Greetings all, I've just registered for the forums. I'm a 20 year old American college student living in North Carolina. I've had quite an intellectual journey through my life, starting out as an Taoist-styled anarchist/libertarian, and then becoming heavily involved in Marxism. I've been a Utilitarian for more than seven years now, an ethic I've found both personally fulfilling and frustratingly misunderstood by those around me in both academic and social contexts.

I've come to Felificia to connect with like minded individuals, and perhaps more importantly, find and start efforts to spread the philosophy. I recognize that for many Utilitarianism is a more personal or esoteric experience. However I hope that this community will, among other things, help me find other people hoping to make "the greatest happiness for the greatest number" the common answer to the question "what is right?"

Welcome to the forums, Southpointingchariot! Glad to have you here.

"frustratingly misunderstood by those around me in both academic and social contexts."
Absolutely, it seems that so much of the time objections to utilitarianism are just misinterpretations. Just non-starters!

With regards to meeting like-minded individuals, you may be interested in this -viewtopic.php?f=20&t=422&hilit=facebook. Having a bunch of utilitarians in your facebook feed is interesting. You get linked to spectacular science and philosophy articles, neat quotes and so on. Once you've added the felicifia users, other utilitarians will add you too. I don't know what my non-utilitarian friends think of it! They're probably a bit confused by it all!

Last thing is that since you've been a utilitarian for a while now - I'm interested in how it started exactly 7 years ago, but that's beside the point - you may be able to contribute to our latest effort to spread utilitarianism, felicifia.com. It's a wiki, where we hope to explain the implications of utilitarianism, why utilitarians hold it to be true and so on!

Thanks for the info Ryan. I will definitely look into adding to the wiki as a good place to start. I've applied to the Wiki Facebook group, and hopefully I'll get to know some of the people here and the Facebook contacts will grow.

As to my start, though the answer admittedly may seem cliche, I think I was always utilitarian at heart - that is to say, I think I always had the central concept as my goal, even before I could express it as succinctly and directly as I can now. As we all know, more or less every ethical argument that has public traction is based on Utilitarian values; if you ask "but why is that right" enough times, you'll get there. But anyway, I came to "Utilitarianism Proper" in part thanks to my brother, who's working on his PhD in Economics right now, but primarily from analyzing and debating policies with other people. I read Bentham 7 years ago, and was sold ever since.

I think most of the people who post here are keen to see the ideas spread. If you believe that more people being utilitarian would make the world a more utilitous place, and you're a utilitarian yourself, it seems inconsistent not to be an advocate in theory, if not in practice.

Arepo wrote:I think most of the people who post here are keen to see the ideas spread. If you believe that more people being utilitarian would make the world a more utilitous place, and you're a utilitarian yourself, it seems inconsistent not to be an advocate in theory, if not in practice.

Very well put.

Hey southpointingchariot (what's that name about, by the way?), you certainly have had quite the intellectual journey! How have you been through so much? Was part of it due to family influences when you were younger (pre-13)?

southpointingchariot wrote:though the answer admittedly may seem cliche, I think I was always utilitarian at heart

For a while I thought I only became a utilitarian when I was around 17 (when I'd learnt what the concept meant and thought about it for a while). Then I remembered that my wishes-on-a-star and birthday-wishes-when-blowing-out-the-candles were always "I wish that everyone will be happy forever", and I came across something I wrote about abortion when I was about 14 that concluded "If there is no pain, there is no problem."

southpointingchariot wrote:As we all know, more or less every ethical argument that has public traction is based on Utilitarian values; if you ask "but why is that right" enough times, you'll get there.

Ah, so true. This is what encourages me to focus my utilitarian activities on projects that aren't explicitly utilitarian - the term often puts people off, and you can easily reach utiliarian conclusions with people using arguments that look like common sense to them.

welcome!:D

LadyMorgana wrote:Then I remembered that my wishes-on-a-star and birthday-wishes-when-blowing-out-the-candles were always "I wish that everyone will be happy forever"

awwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!!!:D! i think its awesome when people talk about stuff like that cause on paper utilitarianism can put people off but in practice is being as loving as possible

I know! I want to say, "Yes, you may call me a heartless b**** if the occasion ever occurs when I have to push a fat man in front of a trolley to save two other people, but for nearly all, if not all, of my life I'll be motivated to do things that are very much in line with your idea of making the world a better place!"

