Is there ever such a thing as a utilitarian justifiable war? Considering the intense suffering it causes, the death and misery. However, WW2, well without a war who knows how many more Hitler may have killed? When dealing with such unethical behavior is there an ethical justification for meeting such violence, intolerance etc with violence as a tool of ending such non-utilitarian philosophies as espoused by the Nazi's or the Japanese? In a contemporary context when we see the suffering caused in Syria, how do you think us Utilitarians should respond? When the violent parties are not acting in a 'utilitarian' or even ethical way, how does utilitarianism respond?

Sorry if this is an easy question.... i am basically a red wine educated philosophical type... so no flaming please

There are definitely times when declaring war is better than doing nothing. There has never been a time when declaring war was the best thing that a government could do, but unless they start doing the cost-effective foreign aid stuff, that will apply to everything. I'm skeptical of the idea that war is the most cost-effective way to stop a government from doing something. I'd expect massive bribery, or even massive assassinations (technically still war, but cheaper and with a much lower death toll than normal) would work better.

I guess it's probably the best you could do with a decentralized genocide or something like that, although I'm not sure if it counts as "war" if you're not fighting a government.

It's a good question. I think:
1. War is overwhelmingly harmful, and only occasionally useful
2. There are far too many wars
3. In recent history, there haven't been any wars worth lobbying for. However, it might not be good use of our time to lobby against wars either.
4. In war, armies and leaders discount the value of opponents' lives and this causes us to underestimate the true cost of war. Peter Singer writes about this here.

Peter Singer wrote that there are far cheaper ways to change behaviour than by warfare here.

RyanCarey wrote:3. In recent history, there haven't been any wars worth lobbying for. However, it might not be good use of our time to lobby against wars either.

This is the key issue. Wars surely aren't good and almost certainly aren't bad enough to hold a candle as a use of our time to just gathering money for AMF, SCI etc. One can imagine given the success of Givewell and Giving What We Can's efforts that a day might come when funding particular wars is the lowest hanging fruit - I'll bet the media will love that. 'Utilitarian army' headlines, anyone?

Digging up from a homework assignment I did for my economics class in senior year of high school:

Current-Events Piece #1
20 September 2004

The article "Lessons in how to lie about Iraq" discusses the words and arguments employed by the US government and media to make the Iraq war seem inevitably necessary. The author argues that what is worse than overtly falsified propaganda is the subtle manipulation of the issues on which people focus their attention.

People have a limited amount of time in which to take in news, discuss the issues presented, and advocate for a certain policy; likewise, the government has limited time and resources with which to act. As a result, I believe that the worst cost of invading Iraq is not the deaths of at least 10,000 Iraqi civilians and 1,000 US troops—horrible as that may be—but the cost of missed opportunities. The immediate monetary price of the war alone, as measured by Congressional appropriations, is already $135 billion, according to conservative estimates described at http://costofwar.com/numbers.html. At the same time, an increase of just $1 billion—0.7 percent of that amount—in spending on worldwide AIDS programs could prevent an additional 1,600,000 people from contracting HIV/AIDS within the first year of the programs and could treat 400,000 people who would otherwise die within two years, according to http://www.bread.org/media/articles/200 ... oct_26.htm.

I do not believe that this misdirection of funds can be considered an “opportunity cost” in the strict sense of the term, inasmuch as it is not the cost of not choosing the next best option but, rather, the cost of not choosing a much better option. Nevertheless, the concept of sacrificing the potential benefits of an alternate decision remains the same. [Here I was being rather strict about the definition of opportunity cost in my textbook. General vernacular is more flexible.]

While I don't think it's the best use of resources (even to relieve human suffering, much less animal suffering), I do think that interventions like those advocated by this group (founded at my former college) usually have positive value ignoring opportunity cost.

Hi Ryan, I agree with what you say. Wars are overwhelmingly abhorant. However, what I am looking for is the tipping point. When and how does something so abhorant becomes something that can be justified in a utilitarin way?I have been reading about Just war concept and understand much of it, although from my reading of history find it idealistic and setting itself up for a fail. For example, proportionality is a fine and noble point, however militarily overwhelming force is the best way to ensure casualties of your own side are minimalized. The US didn't invade Iwo Jima with a force equal to the Japanese. I also think that civilians will inevitably become entangled in any war. Unless it is taking place in a desert. This for me makes Just war a difficult concept. So how does utilitarianism sit in this?

When and how does something so abhorant becomes something that can be justified in a utilitarin way?

When the suffering prevented exceeds the suffering caused.

One possible example would be declaring war on a country that would likely declare wars on other countries, to minimize the total amount of war.

A lot depends on how broadly you define "war." Does intervention in Darfur count? Assassination? Destroying an evil alien civilization that wants to spread suffering throughout the galaxy?

There's also a question of what "just" means. For example, it may be that World War II was good on balance, in the sense that it's better that the Allies fought it than letting the world be taken over by the Axis powers. However, it almost certainly wasn't optimally conducted, because there were huge unnecessary attacks on civilians, etc. And as DanielLC said, maybe the same ends could have been accomplished in other ways entirely, like bribes and assassinations. (I'm no history expert on this point, so I don't profess to know what I'm talking about.)

