Hey,

I just found this forum and am really astonished by the quality of the stuff on here, literally I've spent hours trawling through it all, it's just fantastic. I found y'all through Alan Dawrst's website, and am in the midst of all of that as well.

I just had a few questions though, and thought here would be as good a place as any to put them.
Firstly, has anyone come up with a reasonable counter to the Utility Monster argument against classical utilitarianism?
Also, do you apply any sort of, I dunno, discount rate (thinking of economics) or something to your judgments about the future? What I'm really asking is whether the happiness and suffering in the future (and far future) is just as important as it is now.

Thanks in advance, I hope to have many fascinating discussions.

Hi Gedusa, welcome along. (and put me out of my misery - is the name a Medusa/something(Ursula le Guin?) pun, or one referring to the USA?

Gedusa wrote:I just had a few questions though, and thought here would be as good a place as any to put them.
Firstly, has anyone come up with a reasonable counter to the Utility Monster argument against classical utilitarianism?

Depends what you mean, really. Most of us don't see anything wrong with the utility monster. Nozick just assumed it was self-evidently bad.

But it's basically just the opposite extreme to the repugnant conclusion. Should we object to both extremes and find some (inevitably arbitrary) middle ground, even if it means sacrificing net utility? Or should we prefer one extreme to the other for some reason? Or should we just accept that our intuition isn't designed to cope with such alien situations, and that perhaps we have no real reason to object to either scenario.

Personally I find the utility monster intuitively much more palatable than the repugnant conclusion, but I think the third response is right, and that my intuition isn't very significant.

Also, do you apply any sort of, I dunno, discount rate (thinking of economics) or something to your judgments about the future? What I'm really asking is whether the happiness and suffering in the future (and far future) is just as important as it is now.

Jeremy Bentham did. Most of the Felicifia posters would probably agree that he drew an unnecessary distinction between discounting for distance in time and for risk, the former of which generally entails the latter.

Most of us are interested in expected value (where value is whatever we think of as positive and negative utility - in my case happiness/suffering). But obviously you might disagree with us.

Hi Gedusa. I'm really proud of the quality of discussion at Felicifia too! Welcome, and please don't hesitate to raise any more questions you have either.

re: the utility monster. Just to recap, the arument is that utilitarianism implies that
should it become possible to concentrate a large amount of utility in a computer, then we could plausibly be required to suffer so that that computer can flourish. This conclusion so unintuitive that utilitarianism is wrong.

My response is ultimately that I to find this conclusion inintuitive. However, I don't trust my intuitions in such a bizzare situation as this one. This scenario is too far removed from those my brain is evolved to evaluate. My line of reasoning is roughly borrowed from RM Hare's How to Argue with an Anti-Utilitarian. That is, the unintuitive conclusion may just be the right one.

Related reading here: http://www.utilitarian.net/singer/by/200703--.htm

Whether we should discount future utility is also a good question. My answer is that we should only discount future utility to the extent that we are uncertain about whether it will actually come to fruition. That is, it is as valuable for me to experience one happy day in ten years time as it is for me to experience a happy day tomorrow. Or, at least it would be, if I was certain I would be alive in ten years. There's a further complicating factor: my preferences change over time. If, at the age of twelve, I decide to buy myself a ticket to Disneyland and I stow this ticket away in a Swiss bank account for one decade. When I return to this safe ten years older, is the Disneyland experience one that I'll still find enjoyable? I hope this gives some food for thought on the topic of discounting future utility.

Also, do you apply any sort of, I dunno, discount rate (thinking of economics) or something to your judgments about the future? What I'm really asking is whether the happiness and suffering in the future (and far future) is just as important as it is now.

Just as important. Less likely. More extreme.

One of the big differences between utilitarians is which of the last two makes a bigger difference. I believe it essentially comes down to whether or not you accept the Doomsday argument. I accept it, so I tend to do less about future happiness.

