Is it just me or is utilitarianism often thought of as cold and uncaring? What can be done to rectify this? Whenever ethical theories are listed, utilitarianism is always presented in contrast with 'an ethics of care' (virtue ethics in general should not be classified in contrast with consequentialism and deontology since it is not a proper theory of moral decision making but that's another topic).

I know a lot of this has to do with the idea of sacrificing individuals for 'the greater good' but if you feel empathy for 6 people, equally, while you could not be an empathetic person and not be psychologically damaged from sacrificing one for the benefit of the others, the decision to do so is based on empathy for the other 5 people, is it not? The truth is that interests collide and utilitarianism takes the idea of equal consideration to it's logical conclusion. I watched a debate between Singer and Michel Slote and while Singer claimed that empathy was an important factor, he could have done more to suggest that empathy, guided by logic, leads to utilitarianism, then again Singer is a preference utilitarian and I think hedonistic utilitarianism is more pro-empathy.

I also feel that negative utilitarianism is far more compassionate than classical utilitarianism but I can't avoid the implications that it has for killing people, especially/at least as far as non-human animals are concerned since it's easier to argue against forced euthanasia of humans, since humans can suffer from knowing that they may be killed. I absolutely cannot except killing someone I care about in their life to prevent them from ever again experiencing any kind of distress if they live relatively happy lives, then again, I don't put a lot of faith into moral intuitions.

Utilitarians don't make ethical decisions based on emotions. They do so based on the same principles someone might use to streamline a paperclip-making process. If, due to some quirk, it was more efficient to throw away every thousandth paperclip, they'd do that. If, for some odd reason, it was more efficient for a utilitarian to throw away every thousandth person, they would do that.

This is not a problem about utilitarianism. This is a problem about people. People do what's logical because it emotionally seems like the right thing to do. When other emotions are powerful enough to overpower that, they think the decision should be made on that. Hence, people consider it more important to care about saving lives than to actually save lives.

You might be able to make utilitarianism sound better, but unless you can make the emotion with it greater than that involved in any ethical decision, you're not going to convert people. Of course, you still might be able to make it sound important enough for them to use it to decide what charity to donate to.

Utilitarians don't make ethical decisions based on emotions.

All humans make emotionally based decisions and this is supported by neuroscience. You can not not make an emotionally based decision because there is no logical reason to 'care' about the consequences or implications of that decision. We can say that logic should guide our emotional desires but without context, nothing is 'logical' by itself.

Utilitarians tend to make decisions based on the fact that past experience has shown logic to work, rather than the immediate emotions. What's more, they try to weaken the emotional response to keep it from overpowering logic.

How's that?

That might not be right about everyone though. You'd have to ask each individual utilitarian.

Ubuntu wrote:All humans make emotionally based decisions and this is supported by neuroscience.

This seems intuitively likely to me, but what's your source? And how would you explain the decisions of people who have the syndrome (whose name I forget) that makes them seemingly devoid of emotion?

DanielLC wrote: . . . Hence, people consider it more important to care about saving lives than to actually save lives. . .

Heck of a good point. I think this is because people want to be found as being good enough. Which is part of morality (not logically, since ethics is about judging actions, not people. but in the messy application of real life, sure, it's part of it), but only one part of the tapestry as it were. Yes, as real human beings engaged in real situations, we are almost always pursuing multiple goals. And I think it is artificial and premature to try and reduce everything to one 'good.' (Compare this to newly converted libertarians or 'conservatives' reducing everthing to the market, and things that seem patently abusive or counterproductive or just plain stupid, including stupid even from the business's perspective, are justified as somehow reflecting some deep wisdom of the market.)

Yes, I am a utilitarianism. I think it plays to strength when it directly argues against revenge (including when it's dressed up as 'retribution.') And also when it argues against within-a-mile-altruism. It's sweeping nonsense off the table, and then hopefully we can have a mature, adult discussion focused on what's constructive to do. Where I think utilitarianism really misses it is where we focus on perfectionism and kind of a Euclidean approach to ethics. I mean, it's so heavily left-brain analytical it's not even funny. What it's missing, is drawing a lesson from medicine. Okay, anemia is like the original Heinz 57, let's treat the most likely cause, and whether that works or not is itself diagnostic, then with that feedback, let's work on what is now the most likely cause. That's not sloppy medicine, that's good medicine.
So, take a medium step, hopefully in partnership with others, get feedback, take another medium step, etc.

Name two recent books about applying utilitarianism to real life. Okay one would be Singer's ETHICS INTO ACTION about Henry Spira and the modern animal rights/animal welfare movement. But can you name a second book?

Any book by Peter Singer, any book by John Broome, The Hedonistic Imperative by David Pearce, Living High and Letting Die by Peter Unger, Politics and Morality by Susan Mendus, the Stern report (and any economic text that uses cost-benefit analysis with relation to human or animal welfare (ie most of them?)

I haven't had much time for reading recently, so that's going to be a woefully incomplete list

I think utilitarianism represents the highest form of compassion, as I tried to express in this piece, "On Triage."

I don't understand where this topic is supposed to be heading. If utilitarianism is uncaring it is only superficially so. Doing things due to felicific calculus is an emotionally intelligent decision, what it is not is overly emotional so as to be irrational. The person who understands utilitarianism is about being all as happy as possible (or about satisfying as much preferences as possible) doesn't see it as uncaring, on the contrary.

Alan Dawrst wrote:I think utilitarianism represents the highest form of compassion, as I tried to express in this piece, "On Triage."

Thanks, I'll enjoy this.