How do you respond to this?

The biggest problem I have with utilitarianism is the idea that it is acceptable to cause someone 100 points of distress if it will prevent 1 point of distress for 101 different people.

I call this a red herring, and your way of asking distasteful.

Mike Retriever wrote:I call this a red herring, and your way of asking distasteful.

It was a simple question, Mike. Answer or don't.

It is not acceptable to cause someone 1000 points of distress if it gives 1 point of happiness to 10 people, which is more in line with what the title asks about.

As for your other example, clearly if causing one person 100 points of distress to prevent 1 point of distress for 101 people wasn't worth it, causing 1 point of distress for 101 people to prevent 100 points of distress from one person would be worth it. Let's assume that is.

Take a group of 102 people, all with sufficiently high distress that this doesn't make it go below zero (unless you're not a negative utilitarian, in which case it's perfectly fine for it to go below zero). Add 1 point of distress to everybody except person one, and subtract 100 stress from them. Do the same for person two, three, etc.. Now everyone has 1 more point of distress than they started with. By assumption, every step was good, which would imply that the result was better, but it clearly isn't. Proof by contradiction. It's not worth while to cause 1 point of distress for 101 people to prevent 100 points of distress from one person, and therefore is worth while to cause one person 100 points of distress to prevent 1 point of distress for 101 people.

Also, I'd like to point out that the draft is based on that idea. I get the impression that it's generally believed that, under sufficiently desperate conditions, it's a good idea.

Finally, this should have been posted in Common objections to consequentialism. In fact, it has been.

The fact itself that you considered the rape of a woman by 10 men to be more noteworthy than the rape of a man by 10 men, or the rape of a man by 10 women, goes to show you're not taking the subject seriously enough.

Utilitarianism justifies any cruel act given extreme enough circumstances. There are no normal circumstances in which 10 people gang raping someone would cause felicific net benefit. Rape has grave long lasting emotional consequences.

And this belongs in the topic of common objections, like DanielLC pointed out.

I'll just point out that that thread doesn't have to be a magnet for everyone who wants to post an objection to consequentialism - after all, if they're new to the idea, they might not know whether it's common or not. And there's no need to repeat objections in it, though I do have a dream of one day tidying it up a bit so it serves as a generic but sufficient reply to people whose objections do turn out to have been raised before.

The fact itself that you considered the rape of a woman by 10 men to be more noteworthy than the rape of a man by 10 men, or the rape of a man by 10 women, goes to show you're not taking the subject seriously enough.

Utilitarianism justifies any cruel act given extreme enough circumstances. There are no normal circumstances in which 10 people gang raping someone would cause felicific net benefit. Rape has grave long lasting emotional consequences.

Oh, be quiet (edit - Ryan), Mike. I'm trying to know how I should respond to someone who uses this argument against utilitarianism. The example is irrelevant, women are raped by men more often than men are by other men or by women, this is a common argument against utilitarianism (made by Richard Ryder, for example).

And I know that there are no practical scenarios where the rape or extremely horrific act done to one person would produce pleasure that would outweigh the victim's pain.

DanielLC wrote:It is not acceptable to cause someone 1000 points of distress if it gives 1 point of happiness to 10 people, which is more in line with what the title asks about.

As for your other example, clearly if causing one person 100 points of distress to prevent 1 point of distress for 101 people wasn't worth it, causing 1 point of distress for 101 people to prevent 100 points of distress from one person would be worth it. Let's assume that is.

Take a group of 102 people, all with sufficiently high distress that this doesn't make it go below zero (unless you're not a negative utilitarian, in which case it's perfectly fine for it to go below zero). Add 1 point of distress to everybody except person one, and subtract 100 stress from them. Do the same for person two, three, etc.. Now everyone has 1 more point of distress than they started with. By assumption, every step was good, which would imply that the result was better, but it clearly isn't. Proof by contradiction. It's not worth while to cause 1 point of distress for 101 people to prevent 100 points of distress from one person, and therefore is worth while to cause one person 100 points of distress to prevent 1 point of distress for 101 people.