Wow, my forum name's never been analysed to such an extent before. Basically, you were right about the Ursula le Guin reference, i.e. Ged which I adopted as an internet alias for a while, but then for some reason a forum or game or something wouldn't accept only three characters and so I just put "usa" on the end.

I can see what you're saying about the utility monster and mere addition, they do violate our intuitions, but that doesn't seem to make them wrong, I think that they are both probably good outcomes for utility, although utterly alien. I can also see that these situations are highly unlikely to happen, meaning we shouldn't perhaps waste much time on them. Although perhaps some sort of AI could lead to a utility monster outcome, as the original argument suggested.

I'm still really unsure about how far we can legitimately care about potential suffering in the far future. I think Ryan made a good point in saying that really it all comes down to risk and whether that potential suffering/happiness will come about in the future, probably because this leads me to an intuitive conclusion that we ought to do less about utility as it goes farther into the future as the risk of no or less return increases. However, I run into problems when I think about the sheer enormity of future suffering/happiness and as to whether, as DanielLC said, more extreme happiness/suffering counts for more if it is less likely to occur. Existential risk also ruins my homely little conclusion as obviously all life or just humans going extinct should be avoided avidly no matter how far ahead the risk is. I run into the considerable problems around infinity and so on.

Finally, another random question as you've helped a lot with the others. Do you think that the total utility of the entire biosphere (just wild non-human animals) is positive or negative? So what I'm really asking is whether wild non-humans experience more happiness in general or more suffering in general.

P.S. I don't accept the doomsday argument, as far as I could tell, it could've legitimately applied to cavemen. Though I could be rationalising to avoid having to think that 95% of humanity has already lived (I think that's it anyway) and I do think that reducing existential risk is in general a utility maximising act.

intuitive conclusion that we ought to do less about utility as it goes farther into the future

That intuition is wrong far more often than not. Have you ever heard anyone complain that people save and invest too much?

avoid having to think that 95% of humanity has already lived

They usually give 5%. That's the lower error bound. It means that there's a 5% chance that less than 5% of humanity has lived. It's not that helpful. There's an x% chance that less than x% of humanity has lived for any x.

It could legitimately apply to the cavemen. And polling people on who they vote for for president legitimately applies even if you somehow happened to get 10,000 Republicans and no Democrats. 5% of humanity was (or is going to be) before the point where less than 5% of humanity lived so far, so a Frequentist would say that there's only a 5% chance that less than 5% of humanity has lived so far. I use a Bayesian version, which is a bit more complicated. It's also more pessimistic. Normally, after the Doomsday argument, there's still infinite expected utility. I don't even accept that as my prior, as doing so would mean expected utility can depend on the order in which I count the possibilities. After the argument, it's even more pessimistic.

Hi Gedusa, unfortunately, I think the new versions of your problems are extremely difficult problems. I don't know how to deal with the possibility of infinite utility.

It's tough to estimate whether the total utility of the biosphere is positive or negative. I do have two suggestions, though:
1.The utility of the biosphere is lower than you think. I imagine that you accord life some value, subconsciously. It's a hang-over from the religious doctrine of sanctity of life. I think this makes you and I want to keep people alive, even when their lives are awful. Related points here: here
2. The biosphere has enormous potential to have positive utility in the future.

Hi,

this site is a worthwhile forum for people who care.

Just a comment I picked up on from Gedusa:

'... obviously all life or just humans going extinct should be avoided avidly no matter how far ahead the risk is.'
Is it not illogical to care for a species? The species has no feelings. It is individual members of the species who have feelings. Moreover, our species has probably caused more suffering than any other species on earth. So in particular, human extinction would result in a world that is free of suffering by comparison to our present world.

Is it not illogical to care for a species? The species has no feelings. It is individual members of the species who have feelings. Moreover, our species has probably caused more suffering than any other species on earth. So in particular, human extinction would result in a world that is free of suffering by comparison to our present world.

