I meant 'people who share the same views regarding ethics' but it doesn't fit.

When I read some posts by utilitarians (including hedonists), I'm not sure how to word this without sounding sappy, but it seems like they have very little concern, or love, for other people (neither do I but I've always shied away from actually calling myself a utilitarian/consequentialist and simply said 'this is what I think makes sense or is right' if the issue came up, I've tried to but I can't force myself to care about the well being of every human being on the planet) and I honestly can't imagine why they view themselves as utilitarians. Without criticizing anyone on this board, there are many posts with this blase, unfeeling attitude about sacrificing the interests of individuals for the 'greater good' in theoretical cases where doing so is completely unnecessary, this isn't a 'logical' problem (since, although I disagree with the idea that the happiness/suffering of separate people can be aggregated, which I think plays a big role in why utilitarianism is viewed as 'harsh', cold and undesirable to most people, I would fully agree that the right decision is the one which maximizes the greatest happiness and/ or minimizes the greatest suffering so, if causing Bob 100 points of stress is the *only* possible way to prevent Ann from feeling 200 points of pain or to experience 200 points of pleasure, then it should be done, as regrettable as it would be, but I still acknowledge it as regrettable and a last resort) but it makes me wonder why the kind of person who isn't troubled by the idea of burning a kitten to cause a crowd of 100 people some transient, mild pleasure that I'm sure they could obtain through less harmful means (one example mentioned in one of the threads on here) or the gang rape of a woman by many men (I was never satisfied by most of the answers in that thread as to why, if pleasure/pain can be aggregated, we can be sure that this will never be a practical concern or, even if it isn't, why we shouldn't be horrified by the idea that utilitarianism could justify it in cases where no individual beneficiary benefits more than the victim is harmed), or killing non-human animals for food when no one takes the idea of killing humans for food seriously except in the most hypothetical circumstances or thinks that the short term pleasure of unhealthy, fatty foods is worth a sentient beings entire life would care how other people feel. I don't want to be associated with that kind of callousness, it's not appealing. I would expect a worldview that is concerned with the happiness and suffering of all beings (HU) to be warm, and soft and endearing but your stereotypical utilitarian isn't that way at all, why is that? Studies have actually shown that utilitarians tend to have decreased activity in the regions of the brain that play a role in love and empathy. Wow.

Anyways, I think promoting any worldview (in the interests of 'changing the world') is utterly pointless and I no longer have any interest in doing so. Even in a world with HUs, there will be countless people (self-proclaimed HUs) who are inconsistent, insincere, erroneously base decisions and policies on their claimed world view even when they are clearly not justified by it etc.

Do you feel that you can actually relate to most of the people who also identify with utilitarianism or whatever philosophy you ascribe to? Does it really make any meaningful difference to promote utilitarianism?

People have many different views and preferences. I can relate with other utilitarians in regards to ethics, in what is good and bad and what should be done and shouldn't, because that's what we have in common. I may relate with them also on other things, depending on our interests, for example if they like science fiction, because I do too.

Also, you're confused. This is not utilitarianism: "[...] burning a kitten to cause a crowd of 100 people some transient, mild pleasure that I'm sure they could obtain through less harmful means [...]". And in regards to other things you mention: gang rape; killing anything for food be it non-human animals, humans, little green aliens with antennae... In utilitarianism everything is measured as either good or bad depending on its net felicific benefit, so everything is questioned in regards to that. If you are not just emotionally horrified but morally horrified by possible utilitarian conclusions, you aren't being utilitarian. If it came to be that in a situation it is clearly the utilitarian thing to do to rape someone, and you don't do it, you're doing wrong. An example: a covert police officer is working for a drug dealer, and in a night of celebration with the criminal boss the covert officer is offered to rape a woman. If he can avoid having her raped with no bad consequences to the covert operation, he must not rape her. However, if the woman will be raped nonetheless even if he doesn't rape her, and by not raping her he is risking to be discovered, then he must rape her and give no signs to the criminal boss that he is emotionally disgusted by rape.

If you are utilitarian, promoting utilitarianism is necessarily good, because utilitarianism is good, more people should be utilitarians, and more people will be utilitarians if it is promoted. This is true for any consistent ethical theory: for a deontological ethicist it is good to promote deontological ethics, etc.

