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The [Wikipedia Article]

The book, [Utilitarianism] by JohnStuartMill.

Original poster, DouglasReay, has long been a Utilitarian, holding the view "If God isn't a Utilitarian, he ought to be".

Specifically, I believe in the truth of the sort of Utilitarianism that advocates the merit of actions, in specific situations, that seem (to the person choosing which action to take) to have a high net probable gain of utility for all concerned, weighted for uncertainty due to imperfect information.

Phew, that's quite a mouthful.  So what do I mean by that?

Utility


This is a larger concept than Bentham's Pleasure or Pain.  It isn't quite the same as someone's preference.  Possibly it is what someone would have chosen for themselves with perfect rationality and hindsight.  Yes, I know that makes it impossible to actually calculate.  No, that doesn't matter.  One does one's best to estimate, and the approximation only really features in edge cases.  It is more or less the same as the Quality used in the Health Service's "Quality Life Years".

All Concerned


That's you, me, your pet rabbit, my unborn child.  Everybody.  Even if someone isn't directly affected, there are still the effects of the example set by the action to consider.
Would you say this includes those who have committed a crime?-- Xarak
Absolutely.  There may be good utilitarian reasons to take an action that does not benefit a criminal (such as the precedant set, the deterrant factor, the harm the criminal might go on to cause others), but you must still take the criminal's welfare into account. --DR
Are you a determinist as well as a utilitarian? ^_^? -- Xarak
Is being a determinist relevant?  I'm not sure I understand you. --DR
Well, one could be a utilitarian, but also believe that some people, through exercise of their free will in choosing to do bad things, forgo the right to be happy, and deserve punishment. In other words it's not harm, but harm to "innocent people", that's bad. I suspect many people ( implicitly ) follow this view. On the other hand a thorough determinist would say that no-one deserves to be treated any differently from anyone else. -- Xarak
You wouldn't be a utilitarian then, unless you were Humpty Dumpty and words meant what you chose them to mean. - ChiarkPerson
Not exactly, but you'd be someone who believed in the greatest good for the greatest number, of a certain class of people. Such a person might well call themselves a utilitarian. Most utilitarians haven't extended the principle of utility to cover all forms of life; there's always an element of selectivity, so it would be quite possible to restrict it to a certain group of humans and still legitamately call that a "utilitarian" ethic. It's a question of family resemblence. -- Xarak
I think Utilitarianism would arrive at the answer a different way.  Ask a Utilitarian "This man, Joe Bloggs, just threw a brick through my window, killing my cat.  Is it ok to lock him up for a few months, even if he'd rather not be locked up?", and the Utilitarian would look at the following individuals influenced by the proposed action: Joe Bloggs, people who Joe Bloggs might hurt in the future, Fred Bloggs, who is thinking of copying Joe, people Fred Bloggs might hurt in the future, people who are mourning your cat, tax payers who would have to pay for Joe's incarceration, tax payers who would have to pay for extra police if the crime level goes up, etc.  The Utilitarian would then look at the effect of the proposed action and the precedent set by it on all these people and groups. --DR
That's what I thought you meant, I wasn't quite sure. I agree. -- Xarak





Net Probable Gain


This should really be expressed mathematically, because I mean in it to encompass things like risk and non-linear responses to reward.
How do you view situations in which a few people benefit greatly, but many more suffer slightly, or vice versa? For example, say there was a drug which was great at relieving headaches, or the common cold, but one person in a million suffers a reaction which causes them to die painfully upon taking it. Would you allow it onto the market? -- Xarak
Roughly the way it is handled now.  Allowing one innocent person harm that many can greatly benefit is itself a thing to be disuaded and that weights against such options to a certain extent.  However there exists a trade-off point where the harm causes is so little or the number harmed so few and the benefit caused so much, that it is in society's interests to go ahead anyway despite this.  Similar cost/risk calculations get taken all the time when, for example, deciding how much to spend on rail safety. --DR
I tend to agree, but I've found myself wondering about how to actually judge these situations, given that you can't measure suffering. The invasion of Iraq would be a good example. -- Xarak
There isn't a dial you can stick on someone that gives a number for their suffering between 1 and 10.  But you can make estimates.  You can look at what people actually decide between.  Give someone a pill that will relieve their child's headache for an hour, but has a chance of a side effect and ask what odds they'd risk of death.  1 in 10?  1 in 1,000,000 ? 1 in 1,000,000,000 ?  1 in 10^42 ?  Similarly for Iraq, you could have posed a question to a pre-invasion Iraqi "Here's a magic button.  Pressing it will imprison all Baath party members including Saddam.  But there's a certain chance of your child dying.  What odds will you accept?" --DR
There's a problem here which is that people are irrational when it comes to such choices. It's a fact of psychology that people will, for example, prefer inaction over action even if it's harmful. If you offer people a vaccine which protects their children against a disease but has a small chance of killing them, even if the chance of dying of the disease itself is clearly higher, they will generally choose not to vaccinate. Likewise people tend to have an irrational preoccupation with possible loss over possible gain. And if you'd asked the average German what the best option was in 1933... -- Xarak

