Debate:Utilitarianism

I argue that utilitarianism is useless and simply wrong.

Definition of utilitarianism
What are some good things? Truth, beauty, love... for me, my desire does not determine their goodness; their goodness determines the appropriateness of my desire. I might desire things that aren't really good - but it isn't good for me to do so.

A utilitarian can't speak this way. The good is nothing but desirable and the desirable is nothing but we actually desire. Nothing is good or bad in itself.

What do we desire? According to John Stuart Mill, we ultimately desire only one thing - the pleasure itself. You may think you want to know the meaning of life, but what you really want is the pleasure of thinking that you do. Moral decision reduces to an arithmetic of pleasure.

Suppose that two friends have bought ice-cream and are about to share it, but a hungry man approaches and begs for food.

Decision: Don't give.

John Stuart Mill's (one of the chief proponents of utilitarianism) reasoning is that if pleasure is the sole good for each individual, then the aggregate pleasure must be the sole good for the aggregate of individuals.

Utilitarianism is merely a fallacy of composition
Saying that "if pleasure is the sole good for each individual, then the aggregate pleasure must be the sole good for the aggregate of individuals" is reasoning from the properties of parts to the properties of wholes. It's like saying that if each boy loves his mother, then the aggregate of boys must love the aggregate of mothers, or that if husbands are male and wives are female, then married couples are hermaphrodites.

Pleasures of different people can't be meaningfully added together
Saying "his pleasure is -3, her pleasure is -3 and the beggar's is +5, so the pleasure of the aggregate is -1" makes about as much sense as saying "Iowa's temperature is 75, Wisconsin's is 70 and Minnesota's is 68, so the temperature of the tristate area is 213". Society is a collection of distinct persons not a megaperson.

Different pleasures are incommensurable
Can numbers be assigned to pleasures? Perhaps sometimes - I might be able to tell how much more pleasure of taste I get from a Snickers bar than from drinking milk. But surely they cannot be assigned always. Is the pleasure of tasting Snickers greater or less than the pleasure of finally getting my checkbook in balance? We can compare them in quality, but not in quantity. If they can be measured at all, they should be measured on different scales, as temperature is measured in degrees and wind speed is measured in miles per hour.

The "aggregate pleasure" is morally irrelevant
If we say that what we should do with people depends only on the quantity of aggregate pleasure that results from each alternative, then anything goes so long as the numbers come out right. If there is one fat girl with glasses in the class and her 29 classmates like to bully her, then, according to utilitarianism, they have the moral right to do whatever they want to her - the aggregate pleasure is clearly positive if we measure the pleasure of 29 people and the pain of one person.

Or consider utilitarian sex offender. He has cornered a woman in a dark alley. Should he rape her or not?

Decision: Rape

Do you think that I have doctored the numbers to make the rapist's pleasure greater than the woman's pain and the rapist's frustration greater than the woman's relief? But what if the rapist, being a utilitarian, has knocked the woman out to spare her some of the horror of the experience? Or perhaps he ought to kill her first; then her distress wouldn't enter into the totals at all.

But aren't the numbers irrelevant? Wouldn't rape be wrong no matter how they come out? This utilitarianism denies. Apart from results, it has no concept of good and evil.


 * This is pretty much a straw man of utilitarianism, and your made-up numbers are silly. (Also getting killed would be a -∞ on the woman's side.) 89.132.239.149 (talk) 10:11, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Discussion
While I do not endorse Utilitarianism in the way it is presented there are definite flaws in your arguments. First of all, not receiving a pleasure cannot be equated to the negative of receiving that pleasure. My not having wine with my dinner does not make me inversely displeased to the pleasure of having wine. Your argument about rape is silly as rape is usually more than about having an orgasm for pleasure and the pain of rape for a woman is usually much greater than any pleasure for the rapist. So you want to skew the numbers by speculating that she is unconcious? The trauma is not lessened by being unware of it at the time, and banging her over the head to make her unconcious has its own set of considerations. Also the consequences of the rape may not be confined to the woman, the effects on her partner and family have to be added in to the equation. I would contend that, in general, you cannot discuss any single event as a Utilitarian decision because the later consequences are often unknown. 10:22, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
 * But the woman might be a mentally ill street person, incapable of fully understanding what is going on. The numbers would come out "right".