You remind me of something I read by Bernard Williams. He said something to the effect that hearing utilitarian reasoning is one of the strangest things in the world. It is so cold, so callous and so methodical that it has to be seen to believed. This all seems about half-true to me. Utilitarianism does have to be applied to be understood. It's fully compassionate yet psychopathic. Or maybe it's unwaveringly fair in its distrubution of compassion. Either way, it's wierd. It's unsettling. But sometimes that only endears it to me more! After all, people are pretty silly, and they deserve to have their ethical world turned upside down!

Anyway, could you say how you feel about 'promoting a worldview' being 'pointless'? That doesn't seem like it will be able to hold up to me. If you mean pointless by utilitarian standards, sure, it would be pointless to take the word of John Stuart Mill to your local shopping centre, sure. But introducing people to this utilitarian community can surely motivate us to improve the world together! And if you mean that it's pointless because it's not psychologically satisfying, then I would suggest the opposite. Take Jehovah's Witnesses, for a humorous example. Needless to say, they're more evangelical than utilitarians. But I imagine that taking their message to random strangers would be an immense source of meaning in their life. It would seem to be the opposite of pointless!

Last thing, meeting utilitarians. I know several utilitarians in person. Overall, they're intelligent, open to new experience, kind, eccentric and funny. Of all the people I know, I think they're some of the easiest to relate to. So, in summary, I can find utilitarian reasoning difficult to relate to, but I think utilitarians are easy to relate to

Heh, I was just having a semi(or less) serious discussion about this with Alan over here.

I like the idea of the PsUs/EmUs division, and I don’t think it need trouble us, so long as we do fundamentally share the same goals and reasoning processes (if not actually reasoning) about how to reach them. Every utilitarian I’ve met of either type (if it is a worthwhile distinction) has been entertaining company. Strictly speaking, I’d point out that it’s not very utilitarian to want to feel guilty about things, except as a motivational technique. Better is to just get on with trying to improve the world and be as happy as possible regardless of our success in doing so, though admittedly that can be different in practice.

Also, I think you’re conflating two different issues which we should keep separate – whether we have reason to promote utilitarian thinking (which, I agree with Ryan, we have *very strong* reason to do), and whether seeming like a bunch of androids is inimical to that goal, which it might very well be. But if it is, there’s there’s the question of what we can do about it. Should we encourage each other to be more emotional, at the risk of losing our analytic detachment? It seems dangerous to me. Why not just have the EmUs among us focus on dealing with fellow empaths, and the PsUs focus on fellow rationalists?

Mike Retriever wrote:
If you are utilitarian, promoting utilitarianism is necessarily good, because utilitarianism is good, more people should be utilitarians, and more people will be utilitarians if it is promoted. This is true for any consistent ethical theory: for a deontological ethicist it is good to promote deontological ethics, etc.

Utilitarianism isn't good, happiness is good. Utilitarianism might be 'true' or logical but it's only instrumentally good on the same basis that Islam, deontology, Marxism etc. are 'good', not on the basis that, unlike those other views, it actually makes sense (and I do believe that agent-neutral hedonistic consequentialism is what makes sense, even though I think the idea of aggregating the pleasure/pain of separate people is irrational). Unlike deontology, consequentialism can justify promoting theories other than consequentialism.

Anyway, could you say how you feel about 'promoting a worldview' being 'pointless'? That doesn't seem like it will be able to hold up to me. If you mean pointless by utilitarian standards, sure, it would be pointless to take the word of John Stuart Mill to your local shopping centre, sure. But introducing people to this utilitarian community can surely motivate us to improve the world together! And if you mean that it's pointless because it's not psychologically satisfying, then I would suggest the opposite. Take Jehovah's Witnesses, for a humorous example. Needless to say, they're more evangelical than utilitarians. But I imagine that taking their message to random strangers would be an immense source of meaning in their life. It would seem to be the opposite of pointless!