I would disagree, at least when things come to the future. We have the capacity, as Ryan said, to massively increase the utility of the biosphere. No other species can do this. The human species therefore does have value firstly in terms of it's individuals leading worthwhile lives and in the expected ability in the future to increase utility for all other animals on the planet (via stuff like the hedonistic imperative). Whilst we have caused a lot of suffering, I think that we can probably justify continued existence on the ground I have said (although you might not have been questioning our "right to exist").

I do agree that a species in itself lacks value and agree with your assertion that it is individuals who matter. I would inject one caveat however, that a species as a whole gives value to an ecosystem if it is an instrumental part of it.

I assume that you believe that the natural world is at significant positive utility currently as you said that the world would be comparatively free of suffering if humans went extinct.

P.S. Yeah I probably do still have an intuitive hang-up about the sanctity of life and all that, I'm trying to rid myself of these sorts of biases though, though I still find it difficult to justify ending a life because I think it isn't worth living, I probably would want some sort of preference based Utilitarianism for these sorts of things.

Hi Gedusa,

you are trying to overcome your bias towards the 'sanctity of life' and other biases? It is an important part of our quest for knowledge to overcome these biases. Good luck. I try too to be aware of my biases. I hope they are not working their spell in these utterances.
When you say that humans have the capacity to increase the utility of the biosphere, if you mean by this that we have the capacity to genetically design wild animals and thereby increase their hedonic experience per individual, there is doubt among scientists that this will ever work. If we try to raise the hedonic setpoint of 'wild' animals, these animals might not survive. In 'The Extended Phenotype' Richard Dawkins points out that nature might have provided any given species with an optimum level of mutations already. Therefore, for example, the range of the hedonic setpoint of the gazelle might already be as high as nature will allow before the species has such a high pleasure to discomfort ratio that it gets killed too easily and becomes extinct. Dawkins provides premises for this suspicion by pointing out that there are various species separated by continents who have independently developed similar mutations as their cross continent cousins. This gives us reason to doubt that nature has been inefficient in trying to give wild animals a higher hedonic set point. If nature has experimented with the hedonic setpoint of gazelles, for example, then as low as the pleasure to pain ratio is for an individual gazelle is, it might be as high as nature will allow without sacrificing the gazelle species ('sacrifice' being a metaphor of course, the species would not feel pain during its 'sacrifice').
Furthermore, there has been no precedent for genetically altering the hedonic set point of wild animals. Even predictions of the future that have a precedent are logically considered weak inductive arguments, never mind predictions that have no precedent. Therefore, predicting that humans will one day be able to alter the hedonic setpoint of wild animals, an unprecedented prediction of the future, is tenuous.
If on the other hand, you mean that humans have the capacity to increase utility in the biosphere by breeding animals, then how do we have that capacity, when we do not know whether an individual animal's life is worth living. Bear in mind that evolution cares for the species, not for the organisms. Many humans make the philosophical choice to breed. Let us assume for argument's sake that we can infer from deliberate human reproduction that up to a point human life is worth living. Non-human animals do not reproduce through philosophical choice. They do not reproduce because their lives are worth living. They might be blindly reproducing despite their lives not being worth it. (I doubt, however, that we can infer that human life is worth living from deliberate human reproduction, because humans who reproduce have not yet lived through old age and so they have not experienced what is in most cases the worst part, whose trials I will not detail here).
We have been given insight into non-human animal experience through the autistic animal welfare campaigner Temple Grandin who has been observed to be and believes she is akin to non-human animals in her hyper-sensitivity, and she describes the experience she feels when she passes suspicious strangers as 'hell'. I hope it is not that bad for non-human animals.
Ahhhh, the 'natural' world. (I prefer to put 'natural' in commas because I prefer to use abstract nouns like 'natural' in their broadest sense unless I specify otherwise or put them in inverted commas. The broadest sense of natural of course includes humans; the definition I am using here does not.) To remind us of how painful life can be, (here quoted from Wikipedia) Schopenhauer says, 'A quick test of the assertion that enjoyment outweighs pain in this world, or that they are at any rate balanced, would be to compare the feelings of an animal engaged in eating another with those of the animal being eaten.' So, I doubt that the 'natural' world has positive utility.
My last point is that you would find it difficult to justify ending a life because you think that it is not worth living. I did not say, however, that that would necessarily be justifiable. My point was that if our species were to become extinct, there would be much less suffering on earth. Although a human free earth would have less suffering, that does not mean that we should try to achieve that. One need not prescribe venturing out at night with a body bag and shovel. Rather, tell your friends, if you see an asteroid the size of Texas coming, don't call the police.