Also, I'd like to point out that the draft is based on that idea. I get the impression that it's generally believed that, under sufficiently desperate conditions, it's a good idea.

Finally, this should have been posted in Common objections to consequentialism. In fact, it has been.

I'm not sure I understand (especially underlined) but I'm terrible at math and pretty slow. I'll check that thread out.

Edit by Ryan: I've removed a phrase that was somewhat abusive and not constructive. If there's any complaints or comments, please send a private message.

Ubuntu wrote:I'm trying to know how I should respond to someone who uses this argument against utilitarianism. [...]

And I know that there are no practical scenarios where the rape or extremely horrific act done to one person would produce pleasure that would outweigh the victim's pain.

Well then there you have your answer! There are no normal scenarios where utilitarianism justifies that.

Half of the entire human population becoming suddenly terrified and traumatized by the consequence of a society in which gang rape could somehow be acceptable should be more than enough negative felicifia to make the question meaningless.

I am new to utilitarianism, but it seems to me that many of the debates are framed around somebody's rigid interpretation of this and opposing philosophies. My view begins with the comment from redcarded:

"Half of the entire human population becoming suddenly terrified and traumatized by the consequence of a society in which gang rape could somehow be acceptable should be more than enough negative felicifia to make the question meaningless"

I would generalize this to say that thoughtful people should strive to consider secondary effects of actions, such as the effect of convincing a society that rape is acceptable behavior. As redcarded noted, this could lead to fear and insecurity to an enormous number of people and thereby lead a utilitarian to reject the gang rape hypothesis.

I would also be inclined to include my personal list of secondary effects that are typically ignored by the people whom I know:

1) Every action contributes, to some small degree, to the development of a habit. In this case, what is the habit that might be formed by raping somebody? Disregarding the will of others? Imposing your will on others? Using violence as a means of obtaining base pleasure? Following the crowd without reflective thought? In each case, the action reinforces beliefs and behaviors that are disruptive to self (directly) or society (and thereby to the self when the people around you follow your lead and rape you or disregard your will as in #2 below).

2) My actions influence, to a small but important degree, the behavior of others. Most Americans think that they are driven by pure intellect that is unaffected by media or the actions of strangers, but that is not what research shows. As an example, Cialdini and Reno (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 58[6], 1990) showed the strong impact on littering that is made by experimentally controlling the amount of litter in a parking garage and experimentally exposing people to others who litter. In the study, 54% littered when a confederate littered in a littered environment and only 14% littered in a clean environment when the confederate did not litter. Perhaps more interestingly, in a clean environment the litter rate dropped to 6% when the confederate littered (via disgust generated by the contrast of littering in a clean environment). The other studies in that paper reflected similar trends. Another example of my impact on others would be if my behavior changed from doing the immoral thing to talking to my peers about why the immoral thing is bad, suddenly the 'small' influence of my actions becomes not-so-small and something to be considered by utilitarians.

3) Empathy for others is not something that can be disregarded by utilitarians because empathy is, to an important extent, an unconscious process. Perhaps this pervasiveness of empathy is why philosophers have noted that negative emotions (pain) are morally more significant than positive emotions. Based on physiological evidence of how and when empathy is aroused and how languages describe negative emotion, Royzman and Kumar (New Ideas in Psych, v19, 2001) suggested that our exposure to the negative emotions of others initiates processes that lead to morally relevant behavior. Molnar-Szakacs (Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2010 in press) reviewed the link from mirror neurons to moral behavior. The mirror neurons invoke empathy when we see the pain of others and that empathy often leads to moral behavior and morally relevant cognitions (understanding and considering the condition of others). In those who lack this type of response to the pain of others (e.g., no response to seeing somebody stuck with a pin), psychopathology is more prevalent. The cognitive part of empathy often follows the neurobiological path, however my experience with perspective-taking and compassion exercises tells me that people can cultivate (cognitive?) empathy and then the corresponding moral behavior follows. This unconscious basis of empathy is relevant for utilitarians because they can count a negative emotion for themselves when they are exposed to the negative emotions of others. The exact measurement of this negative experience would vary based on the neurobiology, conditioning, and experience of the agent (not to mention the impossibility of measurement in the first place). The unconscious and genetically-based foundation of empathy can befuddle, or at least give pause to, those who argue that utilitarianism (or atheism) is inherently devoid of what people typically consider to be moral sentiment