It might not be 'pointless' in that utilitarians feel a sense of purpose or even clarity in promoting/ascribing to utilitarianism but I think (could be wrong) that it's pointless to promote as a means of changing the world. Regardless of what ideology a person ascribes to, the majority of human beings are inconsistent (actually, all of us are, but some more so than others). Most people will always find a way out of practicing their philosophy consistently (ie. Muslims eating pig meat) or just don't care enough to be consistent. In a world where everyone, or most people, or the largest single ideological group, were self-proclaimed utilitarians, people will still find a way to justify behavior or policies that are clearly inconsistent with utilitarianism as an ethical theory. For example, I don't know whether or not Bentham was aware of or had the option of a healthy, plant based diet, but he gave a very weak justification for continuing to eat meat (something along the lines of 'they are none the worse off for having been killed', as though the pleasure of non-human animals is intrinsically less valuable than the pleasure of humans despite the fact that pleasure alone has inherent value). John Stuart Mill is another example of an inconsistent utilitarian because 'rule utilitarianism' is clearly deontology and the idea that there are higher and lower forms of pleasure completely contradicts the claim that pleasure alone is intrinsically good, it's like claiming that one shade of blue is not just darker but 'more blue' than another, yet most people still regard him as a 'hedonostic utilitarian' even though he was not..What matters is not living in a world where people agree, logically, with consequentialism but that their behavior and the decisions they make actually do have good consequences, regardless of what ideology they ascribe to. Not many utilitarians seem to agree that it's the actual consequences that determine the moral rightness/wrongness of decisions and not the intentions, even though regarding a decision as morally good or bad based on anything other than consequences is contrary to the idea of 'consequentialism'.

Ubuntu wrote:Utilitarianism isn't good, happiness is good.

Utilitarianism is good, in that in results in net felicific benefit / happiness.

Ubuntu wrote:Unlike deontology, consequentialism can justify promoting theories other than consequentialism.

Only if it is good for utilitarianism. From a utilitarian cognitivist point of view, utilitarianism is the true theory through which a thing is deemed good. Promoting deontology is good in the same way promoting a lie is good. I believe you are underestimating the danger of promoting a lie to the general population: it is actually false, and they'll believe it to be true.

Ubuntu wrote:What matters is not living in a world where people agree, logically, with consequentialism but that their behavior and the decisions they make actually do have good consequences, regardless of what ideology they ascribe to.

And how do you prove consequences are good or bad? Through logic. This argument of yours is like saying "It doesn't matter if you don't actually know maths, what is important is that x^2+x-3 be equal to a positive number". There is no point in arguing that the result be consequentially morally positive, or numerically positive, if you don't use logic, or don't use maths, respectively.

Utilitarianism is good, in that in results in net felicific benefit / happiness.

Utilitarianism can be instrumentally good but it has no intrinsic value (according to utilitarianism itself). When we are all dead, it won't matter that utilitarianism makes sense.

Ubuntu wrote:Unlike deontology, consequentialism can justify promoting theories other than consequentialism.

Only if it is good for utilitarianism.

No, only if it is good for people (ie. maximizes happiness/minimizes suffering).

From a utilitarian cognitivist point of view, utilitarianism is the true theory through which a thing is deemed good.

Hedonism is a theory of value which claims that pleasure is the only intrinsic good and pain is the only intrinsic bad. Utilitarianism/agent-neutral consequentialism is the theory of moral decision making that claims that the objective of ethics should be to promote what is good and minimize what is bad. The right decision is the one that increases good and minimizes bad. If Islam makes people happy without any unnecessary costs, then Islam is morally useful on that basis, even if it isn't actually true. (Consistent) hedonistic utilitarians don't promote utilitarianism for utilitarianism's sake, they promote utilitarianism for happiness's sake.

Promoting deontology is good in the same way promoting a lie is good.

Yes, exactly. As a value hedonist I think that pleasure, not 'truth' or knowledge, is intrinsically valuable. Lying is not morally wrong in all scenarios, in some scenarios it has good consequences, sometimes (usually, probably) it has bad consequences, sometimes it has neutral consequences.

I believe you are underestimating the danger of promoting a lie to the general population: it is actually false, and they'll believe it to be true.

I can agree that promoting a lie will probably have bad consequences in most scenarios but what's your point w/ the bold? I don't believe that it benefits people to know the truth, it benefits them to experience happiness. Maybe you're a preference-utilitarian in which case you can argue that if people prefer to know what's true then lying to them is morally wrong for that reason but I don't agree with the idea of preference satisfaction being intrinsically valuable at all.

And how do you prove consequences are good or bad? Through logic. This argument of yours is like saying "It doesn't matter if you don't actually know maths, what is important is that x^2+x-3 be equal to a positive number". There is no point in arguing that the result be consequentially morally positive, or numerically positive, if you don't use logic, or don't use maths, respectively.

