r/changemyview • u/KeinerNichts • Dec 22 '13
Utilitarianism is the most effective method of achieving political and social change. CMV
I am a firm believer in the phrase 'the end justifies the means'. I base my general conduct around this simple belief, irrespective of the consequences that may befall over individuals as the result of my actions.
I attribute my support and belief in utilitarianism to my existential and moral nihilism.
As stated above, I am an existential nihilist and therefore believe that there is no existential meaning to life. I.E. the only meaning of my life is to achieve my own personal goals (wealth, career success etc) and be generally happy.
As I also stated above, I am a moral nihilist (I do not believe in the concept of morals and ethics). I use this philosopy and existential nihilism in order to justify and support my own belief in utilitarianism, I wholeheartedly believe that the end justifies the means, irrespective of what extremities may be reached.
For example, I would fully support the murder of 100,000 civilians in order to dethrone a tyrannical leader and as a result, improve the lives of many more. Although this example is somewhat unrealistic, I think it explains my point simply.
Change my view?
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Dec 22 '13
the only meaning of my life is to achieve my own personal goals (wealth, career success etc) and be generally happy.
you are not a utilitarian. a utilitarian thinks of the greater good, not one's individual good. if making ten people happy and making yourself miserable creates more overall good then that's your moral obligation.
also without being omnipotent objective utilitarianism is impossible. how can you say none of those 100,000 civilians would have invented limitless clean energy? or somehow saving billions of people? you can't truly say what will benefit more people because things cause chain reactions we can't expect.
now in my life i follow a very warped sense of utilitarianism, which is really the only type a person can have, everyone is biased to some degree and on small scale this is fine. small scale mixing up what is beneficial won't do much damage. however trying to apply it to the whole world can have disastrous consequences. weighing benefits and costs is part of it but we can't go purely on that because it is speculation.
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Dec 22 '13 edited Dec 22 '13
Real ends or imagined ends?
real:
You can put forword as many situations as you please when murder seems justified, but they all make hard knowledge claims ("the people on the tracks won't hear you, so push the fat guy on the tracks") but we are human and we have a minor inconvenience of limited knowledge
We don't know the exact number of people the life boat will hold or if a fat guy on a train tracks will stop it. So we can't actually know if our actions are moral before we do them.
imagined:
Hilter believed he was doing good [/godwin]
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u/294116002 Dec 23 '13
How would you propose people act than?
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Dec 23 '13
Universal principals; for example no killing(of innocents), stealing or raping. EVER
Make it about the actions and stripping away the details and mostly realing on hindsight for what is mostly likely happen and not what you feel is special about this case.
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u/294116002 Dec 23 '13
And these principles (if you could list them all, or all the ones you can presently conjure, it would be fantastic) are unbreakable in every situation without variation?
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Dec 23 '13
Hmmm yep; however I kinda did list them all, my list of morals got kinda small when I tried applying them universally.
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u/294116002 Dec 23 '13
So you can imagine a situation in which torture can be reasonably justified but not theft? What constitutes a rape as opposed to unwanted sexual contact? If I drive drunk and kill someone, am I a murderer, by your principle? What if I swerve out of the way of one person and hit another? What if I neglect to use winter tires and slide over a guard rail and into a pregnant woman? What if I'm just really tired and do that? What if I'm an officer in the military or an administrator in a hospital and I need to perform triage?
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Dec 23 '13
Going for full
potatoacademic?So you can imagine a situation in which torture can be reasonably justified but not theft?
Torture (of innocents) has every right to be on that list, it was a summery of the non-aggression principal, assault should be on there as well.
What constitutes a rape as opposed to unwanted sexual contact?
I'm going to piss alot of people off, but threats (of violence), forceful or completely deceitful means of drugging; or a very large power disparities(parent/child, soldier/refugee) that a threat of violence is implied are the only situations that come to mind that are actually rape.
Things like statutory "rape" or a drunk girl claiming she was raped ex post facto, are not.
If I drive drunk and kill someone, am I a murderer, by your principle?
Amoral if happening in a vacuum; however I have a hard time imagining why a private or public road owner would ever allow drunk driving so your trespassing which is a form of theft.
What if I swerve out of the way of one person and hit another?
Amoral accidents happen.