 * Utilitarianism, even if it was theoretically accurate, would be practically impossible. According to Jeremy Bentham, the founder of primitive utilitarianism, to rate even a single pleasure accurately six different factors must be taken into account - intensity, duration, propinquity or remoteness (how quickly it will occur), fecundity and purity (to what degree it is mixed with pain). Yet the process of reckoning up the pains and pleasures of various courses of action is so complicated that in a later book Bentham devoted a number of paragraphs just to the investigation of whether and how to belch and pass gas.


 * Mill intended to reduce the number of calculations and their scale and difficulty. He does not ask us to envision a person asking whether he should commit a certain act or not; rather he asks us to envision a person asking whether he should adopt such-and-such a rule concerning all such acts. The problem is that the change from an "act" to "rule" basis for calculation may not actually reduce the number of calculations at all. In fact, it may increase it. For instance, even if a woman is assured that most murders reduce aggregate pleasure, she may wonder whether it would really reduce aggregate pleasure to kill her husband; he drinks too much, he philanders, and his habit of sucking his teeth is getting worse and worse.


 * In either way, utilitarianism is useless.


 * "not receiving a pleasure cannot be equated to the negative of receiving that pleasure". Sometimes it may - there are not only "pain" and "pleasure" but also "relief" and "frustration". --NL (talk) 10:49, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, but relief and frustration are lesser than pain and pleasure. Also, one should not confuse pleasure with necessity. Utilitarianism is also about the greatest benefir for the greatest number. Killing your hypothetical bad husband would not bring the greatest benefit for the greatest number. A divorce or separation would remove the woman's pain without the consequences of prison and still leave the man with his life. 11:10, 1 July 2010 (UTC)


 * OK, fine, so how do you ascertain the morality, or otherwise, of an action? Jack Hughes (talk) 10:54, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Click on my username. --NL (talk) 11:51, 1 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Lily, do you really want to quibble with me over numbers? In some situations, it might just as easily have turned out "don't kill" and "don't rape", but wouldn't rape be wrong no matter how they come out? The husband may not have any other place where to go after divorce, it would be far worse for him to live on streets than to be dead. Or he may come back and scare the woman for leaving him. You know that we are playing with numbers and this is what utilitarianism actually is - playing with numbers so that anything may result. And you haven't even commented my other 3 arguments. --NL (talk) 11:49, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Well I guessed that you would come back with further silly analogies. Yes, death is pretty much -infinity on the pleasure scale (if you do not want it). But the point I am trying to make is that Utilitarianism is not the aggregate of everybody's pleasure, if something gives me 10 (or even more) pleasure points and my nine friends get none then it would be better from a Utilitarian POV if everyone got one pleasure point. The problem with Utilitarianism is that as a general priniciple it is actually a good idea but with finite resources on an individual level it can seem heartless. Unfortunately, this also applies to most other systems. As for your other arguments, I do not wish to address them at the moment as I really should be doing other things.  12:08, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Absurd
Your arguments have almost no basis in utilitarian thought, and your reasoning is shallow. Sorry.

''What do we desire? According to John Stuart Mill, we ultimately desire only one thing - the pleasure itself. You may think you want to know the meaning of life, but what you really want is the pleasure of thinking that you do. Moral decision reduces to an arithmetic of pleasure.''