What's valuable is happiness. Logic is something we use to determine how to make people happy. A consequence is good when the beings affected by a decision or action are happier or less distressed than they would otherwise have been as a result of that decision or action. You can't 'prove' that a consequence is good because you don't live inside the minds of other people, you can't 'prove' that anyone is even sentient, you have to rely on their claim (as to whether or not they are pleased or distressed), cognitive empathy, common sense, imagination etc. to infer the likeliness of their being pleased or distressed as a result of any given decision or action. Your analogy is completely off, I don't see how you can even make the comparison. Consequentialism = moral decisions are right or wrong only if they have good or bad consequences, hedonism : what's good is pleasure, what's bad is pain, hedonistic (agent-neutral) consequentialism : we should promote happiness and minimize suffering. If you believe that knowledge or 'logic' ( whatever that's supposed to mean) is what has intrinsic value, then that's a different matter, but *hedonistic* utilitarianism can justify promoting ethical theories other than HU.

If x^2+x3 being equal to a positive number has intrinsic value then I would agree that one's knowledge of math is unimportant, since x^2+x3 equals a positive number regardless. Saying that the knowledge of x^2+x3 being equal to a positive number has intrinsic value is a completely different thing entirely..

Logic is the tool through which I can say that the argument

"If Islam makes people happy without any unnecessary costs, then Islam is morally useful."
Islam makes people happy without any unnecessary costs.
Therefore, Islam is morally useful.

is an invalid modus ponens argument because the antecedent is false.

Logic is the tool through which I can say either hedonistic utilitarianism is false or the moral assertion "only if it is good for people" is false, because the set 'potentially happy individuals' includes elements outside the set 'people'.

What I consider off, using another metaphor, is that you strive for and value above all magnificent culinary results, disregarding the use of tools at your disposal for such task.

Mike Retriever wrote:Logic is the tool through which I can say that the argument

"If Islam makes people happy without any unnecessary costs, then Islam is morally useful."
Islam makes people happy without any unnecessary costs.
Therefore, Islam is morally useful.

is an invalid modus ponens argument because the antecedent is false.

Logic is the tool through which I can say either hedonistic utilitarianism is false or the moral assertion "only if it is good for people" is false, because the set 'potentially happy individuals' includes elements outside the set 'people'.

What I consider off, using another metaphor, is that you strive for and value above all magnificent culinary results, disregarding the use of tools at your disposal for such task.

I know that the antecedent is false, I was being theoretical. Modus ponens is only invalid if one or all of the premises are false. If you think that either a) pleasure is not the only intrinsic good or b) my claim that actions and decisions are only good if they have good consequences then say so. If you disagree with the former, you are not a hedonist, if you disagree with the latter, you are not a consequentialist.

I believe that Hedonistic Utilitarianism (minus aggregation) is the logically correct ethical theory. HU claims that all and only pleasure is intrinsically good, for this reason, we should behave in a way that maximizes the greatest pleasure and/or minimizes the greatest pain in as many people as possible.

According to HU, if giving a homeless man food would make him happier than he would otherwise have been (and not taking into consideration how any other moral patients could possibly be directly or indirectly affected by doing this),which is a good consequence, it is a morally good decision on that basis alone. If stepping on a dog's tail causes her unnecessary distress, which is a bad consequence, then it is morally bad to step on her tail, again, for that reason alone. If promoting Islam is what will result in the greatest happiness and/or least suffering then it is morally good to do so even if Islam is illogical/incorrect. There's no inherent value in believing what's logical or true, after all, we can care for non-human animals and improve their standard of living but we can't 'convert' them to utilitarianism. A world where all humans are very happy Muslims and where Islam encourages behavior that maintains that happiness (ha ha, still being theoretical) would be better than a world where all humans are utilitarians but most or many (or even 1) are unhappy and these utilitarians don't behave in a way that promotes happiness/minimizes pain. Their intentions are irrelevant.

Of course I'm concerned with the consequences (results) and not the tools we use to achieve those results, that's implied in 'consequentialism' isn't it? Well, I'm not any kind of 'practicing' consequentialist/utilitarian but it's the theory that I happen to think is logical.

