ive been having a discussion with 2 of my friends about whether preferential utilitarianism needs something other than logic to prove its true, our converstaions tend to go like:

some organisms have the capacity to value things. i value them having what they value because they value it

but why do you value them having what they value?

because they value it, you are leaving the non-logical part of the question to each individual organism

but what if other things apart from what has value is important?

but does logic actually find truth?


basically im wondering what the true answer to the question "how should i live?" is.

is this something the truth of which we can actually find?

as far as i understand the opposing view to take would be that ethical choices are no more true for everyone that what you find tasty (nithilism?) but the intrinsic nature of what is tasty is that it is different to different people right? but this doesnt change that they find it tasty and that we can maximise that, but what makes tasty important, or in the above case, what makes what they want important? that what ones wants is the reason for everything one does? but is it?

can whats the right way to behave be the same for everyone like something like the laws of physics are the same for everyone?

any help would be great thanks!

The content of your post is something that a philosopher could study for a lifetime. I suspect that a solid answer to your questions that is both true and convincing might solve all the world's social problems.

ruari wrote:but why do you value them having what they value?

A BRIEF ANSWER (this is more of a rhetorical response than a careful philosophical response):

I respect the wishes of others who want to be left unharmed for several reasons:

* I have a negative emotional response to seeing others harmed and I seek to avoid such experiences.

* I expect a risk of retaliation if I harm somebody (either individual retaliation or generalized retaliation against people "like me"), and I don't want such retaliation.

* I want to contribute to a culture in which people respect the desires of others to be left unharmed because I want to live in a society where people respect my preference to be left unharmed.

* I do not want to set a bad example for somebody near me who will later decide that it is OK to harm me or somebody near me.

* I do not want to set a bad example for others because I would experience a negative emotional reaction even if the person who learned from my bad example harmed a stranger.

* Ignoring the desires of others is selfish behavior and a type of egocentrism, which is a characteristic of children (and is considered a cognitive defect when it occurs in adults).

* People who systematically ignore the preferences of others often have a preference for others to be nice, and acting contrary to the "be nice" society is to actively disrupt the society that the offender wants to create and therefore requires the offender to hold contradictory beliefs, which violates a commitment to truth. Perhaps nonhuman animals and humans who do not care about truth see nothing wrong with living a contradiction, but it is offensive to those who understand and pursue truth. Perhaps because of this, I often view selfish people and lower forms of non-human animals to be unskillful as opposed to "morally wrong" (more details in my longer post).

A LONGER (pedantic) ANSWER

Ruari wrote:can whats the right way to behave be the same for everyone like something like the laws of physics are the same for everyone?

You are asking if moral principles are objective. If you review my "short answer" from above, you might notice that people can respond differently to each point based on their disposition. For example, some people might claim that they are "not afraid of" retaliation because they know kung-fu, or they own guns, or other such nonsense, but if they do not recognize the intrinsic value of life, then there is little hope finding a mutually-agreeable answer to ethical questions. As far as I can tell, a prerequisite to reaching a rational agreement on ethical issues is not merely a strong interest in truth, but a supreme interest in truth and all of its implications and antecedents. A person who discards truth or tolerates contradiction can feel satisfied in beliefs that seem ludicrous to rational people. Given a supreme commitment to truth, I still find it difficult to explain why I hold a belief in the intrinsic value of (all) life and in nature in general (I can construct an argument in defense of that belief and describe the contradictions implied by its denial, but ultimately I can't say why a non-believers are compelled to subjugate themselves to the antecedent principles). My subsequent responses to your post are not simple and require some background because the set of ethical "first principles" held by lay people are (IMHO) erroneous and the basis for further confusion.

My first topic is about the illusion of "right and wrong" and what I propose to replace it: skillful decision-making based on consequences of actions. Many people experience a negative emotion when they witness things that they believe to be morally wrong. I think a more scientific view of this is as follows: we do not react to some situations BECAUSE they are morally right or wrong--we react to some situations through largely unconscious processes and then describe the situation as if it were morally right or wrong (i.e., we "create" right and wrong to match what we have already done). See Haidt (2001) and the responses to it. There is a fair amount of evidence for a biological (as opposed to philosophical) basis of moral action: thinking of emotionally-charged events evokes changes in brain activity that are associated with physical sensation of the internal state of the body (Damasio et al, 2000); a system of neurons in the brain ("mirror neurons") activate when people witness certain types of behavior in others (Molnar-Szakacs, 2010); and the biological basis of empathy is specific enough to identify different brain regions for affective versus cognitive empathy (where cognitive empathy is conscious recognition of the responses of other people; Fan et al., 2011). The emotions related to empathy affect moral reasoning processes (Berenguer, 2010), and people who do not have the typical empathic responses are less inclined to perceive certain acts as morally right or wrong as others do (such as people with narcissistic personality disorder; Ritter, in press). The evidence in support of the biological basis for perceptions of right and wrong and the absence of any evidence that there is a property of the universe that defines what is right or wrong leads me to believe that people invent concepts of right and wrong to (inaccurately) explain their emotions.

