In weighing the moral benefits of deontology and utilitarianism, it has occurred to me that, in an extension of the "killing the remote village" case, there are other aspects of utilitarianism that seem a bit dicey--including the possibility that you could entirely lack a "conscience" and still add to the greater utility; you could get away with all kinds of things and never have to feel guilty about them. Just to give a concrete example: if two married people decided to have an affair that their spouses never found out about, in an act utilitarian calculus, that would not be morally incorrect, as long as the two of them were really enjoying themselves.

Hi LB, and welcome to the forum I've moved your thread to the util forum where it should get more responses and will confuse me less...

Lord Beaconsfield wrote:In weighing the moral benefits of deontology and utilitarianism, it has occurred to me that, in an extension of the "killing the remote village" case, there are other aspects of utilitarianism that seem a bit dicey--including the possibility that you could entirely lack a "conscience" and still add to the greater utility; you could get away with all kinds of things and never have to feel guilty about them. Just to give a concrete example: if two married people decided to have an affair that their spouses never found out about, in an act utilitarian calculus, that would not be morally incorrect, as long as the two of them were really enjoying themselves.

With respect to marriage, as a Desire Utilitarian (DU) if they are not harming anyone else - their spouses and anyone else who could be affected by knowledge of this affair is it morally bad? Well one also has to look at the institution of marriage and the effect of, by having an affair, on it - for both them and others. Behind that is the institution of promising and obligations. Provided their actions do not affect these institutions then it would not be morally bad. Well do they? In today's climate but not in the past it seems that they do not. Arguably the "respect" to the institution of marriage created far greater unhappiness then than today - but it is really difficult to tell which was more harmful - attitudes in the past and now. In reality it is probably just knowledge of actions that has changed, the actions have always been similar.

With respect to guilt in DU the external use of blame, condemnation and social punishment are the means to discourage "bad" desires. This works, in properly socialised persons, by the emotional reactions of remorse, shame, embarrassment and guilt - which serves to internalise these attitudes to desires . These serve to modify the weights and even extinguish certain desires so that in the future, when someone seeks to fulfil the more and stronger of their desires - which is proximate the motivation behind our actions - the "bad" desire is no longer the one which is the more and strongest of them.

With respect to conscience and its lack, someone who lacks a conscience is a psychopath. This means they are immune to the influence of social forces such as praise and condemnation because these do not evoke the typical emotional reactions of guilt, remorse and so on. In DU morality is primarily concerned with the use of social forces to change malleable desires - this is what malleable means here. So for psychopaths these "bad" desires are not malleable through such typical means. Does this mean they are outside the scope of morality? No, whether they were born that way or became that way we offer backup mechanism in society for those are immune to social forces - social reward and punishment and behind that legal reward and punishment and so on. In other words we can only appeal to their prudence. (Whether they learn or can learn from these later processes is a different question).

This is my response to your question, would be interested to see how other types of utilitarians respond.

Lord Beaconsfield wrote:In weighing the moral benefits of deontology and utilitarianism, it has occurred to me that, in an extension of the "killing the remote village" case, there are other aspects of utilitarianism that seem a bit dicey--including the possibility that you could entirely lack a "conscience" and still add to the greater utility; you could get away with all kinds of things and never have to feel guilty about them. Just to give a concrete example: if two married people decided to have an affair that their spouses never found out about, in an act utilitarian calculus, that would not be morally incorrect, as long as the two of them were really enjoying themselves.

I think the idea of married couples starting affairs with some kind of certainty that their spouses won't find out is unrealistic. The fact is that affairs affect relationships.

Utilitarianism condemns affairs. It rightly says that affairs are wrong because they dissolve love from a relationship and cause terrible suffering. On cheating, deontology agrees.

But consider lying. Deontology can tell you that lying is universally wrong. Now suppose a serial-murderer asks you for your partner's whereabouts. Deontology will tell you that lies must not be committed. Because. Facilitation of murder is just wrong too. And there's no reason to choose one rule over the other because both were chosen arbitrarily in the first place.

When it comes to euthanasia, deontology is worse than indecisive. It argues that it does not matter how a person feels. Killing is wrong. It just is, and suffering is nothing to do with it. Deontology disregards the consequences of our actions on others. Utilitarianism values peoples feelings and naught else. So which ethical system is it that lacks a conscience?

i agree with ryan - that it is not just the external that suffers with affairs, but the internal - both in terms of "conscience" and our feelings about ourselves, but also the dissolving of trust, reliance, focus in our future. If i can depend on myself to continue loving and caring for my husband, that gives ME something valuable - sex is really the least of it, it is the value we place on the commitment we make when we marry and when we CHOOSE to stay married, day after day, year after year - and i regard that value as much more significant in times of stress, of mundane daily everyday living than when something bright and shiny distracts one.

this is different from when the marriage is not working, and an affair provides the leverage the hope the energy to escape from an untenable situation, but if i read LB's post correctly i do not believe this is what he is talking about - it sounds like having a fling - aside from the fact it is demeaning to all concerned, it is no substitute for the other.

the effect of embarking on such a course of action unbeknownst to my husband, even if i could, ....well i jsut couldn't....but it would not be because i was scared of him, of breaking apart my family, but because i would be terrified of what it would do to me to betray my own principles to that extent, to let go of my certainty about myself. and if we do not have ourselves, if i do not have myself, then what do i have??

I disagree with most of the posters here. Or rather, they seem to be taking it as granted that all affairs dissolve love with detrimental consequences. I challenge this assumption; if it can be shown, I will grant it, but I do not take it as inherent to an affair that it causes the participants to stop loving their spouses, or that, if they do, this has worse consequences than the benefits they gain from the affair.

TraderJoe wrote:I disagree with most of the posters here. Or rather, they seem to be taking it as granted that all affairs dissolve love with detrimental consequences. I challenge this assumption; if it can be shown, I will grant it, but I do not take it as inherent to an affair that it causes the participants to stop loving their spouses, or that, if they do, this has worse consequences than the benefits they gain from the affair.

I agree - which was the emphasis of my first response. However in the light of other comments I will add that from a DU perspective it is the case that most everyone has an interest in encouraging an aversion to having affairs - for the type of reasons that TraderJoe questions are taken for granted. That is these reasons are some of the reasons to encourage an aversion to having affairs. Now granted this aversion - which I implied previously may never have been that strong - if one, for whatever other reason, is led to having an affair, provided these issues are acknowledged and handled then what I said and the point made by TraderJoe here apply. Indeed, surely the belief - however naively or mistakenly held - that the above issues do not apply in a particular affair, is one of the reasons that such an aversion is not that strong compared to its alternative?

So this point becomes is an aversion to having affairs a moral or ethical aversion? And so when one has an affair is this an ethical issue. It appears as a prima facie wrong, but is it?

Note that this post was originally about guilt and that aspect I have answered from a DU perspective my previous answer. Whether this example is a good or distracting one to get to the issue of guilt, I would like to hear other utilitarian answers on the question of guilt and utilitarianism.

TraderJoe wrote:I disagree with most of the posters here. Or rather, they seem to be taking it as granted that all affairs dissolve love with detrimental consequences. I challenge this assumption; if it can be shown, I will grant it, but I do not take it as inherent to an affair that it causes the participants to stop loving their spouses, or that, if they do, this has worse consequences than the benefits they gain from the affair.

Maybe, but I mentally bracket this sort of argument in with telishment - util might tell you to be unfaithful in a thought-experiment, but hardly ever in the real world.

For one thing, if you're confident that the current relationship isn't making you happy and that another one will be much better for you, you're likely to improve things for everyone involved if you cut off the current relationship before starting a new one.