Utilitarianism

>1. When a person suffers that is an objective bad for that one person, ie within his "world"
>2. That person is part of the whole of reality, and there is no meaningful difference between that persons mental world and the outside world
>3. Because that person is simply just a part of reality, and there are objective good and bad in the part of reality that that person is, there are objective good and bad also outside of that person because damaging a small part of something also means (slightly) damaging the whole.
>4. Therefore we should try to minimize what is objectively bad (suffering) and maximixe what is objectively good (ie pleasure).

Rigorously debunk this please.

Other urls found in this thread:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_machine
twitter.com/SFWRedditImages

utility monster

Nope, that doesn't debunk it.
The idea of a utility monster makes us feel bad, but the arguments in the OP seem to justify a utility monster if such a thing actually existed.
It is the arguments in the OP which must be proven wrong, or inferior to another philosophy for it to be debunked.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_machine

>When a person suffers that is an objective bad for that one person
Improvable statement.

If your philosophy leads to the conclusion that we all should be slaves building pyramides for Felix, then it must be flawed.

I deny dualism. suffering and joy are physical, not metaphysical. if there is a metaphysical "good", they are not the whole of it.
any of the other axioms could also be objected to, but I like this one.

not actually a debunk.

>not actually a debunk.
it shows that OPs philosophy would lead to an undesireable outcome

>1. When a person suffers that is an objective bad for that one person, ie within his "world"
But sadists who derive pleasure from the suffering of others exist. An objective bad for one person may be an objective good for another.

Also this whole construction relies on a hedonistic assumption: that all which is good is pleasurable and vice versa. There are some (many, even) for whom pleasure isn't the ultimate goal.

But according to the philosophy itself it is not undesirable.
Aren't you saying that the philosophy would lead to an outcome which is good in the philosophy itself, but bad outside of it and therefore it is invalid?
Isn't that like taking the initial (undefended) position that the philosophy is wrong and holding some other theory X instead (X need not be defined to be anything more than whatever is not the OP-philosophy), and pointing out that something good according to the OP-philosophy would be bad according to X, and therefore OP-philosophy is wrong?

I argue that OPs philosophy leads to clearly undersireable results and thus is itself flawed and undesireable.
Its just like in physics, if you have a theory that sounds good on paper but fails to make accurate predictions, it is simply wrong.

oh and also this:

optimization is a very deep game and you did not specify a time scale. there's no guarantee that a formula to maximize happiness on a scale of here to eternity is even possible, ever. accepting all your axioms does not necessarily lead to any conclusion.

according to OPs axioms it's desirable. that you didn't think it desirable before accepting those axioms reflects learning, not an error.

assuming you accepted the axioms, obviously. if you didn't then you should object about that, not the pyramids. your reasoning skills are bad and you should feel bad.

Either his axioms or his resoning is flawed.
But it is not really my task to proof what exactly is wrong with his argumentation, since the end result is obiviously flawed

>But sadists who derive pleasure from the suffering of others exist. An objective bad for one person may be an objective good for another.
Yes, which is why one must take the sum. If C tortures K, and C derives pleasure from it and K derives suffering from it then we have something which is objectively bad (K's suffering) and something which is objectively good (C's pleasure) therefore we must subtract the total suffering from the total pleasure in order to decide if it is ultimately good or not. It is equivalent to if you have a wrecked car and the objective is to fix that car, and we wreck the wheels even more than they were beforehand, but totally fix the engine. To decide if we did good or not, we must compare the damage we did to the good we did.

>There are some (many, even) for whom pleasure isn't the ultimate goal.
Is this a valid objection though? If the argument is valid, it shouldn't matter what other people actually do or value, they would simply be wrong.

It is exactly for the reason that the outcomes the theory produces are so ugly that I want it debunked, but I cannot see any ways to do it which are valid.

>Its just like in physics, if you have a theory that sounds good on paper but fails to make accurate predictions, it is simply wrong.
But in physics we can compare our predictions with reality even without a theory, by just using experiments. You can't do that here, because how do you know the result of the experiments, ie wether or not doing X is bad or good without already having a philosophy?

well, but we can use thought experiments.
And if a thought experiment based on OPs philosophy leads to all of us becoming slaves, I think we can agree that his ideology is flawed, without wasting time with futher investigation

your entire post is an appeal to emotion. you have not reached the height of argumentation. it is possible to do better and you will not be hurt by trying.

So, in your reasoning(inb4 "not my logic, the theory's logic") a rape is totally cool, if the guy(s) is/are sexually sensible chap(s), that obtain more pleasure than the discomfort of the rape victim.

Or you know, genocide, if the invaders would obtain more use and pleasure from exploiting the land than the natives.
etc, etc, etc.

nice argument buddy

I'm the OP, and it is not so much "my philosophy", it's just that it seems so correct and I can't find any really good objections, even though I would like to.

And again, if the thought experiments are the equivalent to physical experiments, then what is it that "answer" the experiments in philosophy? In physics it is nature itself, nice and clean, but there is no way to determine wether or not X (a thought experiment let's say) is bad or good without already having somekind of a philosophical theory.
Us all ending up as slaves can be rigorously said to be bad if and only if we already have some philosophical justification.

>Us all ending up as slaves can be rigorously said to be bad if and only if we already have some philosophical justification.
do we really need a philosophical circlejerk to try to justify why all of us beeing slaves is an undesireable outcome?

That would be the result of the argument yes, and this result can not be used to debunk the argument because that would be supposing that X is wrong even though the theory says it is right.
You have to go to the axioms, or the reasoning, or show a more rigorous, and more likely competing theory for it to be refuted.

Unironically yes, absolutely.

thank you pal

>optimization is a very deep game and you did not specify a time scale.
The timescale is (must according to the argument) obviously be for eternity, and even if we can not figure out just how to optimize for pleasure this is simply a technical question of implementation and not inherently relevant to the theoretical justification.

So someone who murders because they reeaaallly enjoy it is more ethical than someone who murders in a fit of rage?

That would depend on the situation, and could only be decided by subtracting the sum amount of suffering from the sum amount of pleasure obtained.

Motivation wouldn't matter.