Can you provide any example where this is not true? I cannot think of a single thing I do during my day that is not directed to either immediate or future pleasure (or corresponding reduction of misery). Sometimes this is straightforward: I eat curry for the pleasure of it. Sometimes it's a little more distant: I go to the store so in the future I can have the pleasure of curry. And sometimes it's truly far away: I help my neighbor move his stuff to a new apartment so that his life is easier, in the expectation that in the future this will lead to my own life being easier (perhaps even in a curried fashion). The reasoning becomes more esoteric as you branch out into ethical reciprocity, but pretty much every ethical system struggles along the steps to explain altruism, since it's not an obvious thing.

Consider your example: Suppose that two friends have bought ice-cream and are about to share it, but a hungry man approaches and begs for food.

You forget that the friends will have the pleasure as well of sharing their ice cream with someone, and possibly longer-sighted considerations than "delicious ice cream" like a merciful society.

''Saying "his pleasure is -3, her pleasure is -3 and the beggar's is +5, so the pleasure of the aggregate is -1" makes about as much sense as saying "Iowa's temperature is 75, Wisconsin's is 70 and Minnesota's is 68, so the temperature of the tristate area is 213". Society is a collection of distinct persons not a megaperson.''

Your analogy is good but flawed. You're taking something that's an accumulation and comparing it to a measurement. Consider instead if you spoke of the average of the temperatures. Then you are describing the temperature of the aggregate, are you not? And even though it is a fully valid and useful thing to speak of the average temperature of three cities, they remain distinct cities and not a megacity. In the same way, the individual pleasure of each person can be aggregated and assessed as a whole.

Can numbers be assigned to pleasures?

While I'm aware of numbers as an exercise (hedons and dolons and so on) I don't think anyone proposes this as a consistent thing. After all, these are entirely subjective matters. Your Snickers hedons may be 5, while mine may be 35 - I may be a supertaster or something.

If there is one fat girl with glasses in the class and her 29 classmates like to bully her, then, according to utilitarianism, they have the moral right to do whatever they want to her - the aggregate pleasure is clearly positive if we measure the pleasure of 29 people and the pain of one person.

Your reasoning is puerile. Don't you think the 29 classmates, the teacher, and the school system all will experience much more pleasure in the long run if they make efforts to stop bullying? It's in the best interest of the society to avoid it.-- 12:07, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Yes, you are absurd indeed

 * "While I'm aware of numbers as an exercise (hedons and dolons and so on) I don't think anyone proposes this as a consistent thing. After all, these are entirely subjective matters. Your Snickers hedons may be 5, while mine may be 35 - I may be a supertaster or something."

You absolutely missed my point. I talked about the incommensurability of different pleasures. How much exactly is one pleasure point is obviously entirely subjective, but the method is very consistent. But pleasures come in different kinds that cannot be measured in the same units. For instance, we can't meaningfully subtract an intellectual pain from sensual pleasure. That would be like subtracting the barometric pressure in the music hall from the number of minutes the orchestra played. Nothing stops you from doing it - but the resulting answer makes no sense.

For instance, suppose that only two ways of life were open to you: to live like Socrates but dissatisfied, or to live like a pig but satisfied. If you are a utilitarian, how would you choose between them?

Decision: Live like pig

However, you know very well how it looks like in the real world:

Decision: Live like Socrates


 * "Your analogy is good but flawed. You're taking something that's an accumulation and comparing it to a measurement. Consider instead if you spoke of the average of the temperatures. Then you are describing the temperature of the aggregate, are you not? And even though it is a fully valid and useful thing to speak of the average temperature of three cities, they remain distinct cities and not a megacity. In the same way, the individual pleasure of each person can be aggregated and assessed as a whole."

In one respect the analogy is valid; just as it makes no sense to speak of the aggregate temperature of a set of geographical regions, so it makes no sense to speak of the aggregate pleasure of a set of persons. Such quantities are not additive.