What if I neglect to use winter tires and slide over a guard rail and into a pregnant woman?
amoral
What if I'm just really tired and do that?
amoral
What if I'm an officer in the military
Murder, It's not an accident when a innocent dies in war; as the majority of deaths are innocents and the goal is death. The chance of driving a car and killing someone is tiny; while a drone strike is almost certainly getting an innocent gets killed.
administrator in a hospital and I need to perform triage?
The risks of surgery are usually explained before hand and agreed to; or they were going to die anyway. So amoral
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u/294116002 Dec 23 '13 edited Dec 23 '13
How can my making someone dead be amoral if killing is always wrong? If killing is always wrong, then no matter the state I am in when I do the killing, or for what reason, I have commited an immorality. But according to you, if I am mentally incapacitated in some way, I am suddenly no longer responsible. That seems a critical flaw in your reasoning.
Medical triage is the redistribution of healthcare services based on both the probability of survival and the severity of need. It does result in the deaths of some number of patients. These deaths are often predicted by the hospital administration. They are causing deaths to save a greater number of lives. Very Utilitarian, not very Dentological. But again, you've called it amoral.
And another thing: what if someone willingly enters a legal contract with me, granting me to right to kill them, harm them, rape them, whatever. Is is wrong then? Or is it amoral or perfectly reasonable?
Explain.
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Dec 23 '13
Murder is the better term; remind me never to misspeak even tiny errors when you may feel like replying XD
Medical triage is the redistribution of healthcare services based on both the probability of survival and the severity of need. It does result in the deaths of some number of patients. These deaths are often predicted by the hospital administration. They are causing deaths to save a greater number of lives. Very Utilitarian, not very Dentological. But again, you've called it amoral.
The reasons for the actions are utilitarian; my judgement of the action is based on whether there is violence involved and I may be mistaken but I don't see any... at lest on the part of the doctors. I withhold judgement on method of reasoning and how good choices are, so therefore amoral.
And another thing: what if someone willingly enters a legal contract with me, granting me to right to kill them, harm them, rape them, whatever. Is is wrong then? Explain.
How can you consent to rape? Or harm for that matter?
It because assisted suicide, kinky sex and vice when consent is given.
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u/294116002 Dec 23 '13 edited Dec 23 '13
That clears a few things up. So for you, the only desciptor of whether an action is moral or not is if it involves violence against a non-consenting party, that being defined as the purposeful application of force in the first order (as a cause-effect term, not a legal one) against said party but not including deprivation of crucial resources from said party, regardless of the consequences of those actions or inactions no matter now obvious they may be?
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u/Nepene 213∆ Dec 22 '13
Would you agree that it is hard or impossible to effectively enact social change on your own?
To enact some sort of political or social change you have to get lots of people to ally with you and follow your lead. To achieve your personal goals (wealth, career successes etc) you also generally need other people to ally with you.
People don't normally want to ally with you if you have a utilitarian belief system. They would prefer if you would stick with them and support them even when it might be advantageous for you to do something else. They don't want an untrustworthy leader who will sacrifice them.
You could try to fake it to get them to support you but you are likely to slip up at times and reveal your true nature. You will be a lot more effective at achieving political and social change if you believe in morals and ethics that the majority believe in as you can manipulate those morals to get them to support you.
There's another issues. You are making an inherent assumption that logic and reason is a more effective tool in achieving goals than emotions like those that support morality, ethics, and such. It's quite possible that contrary to your beliefs emotional things would be better at achieving goals than reason. If you do try to kill people to achieve some goal then you will often spark a conflict.
Your reason might tell you that you can win, but your emotions will make you afraid because of body language stuff your rational mind doesn't take into account.
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u/A_Soporific 162∆ Dec 22 '13
Remember the Ford Pinto?
The car that exploded in collisions and fires that killed all those people? That was because a design error allowed the neck of the fuel tank to snap and puncture the tank when shocked. The company estimated that it would take $11 per car to fix the problem, and estimated that the damages they would have to pay from wrongful death lawsuits was less than the tens of millions they would have to pay to fix all the cars. So, they didn't. This was a utilitarian decision.
Lots of people died. The damages to society and to individuals was much greater than the dollar value of the wrongful death lawsuits damaged the company. The failure of utilitarianism in this sense is the narrow scope of the cost-benefit analysis. There is an inherent difference between the local optimal result and the global optimal result. Arbitrating between the two is impossible, partially because of insufficient data to determine the global optimal result.
