How is utilitarianism not the most ethical philosophy there is?

how is utilitarianism not the most ethical philosophy there is?

It is good logic, but fails in reality, because it has grave, heart-breaking errors like:
>you can't evaluate everything, for example: how much does a life cost
>even evaluations that 'can be done' are subjective and often it is too brute forcing to not give them variable value based on context
>humans are selfish creatures; proposing a system that uses a human trait that we are not, but what we should be, comes with great difficulties. For example, proposing that we all should walk with our hands when we clearly walk with our feet.
>it fails to guarantee basic human rights. Is anything possible? Is there always a context where you can be subjected to brutal torture because of 'greater good'?
>it only works if every single nation follows the utilitarian principle; or if you can exist in isolation from other nations

So yeah, like every "fix-it-all-good-insightful-intuitive-easy" -idea, it crumbles in the daylight, in the real world, and can only exist in hopeful, idealist, naive head as a distant dream.

i get that it's idealist to aply it to a society, but isn't an ethical ideology to strive for as a person?

>you can't evaluate everything, for example: how much does a life cost
yes you can
t. Law and Economics

the problem is that human spirit is immeasurable. Only the last man seeks pleasure and avoids pain at all cost.

>basic human rights
also gonna throw out that there is no such thing as 'human rights'

your rights are what the state decides they are.

>your rights are what the state decides they are
Agreed. But if you as a ruler don't conform to your citizens expectations and standards of other nations, your nation will be short-lived. So yeah, you can dictate how people will live in your nation; just as long as you maintain your economic lead, which will be sabotaged by other nations.

>you can evaluated anything
Agreed again. But people will disagree with your evaluation and create civil unrest. For example, state may say my grandpa is worth 1.5 millions. People who don't know my grandpa will most likely agree, which is about 99,99% of people. But to me, my family, and grandpa's friends he will be worth more than 1.5 millions. Teachers will evaluate teacher profession more than non-teachers. Majority will agree with your decisions more than minority. Other nations will most likely to constrict your decisions anyway.

Utility monster.

Because its pragmatism is at its core completely arbitrary. The ideals of utilitarianism are divorced from tangible action and real consequences. Maximizing happiness for the maximum amount of people sounds nice and ethical except there's no objective standard for the quantitative value of happiness. There's no consistent minimum value for happiness either. So whoever is in charge can set set whatever values they like. In the end you don't have a real ethical system so much as a tyrannical regime likely based on one man's idea of utopia.

>tfw if you donate a proportion of your income to charity you can save the lives of thousands of people

Why aren't you practicing effective altruism, Veeky Forums?

As political, economic, and/or social, personal philosophy?

Political is just 'democracy', kind of, 'the majority of people will vote """"for what ""they """want"""""""""" and thus politically 'the best case for the most people will be'.

Economically you may be forced to be a socialist or communist: the thing the capitalist has against such, is they think such requires a 'forcing to work', that if you allow an aire of 'you will get to live no matter what, voluntary work world' that the many goodnesses of the world as we are able to know it, and will be by following our current path and trends, will not be accessible in such a world, which is how you hear their utlilitarian argument, that capitalism is the best system, because it brought a large fraction of billion out of poverty quickly, allows america to be best nation, wealthy, high standard of living, people who work in sweatshops are thankful because they have no alternative opportunity and small coin from sure to be consuming western nations is worth big coins in their hole of shite. And socialism and communism obviously cannot be utilitarianism, because what I just described is what is possible to occur under capitalism, and under socialism and communism what is possible to happen, are these examples of millions of people being killed and sent to slave labor camps. Hollywood, diner, mars rover, victorian house, indoor swimming pool vs. gulag, holocaust.

Personal philosophy, you have to dedicate your life to doing what "benefits" the most number of people (the most?)

You assumed that 'saving lives' brings more utility than 'saving a proportion of your income'. You haven't proved that yet. Utilitarianism works both ways; you can't just assume things like that, it's only mathematics in the end and you must throw the Bible-crap aside and start your ethics from a clean table.

