How the fuck do you argue against utilitarianism...

how the fuck do you argue against utilitarianism? how can you possibly think you are a better person because you have nicer thoughts or feelings, when there are people who actually help others, though they may not be as spiritually deep? How can you think that the only purpose of life is your own happiness, or sense of fulfillment, and not to effect change in the world? did you not live a greater, more significant life by effecting real change in the world, or is it really better just to be a humbe, good dude? why do you think your subjective feelings matter so fucking much?

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>How can you think that the only purpose of life is your own happiness, or sense of fulfillment, and not to effect change in the world?
Well, are you going to stop me?

Humans are ends in themselves

Happiness defined as pleasure is cannot be the measure of the Good. Pleasure is neither necessary nor sufficient for the goodness of an action. Nor is pleasure a lowest common denominator to which all other values can be reduced, as utilitarianism seems to require. Values such as trust, altruism, fidelity, civic-mindedness, courage, compassion, and so forth do not seem to translate directly into pleasure, and vice versa. They may sometimes lead to pleasure and sometimes to its opposite, but they cannot be reduced to, or measured by, pleasure states. This is called the incommensurability of ethical values. In other words, there is not a lowest common denominator (pleasure or anything else) by which all values and all states of affairs can be measured.

Is there a word for feeling this passionately about helping other people, yet at the same time feeling as though it's utterly impossible to help anyone at all, because any help you render is ultimately meaningless in the face of how much goddamn assistance you'd need to give to the world in order to properly fix it? Because that's about where I'm at.

So I'm just sort of writing about it and hoping that the story I write inspires other people to love a bit more, in the same way Brothers Karamazov did for me. Is that futile?

Very easily.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_monster

Fuck off kunt.

>How can you think that the only purpose of life is your own happiness, or sense of fulfillment, and not to effect change in the world?
You will find that it is often the case that a sense of fulfilment and happiness arises from causing a positive change. You also assume that there's only one 'main' purpose.

>Why do you think your subjective feelings matter so fucking much?
Because I'm not living from the perspective of other people, and my whole existence is based about my own subjectivity. Feelings are just a part of it because I'm a normal human being, and not an autist and/or sociopath.

t. your subjective feelings about my subjective feelings
I'm better than you, I don't care what you think.

>how the fuck do you argue against utilitarianism

>do certain people elicit greater degrees of happiness than others from the same stimuli?
>are we then not obligated to satisfy the needs of these "utility monsters" before the needs of others?

>if utilitarianism measures an act's rightness from its consequence, how can we truly measure the ultimate consequence of any single act, when there is an infinite number of consequences over time? do we limit the scope of measurable consequences?

the ultimate BTFO is the experience machine

>imagine a virtual reality device that would play out the rest of a person's life in total paradise, resulting in the quantifiable max happiness for that individual
>there aren't any workarounds such as "I'd only derive actual happiness in a reality that was true", because the machine would take this into account and mislead you into believing that its reality was indeed the true one
>utilitarians are morally obligated to hunt people down and hook them up to experience machines

also there's the obvious objection

if happiness is "quantifiable" (as utilitarians must hold) then anything is justifiable given it can be counterweighed with a net boost in happiness
murdering babies can be justified if these babies are used as delicious pizza toppings to increase the happiness of a large number of people

oh wait OP doesn't understand utilitarianism why did I write out this post

Redditor spotted.
Utilitarianism is selfish and childish.

No, keep doing it.

Because the common man is a piece of shit not worth sacrificing for. I'll help those I like, my neighbors, and maybe strangers that seem approachable but fuck off if you think I'm helping welfare leeches and people who would jail me for thought crimes if they could. In a perfect world, sure, but our world isn't perfect.

The problem with other people's feelings is that they're unfalsifiable while I experience mine directly.

>not being in favour of the utility monster, our lord Gnon, spawning himself through accelerated monkey capitalism

how the fuck do you argue against gut feeling? how can you possibly think you are a better person because you have nicer gut or feelings, when there are people who actually help others, though they may not be as gut deep? How can you think that the only purpose of life is your own gut feeling, or sense of gut feeling, and not to effect change in the feeling? did you not live a guttier, more significant feeling by effecting real change in the world, or is it really better just to be a humbe, good feeling? why do you think your subjective gut feelings matter so fucking much?

the POWER of MORAL DISCOURSE

The world is not fixable until you change human nature. You think all the love in the weekend is going to fix africa or ghettos? No, there's an inherent problem. I say it's due to race and good luck fixing that. The best you can do is "love" locally and tell everyone else to fix their shit.