4) Thoughtful utilitarians would also need to consider the above as part of a more general disposition to consider future consequences of actions. What philosophers might not appreciate is that people tend to have a disposition to emphasize short- or long-term consequences (or to gravitate to a point along that dimension). There are some ways that psychologists measure this, such as the Consideration of Future Consequences scale by Strathman, Gleicher, Boninger, and Edwards, or the Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory. My purpose of mentioning this is that people often approach philosophical questions with their pre-existing baggage that leads them to weigh immediate versus distant consequences in a somewhat predetermined manner. They then proceed to rationalize their answers as if their answers were driven by logic instead of by unconscious predisposition. A thoughtful utilitarian CANNOT irrationally downgrade the importance of any information through unconscious processes. I'm not sure what the cure is other than to avoid the error made by people who make the worst errors from a public health perspective. In other words, utilitarians need to fully weight long-term consequences.

5) I now add a version of the comment from redcarded to say that our consideration of secondary effects should include consideration of the Kantian idea of what would happen if the maxim were made a universal law (or defacto pattern of behavior).

6) By recognizing the immorality of various acts and then taking steps to cultivate the self-regulation, insight, and perspective-taking/empathy needed to refrain from it, the 'benefit' from acts like rape can disappear thereby obviating the need to even ask the question (because the two parts of the utilitarian cost-benefit analysis is then perceived by the agent as 'bad' weighed against another 'bad'). Perhaps this path would be a consequence of a long-term focus on and understanding of the consequences of actions.

7) The utilitarian argument of the rapist would also have to consider the risk of getting a disease or being kicked, scratched, bitten, etc., from by the victim. Note that this observation is important because opponents of utilitarianism might be tempted attribute rape to utilitarian philosophy as opposed to attributing it to any of the many cognitive deficiencies that lead people to underestimate risk. Rape seemingly requires some combination of other deficiencies, such as ignorance of public health consequences (including the health risk that the victim has a disease that increases the risk of being spit on, bitten, scratched etc.), an incapacity to adequately plan for or contemplate the future, or a bodily desire that overpowers reason thereby attributing the cause more to biology than to philosophy. Even if we set aside any concern for the well-being of others and jail time, a thoughtful but selfish person would have many other considerations whose answers are often embedded in our disposition and not effectively manifested in our personal philosophies.

8) A philosopher should generally strive to hold internally consistent moral principles. This follows from the principle of noncontradiction in logic. I cannot hold that my shirt is blue and that it is not blue at the same time. I use this example because if you think you can deny my proposition by having a blue and white striped shirt or a light blue shirt, then you (or I) have not framed the proposition in an adequately precise manner to be evaluated logically under the refined conditions. I am not asserting that your ethical decisions must descend from principles and not arise from consequences, but I am suggesting that you strive to maintain a noncontradictory system of beliefs.

In this case, I will use #8 to present the argument that if the actions of the 10 men are driven by their philosophy (which is implied by the opponents of utilitarianism even though it is not the case in the real world), they cannot rape the victim. How can the philosopher-assailants hold internally consistent moral principles and use violence to rape somebody? It seems to me that to rape a person using physical violence is to adopt the moral principle that it is acceptable for people to use violence to get what they want. Why then would one of the philosophers settle for being 10th in line? If your were an assailant who believed that it is acceptable to use violence to get what you want, why not kill or beat the others so that you can be first? If your coconspirators hold morally consistent beliefs (which is assumed here), then they should be willing to beat you down to be first. The result would be that first person would suffer 9 fights for the privilege of being first. The second assailant, having already fought the first person, would fight 8 more times. In total there would be (I think) would be around 44 fights not counting rematches, do-overs, or masochistic duplications. Bentham's calculus would quickly lead the philosophers to play computer games or make out with each other before raping the victim.

