this argument, on a simple utilitarian account, and which I don’t really see articulated, is that we are not at the trolly switch. By arguing that the democrats should do more to reduce harm than just positioning themselves at 99pct of damage of the GOP, and aiming to create a block of constituents that could plausibly withhold support for the Dems unless they did better, you may create a world that presents fewer people tied on a proverbial trolly track, when you get to it in the voting booth. It’s just of no use affirmatively broadcasting that you will support whatever the Dems give you; this very plausibly contributes to worse aggregate outcomes.
Ethics in general is a field that I’d argue can’t produce a serious application in general in principle. At most, it seems to just be fun to think about. No state or other large organisation is going to just make a genuine code of ethics that puts people first and then derive the other rules from there in a way that can be enforced, and in the case of individual people consciously adopting any specific codes of ethics is just going to simply be a reflection of what they already like and dislike subconsciously.
That said, I’d argue that it’s impossible to have a utilitarian code of ethics that is distinguishable from a deontological one, contrary to the popular perception, and every purely utilitarian code of ethics is going to be garbage that is no more insightful than just judging things ad hoc based on emotions. I.e. it’s just going to be a vibe-based examination of morality of a thing.
I’d argue that it’s impossible to have a utilitarian code of ethics that is distinguishable from a deontological one
I take it you are thinking about act utilitarianism, right?
Utilitarianism and consequentialism in general, really. If one were to develop a utilitarian code of ethics, it would just be the same as a deontological code of ethics with the relevant rules. There isn’t much actual difference between ‘you have a duty to do what maximises happiness’, and ‘an action the consequences of which include maximisation of happiness is good’, and ‘a rule of ethics, satisfaction of which leads to maximisation of happiness is good, and so are the relevant actions’, etc.
If one were to develop a utilitarian code of ethics, it would just be the same as a deontological code of ethics with the relevant rules
Depends. Some deontological systems can get really strict (ex - Kantian), and any 2 different utilitarians would probably have significant disagreements on how to actually calculate utility. Maybe it won’t look too different in ethics, but in government policy the moral systems would produce very different outcomes.
For example, a scenario I was told about when learning about this stuff was that of a city government commissioning a factory in a poor neighbourhood. The factory will bring them jobs, but will negatively impact their health. How the situation should be approached is very different for the moral systems. Even utilitarians amongst each other have difficulty deciding how to weight incomensurate things like health vs jobs.
Some deontological systems can get really strict (ex - Kantian)
Sure. However, that’s not relevant, as the claim is that a consequentialist (or mixed, for that matter) code of ethics is isomorphic to some deontological one, and not the other way around.
and any 2 different utilitarians would probably have significant disagreements on how to actually calculate utility
Not sure why you are bringing that up, considering that that was neither in question, nor is it relevant to whether or not a consequentialist code of ethics can just be rewritten as a deontological one.
Maybe it won’t look too different in ethics, but in government policy the moral systems would produce very different outcomes
Not sure what you mean by this. Care to provide an example where two codes - one deontological and one utilitarian non-deontological that label the same actions as ‘good’ and the same actions as ‘bad’ would produce a different result depending on which a government (or any organisation, for that matter) would subscribe to?
For example, a scenario I was told about when learning about this stuff was that of a city government commissioning a factory in a poor neighbourhood. The factory will bring them jobs, but will negatively impact their health. How the situation should be approached is very different for the moral systems
It differs between different systems of morality, yes, but that doesn’t actually refute my claim that every consequentialist or mixed consequentialist-deontological system of morality is isomorphic to some deontological one.
I don’t think you are using the word deontological correctly here. A deontological theory is one where you have a moral obligation based on the type of action you have performed rather than its concequencues
Now you could theoretically make a theory where you first use utilitarianism (and an all knowing computer) to determine the goodness of any possible action, then make a deontological imperative to do those actions at the times and location where they produce good results. I have thought about how to make the 2 theories compatible as well.
