Comments on: Morals From Stories?

By: Richard Dolder

Richard Dolder — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 21:50:17 +0000

As a utilitarian, i get annoyed by the rather constant attacks on my morality of choice(tm). So being the type to over think things, i generally feels there’s three major complaints against utilitarianism.

1) Almost every moral philosophy [b]will[/b] make an “Appeal to utilitarianism”, namely the idea that there philosophy will be somehow better for everyone if followed and if you pull on that string you can very likely reduce the philosophy into a form of rules based utilitarianism. Utilitarianism can subsume practically any other system into itself, people don’t want there pet ideology being an aspect of a bigger ideology.
2) It reduces morality to a math problem, and people don’t seem to want to accept the idea that all choice is really just a bunch of complex math problems. So morality is one of the places they more firmly sit on “This clearly isn’t math.”
3) Utilitarianism, is, hard. It judges based on consequence which means there’s no easy answer of “Will this be right or wrong.” you literally can’t know until after the fact(And since that action causes other actions…..), it also means everyone literally everyone fails to live up to it, and most people don’t want to accept they aren’t just and moral people.

Behold my bias, assuming not being a utilitarian is born of your bias.

By: Shae

Shae — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 17:21:08 +0000

“…reaching for the Holocaust as your example of evil every time strikes me as a kind of intellectual laziness.”

Paul, I agree with those who criticize Godwin’s Law. “Intellectual laziness” is useful shorthand when people want to discuss evil in some context without discussing endlessly what evil is:

1st guy: “Suppose you had this evil guy. An abortionist”.
2nd guy: “Wait, I don’t find abortionists evil.”

1st guy: “Suppose you had this evil guy. A politician”.
2nd guy: “Not all politicians are evil. Take for example my favorite…”

1st guy: “Suppose you had this evil guy. A murderer.”.
2nd guy: “What do you mean by murder? Killing is sometimes defensible…”

1st guy: “Suppose you had this evil guy. Like Hitler”.
2nd guy: “Ok. Go on.”

By: Shae

Shae — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 16:53:11 +0000

I like Jess Riedel’s example, although as others have suggested, utilitarianism seems to address more what one shouldn’t do than what one should. For a more straightforward and realistic example, it wouldn’t pain many of us to give a dollar (or ten) to every single charity we come across every time we come across it. Are we obligated to do so?

But suppose there was a network of voyerist photographers and fetishists who only photograph Amish women in the shower, and only from the neck down, so that these women will never see/recognize the photos of themselves being passed around on the Internet and thus will never experience any pain from it. Maybe they even do it with remote hidden cams so that getting caught is not a possibility. Utilitarianism seems to suggest this is OK, I suggest it is not.

By: nazgulnarsil

nazgulnarsil — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 07:15:29 +0000

Gus:
You are accusing consequentialism of curve fitting. But this is really the problem of induction restated. Since we can never prove that induction isn’t working what alternative do we have? Strict deontological maxims?

By: nazgulnarsil

nazgulnarsil — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 07:08:25 +0000

preference utilitarianism solves these sorts of thought experiments IMO. In the case of the beautiful woman, the classic utilitarian argument would be to say that her preference to not sleep with unattractive men is outweighed by the preferences of those men to sleep with her. But what if instead of trying to create “aggregate preferences” we only accounted for individual preference? Each individual preference of an unattractive man to sleep with her is perfectly counter balanced by her preference not to sleep with that particular man.

By: Doug S.

Doug S. — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 05:56:04 +0000

I do have grave misgivings about such a policy (one contradicts the received wisdom about ends and means at one’s peril), but I also think it might very well be an effective policy for a country enduring repeated suicide attacks. The biggest downside that I can see is that it could easily be a public relations disaster for any government that tries it.

Interestingly, under the Geneva Conventions, the use of civilians as human shields is a war crime, and countries at war have every right to go ahead and kill them if they interfere with an attack on military targets.

(In other words, under international law, Hezbollah commits a war crime every time it builds a school and puts an arsenal in its basement, and the civilian casualties inflicted by Israel during its recent conflict in Lebanon were completely legal.)

By: Gus

Gus — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 23:20:46 +0000

While I also become frustrated at this way of doing philosophy, I think there is a really powerful objection lurking that is rarely given its proper treatment. The objection is that we don’t ever really know the consequences of our actions. The objection is doubly powerful because not only do all theories of well-being have serious problems, but we also just cannot know or predict the future. As a result, we cannot know with any reasonable degree certainty the consequences of our actions. There is a decent paper by James Lenman about this called “Consequentialism and Cluelessness”. Lenman also has a good response to Parfit’s new book if anyone is interested.

By: TGGP

TGGP — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 18:18:15 +0000

Doug S., I have suggested the same policy regarding the families of terrorists. You’re the only other person I can think of who agrees.

By: Doug S.

Doug S. — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 17:34:04 +0000

Utilitarian policy evaluation in the real world? Let's see: How about the use of scorched earth tactics and collective punishment in counterinsurgency warfare? This article describes simple and effective tactics by which a conventional army can defeat a guerrilla force. In the recent past, Russia used them very effectively to quell the insurrection in Chechnya. A few good massacres, such as the Hama massacre committed by the Syrian government, could easily save more lives in the long run by ending drawn-out conflicts before they start. Additionally, I propose that we deter suicide bombers by executing the immediate family of people who commit such attacks. A suicide bomber is clearly willing to sacrifice his or her own life for the cause, but their relatives might not be willing to share that sacrifice.

By: Eliezer Yudkowsky

Eliezer Yudkowsky — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 01:22:25 +0000

Jess, if I were to hold her to the same standards that I hold myself, and there's nothing else more useful that she can do with a given hour, then yes, she is a bad person for not alleviating the misery that she alone can alleviate more effectively than anyone else, with a comparative advantage greater than any other comparative advantage she holds. But in fact it would be inappropriate for others to hold her to such a standard, unless she endorsed that standard herself, or she asked them for strict advice.