User

I remember Epicurus' ethics as revolving around minimizing suffering and maximizing pleasure through living a moderate lifestyle, which sounds identical to Utilitarianism.

Where did Epicurus talk about "a stoical lack of caring about suffering and the world?" I vaguely remember a passage where he talks about how a man in pain is better off than something else, but that's it (it's been awhile since I've read Epicurus).

Thomas Ash

Yes, but this is just for you - more a self-help guide than a morality. One of the striking things about utilitarianism is its demanding insistence that you maximise the goodness for the whole world with each of your actions, making every decision a moral one (ie. coud I be giving this money to charity rather than buying a paper?) Indeed, that's one of the ways its often criticized, as I mention in the essay.

I have to admit, I can't point to a passage where he says just this; but it's something people normally agree loomed large in his philosophy. Hopefully, any dictionary of philosophy you have should confirm this.

Best wishes, Thomas

Wiploc

If Epicurus' attempt to maximize pleasure thru
moderation is the same a utilitarianism, then
a Christian's attempt to maximize pleasure
thru asceticism would also be the same as
utilitarianism, right?

crc

User

That doesn't make any sense.

Rusting Car Bumper

It seems that these posts where you start off, post a link to your site and then incite discusion as a means to advertise your own site. The iidb rules say "You will not advertise or solicit other members to ... peruse any ... services through this discussion forum." Anyway, that's my opinion for what its forth... which may not be much. I'm not a mod.

In many cases where we have limited inofrmation, means and time to affect an outcome.

No. Precisely the opposite in fact. A great amount of the time people don't have the will or time to analyze every detail of every choice. Often the result is that in practice we behave like utilitarians a good amount of the time.

No.

...but "other choices" does not equate to opportunity.

DC

Alonzo Fyfe

Mr. Ash.

I wish to argue that, contrary to your assertion, "motive utilitarianism" (or even rule utilitarianism for that matter) does not collapse into "act utilitarianism" if we take certain facts into consideration.

Some of these revelevant facts are contained in today's most widely accepted view of human psychology, known as BDI theory.


BDI Theory

BDI theory states:

(Belief + Desire) -> Intention -> Action

It is important to understand that beliefs and desires are both propositional attitudes. That is to say, they express a mental attitude towards a proposition. Furthermore, a proposition is the meaning component of a sentence. "I am eating chocolate cake" and "Alonzo is eating chocolate cake" are two different sentences that happen to express the same proposition (given that I am the Alonzo referred to in the second sentence).

"Agent believes that P" states that Agent has the mental attitude that the proposition P is true.

"Agent desires that P" states that Agent has the mental attitude that the proposition P is to be made or kept true.

BDI theory states that the intentional component of intentional actions (the only type of action we can be held morally accountable for) is strictly determined by our beliefs and desires. If I desire some chocolate cake, and believe that I still have some chocolate cake left over from the birthday party, I form the intention to go downstairs and get the cake, which (barring physical injury) causes the muscle contractions associated with walking downstairs, cutting a piece of cake, and bringing it back up to my computer.

If I do not go downstairs and get a piece of cake, this is because the description of my beliefs and desires is either mistaken or incomplete. Perhaps I do not believe that there is a chocolate cake in the kitchen. Or perhaps I have an aversion to gaining weight that is stronger than my desire for chocolate cake. Either way, the intentional component of my behavior is to be explained in terms of my beliefs and desires.

All human action, according to this theory, can be explained this way.

Now, associating utilitarian ethical theory with a theory of human action has a long tradiction that starts with Bentham. Bentham's view is human psychology is that no person ever does anything but seek to increase his own pleasure and decrease his own pain. Unfortunately, this view has many counter-examples such as acts of self-sacrifice. Issues of balancing present and future pleasure and pain also must be addressed. Humans seem quite willing to obtain present pleasure at the cost of greater future pain.

Mill (though not entirely consistent) argued that every action aimed not at obtaining personal pleasure and avoiding personal pain, but at obtaining personal happiness and avoiding personal unhappiness. Yet, this only partially solved the problem of self sacrifice and ran into the same problem of balancing of present and future happiness.