Deontological ethics is still superior in every possible way

I personally don't think I'm a better person than most utilitarians, I just believe I'm better off.

Because I read too much rand in high school and throughout my young adulthood I have built a cult of personality around my superiority complex that separates me from the sad and bitter dream that is wage-cuck mediocrity.

>how the fuck do you argue against utilitarianism?
Because the mob does not determine what is good, nor is satisfying the mobs utility/pleasure even related to what is necessarily good or moral.
What is good is good in itself, a transcendent form that we have access to via intuition and reason. read Plato. JSM is a liar.

>how the fuck do you argue against utilitarianism?
simple
how can you judge what is of the most utility and what isn't?
you can only make educated guesses, which may be fine for a short time in the future but in longer terms it becomes much much more difficult if you still want your ideas to be applicable on the lower level.
and how do you define "utility", there is never going to be one single action that is universally of more use than another, when you apply utilitarian value to an action you are making a moral judgement just the same.

in reality there are no actions which are superior or inferior, all actions are beyond are capability to judge except in hindsight

Donate blood

this is no longer an issue when you can start linking people's nervous systems

Both Rawls and Nozick argue against JS Mills and utilitarianism.

Rawls argues there is a social dimension to happiness that is not measured by utilitarianism. This prempts the arguments of OP, a moral philosophy of sorts. Society would breakdown if we had actual utilitarianism and it would become a BNW situation. Rawls does this through the Rousseau's social contract method.

Nozick takes a similar approach with lockean natural rights. In essence he argues Rawls is wrong to even ascribe a social value to humanity, as he claims Mills values are wrong, where is the basis of social value over pure utilitarian constructs? A compelling argument in my opinion.

Either of these, the social contract or natural rights, are good methods of rebuttals utilitarianism. I think Nozick is right in his critique of Rawls, but I like Rawls better.

>Values such as trust, altruism, fidelity, civic-mindedness, courage, compassion, and so forth do not seem to translate directly into pleasure, and vice versa.
The utilitarian would counter that none of these things are values.

Kant's ethics create no-win scenarios; they're self-defeating.

This is a better objection.

>Implying utilitarians are afraid of the experience machine.
Several have stated on-the-record that they love the idea.

, >Because the common man is a piece of shit not worth sacrificing for.
>Because the mob does not determine what is good, nor is satisfying the mobs utility/pleasure even related to what is necessarily good or moral.
You're assuming some people have more moral weight than others, and need to justify this.

Also good objections.

Arguing about shit like this is for faggots.

If you endorse utilitarianism, you can justify any act as being moral since it's impossible to say if one's suffering really is greater than another's pleasure, both being purely subjective. Basically what this argument says implicitlyFor example, if I get an immense pleasure from raping, am I really allowed to go around raping women so long as I pick those I know will suffer less from it than I will enjoy?

Stating you'd plug in immediately is spammed across Youtube comments sections by morons; doesn't mean they'd actually do it if you stuck the machine in front of them and told them to make the choice in meatspace.

there's no such thing as objective morality, so there's no need to argue against utilitarianism. the whole notion of "rational morality" is as absurd as any religiously inspired system of ethics. reason is a tool. you have to start with some premise. there's no reason to take your own starting point for granted. "the greatest good for the greatest number" - why? what if i don't care about anyone but myself and a small handful of people close to me? why should i sacrifice them for an abstraction?

It sacrifices justice, rights, law, virtue, character, and ethics.

We also can't afford utilitarianism in the modern world, when a shitty South American country can cheaply build nuclear weapons that can crush us all.

It would also then be ultimately benefitial for us all to start doing certain drugs, because it produces happiness with little side effects.

Law utilitarianism is a better choice, but virtue ethics is the right answer.

This.
I was going to say something similar in far inferior wording

>what are videogames?

>how can you possibly think you are a better person because you have nicer thoughts or feelings, when there are people who actually help others

Helping others has just as many negative consequences as not helping them.

>Kant's ethics create no-win scenarios;
So does real life

bump

>>r/atheism
You have to go back.