In another respect, however, the analogy is a little bit misleading, because in one case the quantities are not even measurable on the same scale, while in the other case they are. If we are comparing three geographical regions, we cannot speak meaningfully of their aggregate temperature, but we can certainly speak meaningfully of, say, their average temperature. By contrast, if we are thinking of three persons, it makes no more sense to speak of their average than of their aggregate pleasure, because we don't have a shared yardstick. It isn't just that some arithmetic operations involving more than one person's pleasure aren't meaningful - say, that averaging works but that aggregation doesn't - it is that none of them are. Though I may tell you that I feel just as good today as I did yesterday, I can't get away with telling you that I feel as good as you.


 * "Can you provide any example where this is not true? I cannot think of a single thing I do during my day that is not directed to either immediate or future pleasure"

You didn't understand me quite correctly. Mill's argument for utilitarianism holds that pleasure is the only thing desired and that, therefore, pleasure is the only thing desirable. But this is like saying that things visible are things seen, or that the only things audible are things heard. A thing is "visible" if it can be seen and "desirable" if it ought to be desired. Thus the word "desirable" presupposes an ethical theory: we cannot infer what is desirable from what is desired.


 * "Your reasoning is puerile. Don't you think the 29 classmates, the teacher, and the school system all will experience much more pleasure in the long run if they make efforts to stop bullying? It's in the best interest of the society to avoid it."

I could carry on with this analogy and show that there is no actual utilitarian need to make such efforts. You didn't mention my second example. But consider, for instance, a very homophobic society - you know there are lots of really homophobic societies that even punish homosexuals with death penalty. If you are a utilitarian, you must agree that, in given societies, torturing and killing homosexuals is absolutely justified. You can't say that it is a human right to not to be tortured or killed just for being homosexual, because human rights, in fact, don't really exist. Human rights is a universalist concept that says that everyone is endowed with certain entitlements merely by reason of being human. Utilitarianism clearly does not recognize such thing, because it has no concept of good and evil at all. Murder and rape may reduce the alleged aggregate pleasure in one situation and increase the aggregate pleasure in another situation. Utilitarianism justifies hurting innocent people just in order to make others happy enough to compensate.

All in all, the problems with utilitarianism are fundamental. They can't be fixed by jiggering with the formula, because the flaws lie in the basic conception. --NL (talk) 20:20, 13 July 2010 (UTC)


 * "But pleasures come in different kinds that cannot be measured in the same units. For instance, we can't meaningfully subtract an intellectual pain from sensual pleasure. That would be like subtracting the barometric pressure in the music hall from the number of minutes the orchestra played. Nothing stops you from doing it - but the resulting answer makes no sense."
 * I understood you entirely. You are arguing that the two kinds of pleasures cannot be usefully measured against each other.  My argument was that I am not aware of anyone trying to do that, and so this doesn't really figure into being much of a critique against utilitarianism.  As I said: I'm aware of the use of numbers as an exercise, but I have not seen any prominent utilitarian approaches that rely on it for decisions.  While someone like Mill does compare pleasures to judge utility, he does not engage in the practice you describe.  Instead... well, he says it best himself, describing how competing varieties of worth can be resolved:
 * "There exists no moral system under which there do not arise unequivocal cases of conflicting obligation. These are the real difficulties, the knotty points both in the theory of ethics, and in the conscientious guidance of personal conduct. They are overcome practically, with greater or with less success, according to the intellect and virtue of the individual; but it can hardly be pretended that any one will be the less qualified for dealing with them, from possessing an ultimate standard to which conflicting rights and duties can be referred. If utility is the ultimate source of moral obligations, utility may be invoked to decide between them when their demands are incompatible."


 * "For instance, suppose that only two ways of life were open to you: to live like Socrates but dissatisfied, or to live like a pig but satisfied. If you are a utilitarian, how would you choose between them?"
 * Given your data, the question is obvious. But I think the values are pretty laughable -  1 for intellectual pleasure?
 * Really, if you examine what you're saying, I think you'll find that you yourself disagree with your conclusions. If Socrates was so deeply unhappy with his life and it's fiftyfold better to live like a pig, then surely we must call Socrates mad, must we not?  If intellectual pleasure is so puny compared to sensual pleasure, then he was a complete idiot.  But I bet if you think about it you'll realize that neither you nor Socrates would call the intellectual life so devoid of pleasure: it's just pleasure of a different and more refined sort, and arguably a pleasure that ascends to greater heights.  If you didn't greatly enjoy the pursuit of truth, in fact, I bet you wouldn't be involved with an internet debate about utilitarianism.