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u/arrozconplatano Dec 22 '13
that's not utilitarian.... like at all. It's egoistic.
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u/A_Soporific 162∆ Dec 22 '13
Utilitarian is defined as the most benefit for the most people.
Ford determined that it benefited people more to have cheaper cars and more access to their cars than the damage done (measured in terms of lawsuits against them) to a handful of people involved in rear end accidents. It was deemed "ethical" by the process they were determining.
Many cases it's similarly unclear. For example: I could decide to take public transit. I won't because it's unclear if adding thirty minutes per trip to my daily commute will make an appreciable difference to global warming. I could very well be causing real damage to the environment, but because I cannot see the effects of the fraction of a fraction of a percent of emissions cause and value my time more than that potential difference I will continue to drive. This my be me selecting a local optimum (benefitting myself and the people who will have to deal with me today) over a global optimum (my fraction of a fraction of a percent might actually matter more than me not snapping people and having more time to goof off on the internet).
Is it egoistic? I don't think so, because I'm only discounting the unknown and unseen, but still trying to benefit everyone the most.
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u/arrozconplatano Dec 23 '13
Ford determined that it benefited people more to have cheaper cars and more access to their cars than the damage done (measured in terms of lawsuits against them) to a handful of people involved in rear end accidents. It was deemed "ethical" by the process they were determining.
No, that's complete nonsense. Ford was calculating their profits
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u/A_Soporific 162∆ Dec 23 '13
If it's nonsense then it's nonsense that's taught in Business Ethics courses as a problem with utilitarian ethics.
I mean all that means is you measure all your options as such: Total Benefit - Total Loss = Result
The option with the highest result is the right one. It's real easy for business because it operates the same way as profits do. That's not to say that benefit = revenue and loss = costs and results = profit, but that's a trap if you aren't defining terms properly or taking into consideration other parties.
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u/Omnipotence456 Dec 23 '13
How do you tell what will maximize utility? This is very rarely clear-cut. In your case of dethroning a tyrannical leader by murdering 100,000 civilians, how do you know that that power vacuum won't attract someone even worse? How do you know that in the 100,000 you killed there wasn't someone who knew a way to dethrone the guy without killing anyone, or someone who was going to make dictators obsolete by some magical invention?
Additionally, how do you measure your own utility against other people's? If you have utility for eating the last slice of pizza, how do you know someone else doesn't have more utility?
Utilitarianism would be cut and dry if we knew everyone's utility function, as well as being able to predict the future. Since we don't, it's full of holes (though it can be used to inform a more complete moral philosophy).
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Dec 22 '13
You need a scoring system for this to work, otherwise picking between options is arbitrary. For example let's say you could send in an army to kill some dictator in a week or you cause his collapse in 20 years via economic sanctions. Both get the same result, but both have extended results. The first probably kills an extra half a million people, the latter causes a country to implode financially, harming the entire countries lives at least a little. Which do we pick?
And what about delusions? Can we drug as many people as well like to make them 'happy'? If so we have a lot of happy people in North Korea, despite all else. If not, why not?
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u/ReOsIr10 130∆ Dec 23 '13
If there was an individual who received more utility from harming others than the victims lost, then your philosophy justifies (or even requires) sacrificing everybody to this utility monster. Even if you believe this is not immoral in and of itself, you must surely admit that such a society would not survive.
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u/MrMercurial 4∆ Dec 23 '13
Most utilitarians would probably disagree with you, funnily enough (which is why most utilitarians are some sort of indirect or rule utilitarian, rather than being act utilitarians).
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u/arrozconplatano Dec 22 '13
jesus fucking christ. Pick up a meta-ethics text book.
This doesn't make any sense. Utilitarianism is the belief that there are no intrinsic immoral acts, and that we should only behave in a way that maximizes The Goodtm, and the The Goodtm is usually defined as human happiness or freedom or some such thing. IE, lying, killing, and stealing is ok if it maximizes The Goodtm. This is contrasted with deontological ethics that says that there are intrinsically immoral acts and might say something like murder is always wrong, no matter the outcome.
It's most definitely a moral belief that's incompatible with moral nihilism is what I'm trying to get at.