quote: Most utilitarian theories deal with producing the greatest amount of good for the greatest number.
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I have no idea what the purpose of this thread is for. Is it to ask what the word utilitarianism means, or to instruct others as to what it means?
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An alternative formulation (one that avoids so-called "Omelasian" objections) is to change the goal to "producing the least amount of bad for the greatest number."
Also, Porter, the "for" in your sentence is redundant. How unutilitarian!
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I can say what Utilitarianism means to me, but it may not be indicative of consensus. Wikipedia might be better for that.
For me, utilitarianism stems from the idea that the "goodness" of all events can be quantified, i.e. given a "utility." Given multiple individuals, each with personal utilities, the challenge is how to combine individual utilities into a group utility. Utilitarianism would say the group utility is simply the sum of the individual utilities. So the optimal event is the one that maximizes the summed individual utilities. I think "the greatest amount of good for the greatest number" is somewhat of a misnomer (from my experience). It's more like the greatest average good. Thus, if a society existed in which thousands lived in Elysian bliss while a few hundred toiled in Tartaric hell, Utilitarianism would dictate choosing that over one in which we all went about our mundane duties.
I have issues with the theory, both on theoretical and practical grounds, from my area of interest which is artificial systems (as opposed to social or political systems).
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quote:Thus, if a society existed in which thousands lived in Elysian bliss while a few hundred toiled in Tartaric hell, Utilitarianism would dictate choosing that over one in which we all went about our mundane duties.
While that's true for a simplistic form of utilitarianism, there are some strong arguments that this could never fit a complex utilitarian system in the real world.
For example, a system of guarranteed individual rights seems to be anti-utlitarian in simple, specific cases, but it can be argued that having the idea and practice of this as part of the context of a system yields greater goods and less bads than not having it. That's the basic social contract argument, which is a utilitarian idea.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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That's exactly one of the pragmatic problems I have with Utilitarianism. If I don't misunderstand, your "complex utilitarian system" requires an ability to incorporate social "goods" and "bads" into individual utilities, presumably through some sort of rational delineation of alternatives and weighing of likelihoods. But the quantification of such things is immensely difficult, and (from my personal experience) in the end, not very productive. Maybe that's more a comment on my abilities than the theory, but I have yet to find an application of broad implication where utilitarian arguments were persuasive.
How much would it cost for you to give up your individual rights? What if you knew everyone else was being given the same offer of exchange? Would that alter your valuation? Should it? The makeup of the group inherently affects your utilities, but the quantification of those effects is at the best very challenging (and I think that in any reasonable problem, essentially impossible).
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Senoj, A valuing function that explicitly quantifies the "utiles" of various outcomes is a common, but not necessary part of utilitarian theories.
If you look at Bentham or Mill's formulations, I think you'll find this quality to their thought. They certaily advocated explicit values in many cases, but they were also positing a not necessarily specific philosophical idea as a alternative to the ideas that "might makes right" and/or "trust me, I actually know what the objectively right rules are" inherent in nearly all other social theories, even democracy.
It can also be useful as a description of multi-agent behavior without setting exact numbers down. I'm part of a movement in psychology to move away from the medical and scientific models, which largely depend on treating the subject as the only active force) and more towards the game theoretic one. Yes, it does make things much more complex, especially when you consider that we're nowhere near putting actual values, but I think this model yields a more accurate pucture of actual behavior.
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Squick- I browsed the wikipedia link, and was somewhat at sea after reading the philosophical explanation of utilitarianism. Then I clicked through to the economic utility theory and felt much more at home. Perhaps that explains my insistance on quantification of utility, since it seems to be more integral to the economic side of the theory than to the philosophical one.
I'm all in favor of moving toward game theoretic models; it's essentially what I'm doing with artificial systems. In that sense that game theory requires quantified preferences, I'm a utilitarian. Perhaps my problem is more with what I consider an undue stringence in capturing all factors in the utility measurement. I think it makes more sense to leave some factors external to the utilities.
For example, I was faced with a resource sharing problem. One agent had continual strong preference for the resource, while another had continually weak preference (although still preference). In repeated play, strict utilitarianism would do one of two things: either say the one with strong preference always received the resource, or somehow incorporate a fairness value for resource sharing into the individual preferences, so that over time eventually the one with weaker preference got a turn at the table. I preferred instead to keep utilities strictly private and treat the public consequences in a non-utilitarian manner (using an approximate bargaining scheme).
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BTW, is anyone listening besides us? I don't mind the thread morphing into a two-person conversation, but is it bad Hatrack etiquette?
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I might be a utilitarian, but it would require defining the goodness or badness of something to include more than the consequences - something not truly precluded by utlitarianism per se, but excluded from many of the popular conceptions of utilitarianism.
For example, consider a person hit by a car, totally by accident with no negligence involved, and a person intentionally shot and klilled. Imagine all physical aspects of suffering and the impact on relatives and friends left behind were identical between the two cases - one wife, two kids left in identical financial shape with equally devestating emotional impact, etc. I still consider the murder to be a greater moral wrong, at least in part because I believe it causes more harm. Squick's reference to the social contract touches on why.
Where I probably part ways with a utilitarian is that I think there is harm caused by murder other than that caused to the victim and survivors and by the damage that murder without consequences would cause to the social fabric.
In short, I don't think consequentialism is an adequate basis for judging the morality of acts, although I tend to think consequentialism is the best basis for deciding which acts should be criminalized.
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quote: But the quantification of such things is immensely difficult, and (from my personal experience) in the end, not very productive. Maybe that's more a comment on my abilities than the theory, but I have yet to find an application of broad implication where utilitarian arguments were persuasive.
How much would it cost for you to give up your individual rights? What if you knew everyone else was being given the same offer of exchange? Would that alter your valuation? Should it? The makeup of the group inherently affects your utilities, but the quantification of those effects is at the best very challenging (and I think that in any reasonable problem, essentially impossible).
As the wiki link noted, most arguments on social policy are rooted in utilitarianism these days. If a person or a group does X, it results in Y for the much of society, which would be bad or good for society. While I certainly appreciate that this might be difficult or impossible in some cases, I disagree very strongly with you that it's 'at the best very challenging (and I think that in any reasonable problem, essentially impossible).'
The last few posts are why I said a while back that Utilitarianism isn't an objective moral code. While it certainly attempts to make someone think objectively, it has no guidelines as to what the definers of good and bad should be, so you can end up almost anywhere with it.
There isn't anything wrong with this. Indeed, I think you could say that the whole reason for Utilitarianism is to force a person to think about the consequences of their behavior, to force people into discussions as to what the utility of an act is, what its ramifications are for society at large. This, to me, is very good. If there is no pat answer, this is because circumstances change and new information is constantly coming in.
On the other hand, people of good will can agree on many things, and through discussion come to an understanding of where the other person stands and what can and can't be compromised on. I think this is demonstrated all the time here on this forum and elsewhere.
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