BDI theory says that we always act to maximize fulfillment of our desires (given our beliefs), but allows that we can have a mix of self-regarding and other-regarding desires. A 'desire that my child is healthy and happy' is as possible as a 'desire that I am having sex with Jenny'. Self-sacrifice springs from our other-regarding desires. An parent's act of sacrifice to benefit his child springs from the agent's desire that P, where P = 'my child is healthy and happy', and the desire that P is a motivating reason to make it the case that P either becomes or remains true. There are times when an agent's other-regarding desires can override all self-regarding desires.

People can even have other-thing-regarding desires such as a desire that a piece of artwork or a historic document be preserved, or a desire to learn some secret of the universe. These are not always done for personal credit.

[Note: I find it ironic that, though this view is the most widely accepted view today, its roots predate Mill and Bentham (both of whom wrote in the 1800s); it is built on the view first developed in deapth by David Hume in the 1700s]

Yet, in all cases, it is always our own desires that fully govern our actions.


BDI Theory and Act Utilitarianism

BDI theory creates a significant problem for act-utilitarianism. According to BDI theory, the only way that we can be act utilitarians is if we only have one desire -- a desire to maximize fulfillment of all all desires regardless of who has them. However, if everybody were an act-utilitarian, then everybody else would have only one desire as well, the same desire to maximize the fulfillment of all desires. But there would be no other desires to fulfill.

This is already problematic in a logical sense. There would be nothing to do. A race of such creatures would sit like zombies and die -- and not care about dying.

If there is even the smallest hint of a second desire added to a person's makeup (e.g., an aversion to pain, a desire for sex, a desire to eat, thirst, a fear of dark places, a longing for a hot bath), then those other desires are going to mix with the act-utilitarian desire to divert actions away from their act-utilitarian ideal.

Needless to say, humans have all of these other desires, so always acting on the act-utilitarian ideal is not only logically problematic, but causally impossible.

At this point, I need to introduce just one more fact: 'Ought' implies 'can' and 'cannot' implies 'it is not the case that one ought'. Examples are easy to come upon. It is not the case that you 'ought' to teleport the child out of a burning building because you cannot do so. And it is not the case that you ought not to cure cancer by tomorrow afternoon if there is no way that you can cure cancer by tomorrow afternoon.

If we cannot be act utilitarians, then it is not the case that we ought to be act utilitarians. To say that any theory 'collapses' into act-utilitarianism (that the act-utilitarian alternative is something that we ought to do) assumes that we can be act-utilitarians. But we cannot be act-utilitarians. Therefore, the statement that we ought to act like act utilitarians is a mistake.


Desire utilitarianism

On the issue of free will, the compatibalist definition of 'could have done other wise' is 'would have done otherwise if he had wanted to'. Or, if his desires were different than they were, he would have done something else.

To say that a person 'should have done otherwise' is to say (using 'ought' implies 'can') that he would have done otherwise if he had wanted to, and he should have wanted to.

But, if we say that he 'should have done otherwise', then we are asking for a change in his desires. And if we change his desires, we are going to bring about a long string of consequences of which this specific act is only one.

Let is look at Bernard Williams' example of the visitor being asked to kill one person to prevent 20 from being killed by an evil dictator. To say that he should kill this person is to say that he would kill this person if he wants to, and he should want to. But, if we say that he should want to, then we must also endorse all of the other consequences that his having this set of desires would also bring about.

In this, it is important to note that desires are persistent entities. They are not the type of thing that springs forth at a whim to be tucked back into their corner when it is convenient to do so. Every desire weighs on us constantly, and if it is there, its effects will not be confined to this one act alone.

Is it the case that he should want to kill the prisoner, given all of the other consequences that his being the type of person who would want such a thing could bring about? A reasonable argument can be made that he should have an aversion to killing -- with all of the consequences that this desire would bring about -- including the possibility that he would refuse to kill in this rare and unusual type of circimstance.