For those who claim that utilitarianism would lead the philosopher-assailants to fight only if they had an expectation that they would win, thereby leading them to quite nobly wait in line like sophisticated gentlemen, then think again. That argument is based on a grossly short-term and incomplete sense of utilitarianism, because anybody with any skill in martial arts knows that the weaker person can prevail if the stronger person is turned the other way (waiting in line). When this happens, the weaker person can brake the stronger person's neck from behind, stab the stronger person from behind, kick the person in a sensitive spot, or do any number of choke holds or dirty deeds. The weaker person will always have a chance to prevail from the position of surprise because as the stronger person drops his pants and faces the victim or otherwise begins the act, the weaker person has an advantage. For the stronger person to prevent attacks, he would need to maintain a level of vigilance that would likely ruin the mood.

It seems that any intelligent utilitarian philosopher who has adopted the first and foremost principle of philosophy (the principle of noncontradiction) would not participate in a gang rape.

I think every response has come at precisely the same answer, from slightly varying angles. Here's my fusion of answers so far provided, with a bit of embellishment.


Firstly, I'll say that I could be offended that you would even ask the question. Because this question and other slike it have been answered over and over again by utilitarians. But the answer still hasn't been distributed widely enough, and I suppose that If I should be angry, it's really this lack of communication that I should get angry about.

Secondly, if the total amount of pleasure that is conferred to the perpitrators does not meet the amount of suffering experienced by the victim, then it would not be a utilitarian crime, and it never would.

Thirdly, even if the pleasure of the perpitrators should exceed the suffering of the victim, this would neglect secondary effects, by which we mean effects that are not immediately obvious, yet as real as any primary effect. To omit to consider secondary effects is to try to transform into a utilitarian but to get stuck half way. This naive utilitarianism is deranged, and to act according to it can lead to the worst consequences of all. Secondary effects include the fact that cultivation of a habit that may become ingrained, the effect that one's behaviour can have on the behaviour of others, the fact that such an act may compromise one's empathy for others, All of these can be combined to prove a weaker version of Kant's categorical imperative. If one would not be happy in a world where you and others performed rape repeatedly with a mindset consisting of the cruelty and heartlessness required to do so, then you should not commit rape. To put this another way, rape incites fear. And you don't want to contribute by a single act of rape, to creating a world such in which rape prevails.

DaneilLC's argument works really well once you get your head round it. Let me try to explain it a bit more. Let's assume that it's always good to cause 1 degree of pain in 101 people in order to prevent 100 degrees of pain in 1 person (which is the non-utilitarian view but seems to match up with your intuitions). That would mean that it's good to do this action 102 times, with the same group of people, but using a different person to be alleviated of the 100 degrees of pain, the final net effect being that everyone ends up with one degree of pain (because each person has had 1 degree of pain 101 times and been alleviated of 100 degrees of pain once). How can that be good?

[Edit: I have removed a quote because Ryan is right. It was funny though...]

DanielLC's point is good. LadyMorgana's clarification of it is good too.

Saying you were referring to an experience machine that needed a hundred people to support it... Knowing anti-utilitarians, they'd be likely to say "but that's a different situation. Once the experience machine is shared around in that way, the happiness is fairly distributed" or something equally exasperating


This is true,important, and well put, by the way, so I just had to repost it.

Rehoot:it seems to me that many of the debates are framed around somebody's rigid interpretation of this and opposing philosophies.

You may be new to utilitarianism, but you clearly can see the difference between naive utilitarianism - the strawman, and actual utilitarianism.