>how the fuck do you argue against utilitarianism?
I mean, I would say that "to judge the consequences is not to judge the man" is a pretty clear objection. What are you? Atoms? Anyone who's been through a 101 course knows why that definition doesn't really work. The only things which are distinctly you are your choices, and as such judging those is the only way to actually judge you, not just ethically, but literally, in the most objective way possible.

Now obviously while acting you ought to be concerned with what's going to happen in a fairly utilitarian sense, but once something does, you should judge the individual who acted based upon what their intentions were and not by things which ended up being beyond their control. And yes, there's something to be said for negligence etc, but the reason for that is that we take negligence to be a choice. If you want to wonder about how to make decisions you ought to worry about consequences, but when actually passing ethical judgement, the decisions are the focus and that can't be forgotten.

I guess what I'm presenting isn't downright anti-utilitarian, but I would say you at least ought to look beyond bare bones Spock-tier utilitarianism.

>how can you possibly think you are a better person because you have nicer thoughts or feelings
I don't think people usually argue that.

>why do you think your subjective feelings matter so fucking much?
Let's say you did it: you wrote the book, the final book, the end-all to ethics, and that anyone who read it would know what the most ethically good decision to make in any scenario was. Can you not see how this kills ethics in its entirety? Now every decision you make can be reduced to rule following as opposed to something more of your own will.

Also

>virtue
Not defined, /pol/tard

Utilitarians neither help others, nor take their own views seriously.
How utilitarians see themselves
>How about we make everybody happy and healthy? That sounds nice! Surely it is impossible, but let us do it to the most that can be done. Mirror, Mirror on the wall, am I not the greatest of all!
How utilitarians truly are
>The HelperBot has reported 71 units in dire need for organs. 5 units are ready to be utilized. Preparing sedatives based on economic algorithm. Error. Error... The suffering of greedy_CEO is surpassing all known limits. Removing sedatives from archive. Deleting archive. Initiating harvesting procedures. Connecting to mediahub: "Soylent is for everybody. Just for you, just like you!"

I am sorry mr. Flesh McBiowaste. Virtue is apparent to all men of Spirit.

how the fuck do you argue against utilitarianism?

By understanding the naturalistic fallacy?

Not an argument, fedoralord. Take your legalistic trash back to China. Hopefully their rapist policies will choke you to death!

>How can you think that the only purpose of life is your own happiness, or sense of fulfillment, and not to effect change in the world?
Stopped reading. You don't know what utilitariameme is

>Not an argument, fedoralord.
But it's the fedoras who want everything to be an argument.

have u ever read a book lol

Perhaps one should, if it goes against the greater good

youtu.be/sUIcCyPOA30

If a system of ethics won't tell me what the most ethical thing to do is, what good is that system?

continued

I dont see any argument in your post as to why objectivity is so great, you flagrant, emotionally-invested faggot.

w-what bookk is this? i'm literal autist

>muh rat brains on heroin

HAVE YOU PEOPLE HEARD OF PREFERENCE UTILITARIANISM????

To think that any systemized formulation of Ethics can -- and, more importantly, /should/ -- be able to tell you what to do in any and every situation is honestly kinda inane and bullish. So much of Ethics philosophy is just obscure esoteric Thought Experiment: does this in any way shape or tailor the way you approach a morally ambiguous situation? I would guess not.

Ethics philosophy cannot teach you what to think; there is no formula existing just beyond our vision and/or our language-border that can and will mathematically formulate the Morally Correct choice for you ten times outta ten. What a study of Ethics /can/ do, is simply teach you /how/ to think, and /how/ to approach a situation.

You're confusing utilitarianism with altruism because you're a pleb

>Your brain on utilitarianism. Any questions?

>Ethics philosophy cannot teach you what to think; there is no formula existing just beyond our vision and/or our language-border that can and will mathematically formulate the Morally Correct choice for you ten times outta ten.

I agree with you. But this is a bug, not a feature.

In any other discipline, the most important criterion for a theory is applicability. Good literary theories can be applied to any kind of text. Good sociological theories hold for all societies. Good aesthetic theories hold for a vast majority of artworks.

Why should ethics be any different?

Kant and Bentham are totally at odds with each other, and I don't have a strong preference for one over the other, but from a pure meta-theoretical perspective, Bentham's system is better because it applies universally. Deciding what to eat for breakfast? There's a wrong and right choice. Deciding whether or not to divert the trolley? There's a correct answer for that, too. It may sound autistic to want my ethical system to pick a cereal for me, but breadth can only be good.