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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

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.

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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

"...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."

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