utilitarianism

[Clay S]

stuff i've written.

https://clayshentrup.medium.com/list/utilitarianism-7ab89681130c

as to the notion of wanting a utilitarianism that's behind the veil of ignorance, here's perhaps a way of articulating my position. suppose jack and steve are on an island with  eve, and decide to take her belongings, or even kill her. you can argue that this is "bad", but of what practical impact is this pronouncement? they're still going to do it.

but suppose alice has some kind of skill that can save them, e.g. she knows enough about electronics to fix their broken radio and signal for a rescue boat. knowing that, it would be in their rational self interest to keep her alive.

right now we are on an "island". it's planet earth. and we don't have the power to convince rich and powerful people to advocate for a system that acts as if they're behind the veil of ignorance. but we can plausibly convince a sizable majority of people to support voting reform, election by jury, etc. for their own individual selfish reasons. so our rational goal would be to try to make that happen, if it appears plausibly achievable.

this is the only rational way to think about "ethics". what can we realistically achieve to improve our welfare, knowing it has to be preferable to a pretty large share of society to ever be viable. coming up with some abstract principle that says e.g. dancing on sunday is "wrong" is just a pointless semantic game. what does "wrong" even mean in that sense? apart from what you can achieve in the real world, you might as well say something like "murder is smeg". what is smeg? just some abstract/undefined word we came up with. that's wrong "wrong" is. it effectively just means, "stuff i subjectively don't like".

[Rajiv Prabhakar]

> suppose jack and steve are on an island with  eve, and decide to take her belongings, or even kill her. you can argue that this is "bad", but of what practical impact is this pronouncement? they're still going to do it.

I don't think this is true. Would you kill Eve? Would you kill an innocent person if you knew for a fact that it would make your own life a little bit better? The majority of people wouldn't. There are many reasons for this, but a big one is the moral teachings that our society has been beating into the heads of every young kid. That is the entire point of, and the practical impact of, morality and moral theories. It convinces people (sometimes) that there are certain things they shouldn't do even if it furthers their self-interest.

1000 years ago, nobody would bat an eye when an empire invades and annexes its weaker neighbor. Today when Putin tries to do it, the entire world responds with moral outrage and takes punitive action. 1000 years ago, nobody would think twice about a stronger empire invading and enslaving its weaker neighbors. Today, even the most hardcore Trump supporter wouldn't endorse any proposal to invade and enslave Mexicans.

This seems obvious, but only because of centuries of hard fought moral teachings taught to each successive generation. If we all instead decided that there's no such thing as "moral rights and wrongs", our world would collapse back into the type of atrocities that we worked so hard to claw away from.

Would it be great if we built a global society where self-interest and society's interests are perfectly aligned? Absolutely. But until then, we still need morality to temper our selfish impulses.

Regards,
Rajiv

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[Clay S]

On Monday, January 22, 2024 at 3:26:49 PM UTC-8 rajivprab wrote:

I don't think this is true. Would you kill Eve?

no no, i'm specifically describing an example where they want to and have the power to. it doesn't matter what i personally would do.

my point is that utilitarianism has to be functional. in this example, it doesn't matter if you tell them that killing eve is "wrong". in their view, it's right. it's preferable.

Would you kill an innocent person if you knew for a fact that it would make your own life a little bit better?

you and i both are killing people, every day. every time we choose not to give more money to charity. a child just died because you didn't pay for him to have more food, or mosquito nets, or health care. you chose instead to live in a slightly larger/nicer home, or have a better cell phone or computer than you could have had, etc.

or, if you take your kids on a plane flight, or car ride, you're increasing their risk of death. it's stochastic murder.

The majority of people wouldn't.

oh yes they would. just like you and me, they do it every day.

 

That is the entire point of, and the practical impact of, morality and moral theories. It convinces people (sometimes) that there are certain things they shouldn't do even if it furthers their self-interest.

there's no such thing as "should". if you say, "clay, you should save that person's life", that just means you want me to save that person's life. it's just an expression of your preference.

1000 years ago, nobody would bat an eye when an empire invades and annexes its weaker neighbor.

moral behavior is observed in even very simple animals.

Today when Putin tries to do it, the entire world responds with moral outrage and takes punitive action.

mass media makes them aware it's happening. international organizations like nato exist for mutual self-protection.

This seems obvious, but only because of centuries of hard fought moral teachings taught to each successive generation. If we all instead decided that there's no such thing as "moral rights and wrongs", our world would collapse back into the type of atrocities that we worked so hard to claw away from.

none of this requires moral teachings. we can advocate for laws against murder, and bend to the iterated prisoner's dilemma via coalitions like nato or the united nations, purely out of self interest.

Would it be great if we built a global society where self-interest and society's interests are perfectly aligned?

great is relative to the person you ask. preferences are subjective.

 

Absolutely. But until then, we still need morality to temper our selfish impulses.

well, not quite. you need laws to protect you from the selfish impulses of others.

"morality" is just the behaviors genes impart to their host organisms in order to get copied.

clay

[Clay S]

On Tuesday, January 23, 2024 at 10:36:01 PM UTC-8 Clay S wrote:

moral behavior is observed in even very simple animals.

"morality" is just the behaviors genes impart to their host organisms in order to get copied.

i should caveat to harmonize these points here. in the former case i mean "moral" as in "pseudo-altruistic". e.g. an animal helps another animal. we now understand from evolutionary science that this results from kin selection and reciprocal altruism, which are really just selfish mechanisms.

in the latter example, i'm just saying that all behaviors are supplied by our genes in order to get themselves copied, and that includes the subset of those behaviors that fall under the category of "morality". i don't mean to say that all behaviors constitute morality per se, but they virtually all have some impact on others thus have moral implications.