Then you must evaluate, "how many lives on average will I save if I give 10% of my income (10'000€) to charity. Will it save maybe 0,1 lives on average? So "saving a life" would cost 100'000€?

>your rights are what the state decides they are
Whew, good thing the state is The People, and We, are Smart.

Because it's not remotely ethical, it's nonsensical humanism.
That's not an evaluation, that's a valuation.

Kinda, but then you see the thing you'd have to do. For instance, you'd have to work like a horse to gain a bunch of money, and you'll give all that money to the poor except what you need to keep work like a horse.

You can't fulfill such ideals, and, at the same time, it doesn't give you the techniques to be able to do such things. And, also is not aesthesically pleasing; you can't do or appreciate art living like this.

>things
>you'd
>working

God dammit.

Based Oberstein

Nobody's arguing it's perfect, though. The OP said 'most ethical philosophy'.

Capitalism is undeniably more ethical though feeding about 4 billion people on the planet

Not that user, but utilitarianism isn't an economic theory, and isn't at all incompatible with capitalism, so your criticism is totally meaningless.

Second, OP is begging the question. Utilitarianism is an ethical theory, so to say it's the "most ethical" is like saying Christianity is the "most religious" religion.

this is now a LOTGH thread

The repugnant conclusion.

>Utilitarianism is an ethical theory
Well would the most ethical theory be caring about the happiness of all, instead of the most?

Though the counter argument/claim over why and how utilitarianism declares itself, is that 'in all (or most most?) practical, worthily valuable' circumstances of 'attempting to assure/insure/ensure 'everyone/alls' happiness, such becomes so difficult/unbearable/undesirable that it turns into decreasing the happiness of 'a/the lot', by which the lot settles upon, 'the most', instead of 'the all', as the only practical, but therefore, most ethical, proposition.

then there is the discussion/argument over what is actually practical to what varying degrees

HUMAN LIVES CAN'T BE MEASURED LIKE THAT YOU FUCKING ANGLO CONSEQUENTIALIST.
t- reinhard

>That's not an evaluation, that's a valuation.
you are offered a job that is in all respects exactly the same as your current one, except that your likelihood of dying in a work related accident is increased by 1%. what increase in wages would be sufficient to induce you to accept the job? congrats, you just 'evaluated' and valuated your own life.

you underestimate the states' power to propagandize you. that aside, people's lives are assigned dollar values in civil court every day, and our society hasn't exactly collapsed as a result.

I can sense your realpolitik leanings. I suggest you read Sophocles' Theban plays, particularly Antigone.

Because why should I give a shit about the guy next to me?

Nonargument right here. Try again, ideologue.

>economics
The value of what anything is is what someone is willing to give up to get it. It depends on person to person.

Why should you not?

Because all of human civilisation is built on cooperation, unless maybe you grow your own food, make your own clothes, built your own house, provide yourself with healthcare, taught yourself to read, invented your own way of accessing the internet to post on this site, weren't born but rather appeared from the ether of the cosmos or at the very least are sure you could survive without the help of other people

Utilitarianism is definitely flawed but I don't understand why most people claim they wouldn't hook themselves up to the pleasure machine.

Television, computers, videogames, books, music, sex, drugs, alcohol and fine dining are all just flawed pleasure machines in my opinion. Why is getting pleasure indirectly from reading a book better than getting sheer pleasure from a machine?

It doesn't hold up against rational criticism.

And even if it did, the only reasonable solution it can offer is killing everyone.

It depends on what gives you happiness. If killing babies brings you great joy then the majority of people would say that's an unethical path to take.

...

>Only the last man seeks pleasure and avoids pain at all cost.
this is actually really insightful

>Why is getting pleasure indirectly from reading a book better than getting sheer pleasure from a machine?


Because learning/knowledge (to then have the potential to actively, constructively use what you have learned), is the highest form of pleasure, because the complex realm of intellectual potential, has more room for variety, quantity and quality of pleasures, than a bodily potential (which requires some amount of mind, as intellectuality requires the body and its sense pleasures) but is your question pretty much, would you choose the matrix?