I don't see why (hedonistic) utilitarians should be opposed to the experience machine. The single only reason I would not hook myself up is if my not doing so would make other people happier (like donating to charity, performing kind acts,) or my doing so would cause other people distress (like my cat who is dependent on me). Consciousness is an "illusion" as it is, my VR experiences would still be perceptually real. There is no 'fake' happiness.

How did experience machines get into this?

Knowing anti-utilitarians, they'd be likely to say "but that's a different situation. Once the experience machine is shared around in that way, the happiness is fairly distributed" or something equally exasperating

I know gang rape isn't a good example of this, but an experience machine? Is that like, one person is using it and 100 people are supporting it?

Anyway, if you argue that, you might as well count all the other unfair things that cancel out, and just have prioritarianism.

Daniel, I could swear I'd already answered you, but experience machines got into this because of a reference I made to something which I have now edited out. It was completely irrelevant to the topic of this thread anyway.

The underlying objection to utilitarianism isn't much about gang rape specifically, though by choosing such examples anti-utilitarians manage to put special pressure on utilitarians: "Recant your utilitarianism or be ostracized as unretrievably sexist".

The real issue is the following: can one large chunk of suffering be outweighed by a large number of small bits of positive utility (small bits of pleasure or of non-suffering)?

Can the death of a child, and all the suffering of eir family and friends, ever be outweighed by the pleasure that n people derive from, say, putting flowers on their window sills?

I don't see how it can be denied that that can sometimes be the case, without calling for a ban on all floral window decoration. Of a million flower pots, or perhaps of ten million, or of a hundred million, someday on a windy day one will fall and kill a passing child. We know this. If we allow flower pots on window sills, we are accepting that at some point a child will be killed, because we feel that the total pleasure derived from those n flower pots is worth that suffering and death.

We may feel that that is not the case for n = 10, or for n = one million, or a hundred million, but I think there will be some value of n for which we will accept it is the case. If we did not, we would have to commit ourselves to building a fanatically secure society.

Non-utilitarians can try to argue about intentions - the death of the child is not intended, even if it can be predicted - but I don't think that holds water.

In the rape case, I have seen many argue that the pleasure of the rapists doesn't count at all, because it is evil pleasure. I think that just begs the point. Pleasure is pleasure, and as such is good, whatever the means by which it came about.

David

Oo I really like the flowerpot example!

Yeah, really nice flower-pot example!

Re "Evil-pleasures":
I don't see why people have to agree that pleasure is good in itself, in particular after considering examples of "evil pleasures" and the alternative that it is only non-evil-pleasure which is good in itself. For certain kinds of moral realism the latter position might seem problematic, especially if they think that good things must be natural kinds (pleasure is a much more natural kind than non-evil-pleasure) but for other realists and anti-realists it should be easy to adopt.

If you don't agree that pleasure is good, that means that it would be possible for there to be a utopia in which nobody is happy. For example, if you believe that goodness = pleasure * desert, this would mean that a world full of evil people being tortured for eternity would be a utopia.

People tend to be against unnatural things, but that's not all. For example, pleasure from rape would likely be considered an evil pleasure, despite rape being perfectly natural.

I think most people wouldn't call a world filled with sadistic psychopaths in vats an "utopia", even if they were happy (mistakenly) thinking they were torturing innocent victims.

People could agree that those sadistic psycopaths are happy, but claim that their happiness isn't something good (in particular if they were really torturing people).

Also note that people needn't value punishment of the deserving even if they think "evil pleasures" are worthless (though, it is possible that some intuition about punishment is partly responsible for people's devaluing of "evil pleasures".

Flower Pots and Intentions:

David Olivier wrote: Of a million flower pots, or perhaps of ten million, or of a hundred million, someday on a windy day one will fall and kill a passing child. We know this. If we allow flower pots on window sills, we are accepting that at some point a child will be killed, because we feel that the total pleasure derived from those n flower pots is worth that suffering and death.

...Non-utilitarians can try to argue about intentions - the death of the child is not intended, even if it can be predicted - but I don't think that holds water.