LadyMorgana wrote:Hey southpointingchariot (what's that name about, by the way?),

Well, just Wikipedia it, they can explain it better than I can .

LadyMorgana wrote:How have you been through so much? Was part of it due to family influences when you were younger (pre-13)?

I'd definitely say my family has something to do with it. My parents are devout Christians, but have always encouraged me to think reasonably and investigate and follow what is right.

LadyMorgana wrote:For a while I thought I only became a utilitarian when I was around 17 (when I'd learnt what the concept meant and thought about it for a while). Then I remembered that my wishes-on-a-star and birthday-wishes-when-blowing-out-the-candles were always "I wish that everyone will be happy forever", and I came across something I wrote about abortion when I was about 14 that concluded "If there is no pain, there is no problem."

See, it's stuff like that that can help everyday people understand the value of these principles.

LadyMorgana wrote:This is what encourages me to focus my utilitarian activities on projects that aren't explicitly utilitarian - the term often puts people off, and you can easily reach utiliarian conclusions with people using arguments that look like common sense to them.

I think there's definitely value to what you're saying, especially in the short term. But I think we sell ourselves short by not trying to bring utilitarianism to the masses. Time will tell.

LadyMorgana wrote:I know! I want to say, "Yes, you may call me a heartless b**** if the occasion ever occurs when I have to push a fat man in front of a trolley to save two other people, but for nearly all, if not all, of my life I'll be motivated to do things that are very much in line with your idea of making the world a better place!"

'And as for the rest of it, I can point you to six people who will very strongly disagree with your judgement...'

southpointingchariot wrote:Well, just Wikipedia it, they can explain it better than I can

I still don't get it lol. Is it a metaphor about orientating yourself towards a utilitarian goal no matter where life takes you?

southpointingchariot wrote:My parents are devout Christians, but have always encouraged me to think reasonably and investigate and follow what is right.

I admire that so much - that's the first story I've heard of Christian parents encouraging their child to think reasonably and follow what is right over just following Christianity.

southpointingchariot wrote:I think there's definitely value to what you're saying, especially in the short term. But I think we sell ourselves short by not trying to bring utilitarianism to the masses. Time will tell.

Interesting. I'm still not sure what the best approach is.
I think there's a danger with specifying any complete normative theory to which you adhere, because people then tend to search for the areas where you disagree and exaggerate your differences. It's the same with politicians or charities - if a politician/charity does things you support 90% of the time, and things you don't 10% of the time, the average person would rather support a politician/charity that did things they like 100% of the time, even if they did it far less effectively. Same with religions (heckles tend to raise when a Christian tells an atheist that they're a Christian, even if deep down the atheist thinks that the Christian is actually better than the average person as a result).
"When the s*** hits the fan, everyone's a utilitarian." When people are forced to make tough decisions, they will often choose the utilitarian option. But very rarely will people admit this is in everyday life - they just won't give an answer to those tough moral dilemmas, and think that makes them morally superior to the utilitarian.
By the way, Charity International were an explicitly utilitarian organisation and they've now become "Global Happiness Organisation" and don't call themselves utilitarian.

Arepo wrote: I can point you to six people

I'm curious...why six?

LadyMorgana wrote:

Arepo wrote: I can point you to six people

I'm curious...why six?

Ah, didn't read your comment properly. Usually in these trolley problems, it seems to be a 1:6 kill/save ratio. Not sure why - maybe Phillipa Foot was a Yahtzee fan.

LadyMorgana wrote:I still don't get it lol. Is it a metaphor about orientating yourself towards a utilitarian goal no matter where life takes you?

I've always been somewhat of a sinophile, and I think it's more about using intelligence and ingenuity to solve problems as opposed to sticking to the assumed status quo

LadyMorgana wrote:Interesting. I'm still not sure what the best approach is. "When the s*** hits the fan, everyone's a utilitarian." When people are forced to make tough decisions, they will often choose the utilitarian option. But very rarely will people admit this is in everyday life - they just won't give an answer to those tough moral dilemmas, and think that makes them morally superior to the utilitarian.

Well said!

Who was the first to say in print "the greatest happiness for the greatest number"? people ascribe it to Bentham, but always without a citation, and I am dubious.

I think it was Bentham, but that he revised it in later works to just 'the greatest happiness', which might explain why it's hard to source.