Ubuntu wrote:There's no inherent value in believing what's logical or true.

There's no inherent value in anything whatsoever but satisfaction, and that is merely axiomatic, so why do you keep using the 'no inherent value' as an argument? It's a moot point. It's tautological. There's no inherent value in helping the poor. There's no inherent value in bombing Russia. There's no inherent value in cutting your testicles, or in being Mahatma Gandhi.

And yet, that something has no inherent value, seems to be of some importance to you or for your reasoning. Why should it? Logic, reasoning, lacks as much inherent value as partying or medicine: none has inherent value.

The value of logic lies in that people tend to act on their own accord, and one and many days utilitarians will not be there to tell them what to do, in fact most of the time in their lives. So what should they do then? They should act according to utilitarian principles. How would they know what's in accordance to that? Using the rules of valid inference. Without logic or with false logic, any conclusions proceeds from any inference.

People are stupid. If you tell them deontologically they should eat veggies, two thousand years will pass, and people will be killing each other because some of them are not eating veggies, others will be in a position where they should be eating meat but they're not because some guy two thousand years ago said they should be eating veggies, and so on. Value isn't all in what's good right now, in this day and age, there is much more value to be had in the future. Thus there is more value in showing them the though process through which an act is deemed good, than in simply showing them what's good. Not just that, but also there are other opposing views on what's good, and how do you plan on defending the utilitarian perspective but through logic?

It is totally absurd to defend chain of events disregarding the rules of valid inference.

This seems relevant: http://felicifia.com/index.php?title=Utilitarianism_and_its_Critics_(book)#R.M._Hare:_Levels_of_Moral_Thinking

If we were "archangels" - omniscient, omnibenevolent people, then 'believing in utilitarianism' would be equal to 'what is good'.

If we were "proles" - people completely lacking intelligence and analytic ability, then all we would have is general heuristics passed down to us by ethics professors.

Since we are somewhere in-between, we should partly doing our own moral thinking about how to be good and partly use recieved wisdom.

Mike Retriever wrote:

Ubuntu wrote:There's no inherent value in believing what's logical or true.

There's no inherent value in anything whatsoever but satisfaction, and that is merely axiomatic, so why do you keep using the 'no inherent value' as an argument? It's a moot point. It's tautological. There's no inherent value in helping the poor. There's no inherent value in bombing Russia. There's no inherent value in cutting your testicles, or in being Mahatma Gandhi.

And yet, that something has no inherent value, seems to be of some importance to you or for your reasoning. Why should it? Logic, reasoning, lacks as much inherent value as partying or medicine: none has inherent value.

The value of logic lies in that people tend to act on their own accord, and one and many days utilitarians will not be there to tell them what to do, in fact most of the time in their lives. So what should they do then? They should act according to utilitarian principles. How would they know what's in accordance to that? Using the rules of valid inference. Without logic or with false logic, any conclusions proceeds from any inference.

People are stupid. If you tell them deontologically they should eat veggies, two thousand years will pass, and people will be killing each other because some of them are not eating veggies, others will be in a position where they should be eating meat but they're not because some guy two thousand years ago said they should be eating veggies, and so on. Value isn't all in what's good right now, in this day and age, there is much more value to be had in the future. Thus there is more value in showing them the though process through which an act is deemed good, than in simply showing them what's good. Not just that, but also there are other opposing views on what's good, and how do you plan on defending the utilitarian perspective but through logic?

It is totally absurd to defend chain of events disregarding the rules of valid inference.

Like I said, I was being theoretical and my point still stands. That, in practice, you claim it`s virtually impossible to achieve the desired results through any other system than utilitarianism is completely besides the point. I don`t deny the bold at all.

Someone with some horrible terminal illness has a week to live but is given the option of being plugged into a VR machine and subjectively experiencing 1000 years of complete happiness, as a non-utilitarian, or 1000 years of pure hell, as a utilitarian. Which, from the (hedonistic) utilitarian point of view is the morally right decision to make? If you admit the former then the goal of utilitarianism is not to promote utilitarianism (even if, in practice, the best way to achieve the results that utilitarianism desires is by promoting utilitarianism), it's to promote happiness (or preference satisfaction). My argument was not tautological, I was merely pointing out that pleasure and not knowledge/logically sound beliefs is what has value and what should be *your* justification for promoting any world view.