Should Want

The last step in this argument is to example what is meant by the phrase 'should want to'. Wanting to is not an action, so 'should have wanted otherwise' does not have the same analysis as 'should have done otherwise'. It is a bit more complex. And, I am afraid, I am going to go over the main points a bit quickly, because I will be repeating a lot of stuff I have written before.

See, for example, .Ethics Without God: A Pesonal Journey, which contains chapters that explicitly detail my arrival at these conclusions through an analysis of the problems of rule utilitarianism. Relevant information can also be found in my participation in the formal debate, Is Morality Objective?, and my posts in the thread on Subjective Relativism.

This analysis draws upon the fact that our desires are not entirely hard wired; that we learn some of our tastes and preferences from our interaction with the physical world around us. This is made evident by the different tastes and preferences in different cultures. Among the environmental influences that shape our desires are praise, blame, reward, and punishment that we experience for ourselves and for others around us.

So, the institution of morality comes into existence to use these forces to shape peoples' desires to the degree that they can be shaped. And we do so for the purpose of promoting desires and aversions (that can be promoted) that fulfill other desires regardless of whose they or, and for suppressing desires and aversions (that can be suppressed) that tend to thwart other desires regardless of whose they are.

All of it aims at promoting that set of desires and aversions that people can have, that it is best that they do have.

Okay, "best?"

well, if we hold that all value relates states of affairs to desires in such a way that 'good' means 'such as to fulfill the desires in question'. Different senses of the word 'good' in different context identify different desires in question. When I say, 'it was a good food' I refer to a different set of desires than I do when I say, 'that food is good for you.'

Moral senses of the word 'good' mean 'such as to fulfill the desires in question, where the desires in question are all desires regardless of who has them.' The morally best desires are those that fulfill other desires, regardless of who has them; the morally worst desires are those that tend to thwart other desires regardless of who has them.

To say, of a person, that they 'should have wanted to do otherwise' means nothing more than that 'we can use the tools of praise, blame, reward, and punishment to cause people to do otherwise and doing so would genreally lead to the fulfillment of more desires regardless of whose desires they were.' Nothing more than that.


Conclusion

The issue, here, is whether desire utilitarianism can escape the charge of being reduced to act utilitarianism. I think it can because BDI theory, the fact that 'ought' implies 'can', the persistence of desires, and the limits to the effectiveness of praise, blame, reward, and punishment on shaping peoples' desires, the act-utilitarian alternative is often simply not an option. It is senseless to say that an agent ought to have done what he could not have done, or what he could have done only in a possible world having worse consequences elsewhere.


I hope that you find this contribution useful.

Alonzo Fyfe

Ed

One of the major problems with utilitarianism is that it values people based on their usefulness, thereby ultimately turning them into objects. Persons that produce pleasure are good, persons that produce hardship such as unwanted unborn children are "bad" and can therefore be eliminated.

Alonzo Fyfe

If people are valued entirely by their usefulness, then how is this usefulness measured? If people are the means, then what are the ends?

The ends (or goals) of ethics is serving people. From Bentham's statements "each to count for one and none to count for more than one," and "the greatest happiness for the greatest number," utilitarianism's basic principle is to promote, to the maximum degree possible, the well being of all people.

Any other theory states that less well being for fewer people is (for some unimaginable reason) better.

Wiploc

On what grounds would you object to that?

As a utilitarian, I would protest that people won't be happy if they are subject to elimination because somebody doesn't think they make people happy. I think people will generally be happier if we have a rule against eliminating people.

crc

Ed

Pleasure and avoidance of pain. People are useful if they provide pleasure but not useful if they cause pain and suffering.

Quote:

af: The ends (or goals) of ethics is serving people. From Bentham's statements "each to count for one and none to count for more than one," and "the greatest happiness for the greatest number," utilitarianism's basic principle is to promote, to the maximum degree possible, the well being of all people.

What about people in the womb?

Quote:

af: Any other theory states that less well being for fewer people is (for some unimaginable reason) better.

What theory?