Lets say you had infinite reincarnations, and you could choose right now what they would 'all' be: lets say there is some small creature, the size of a mouse, or a fly, or bacteria: which had a very small intellectual world, very small realm potential of experiencing mental pleasures, higher order complex mental sophistication, and interaction with others (maybe...), but from a reaction with the sun, and even over night, it received all the nutrients it needed, and chemical reactions all over its body, continuously produced pleasures, it could feel every pico point of its body, and each particle pixel felt different pleasurable ways, if it wanted, its body is like a hot tub you can control the temperature and jets it can feel different levels of drunk, high, massage chair, different combos of mixing, etc. Would you choose this mode of being every time, the opportunity to by far receive the most pleasure out of any opportunity in the universe?

Man strives to oppress those below him, lest those oppressing him above him successfully push him down with them

Would you rather be like god or an animal or is the correct answer 'the bits of both how you want it when you want it'? And would immortality sweeten the deal; lets say an ai immortal robot, or just an immortal body is possible; and it is possible to house consciousness in an immortal body with out the experience of ""physical, bodily "pain"", or pleasure; would you give up bodily pleasure for immortality? This leaves open to ask about "emotional, intellectual, pleasure"; the sublime, the pleasures of comedy, tragedy, mystery, suspense, drama; if one may find pleasure in math, geometry, architecture, painting/drawing, cooking etc.

What kind of drugs would immortal robots do? And would they have to be cautious of wiping their hard drive, frying their motherboard, ingest spam and viruses, seeking dank programs and games.

Because he isn't me, and from where I'm standing, I'm infinitely more important than him.

all pleasures are ultimately mental, the body is one big brain, the mind courses throughout, the body is the extension of the mind, intellectual pleasures are the tickling of the brain in the minds body, if someone gains pleasure from math, or sending a rocket to the moon, there is still ultimately, physical movements of particles in the brain, that release pleasurable chemicals; to have a feather touched on the skin, to move particles in the brain to release pleasurable chemicals, so these pleasures are better, more worthy and refined, just because the inner particles can be moved to 'inner tears of ecstatic joy' without moving the particles outside the minds immediate brain body, such as a feather moves on the light hairs of the sensitive weenus; of course we would first sense to relate such value to such, for its, over (long time, though much of it unmodern, as is always the strong argument against the ancients wisdom; "everything is different now") time, recognition that such pursuits of certain types of pleasure, are more beneficial to the individual and community, it is possible certain intellectual pursuits, lead to more constructive productions, and seeking obsessively, physical bodily pleasures could more probabilistically tend to a degradation, as the momentumizing of the more massive particles, exacerbates the potentials of entropy, whereas the particles of the minds realm, memory, recall, vividization, finer fibers, light, etc, are more subtle, have more give and take.

It also would be necessary to define Pleasure at all, for some, for many, is there a baseline pleasure that is simply the absence of pain? And sensual, bodily pleasure, can be used, as can be seen, as a great motivator, carrot on the stick, for order and community success, pretty much how capitalism claims its supremacy, "lets see how much you want "your pleasure", there exists money, there exists a field of pleasures that require it, let the games begin, and may they never end", most efficient and fair system of distributing pleasure per value/worth/justified valiant effort. If we admit that there can be such thing as 'intellectual pleasure' which may include something as ambiguous and simple and easy as """""enjoying (?), "stoically orgasmically ""appreciating""" math"""", do we then go to, thinking at all, being at all (without pain), being able to think, being able to know, witnessing, is pure pleasure, a baseline of pure enjoyment?

Sure, we can then think we must semi necessarily worry about the future, scurry for food and evade death around every shadowy corner, which may take the pure pleasure, contentedness, of absent of pain, pleasurable being.