Besides the biological basis of moral thought and behavior, many philosophers have cast doubt on the traditional conception of "right and wrong." In Chapter 2 of Principles of Morals and Legislation, Bentham said that we do not have a reliable way to obtain knowledge of right and wrong through divine revelation. Others suggest that right and wrong do not even exist. I suggest that the traditional concepts of right and wrong are simply examples of G. E. Moore's naturalistic fallacy (see the opening chapters G. E. Moore's Principia Ethica as an example of this discussion), and the biological basis of empathy and moral reasoning provides the only scientific understanding of why we believe in the idea of right and wrong (the full case is not presented here).

Those of us who deny that right and wrong exist are now in the difficult position of explaining why we refrain from killing babies and why we strive to "do the right thing." In your case, the question is why we have certain values or why we adopt philosophy that is based on happiness (or something like it). Here is a *description* (not a justification) of how I act: I am a human being. Human behavior is a complex product of genetics, developmental factors (like nutrients during gestation), and many types of social and environmental influence and experiences. These factors contribute to what I will call "my constitution." I seek to continue living and I seek to avoid harm because that is what my constitution has led me to do. I experience negative emotional reactions when I see things like babies being killed or animals being injured, and other parts of my constitution compel me to act in certain ways in response to those emotions, so I avoid negative activities and contribute to efforts to reduce those activities. I have a negative emotional reaction when I see people acting selfishly in a way that harms me or others. Some lions and some humans, for whatever reason, act against my best interests, and I will therefore attempt to thwart those actions in a way that is consistent with the other elements of my constitution (this also means that I will sometimes work against people who are selfish).

Here is a philosophical description of my behavior (which assumes some degree of free-will). I sometimes ponder the rational basis for my action--the ultimate goal of the pondering is to seek truth. I do this as if I had enough free will to respond to whatever my inquiry leads me to. The combined explanation and justification for why I seek truth and how I do it entails a long list of assertions, each one of which can become a point of disagreement... I believe that truth exists and I have adopted this as my primary epistemological goal (i.e., I strive to direct my acquisition of knowledge so that I can attain an understanding of truth). I believe that self-contradiction is irrational and therefore something to be avoided. I believe that arguing that something is true because it is self-evident is irrational. I believe that the majority of my accomplishments are nearly entirely due to the work of other people or to the availability of natural resources that were not destroyed by previous generations (e.g., I didn't invent language, math, logic, or science, I didn't build roads, cars, electronics or social infrastructure without which I would be an illiterate ape living in the jungle [or I wouldn't even exist]), and that recognition affects my willingness to sacrifice for the greater good. On each of those points, and hundreds more like them, people hold different beliefs and thereby reach different conclusions of how people should act. To argue that one approach to ethics is right and another is wrong is to hold beliefs about the large collection of subordinate beliefs that affect how we perceive things, how we value things, and how we reason. Consequently, I am not aware of any short, meaningful, truthful argument that will convince people with opposing beliefs why they should adopt a given ethical orientation. Given the history of political and religious conflict, I am confident that there is no short, meaningful, truthful, and convincing argument that would compel people to adopt the ethical stance that I have taken (or that you have taken).

Sometimes large groups of people agree on a similar set of philosophical principles (or it seems as if they do). To Mao's communist supporters during the Chinese revolution, their group shared collective insight into the truth of how governments should be constructed. Members of libertarian forums seem to believe that they share insight into how governments should work, but they disagree with Mao's supporters. Members of this board seem to think that they have insight into philosophy and it seems like the "community" of "believers" adds legitimacy to the beliefs. In group situations like this, people sometimes tend to mistake group consensus for truth. Psychologists who study morally-relevant behavior have found that people tend to adopt beliefs that are not randomly distributed but that they cluster together (clusters of values or beliefs or personality traits), but the clustering of beliefs does not indicate that one cluster of beliefs are better than another. My point is that regardless of what the group says, it is up to you to explore the rationale for your beliefs if you are inclined to seek truth.