However, meaningfully, for a human with limited knowledge, utilitarianism and deontology aren’t going to be isomorphic unless you really strecht the meanings of those 2 systems. A human will never be able to come up with a deontological ruleset rich enough to maximise utility in every possible situation they will encounter.
I think it would be more accurate to say that utilitarianism in general can simulate deontology by assigning utilities to the type of action a person performs. For the lack of a better term, I would consider utilitarianism a “Turing complete” moral theory, while deontology would be closer to combinatorial logic in moral terms.
I don’t think you are using the word deontological correctly here. A deontological theory is one where you have a moral obligation based on the type of action you have performed rather than its concequencues
The thing is, we can always make an axiom of a consequentialist code of ethics (just in case, I use expressions ‘system of morality’, ‘morality system’, ‘code of ethics’ interchangeably) into an axiom of an equivalent deontological code of ethics by just saying that, (I am going to use square brackets ‘[’, ‘]’ to denote parts of the ‘instead’ clause for better clarity here) instead of [an action being good because it has such-and-such consequences], [you have a duty to perform actions that are evaluated to have such-and-such consequences]. I suppose, that does mean that it is possible for one action that is not evaluated to have particular consequences to lead to those consequences, and for an action that was evaluated a priori to lead to particular consequences to not actually lead to those consequences, and this is a refutation of my original claim, as these systems can end up with different a posteriori descriptions.
However, I do posit that, in a sense, there is still no significant difference in how deontological and consequentialist systems of morality work prescriptively, as you can’t actually know the future with absolute certainty, and every principled subscriber to a consequentialist code of ethics is going to act in accordance to what I previously called an ‘equivalent deontological code of ethics’ - they will try to evaluate an action’s consequences a priori, and act in accordance with said predictions.
However, meaningfully, for a human with limited knowledge, utilitarianism and deontology aren’t going to be isomorphic unless you really strecht the meanings of those 2 systems. A human will never be able to come up with a deontological ruleset rich enough to maximise utility in every possible situation they will encounter
I mean, you won’t be finding many people who actually adopt explicit codes of ethics in general, whether deontological, consequentialist, virtue-ist, or a mix of any of those, especially one that they would actually follow.
Also, I’m not sure why you think we can’t just find a deontological code of ethics from a given utilitarian one. You basically just add ‘you have a duty to do actions that satisfy such-and-such criteria for good actions in this given utilitarian code of ethics’.I think it would be more accurate to say that utilitarianism in general can simulate deontology by assigning utilities to the type of action a person performs
I mean, we can also find a deontological code of ethics equivalent to a given utilitarian one using the method that I have outlined previously. It can even be done with just one additional axiom.
For the lack of a better term, I would consider utilitarianism a “Turing complete” moral theory, while deontology would be closer to combinatorial logic in moral terms
There are better analogies that would involve just using set theory, if I understand correctly what you are trying to say - that every deontological code of ethics has an equivalent utilitarian code of ethics, and not vice versa. I disagree, as I have provided a method for finding a deontological code of ethics that is equivalent to a given utilitarian one.
Also, neither utilitarian, nor deontological codes of ethics intersect well with virtue-based codes of ethics, as those tell us whether people are good or bad, and not whether actions are good or bad.
I mean, you won’t be finding many people who actually adopt explicit codes of ethics in general
Yeah, this is just theoretical. I am pretty much assuming we are talking about computers calculating morality here rather than actual people.
There are better analogies that would involve just using set theory
Yeah, scratch my analogy. It’s actually kind of terrible.
instead of [an action being good because it has such-and-such consequences], [you have a duty to perform actions that are evaluated to have such-and-such consequences].
Well, the latter is just called act utilitarianism, which is more or less any moral system which is deontological but tries to approximate utilitarianism. Basically, you create a deontological ruleset which tries to predict in advance what maximises utility.
It only approximates utilitarianism as I see it because once a deontological ruleset is laid out, you can’t change it. If you then encounter an action which will have negative conquerors, but you should do according to your ruleset, you have to do it, or else you are just doing utilitarianism and calling it deontology.
