Hi, all, I'm hoping that some of you thoughtful consequentialists may have some reactions to the lengthy discussion that I and some other ex-grad students in philosophy from U. of Texas just posted to our podcast, The Partially Examined Life ([url]partiallyexaminedlife.com[/url]). We read some Bentham, Mill, and Singer; the other guys were especially harsh on Singer, though I sympathize a lot with his positions and think we do have a "speciesist" mentality (Come to think of it, the recently released film "District 9" is mildly relevant here, though I s'pose there were more explosions than philosophical fodder there.)

Thanks for listening.

I'll try and listen during the week.

Having listened to the first 25 minutes and last 25 minutes of the podacast, I'll offer some suggestions:
Firstly, I think I can explain faults in some of the criticisms of utilitarianism:
> Wes suggested that utilitarianism will result in 51% of the population oppressing 49% of the population. With "misery" for the few and "contentment" for the many. Well, firstly, if the few were miserable whereas the many were merely content the greater intensity of the minority group's feelings would cause their interests to prevail. Furthermore, the utilitarian approach would be to cultivate values of cooperation and community over any long-term division of society.
> utilitarians conclude that taking people's houses at a whim and, say, turning them into playgrounds is a bad idea. It would cause anxiety among the wider population. It would create a playground that noone would want to use. Of course, the government who made the decision would be unelectable! Few utilitarians oppose the idea of property. It helps to incentivise work, run our economy, and help to get things done.
> on the idea that it is hard to justify utilitarianism using premises which are outside of our culture, I would suggest that the criticism is misplaced: it hits other ethical systems harder than utilitarianism. Consider the origin of the following values: purity (of religious origins), fairness (from reciprocity), loyalty (of tribal origins), etc. Although I'm no historian, these values seem easy enough to pin down, especially compared with the value of happiness.

Thanks for the reply. (Arepo also just posted a long long long reply at partiallyexaminedlife.com.)

Ryan, I agree with your replies and am personally in general (as evidenced on the cast) sympathetic to util, but I do see it as too easy to juke the calculation, and think that it just doesn't do justice to the unconditional value of each person as a "whole world." My alternative is not Kantianism or something, however, but something more defeatist that I've yet to fully figure out.

...Each death (well, premature, unwilling death, at least) is a tragedy for which there is no adequate recompense. Doing the util calculation where death is involved is like "Sophie's Choice," i.e. choosing which of your kids to send off to the gas chamber. F'ing unbearable. ...So I guess as a legislator I'd just be paralyzed.

What about degrees of willingness? If you think the harm of unwilling death is (in some sense) infinite, then do you see no difference between someone who's only mildly averse to death and someone who's desperately afraid of it? (both multiplying to the same infinity, I think)