References

Berenguer, J. (2010). The Effect of Empathy in Environmental Moral Reasoning. Environment and Behavior, 42(1), 110–134. doi:10.1177/0013916508325892

Damasio, A. R., Grabowski, T. J., Bechara, A., Damasio, H., Ponto, L. L. B., Parvizi, J. & Hichwa, R. D. (2000). Subcortical and cortical brain activity during the feeling of self-generated emotions. Nature Neuroscience, 3(10), 1049–1056.

Fan, Y., Duncan, N. W., de Greck, M., & Northoff, G. (2011). Is there a core neural network in empathy? An fMRI based quantitative meta-analysis. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 35, 903–911. doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2010.10.009

Haidt, J. (2001). The Emotional Dog and Its Rational Tail: A Social Intuitionist Approach to Moral Judgment. Psychological Review, 108(4), 814–834. doi:10.1037//0033-295X. 108.4.814

Molnar-Szakacs, I. (2010). From actions to empathy and morality – A neural perspective. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization. doi:10.1016/j.jebo.2010.02.019

Ritter, K., Isabel Dziobek and, S. P., Rüter, A., Vater, A., Fydrich, T., Lammers, C.-H., et al. (in press). Lack of empathy in patients with narcissistic personality disorder. Psychiatry Research. DOI: 10.1016/j.psychres.2010.09.013

Preferential utilitarianism makes no sense to me because preferences are emotionally based. I can't wrap my mind around how it can 'matter' that someone is cremated, as requested, if neither they or anyone else is any happier as a result of their having been cremated. Someone only wants to be cremated because the idea of being cremated is pleasing.

I honestly believe that the rationale behind hedonistic (act) utilitarianism is a philosophical truth to be discovered and would have been discovered by many people if Bentham had never published his Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, if it wasn't already, it's a a simple and honest idea. I more or less agreed with HU long before I knew who Jeremy Bentham was. You can't logically argue that one should maximize happiness and minimize suffering but I think you can show that it's desirable based on the premise that value is an emotional concept and what's of positive value is positive emotion (happiness) and what's of negative value is negative emotion (suffering), although Bentham justified his argument with psychological hedonism. Hedonism as a theory of value can only be arrived at through abstract reasoning, rather than empirical testing, but the same is true for mathematical laws.

Preferential utilitarianism makes even less sense to me considering that 'selves' and their 'preferences' are constructions of organic machines (brains) that are hardwired by genetic and environmental factors to develop the 'preferences' that they have.

something other than logic to prove its true.

For one, you need axioms. You can't prove anything without axioms.

Normally, axioms only talk about what is. You'd need an axiom that talks about what ought to be. This is known as the is-ought problem.

because they value it, you are leaving the non-logical part of the question to each individual organism

Taboo "value". Organisms act in a way that moves the universe towards a certain goal under a wide variety a circumstances. So?

A bigger problem: taboo "morality". What exactly are you trying to prove?

rehoot wrote:The content of your post is something that a philosopher could study for a lifetime.

This is true, but not very informative. Philosophers have negative incentives to settle on answers.

DanielLC wrote:For one, you need axioms. You can't prove anything without axioms.

I think this is the key point. It's kind of circular but obvious for logic - if you don't just accept a few logical axioms, you can't make sense of anything. But the set of axioms normally given for formal logic and the like don't include the existence of anything (except the logical axioms themselves), so in order to draw inferences about the world one clearly needs to supplement them somehow.

Normally, axioms only talk about what is. You'd need an axiom that talks about what ought to be. This is known as the is-ought problem.

I think this is a false dilemma, and that we can neither have any sense of what is nor what should be, so should dispense with both concepts in this kind of discussion. We either need to stretch an existing concept like 'assumption' to fit both categories or invent a new one.

Perhaps we could borrow it from another culture. I remember reading somewhere recently about a tribe who had only one concept for 'to believe' and 'to obey'; both led to identical outcomes, so why would you need to separate them? Frustratiningly I can't think where I read this now, still less the specific details. If anyone else knows what I might be referring to, please let me know!

Pertaining to DanielLC's is-ought comment:

Arepo wrote:I think this is a false dilemma, and that we can neither have any sense of what is nor what should be, so should dispense with both concepts in this kind of discussion. We either need to stretch an existing concept like 'assumption' to fit both categories or invent a new one.