You can improve the approximation arbitrarily by making a richer and richer ruleset, but this requires more and more knowledge and computing beforehand.
Yeah this. As well as, in practice, humans tend to act first, then create ethical justification post-hoc. Even if we were able to create a totally ethical system, it would be unlikely to ever actually be applied correctly.
That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be attempting to create better things, or more ethical outcomes, it just means that getting bogged down in ethical arguments is pointless. To quote Parenti, I support the revolution that feeds and teaches the children.
I’ll spare a longer post, but it’s all analytical and under determined, and any criticism of a leftist project can and is attacked under other various ethical theories as well (what’shisname’s (good faith) post questioned if it was morally defensible to off the Romanov kids; he didn’t do this from a utilitarian perspective).
A more common experience imo is running into accusations that leftist policies fail because they wrongly let the ends justify the means, not that they are too unconcerned w aggregate happiness (see aforementioned post/argument (from a_blanqui_slate?)). This is because leftist policies are seen as departing from a baseline of the distributive status quo, such that these departures, because they are almost necessarily not-pareto superior (ie, require a redistribution where someone must be made worse off), can always be argued to infringe on some ex ante Right, and are thus unacceptable on some deontological theory; of course, one could rhetorically change the analytic baseline, and argue that the status quo of distribution already departs and infringes on a prior Right, and argue for amelioration from a Rights based perspective; and which is again to say, it’s all analytical and immaterial.
Utilitarianism is just “the ends justifies the means” laundered through 19th century English hippies.
Utilitarianism is just “the ends justifies the means” laundered
Laundered? I thought utilitarians were pretty open about being concequentialists. When I was a utilitarian, I thought this was just obvious.
‘The ends justify the means’ is actually a(n undeservedly-maligned) good take. The ends are a primary thing that determines what means are appropriate, and I’m not sure how anybody can argue against this.
Utilitarianism is just garbage that is no more insightful than vibes-based examination of actions.
This is exactly how I feel, and is only a problem to liberals (I mean philosophical liberals) who don’t understand that certain ends can only be reached by certain means, and conversely certain means can never reach certain ends.
They live in a reality where “authoritarian” measures like a one-party state are just the personal preference of dictatorial leaders who are misguided or evil and who could have just chosen to be “good” instead, rather than those measures being the only way to survive the imperial onslaught.
Gödel’s incompleteness theorem but for ethical systems.
I’m mostly ambivalent to it, but I remember in a political philosophy class I took back in college, we went over what utilitarians said about US democracy, and it was funny as fuck to see all these jackasses shift from “yes, consequentialism is where it’s at, the outcome determines the moral worth of an action!” to “… uh, actually it’s the process that really makes a government democratic…”
Whatever utilitarianism may be in theory, in practice, it just trains people to think like bureaucrats who belive themselves to be impartial observers of society (not true), holding power over the lives of others for the sake of the common good.
Yeah that’s the problem. It’s fine in the abstract, but the moment rubber hits the road the question of “who gets to decide what the best utility is” throws a wrench in the work. Similar to “we should have a system where the most qualified candidate gets hired.”
It doesn’t help that the most prominent critique of utilitarianism is the Nietzschean “you’re holding back the ubermensches!” one, which is problematic on so many levels. So libs hear “utilitarianism has problems” and they immediately assume the person is a Randite sociopath.
Similar to “we should have a system where the most qualified candidate gets hired.”
Funny you mention that, I was thinking about making a post about how most bourgeois ideology just seems to be some flavour of meritocracy.
Both utilitarianism and meritocracy are imo the bourgeois ideologies that together form the justification of modern liberal/elitist society.
There’s a certain analogy there to virtue and piety under feudalism. The rule by nobility and aristocracy is good because they’ve been anointed by God, which means their rule will be moral and just because that anointing brings them closer to godliness. Please ignore the literal backstabbing and adultery they’re doing.