Well, I think assasination does count if it is done by one government on another. If the Israelis kill the president of iran that would be a pretty war like act. Intervention in Darfur, well it depends on the type of intervention, if it is armed and involved african nation troops being sent in and they fight against Sudanese troops then yes. If it is sanctions, then 'no'. Aliens? No, I want to keep this applicable and if possible talking about actual historical and current events, no hyper-philo-hypothesising. War is something that is real and potential for many people today and has been a constant throughout human history. Utilitarianism as an ethical system must have ideas on how to answer these big questions if it is going to convince anyone of its worth at all

Bribery? Well, isn't that just the current problem with North Korea. they rattle their sabres and the rest of the world gives them more aid and helps them in some or another. This just alleviates the potential for a war. An authoratarian regime remains in power, the ordinary people still suffer, the first world doesn't have to worry about a war. the only people who don't win are the ordinary NK people who still have a dictator in effect kept in place by first world aid for fear that the first world would have to fight a war...

Assasination? Well, WW1 makes me a tad cautious if that is the best solution. From what I understand it can lead to a succession of unpredictable events that may or may not have the desired results. May result in a new leader who helps, may result in a power vaccuum and potential civil war or may result in another leader coming to power who is worse than the original you sought to get rid of.

I agree that negotiation as much as possible before any sword is drawn must be a prerequisite. However, knowing when not to is also just as important. The whole 'Peace in our time' being a perfect example

Damn, got to run.....wife....calling.....

For bribery, they need to make it clear what's to be expected, and what will be payed, although that might not be necessary depending on how it's done. For example, if they're giving campaign contributions to presidential candidates.

The method of assassination I was thinking of is to make it obvious who you are and why you're killing them. The next in line may be worse, but only if they have a death wish.

Thanks, redcarded.

redcarded wrote:Utilitarianism as an ethical system must have ideas on how to answer these big questions if it is going to convince anyone of its worth at all

Well, the thing is, I don't think utilitarianism has anything unique to say. It doesn't contain special principles (like inherent pacifism) -- the decision will mainly be based on the historical details and counterfactuals. Utilitarians may want to apply "rule utilitarian" / "timeless decision theoretic" approaches, so that, for example, they can make credible threats, but even this isn't unique to utilitarianism. All kinds of rational agents will be interested in such matters.

What utilitarianism does give you is a metric to optimize against, and this metric immediately suggests that animal suffering and futurism (including animal/machine suffering in the future) will probably dominate the calculations. However, beyond that, the empirical judgments are pretty messy.

For example, proportionality is a fine and noble point, however militarily overwhelming force is the best way to ensure casualties of your own side are minimalized. The US didn't invade Iwo Jima with a force equal to the Japanese. I also think that civilians will inevitably become entangled in any war. Unless it is taking place in a desert. This for me makes Just war a difficult concept. So how does utilitarianism sit in this?

So utilitarianism isn't going to lead us to any particular theory of war. It's doesn't really make any claim about proportionality, Jus ad bellum and jus in bello, etc. Rather, these concepts are entangled in a web of conversation and to evaluate their legitimacy in certain contexts, we have to consider how these concepts influence the behaviour of humans and how this contributes to human flourishing or human suffering. War is too complicated for utilitarians have any really consistent opinion on.

redcarded wrote:Is there ever such a thing as a utilitarian justifiable war?

Power-grabbers who want something wage war to get what they want. If the power-grabber is, to some degree, dependent upon public support for the action, the the power-grabber would be inclined to use any type of argument that helps the power-grabber achieve his or her goals--that could mean using utilitarian arguments or rights-based (deontological) arguments.

Perhaps your question was whether the "pure" version of utilitarian philosophy (which doen't exist) would compel somebody to support a given war. My answer is similar to the above: the "science" of utilitarianism is strongly affected by the values that people use to determine what is good, so a room with 20 utilitarians could give you 20 different answers on the validity of any given war. That being said, I would say that utilitarian philosophy allows for a war if that war is the best way to maximize happiness or minimize suffering according to the values of the utilitarians. There could even be utilitarian philosophers who fight each other over what they thing is the best course of action.

As a somewhat post-modern philosopher, I doubt that our perception of what is good is objective---meaning that just because I think some particular social or economic outcome would be good does not mean that it actually would be good. I prefer a something like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_of_Westphalia

The Treaty of Westphalia had terms like this:

From Wikipedia wrote:All parties would recognize the Peace of Augsburg of 1555, in which each prince would have the right to determine the religion of his own state, the options being Catholicism, Lutheranism, and now Calvinism (the principle of cuius regio, eius religion)... General recognition of the exclusive sovereignty of each party over its lands, people, and agents abroad, and each and several responsibility for the warlike acts of any of its citizens or agents.

the general idea being that each country would be left with minimal threat of interference from other countries.

Millions of humans and animals suffer in wars, so I think it's better to avoid wars. Most people tend to reject wars if most victims are civilians, but most victims are actually animals in all the wars.

If we take animal suffering into account, I think we must be nearly pacifists in practice, and only support wars when they clearly produce utility and there is not another choice.