Modern Utilitarianism and Having A Rational System In General...

I think I was introduced to the moral theory of utilitarianism about 20 years ago. It says that good is defined by utility. IOW the usefulness of an action. Utility can be defined in more than one way. But usually it's pleasure for the greatest number. Or the greatest happiness of the greatest number of people. Sometimes even motives can bring out greater good or happiness. For example Henry Ford is credited with the economic theory of "Fordism", the mass production of inexpensive goods coupled with high wages for workers. But Ford had ulterior, even evil, motives. By stimulating the economy, he made wealthy industrialist like him more wealthy. Because those higher wages were used to buy his automobiles. But it did lead to the modern middle class as we know it.

But is pleasure really the only goal of life? J.J.C. Smart points out that if that were so, all we would have to do was hook someone's brain up to machine that produced nothing but pleasure all day long. Shave the head. And you wouldn't need those bothersome eyes or ears. They would only produce negative stimuli. John Stuart Mill thought some pleasures were more sophisticated than others. I have always been skeptical of that. Also, is happiness and pleasure really the same thing, even as a mental state? And what about "healthy"? Most psychologists would say being hooked up to a machine like that wouldn't be healthy...

I tend to define good by lack of pain. I also tend to define it in terms of personal choice and rights. The first thing called negative utilitarianism. But as Smart pointed out, we should just eliminate humans. Because then there would be no pain. You could create a negative utilitarian two-rule system: 1.) No pain and 2.) everyone lives. But then things just get more complicated. Plus, what about freedom? For example some people don't want to be happy. They lose a loved one and they say, no, I want to be miserable for the rest of my life. I don't want to get over it. Shouldn't that be their choice?

Anyways, my question is two-fold: Is pleasure by itself the sole intrinsic good, especially in (modern) utilitarianism? And even if there is no objective moral facts, can you still have a rational objective system of any kind?

 

You mean, similar to how the Matrix portrayed humans as living batteries, hooked into a VR System that provided all their needs and desires?

 

Very insightful . You know back in 1989 they had that alien autopsy scandal. Some guy who "worked" for the government (yeah right ) said there were aliens and cover ups. "They" believed in a general God concept. I wasn't interested in ET stuff back then. But I had wondered. And I was about there in my life at that time. There is probably a God, a general force. But who is He? Is He Buddha? Is the Blessed Virgin Mary? And so forth. Then he said they loved Strawberry ice cream. Like a real army brass there at the time pointed out, be on the look out the next time you go the supermarket! But you know, what philosophy would an advanced race adopt? There are so many. And you just can't get any straight answers on the subject. The internet is filled with disinformation. That is the price of technology they say. I recently read aesthetics was still a thing. About a third of philosophers still thought that was objective. I thought the Greeks were the last to do that. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But is beauty that which (is) "useful"? I just don't know. Thank you sir.

Anyone else want to add to the discussion? And I could start a new thread for this. But what is "moral status". What are the nihilists views on it? Most philosophers aren't nihilists BTW. That [nihilism] is just what they call a thought experiment anyways. But what is the modern view of moral status? Do animals have it?

"Does Data have a soul? I don't know that he has. I don't know that I have. But I have got to give him the freedom to explore that question himself."

—The Measure Of A Man,
Captain Phillipa Louvois,
Stardate: 42523.7,
Original Airdate: 13 Feb, 1989.

But Data is definitely not the property of Star Fleet! And maybe that is all we need to know for now...

 

Many thanks for this. There is a real prime directive instituted billions of yrs ago by the galactic federation of light. This was often violated by dark cabal. So much so, that the sirian high council iniated a special alliance of members. This partly due to our harmonic convergence. I liken this more to horton hears a who.

 

I follow a modified utilitarianism as a guide to moral action, but the original Benthamite version is woefully defective. I supplement it by Mill's qualitative hedonism and deontological considerations. You say that Mill thought some pleasures were more "sophisiticated' than others. I think "superior" would be more accurate. To Bentham, pleasure was pleasure, and all forms of it were on the same plain: pushpin was just as good as poetry, or in modern terms, watching game shows was as good as reading great literature or listening to great music--whatever turns you on. He also thought it was possible to quantify pleasure according to a hedonic calculus that weighed frequency and intensity of pleasure. And it was the tastes of the majority that always prevailed. J.S. Mill thought it would be better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied, so qualitative judgments would have to enter in. There's also a controversy between "act" utilitarianism and "rule" utilitarianism: do we go case-by-case in deciding what policies would make the majority at a particular time happy or do we consider what institutions (like the Bill of Rights, free elections, etc, would bring the most satisfaction in the long run. Kant, who rejected utilitarianism in favor of deontology, thought the important thing in morality was subjective intentions or motives instead of outcomes. And Rawls added a specific contractarian concern with justice, defined as fairness, which he arrived at by asking what principles rational people would agree to govern society if they had no idea what position they'd occupy in it. A good Benthamite act utilitarian might cater to the majority desire to see LGBTQs fed to the lions or African-Americans re-enslaved, since it would give more people satisfaction at the expense of pain to a minority. There also needs to be a check on the utilitarian impulse to use draconian measures to punish transgressions in the name of promoting the greater good. Crucifying traffic violators might be effective in discouraging speeding, but the result would be unjust--a concept Benthamites have trouble with.

I find utilitarian principles useful as one factor in implementing religiously grounded principles of peace, love, understanding, and social justice. Even non-human pack animals and herd animals were endowed by biological evolution with sentiments of empathy and reciprocal altruism. Unfortunately, those only worked origninally with small groups related by genes or mating. So cultural evolution had to take over for humans in the form of religious and moral codes. As societies became larger and more complex, these became more universalistic. A variation of the Golden Rule (reciprocal altruism) is found in all the world religions. Empathy is embodied in the agape principle of love for all humankind. Jesus told us the law and the prophets could be summed up in the : love of God and love of neighbor. According to 1 John 4: 7-12, "God is Love", more generally conceptualized by John Dewey as "the summation of human idealism'. And our neighbor is all humanity, including society's rejects and disadvantaged. Loving them means doing what we think is in their best interest, not necessarily the same as giving them what they want or what will give them pleasure. Our Founding Fathers understood that "the pursuit of happiness' meant not just pleasure but virtue: conforming to a standard of right or pursuit of the good of humanity. The classical virtues were prudence, fortitude, temperance and justice, to which Plato added piety. Aristotle wisely taught that these are best achieved in moderation, in pursuit of the "golden mean" between extremes. I opt for qualitative utilitarianism and rule utilitarianism as the most effective means of pursuing these, within a contractarian framework calling for the greatest equal liberty and the understanding that all inequalities must work to the benefit of the least advantaged members of society.