Meritocracy isn’t really a ‘bourgeois’ ideology in the sense that it originated from favouring the bourgeoisie in some sense. However, meritocracy is still garbage, both in the sense that it is actually understood academically (i.e. broadly, where the relevant merits can be anything from one being skilled and/or knowledgeable to one being rich to one being an inheritor of a fief), and in the sense that it is understood more popularly (i.e. the skilled and knowledgeable people should be rewarded based on this particular merit). I’d argue that people should be provided for based on their capabilities and input (i.e. an old person shouldn’t be required to work 16 hours a day, 6 days a week to be able to satisfy their basic needs, while a person who does more should probably also be given more). I see no sense in having some people live in luxury (at the expense of everybody else) simply based on them proving that they have some merit in the past.
Well, the “academic” version of meritocracy would be more accurately described as the division of labor (which is happens to be something that grew exponentially with capitalism), while the popular notion of meritocracy is how the bourgeoise justify their rule.
I’m sure you have heard of the argument defending the bourgeoise as deserving power because they “work hard, are creative and skilled”. In fact, that is the most common argument in their favour I have encountered. You also hear similar justifications for colonialism and slavery.
Well, the “academic” version of meritocracy would be more accurately described as the division of labor
Not sure how you can argue that. It’s not about a division of labour at all. The difference between the popular understanding and the academic one is in what can be considered a merit. The academic understanding is broader.
while the popular notion of meritocracy is how the bourgeoise justify their rule
It’s also how feodals did so, and basically every political system tries to be meritocratic in the sense of having qualified people in more powerful and/or more rewarding positions, at least for some positions.
I’m sure you have heard of the argument defending the bourgeoise as deserving power because they “work hard, are creative and skilled”. In fact, that is the most common argument in their favour I have encountered. You also hear similar justifications for colonialism and slavery
I am very well-aware of these arguments. I have even provided some of my thoughts regarding why those arguments are only appealing if one doesn’t think about them too much. This sort of justification, however, is not unique to the bourgeoisie’s usage of them, and also predates their dominance in the first place.
Not sure how you can argue that. It’s not about a division of labour at all. The difference between the popular understanding and the academic one is in what can be considered a merit. The academic understanding is broader.
Diving up tasks by the skills of the people involved is a pretty classical example of division if labor. That goes even if whether the job is running a society and the merit is one’s political knowledge.
Also, I misread your comment a bit and didn’t see how the academic understanding of meritocracy includes things like inheritance or being rich. I am not talking about these things when I say “meritocracy”, especially as an ideology that justifies bourgeois rule. I am sure you have encountered liberals who struggle to reconcile capitalism’s supposed meritocratic nature with the existence of inhereticance.
It’s also how feodals did so
It’s more complicated with feudal lords. They portrayed themselves as God’s chosen, rulers by moral virtue rather than by skill. As far as I know, the early bourgeois rebels against feudal rule heavily lambasted the un-meritocratic nature of feudalism.
is not unique to the bourgeoisie’s usage of them, and also predates their dominance in the first place.
This might just be my own ideological bias showing, but is this actually true? I don’t see how class systems based on rigid inheritance can even pretend to be meritocratic. You would need at least some class mobility to make the illusion work.
Diving up tasks by the skills of the people involved is a pretty classical example of division if labor
Meritocracy is not concerned with division of tasks by skills. It is concerned with rewarding people of merit, and providing them with power.
I am not talking about these things when I say “meritocracy”
Yeah, this is rather common, which is why I pointed out this discrepancy between how meritocracy is understood popularly and how it is understood academically.
I am sure you have encountered liberals who struggle to reconcile capitalism’s supposed meritocratic nature with the existence of inhereticance
A part of my interest in commenting here is not having prepared an answer quickly enough to one such person whom I did try to turn socialist. After one of our conversations, they said that they looked into and like ‘some right-wing ideas’, and, as an example they provided meritocracy. I already had my issues with meritocracy, but couldn’t provide a comprehensive critique at that moment, so I did not pursue that topic. This is kind of an outlet for my thoughts on that matter.