So could you make a consciousness, which did not experience pleasure or pain? If a consciousness could potentially experience pleasure by thinking/knowing 2+2=4? But, then there is tolerance, a consciousness that gains pleasure from math, maybe not so much would... if they only had 2+2=4 (well obviously, they would likely then also see they have 2 + 4 = ? there), and they can only think and repeat this over and over... it would degrade in pleasure perhaps (though there are somethings which seem to never get old...what makes that so? how to compare 2+2=4 to sex?)

(lets say there is one person: on welfare, who spends their days, doing drugs, eating snacks, fucking hookers, watching tv (anime)(kino), walking around the city, taking pictures, going to museum, going shopping at trendy thrift stores, playing chess and eating pizza in the park, reading, painting, internet, dying at 80 as a life long bachelor with no family and few possessions behind.

Or; a person who has multiple technical, challenging, sophisticated, demanding careers in multiple industrial fields; through out their life; have 3 children, a dog/s, nice house/home, a few nice cars, tons of equipment and gear and tech and toys, multiple vacations every year, a few vacation homes, diverse portfolio, well liked and involved in community; die at 80.

On average, who had the more pleasurable life? Is pleasure, the most pleasurable life most important? And has humankind approached an objective system of measure?

Why these grand systems that seem to fall apart? Why not micro-ethics?

life must be worked for, striven towards regardless, the comforting padding cushions of money, around ones job, in many ways, may be synonymous with pleasure (or the standard is, the major mass major normal standard real supreme majority, know that they must spend a life working for money, so dutifully approach, and successfully accomplish a field, and get their nice amount of salary, and live a great, respectful and respected marvelous life as a normal great good civilian civilized magnificent beautiful wonderful awesome cool sweet sexy human person being.

If you were gureented to never experience enjoyment; would you desire to exist? Does that meant the point of life is? If a person did not want to experience enjoyment, would they enjoy unenjoyment; is what you want automatically what you enjoy?
What is enjoyment? At minimum, range/hierarchaly? If one did not fundamentally on some level enjoy existing how/why would they; would that not be, why would you choose to do something that serves you absolutely no value, or negative value; well you can enjoy 2% of it; so in all you unenjoy existing (the cons you can list outweigh the pros) but this 2% makes it worth it; and so the one is necessary for the other, in this situation, and imaginably most (though the great progression and advancement of human history has been the dedicated and determined alteration of the desired odds in the desired favors; but if these were truly 0% or if you loved 95% of good-world-life-things but were "forced" to focus and spend 99% of your time on 5% of what you dont enjoy.

(and we can see, without that potential glaring variable of 'welfare', if individual A, then had to attempt to pursue their life, of seeking pleasure, and could not recieve a high paying job, well then that is the, work, energy effort to reward ratio, that is one of the main sources of 'problem/trouble/grievence' making the nature of 'poor'

It removes the human element. I mean sometimes its good to be a utilitarian to solve certain issues, but in your day to day life it doesnt make sense. It seems to go over a lot of peoples heads that C&P is actually taking a little jab at utilitarians. In the tavern before Rask commits the murder, he overhears a student suggesting someone kill the pawnbroker. The student says that it will be beneficial to everyone if she dies because her wealth can be distrubeted to help the less fortunate, but his idea is quickly shut down when hes confronted with the fact that he cant possibly do it himself. From a utilitarian perspective, killing the pawnbroker is justified. But from almost any other ethical view which factors in human emotion and bias, killing the pawnbroker is wrong.

>sources of 'problem/trouble/grievence' making the nature of 'poor'
(of course the source is the efficiency, consolidation, improvement of efficiency per value ratio making the value making hiearchy top heavy, the mass bottom masses heavily replaceable parts, bidding by one another for the lowest debts)

If there was a happy pill that you could take once or multiple times a day that had no negative side effects or damaging qualities; would it be right? good? desirable? worth it? ethical/moral/righteous/sensical/purposeful/reasonable/logical? brave new world soma; "mood stabilizers", "anti depressants", "comfort food", "Ay Weed".