The flower pot post raises the old question about counting intentions or counting exclusively "consequences." One view of the issue is that if somebody kills somebody through intention or negligence, the ultimate outcome is the same: the victim is dead. In this view, if a flower pot falls from a high window ledge or is intentionally dropped, the response to the incident (crime) would be the same. This might be called the "no breaks for negligent people" stance. I generally take such a stance, but in other cases I might count intentions in a utilitarian analysis (is that an oxymoron?).

What if I base my happiness on my understanding of risk around me? For example, if I noticed heavy objects balanced precariously above my head or if I saw evidence that suggested that I might be attacked by 10 people, I would feel compelled to stay alert and take precautionary actions that might require unwanted diversion of my time and effort. Based on this, I would perceive deaths caused from the wind blowing heavy objects as less threatening in the long run than the same deaths caused by people intentionally throwing objects from apartment windows. If the trend of throwing flower pots from apartment windows increases, I might (accurately) conclude that there is a new fad that will continue to expand and cause more harm in the future. Perhaps intentions of evil acts could indicate an increasing risk of a race riot or other such things.

Are utilitarians or consequentialists not allowed to permit themselves to analyze intentions to predict things like repeated criminal behavior, race riots, and the like? Is there another way to view this?

I suspect that if someone intentionally kills someone, it's more likely that punishing them would keep people from doing it again. As such, punishing them would be more useful.

Hi rehoot. I wouldn't go so far as to say that intentional harm is "more threatening" than non-intentional harm. Here's how I'd put it: suffering is a bad thing whether or not it's intentional. We should try to prevent harm by the most efficient acts, without regard to whether or not the harm is intentional. Preventing heavy objects from hurting people involves helping people to take care that pots, air conditioners, or whatever, are well secured. Preventing someone from dropping a pot on you requires quite a different approach though. The main way to prevent someone from intentionally killing is to change their intentions. Make them think twice before doing so nasty, possibly by threatening to punish them. Punishment and reward only work on people with intentions, and they have a place in utilitarianism. Like everything, they should be used when they can increase happiness, or reduce suffering, and only when they can do so.

My favourite read on the topic of intention is not specific to ethics at all. It's Daniel Dennett's The Intentional Stance. I thought you might find it interesting, so I've included Wikipedia's summary of this thesis:

Wikipedia says: The core idea is that, when explaining and predicting the behavior of an object, we can choose to view it at varying levels of abstraction. The more concrete the level, the more accurate in principle our predictions are. The more abstract, the greater the computational power we gain by zooming out and skipping over the irrelevant details.
Dennett defines three levels of abstraction:
The most concrete is the physical stance, which is the domain of physics and chemistry. At this level, we are concerned with such things as mass, energy, velocity, and chemical composition. When we predict where a ball is going to land based on its current trajectory, we are taking the physical stance. Another example of this stance comes when we look at a strip made up of two types of metal bonded together and predict how it will bend as the temperature changes, based on the physical properties of the two metals.
Somewhat more abstract is the design stance, which is the domain of biology and engineering. At this level, we are concerned with such things as purpose, function and design. When we predict that a bird will fly when it flaps its wings on the basis that wings are made for flying, we are taking the design stance. Likewise, we can understand the bimetallic strip as a particular type of thermometer, not concerning ourselves with the details of how this type of thermometer happens to work. We can also recognize the purpose that this thermometer serves inside a thermostat and even generalize to other kinds of thermostats that might use a different sort of thermometer. We can even explain the thermostat in terms of what it's good for, saying that it keeps track of the temperature and turns on the heater whenever it gets below a minimum, turning it off once it reaches a maximum.
Most abstract is the intentional stance, which is the domain of software and minds. At this level, we are concerned with such things as belief, thinking and intent. When we predict that the bird will fly away because it knows the cat is coming and is afraid of getting eaten, we are taking the intentional stance. Another example would be when we predict that Mary will leave the theater and drive to the restaurant because she sees that the movie is over and is hungry