It’s more complicated with feudal lords. They portrayed themselves as God’s chosen, rulers by moral virtue rather than by skill
I’m confident that they also claimed to be more skilled than the non-aristocratic members of society, and that inheritance allowed them to produce most qualified people in the society.
Also, being a ‘god’s chosen’ is a merit under the relevant systems.
I don’t see how class systems based on rigid inheritance can even pretend to be meritocratic
You have people who believe that such traits are inheritable as well, and that educating their spawn from early age for rather specific tasks (such as ruling a fief) creates the most skilful members of society.
You would need at least some class mobility to make the illusion work
There was, indeed, some class mobility.
For example, unless I’m missing something and bourgeoisie was already dominant in the Russian Empire of the 18th century, there is Mikhail Lomonosov, one of the most important scientists of the time, who came from a peasant family and managed to become a noble by becoming a professor. The Russian Imperial table of ranks provided a systemic way of achieving inheritable noble status (starting with different ranks for military and civilian ranks).
But did you ever consider that an omniscient and omnipotent robot god in the future can solve every problem therefore the most utilitarian thing to do is make billionaires even richer so they can totally finance the construction of an omniscient and omnipotent robot god in the future?
“I like that part about omnipotent robot god, though i’m not sure i follow the rest”
- Kagrenac
I don’t think any theoretical model is gonna be able to perfectly describe the complexities of human ethics, let alone prescribe “good” actions in broad strokes. But any of them might be useful lenses to judge a situation by.
Utilitarianism is useful (ha) in situations like the prisoner’s dilemma, where a selfish action results in less overall benefit than a non-selfish action, despite potentially resulting in more personal benefit. Most of us won’t face the exact prisoner’s dilemma, but there’s frequently decisions to be made with a similar structure:
Some task has to be done, neither I nor my roommate want to do it. But I know it’s harder for my roommate to do (for whatever reason) so the utilitarian action would be to do it myself because that results in less misery than if my roommate did it.
I have a pizza. Theoretically I could eat the whole pizza, but the second and third slices aren’t nearly as enjoyable as the first. So sharing the pizza with other people maximizes overall utility at the cost of marginal personal utility.
I gain omnipotence and decide to construct a universe where one person is tortured for all eternity to avoid a billion trillion gazillion people from ever getting an eyelash stuck in their eyes. This maximizes utility because a billion trillion gazillion times negative 0.01 utils outweighs 1 times negative 1000 utils.
I don’t think any theoretical model is gonna be able to perfectly describe the complexities of human ethics, let alone prescribe “good” actions in broad strokes. But any of them might be useful lenses to judge a situation by.
Maybe this is just the lingering influence of my days when I was a fan of Max Stirner, but both of those tasks seem to be kind of pointless and impossible.
Right away, by making moral theories into lenses, or tools to be picked and chosen, you have undermined their imperative power.
Essentially, you have just kicked the can down the road, because we now need a meta moral theory to determine which moral theory produces the best outcome for which situation.
Really, hume’s guillotine (one cannot derive an ought statement from an is statement) kills any rational or empirical approach to morality dead in its tracks.
undermined their imperative power.
Maybe this is me being a vulgar materialist but on a larger scale I think ethical considerations are mostly normative and derived from power relations, and superstructural. There’s a strong tension to define right and wrong around whatever material/class interests are at play.
It’s good that there’s people thinking about ethics and trying to hash out detailed and coherent models and whatnot, but I think for most if not all people ethics is gonna be very vibey and dynamic, maybe instinctive or intuitive.
Which meshes, I think, with your final statement. Actually-existing ethics isn’t particularly scientific nor mathematical. Imo it’s constantly being produced between people at every level of relationship, and philosophical models are tools that help us communicate and hone in on ethical concepts, perhaps identify contradictions and power dynamics.
Really, hume’s guillotine (one cannot derive an ought statement from an is statement) kills any rational or empirical approach to morality dead in its tracks.
Damn, they have a comic for everything lmao
Hume as a MechWarrior got me.