I think you used the best word, when you said that we do not need to dispense with the "sense of... what should be" [emphasis added], but part of the problem is what we think that "sense" is. If you have a "sense" that it is wrong to strangle babies, then you have such a sense and you will probably avoid strangling babies. A radically scientific view of your experience is that you have some type of physiological response that makes you averse to strangling babies (due to things like empathic responses, social conditions and a million other things), but at no point does your sense of what is right or wrong indicate the existence of a methaphysical law (similar to a law of physics) that says that it is objectively wrong to strangle babies. If you want to accept your aversion to strangling babies as being super important and something that you do not want to contradict, then the rational thing is to avoid strangling babies. Perhaps this is what happens when we:

Arepo wrote:...stretch an existing concept like 'assumption'

People have the option to do the following: state a personal preference and then declare that certain actions are logically consistent with those personal preferences while simultaneously making no assertion that the personal preferences reflect factual information about the universe. In some cases, there is great consensus about the fundamental preferences (people don't want to be strangled, they don't want their friends to be strangled) but people act in ways that are inconsistent with their own principles (they perceive an arbitrary moral distinction between their friends and other people and want people in other countries to be strangled or killed for some stupid political reason).

I know that this is not traditional utilitarianism, but happiness, contentment, well-being, a feeling of security... are important to me (and to many others). I might have no basis for saying that happiness or well-being has any intrinsic value or that it is "morally right" to advance happiness, but those are my preferences (without a strictly rational basis). From that basis, I can attempt to guide my actions to be consistent with the things that are most important to me. I'm not so sure that breeding billions of tiny utility-vessels adds anything to the universe because I am unaware of an objective, intrinsic value of happiness that exists outside my personal preference.

Thanks for all the replies! I must admit I have some learning to do before I reply.

As regards the is/ought problem if things that ought to be are subjective truths, but still totally true, then is what one ought to do what makes the universe the way sentients believe the universe should be? Because its still true that the universe should be the way sentients think it should be because their normative subjective truths are true?
Does this make sense:/

DanielLC wrote:A bigger problem: taboo "morality". What exactly are you trying to prove?

Thank you for posting this!

At first I thought I was trying to work out what I should do, but then I thought "why do what I should do?" , I think the answer is because I should do it.
But this seems unsatisfactory, if whats motivating me to action is what I should do, surely I could instead be motivated by something else? I could have a different goal instead of doing what I should do?
I think my question is "what to do?"
but for that you need some axiom? So I need to decide on a goal before I can know what to do?

Ruairi wrote:As regards the is/ought problem if things that ought to be are subjective truths, but still totally true, then is what one ought to do what makes the universe the way sentients believe the universe should be? Because its still true that the universe should be the way sentients think it should be because their normative subjective truths are true?
Does this make sense:/

I used to think so, and wrote about it in an essay from 2005-2006. However, that "subjective truths are true" doesn't imply anything more than it says. It doesn't give a reason why the universe should care. You can say the universe should be the way that the weighted average of organisms wants it to be, but that's just restating the assumption of preference-type utilitarianism. Also, what counts as an organism with subjective truths? Does a thermostat think it subjectively true that the room temperature should stay at 20 degrees Celsius?

I'm not currently a fan of preference utilitarianism because it doesn't align with my intuitions for why I care about preventing suffering. I want to prevent suffering because suffering feels bad, not for any more abstract reason. When there's a divergence between preference and hedonistic utilitarianism, I favor hedonistic, just because that seems more right to me. I'm not troubled by this because even preference utilitarianism is arbitrary: You have to decide what kinds of things have preferences (does an apple have a preference to fall off a tree?), and you have to come up with a weighting scheme among them. This is no less ad hoc than deciding what kinds of organisms experience how much pleasure and pain.

Ruairi wrote:I think the answer is because I should do it.

Hmm, but that's circular. You said, "I should do what I should do because I should do what I should do." Actually, it's a circular succession of tautologies, since "I should do what I should do" is tautological.

Ruairi wrote:But this seems unsatisfactory, if whats motivating me to action is what I should do, surely I could instead be motivated by something else? I could have a different goal instead of doing what I should do?

Exactly.

Ruairi wrote:I think my question is "what to do?"
but for that you need some axiom? So I need to decide on a goal before I can know what to do?

That's right.

Alan Dawrst wrote:

Ruairi wrote:As regards the is/ought problem if things that ought to be are subjective truths, but still totally true, then is what one ought to do what makes the universe the way sentients believe the universe should be? Because its still true that the universe should be the way sentients think it should be because their normative subjective truths are true?
Does this make sense:/

I used to think so, and wrote about it in an essay from 2005-2006. However, that "subjective truths are true" doesn't imply anything more than it says. It doesn't give a reason why the universe should care. You can say the universe should be the way that the weighted average of organisms want it to be, but that's just restating the assumption of preference-type utilitarianism. Also, what counts as an organism with subjective truths? Does a thermostat think it subjectively true that the room temperature should stay at 20 degrees Celsius?

cool thanks for that piece!:D! but if the things that sentients think should be actually ought to be then surely that tells us what actually ought to be? presumably weighted by intensity. well presumably they have to be sentient (or norm-ient?) for their view of the way the universe ought to be to count.