That last paragraph? Here is a proofread, comprehensible and expanded version:

My last point is that Getusa said he would find it difficult to justify ending a life because he thinks that it is not worth living (he implies here, that I would justify ending a life that is not worth living). I did not say, however, that that would necessarily be justifiable. My point was that if our species were to become extinct, there would be much less suffering on earth. Although a human free earth would have less suffering, that does not mean that we should try to achieve that. However, to work towards preserving our species in the event of a potential extinction event would perpetuate the suffering our species endures and deals out. Each one of us will die anyway. One's death agony will tear at us whether we are old or young, eventually. So what matters if it is later. Of course we are programmed to avoid it, and well we might, but it is not necessarily logical. Socrates was right to question whether he was luckier than his captors who were forcing him to drink the hemlock. He was about to become insensitive to everything. They would continue to suffer.
As for the suffering of our species, I am reminded of Bob Dylan's 'Talkin World War III Blues', where post holocaust Bob meets his 'Eve'. She looks at him with a glint in her eye, ready to start repopulating the earth with humans. He says to her, 'You crazy or suthin? Look what happened last time.'
In the piece of writing that Gedusa quoted, I was not prescribing venturing out at night with a body bag and shovel. Nevertheless, tell your friends, if you see an asteroid the size of Texas coming, don't call the police.

The hedonistically optimized animals only have to be more successful if you're only willing to interfere once. Every time they start evolving depression, send a new wave of genetic modification viruses to make their offspring happy again.

People aren't capable of doing this now, but that doesn't mean we won't be able to do it. If we can make them happy enough, it would make up for a low probability of success. Besides, if it turns out we can't, we can always nuke them later.

you would find it difficult to justify ending a life because you think that it is not worth living.

I find it hard to justify not ending it. If it isn't worth living, that means it would be better if it ended. This means one should end it if one has the means to do so without significant collateral damage (e.g. getting arrested).

As for the suffering of our species, I am reminded of Bob Dylan's 'Talkin World War III Blues', where post holocaust Bob meets his 'Eve'. She looks at him with a glint in her eye, ready to start repopulating the earth with humans. He says to her, 'You crazy or suthin? Look what happened last time.'

The entire song has exception lyrics, and that one is a definite stand-out. I'm interested that you have indicated that if humanity could be eliminated in one fell swoop, this would be favourable. At risk of going off topic, may I ask why? Is your understanding of the human condition that humans experience both happiness and suffering, but that the suffering is of greater magnitude than the happiness, and so it is more important? If so, why do you call yourself a Negative Utilitarian? Or, do you believe that the happiness is of greater magnitude than the suffering, but that this happiness counts for nothing?

@ Ryan, I think he's referring to the amount of suffering caused by humans, not whether human happiness outweighs suffering. I think so anyway, though I could be wrong.

@ David, I think that your argument is inconsistent. On the one hand you say this:

I doubt that the 'natural' world has positive utility.

And yet on the other hand you claim that human extinction should not be worked against as (and again I quote):

if our species were to become extinct, there would be much less suffering on earth

I can't seem to square the two, given that if humanity going extinct were to increase utility then surely the natural world must have positive utility. If the natural world has negative utility (as you suggest) then surely the human species going extinct wouldn't improve things one bit. Do you mean the natural world as influenced by humans today? Or do you think that the extinction of other species besides humans might skew utility into the positive? Will the numerical amount of anhedons (or whatever the term is for suffering) be reduced whilst the ratio of pleasure to pain remains the same?