Uncertainty


It makes sense to give a somewhat higher weighting to the needs of those we know and times near to our own, because we know more about them and so can be more confident that a particular consequence will be seen as of benefit.
I've seen it suggested that Utilitarianism is the same as rational selfish egotism if you believe in universal serial re-incarnation.  IE that there is only one person in the entire universe who, through a process of re-incarnation, lives through each life exactly once, then goes onto the next one.  So you were both Napolean, Churchill, Ghandi, Vlad the Impaler, all the peasants who died from the black death, your grandmother, etc. --DR

Merit


Applying Utilitarianism to the questions "Should I try to use explicit exhaustive Utilitarian reasoning every time I take a decision?" and "Should I try to live my life solely by Utilitarian principles" gives the answer "no".  There are more easily calculable approximations that give good enough answers in all but edge cases, that can be lived by instead, and that give fringe benefits (eg social ties, cultural resonance).  For instance, it would be possible for someone to be a Utilitarian but mostly live their life by Christian, Taoist or pacifist principles.  Utilitarianism advocates selecting a belief system to live by that is most likely to give happiness to you and all those you interact with (except when important decisions come up, in which case you ought to spend the time to think it through properly).
(PeterTaylor) I'm not sure it makes sense to talk of living your life mostly by Christian principles, but taking a Utilitarian approach to the really big decisions. That sounds like "God is an authority, but not the supreme authority".
Yet people do seem to do it with other things.  For instance, trying to live what they believe is a peaceful Christian life, yet commit violence in defence of their family (even when they believe that is not the Christian thing to do) and still think they were right to do so. --DR
Theory doesn't always accord with practice. I think what PeterTaylor means is that you wouldn't be a Christian if you did as you suggested, because being a Christian means dedicating your life to Christ, not utility. However one could argue that if you believed Christ was a utilitarian ( not such a silly suggestion ), they'd be one and the same thing. -- Xarak
The phrase often used is "rules of thumb".  So for instance, you might use "love thy neighbour as thyself", "honour thy father and thy mother", "don't bear false witness", "don't covert your neighbour's stuff", etc as your rules of thumb but, when they contradict (like should you testify in court against your parents), then use Utilitarianism to decide between them.



There's a [Utilitarianism FAQ] that does a nice job of categorising the different flavours of Utilitarianism by the position taken on five issues:
Consequentialism
Act
Rule
Welfarism
Hedonistic
Pleasure only
Pleasure + Absence of Pain
Preference
Current at time of choice
Free & Informed Hindsight
Perfect Hindsight & Infinite Rationality
Negative
Absence of Pain only
Aggregation
Total
Average
Maximization
Expected
Actual
Implementation
Direct
Indirect

However it does miss out a couple of the more modern options under Consequentialism (motive, and precedent)

DouglasReay falls into the categories: Indirect, Expected, geometric mean of total & average, free & informed hindsight preference, and precedent.



/InAction

[CartesianDaemon has commented on this page in his LiveJournal]

SeeAlso: [Consequentialism] and [Rule Consequentalism]

[Ridiculously simplistic MIT course notes]

[Precedent Utilitarianism] (Warning: See ConexionsProject)

[Matthieu Ricard on Happiness - TED Talk]


CategoryPhilosophy

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