>If there was a happy pill that you could take once or multiple times a day that had no negative side effects or damaging qualities
There never could be. Youre not talking about real life

ethnic cleansing is justified by utilitarianism.

So is slavery

It's a good general idea but like most philosophy, way too vague and not really applicable. Boil it down to a semi-rigid system, specifically applied to the situation at hand, that is constantly refined and agreed upon; then I guess you have something that works. To begin with you need to clearly define what exactly is ethical and what actually maximises utility. With that science you don't have a uniform and universal ethical philosophy, you have a relative ethical system that is (hopefully) stable and inclined to growth of some kind. Certainly not the be all and end all but something productive and functional at least. This is the same as all ethical philosophy and philosophy in general. Vague sweeping ideas and statements that are useless to the real world, but often beneficial for cultivating individual's mind.

These systems and thoughts are relative: to us as individuals, our species and our world. There is no "most ethical" there is no clearly defined "ethical", not until you make them. You can create right & wrong if you want, situated within a multitude of systems. It's obviously beneficial for a collective of individuals, relative to those individuals. Basically do whatever and if it's solid enough and implemented decently, then it'll work fine. Don't mistake assigned meaning and your relative view to be something actually universal or relevant outside of your metaphorical village, your collection.

The thing that always bothered me about utilitarianism was the various hypotheticals and 18th and 19th century legal cases that attempted to actually apply it.

For instance, if I'm in a helicopter by myself (or with my old, senile grandpa), and there's another helicopter with two young healthy guys, and then someone up above drops a live grenade into my helicopter, under utilitarian analysis it is unjust and unethical for me to throw the grenade into the other helicopter, or to let it drop down to the city below where there are many people.

>There never could be.
there are relative happy pills, depending on how 'loosely one/s define happy', some people snapping their fingers makes them happy, playing guitar, smiling, smelling a rose,

A lot of the criticism comes from using Utilitarianism in a moral vacuum where you commit obviously wrong actions if you are given some ridiculous hypothetical. However it's not like utilitarianism suddenly invalidates things like Locke's conception of property rights or the harm principle, in fact it can internalize them into the utility functions. Most decisions for public policy are made using utilitarian cost benefit analysis.

I think its heavily misrepresented because people don't understand you can model anything with it, including love of freedoms, religious ideals, any variety of deep truths can be assigned value in the calculus. A society could be perfectly utiliartian if every individual was trained in its function and could realistically asses their own utility functions. People already do this subconsciously day to day in purchases and decision making.

The hypothetical is reffering to a pill that will unconditionally, without fail, and without side effects, make you happy. All those examples you gave are very brief/ fleeting examples of happiness. Theres nothing in this world to rid you entirely of pain and suffering, there will always be a catch

>if I'm in a helicopter by myself (or with my old, senile grandpa), and there's another helicopter with two young healthy guys, and then someone up above drops a live grenade into my helicopter, under utilitarian analysis.

In what ethical system would you be allowed to do such?

I am assuming, the conclusion, is that if the situation was vice versaed, and the grenade landed in their helicopter, they would be allowed to toss it into yours?

>Moral Slavery
>ethical

Choose one

Because consequences don't determine ethical action but the reasoning of the person doing the action.

there are a lot of people, that take pills that make them feel good/very good, often, and they can live relatively to long lives. There are some alcoholics which live long (though I wouldnt know how to say if that is their 'happy pill'), weed smokers, etc. Tv addicts, as I said it depends how one defines happy first of all, but lets say there was a pill, that would just give you a pleasant feeling/disposition, (how are we defining happiness? it gives you x1 amount of pleasure for 5 hours, then you take another pill, it gives you x2, x3, x4... happiness?)

Lets say such did exist. Most people in the world start taking it, obvious thing to do? Smart, right, good, intelligent, sensical, reasonable? Unnecessary? Pointless?

Does the world get more utopian, if everyone has access to easy (lets say cheap too) happiness every second?

You'd ultimately have to dumb down higher pleasures for philistines.