Also, in regards to humans increasing the utility of the biosphere, yes I was referring to genetic intervention in the natural world. And in this I agree with Daniel completely.

Hi Ryan and Gedusa,

just to clear up Gedusa, I am Richard Pearce, not David. I would not want anyone to be mistakenly said to have said something that I said.
One point I will repeat is that I am concerned with individuals, not species. Also, I am concerned not with increasing positive utility but with decreasing negative utility because suffering is more intense than pleasure. Furthermore, I believe that helping to help our species to avoid an extinction event will also increase suffering, because then our species will live further into the future and perhaps even colonise other planets, perhaps even other solar systems. Therefore, helping our species avoid an extinction event would increase negative utility. It follows then that the fewer mammals that are born the better, because the fewer that are born, the less negative utility.
Another point is that since each individual will die anyway, if they die tomorrow in a no more painful way than they would die in say 50 years time, then they would suffer less, missing out on the suffering they would have felt in that 50 years. Hence Socrates considering himself luckier than his captors who were forcing him to kill himself.
Also, Ryan, I do consider that happiness counts for nothing other than being a means of reducing suffering. In other words, if an organism is suffering depression, for example, and it were possible to make it happy for the rest of its life without increasing suffering in another organism, then it would be right to make the organism happy to reduce its suffering. Whereas to breed an organism that would be happy throughout its life without it suffering, to breed it only for the value of its happiness, would be pointless. If in its former state, it were insentient, then let it be insentient.

I must also add to make more sense of my previous comment, that I do not give positive moral value to happiness. I only give negative moral value to suffering. Thus, I believe that the fewer sentient beings who are born the better, or at least the less harm.

If you believe suffering to be less intense than happiness, surely that should lead you to value suffering more intensely than happiness. Nothing about the intensity of the two should lead you to disregard happiness altogether.

Also, how do you distinguish happiness from the absence of suffering? The two seem rather similar to me. Should I be deprived of my internet connection, this would make me less happy than before. You would say that since I am not suffering, there is no moral difference. However, I counter that internet deprivation does indeed cause suffering. Since my conscious state is worse than before, I am surely in a state of relative suffering. Who is right, and what is suffering if not an opposite to happiness?

Hi Ryan,

if we were to regard happiness as having positive utility, then the positive utility that we would count from happiness could bring negative utility into a positive figure. We could then justify breeding an unhappy organism so long as we also breed 1 or 2 happy ones. But this should not be justifiable. All 3 potential organisms are insentient. All 3 are insentient and therefore are not missing anything. If it is insentient, let it remain insentient. If it is free from suffering, let it be free from suffering.

What do you mean not missing anything? They don't feel the emotion of missing happiness, but they still don't feel happiness. You could just as well argue that an organism incapable of feeling anything but pain isn't missing anything, since it can't feel neutrality.

Daniel C, your entire last comment is equivocation.

Why? It seems to me that you're saying that it isn't bad that they don't feel happiness because they can't. Am I missing something?

An entity's capacity to feel pain and no pleasure is bad.
But if for you an entity's insentience is bad, then you must get great displeasure from looking at the moon, which for you is full badness.

I'm not that empathetic. In any case, even the suffering of just the humans alive now is beyond my comprehension. Adding in the waste of the universe can't really do anything, even though it's inconceivably more.

Also, the moon isn't full of badness, it's full of the potential for goodness. They amount to the same thing, as I'm just concerned with marginal utility, but they're not fundamentally the same thing. Badness is negative goodness, and vice versa.

An entity's capacity to feel pain and no pleasure is bad. An entity's capacity to feel pleasure and no pain is good.

Edit: I don't feel great displeasure from looking at the moon for the same reasons you don't feel great pleasure looking at it.