Alan Dawrst wrote:

Ruairi wrote:I think the answer is because I should do it.

Hmm, but that's circular. You said, "I should do what I should do because I should do what I should do." Actually, it's a circular succession of tautologies, since "I should do what I should do" is tautological.

I need to learn more before I reply here.

Alan Dawrst wrote:

Ruairi wrote:But this seems unsatisfactory, if whats motivating me to action is what I should do, surely I could instead be motivated by something else? I could have a different goal instead of doing what I should do?

Exactly.

thanks for that article!:D!

Alan Dawrst wrote:

Ruairi wrote:I think my question is "what to do?"
but for that you need some axiom? So I need to decide on a goal before I can know what to do?

That's right.

Oh. I had been thinking for a while perhaps this is the case. I don’t find it unsettling it all, I didn’t think it would either actually but still some part of me feels like I should find it unsettling.

You have choices, you must decide what to do, you must start with a non logical decision, you can apply logic after that.

I think I’ll probably go with general good/happiness/norm/wellbeing/satisfaction, weighted by intensity. I guess maybe preference satisfaction really means the above.

Thanks!:D!

Peter Singer wrote:We are not, on the descriptivist view, free to form our own opinion about what is and what is not a moral principle; but we are free to refuse to concern ourselves about moral principles. Bill has to grant that if morality is tied to suffering and happiness, it follows that he is morally obliged to give to famine relief, but he may say that if that is what morality is about, he is not interested in acting according to moral principles. The descriptivist cannot tie morality to action, as the neutralist did, because he has tied it to form and content. So morality may become irrelevant to the practical problem of what to do.

What’s crucial in reality is what I decide to do, not what I should do.

Ruairi wrote:but if the things that sentients think should be actually ought to be then surely that tells us what actually ought to be?

Taboo what it means that something "actually ought to be."

Ruairi wrote:Oh. I had been thinking for a while perhaps this is the case. I don’t find it unsettling it all, I didn’t think it would either actually but still some part of me feels like I should find it unsettling.

Yeah, many people find it unsettling, but even if so, they get over it soon enough.

IMO, belief in objective morality is very similar to belief in dualism. In both cases, people feel like the concepts are so obvious, and people think they know what they mean, but when you actually think about the concepts, they stop making much sense. In both cases, people are postulating some second realm of metaphysics (either objective moral truths, or a soul/mind separate from the material world). In both cases, we can ask what's the relation between that second metaphysical realm and the regular metaphysical world. If people say that morality or the soul is in our world, then it's no longer special and non-material. If the say it has no causal connection to our world, then it's preposterous that we see such a correlation between the material world of brain chemicals and the second realm of morality/souls. Or, if the correlation is introduced by some third metaphysical mechanism, then we have strongly violated Occam's razor.

Ruairi wrote:You have choices, you must decide what to do, you must start with a non logical decision, you can apply logic after that.

Exactly. Hume famously said, "Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them."

Alan Dawrst wrote:

Ruairi wrote:but if the things that sentients think should be actually ought to be then surely that tells us what actually ought to be?

Taboo what it means that something "actually ought to be."

sorry im not getting this very quickly, do you mean that this logic is circular? that what ought to be is defined in the first place by sentients defining it?

Alan Dawrst wrote:

Ruairi wrote:You have choices, you must decide what to do, you must start with a non logical decision, you can apply logic after that.

Exactly. Hume famously said, "Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them."

that is awesome:)!

Ruairi wrote:

Alan Dawrst wrote:

Ruairi wrote:but if the things that sentients think should be actually ought to be then surely that tells us what actually ought to be?

Taboo what it means that something "actually ought to be."

sorry im not getting this very quickly, do you mean that this logic is circular? that what ought to be is defined in the first place by sentients defining it?

This one isn't circular. Let A = "sentients think should be," B = "actually ought to be," and x = some thing. You said that if for all x, Ax implies Bx, then if we know that Ax is true, then Bx is true. This is logically valid, although it requires the assumption that Ax implies Bx.

I was asking a different question (and wasn't very clear about doing so): What does Bx mean? What does it look like for it to be the case that x really ought to be? I know what Ax looks like: It means that an organism's brain is producing emotions related to x and that the organism has motivations toward x. These are understandable enough material processes. What, in contrast, is Bx?

well B is the way the universe is supposed to be, but i guess thats simply defined by the sentients in the first place... so i guess its the same thing...oh