 * "In one respect the analogy is valid; just as it makes no sense to speak of the aggregate temperature of a set of geographical regions, so it makes no sense to speak of the aggregate pleasure of a set of persons. Such quantities are not additive."
 * You have not demonstrated that, you've just stated it.
 * Billy, Tommy, and Sam go to lunch. Billy and Tommy get a great lunch and are happy, but Sam gets one noodle and is very unhappy.  Altogether, they are somewhat happy.
 * The next day, Billy and Tommy get a great lunch and are happy, while Sam has only a noodle. The three friends get a nice cigar from the shopkeep, and of course they have little trouble deciding to give it to Sam.
 * You'd probably prefer to assign units, and you can do so if you like. Maybe it will be Lunch Units, Cigar Units, and Noodle Units.  I don't know how you'll combine them.


 * "By contrast, if we are thinking of three persons, it makes no more sense to speak of their average than of their aggregate pleasure, because we don't have a shared yardstick. It isn't just that some arithmetic operations involving more than one person's pleasure aren't meaningful - say, that averaging works but that aggregation doesn't - it is that none of them are. Though I may tell you that I feel just as good today as I did yesterday, I can't get away with telling you that I feel as good as you."
 * Sure. And Billy couldn't say such to Sam, either.  But they still would have no trouble deciding who should get the cigar.
 * I guess you can think of all kinds of ways that using hedons and similar units can be silly. I'm just not sure what that has to do with the application of utilitarianism.


 * "You didn't understand me quite correctly. Mill's argument for utilitarianism holds that pleasure is the only thing desired and that, therefore, pleasure is the only thing desirable. But this is like saying that things visible are things seen, or that the only things audible are things heard. A thing is "visible" if it can be seen and "desirable" if it ought to be desired. Thus the word "desirable" presupposes an ethical theory: we cannot infer what is desirable from what is desired."
 * First: Is something desirable if it ought to be desired?  Who decides what ought to be desired?  I like beer, but my friend Leisha does not.  Is beer something that "ought to be desired?"
 * Of course not. Everyone decides for themselves what they desire based on what they perceive as pleasurable.  Being "visible" is an objective quality: either enough light and a clear path exists to reflect off of an object and travel to a functioning eye, or they do not.  The same goes with "audible."
 * Second: Can you think of an example where you do not engage in that arithmetic of pleasure?  You state the case and then stand back as if it was obviously false.  But can you name a time when you have done differently, and provide a moral basis for it beyond the pleasure principle?


 * "I could carry on with this analogy and show that there is no actual utilitarian need to make such efforts."
 * Great. Proceed.


 * "But consider, for instance, a very homophobic society"
 * Oh, wait. You actually want to talk about a different example and NOT that analogy.  That's okay too.


 * "If you are a utilitarian, you must agree that, in given societies, torturing and killing homosexuals is absolutely justified. You can't say that it is a human right to not to be tortured or killed just for being homosexual, because human rights, in fact, don't really exist. Human rights is a universalist concept that says that everyone is endowed with certain entitlements merely by reason of being human. Utilitarianism clearly does not recognize such thing, because it has no concept of good and evil at all. Murder and rape may reduce the alleged aggregate pleasure in one situation and increase the aggregate pleasure in another situation. Utilitarianism justifies hurting innocent people just in order to make others happy enough to compensate."
 * If someone can be killed simply for possessing an inborn quality that harms no one else, then I could be killed if having green eyes suddenly was seen as evil (presumably by some religion or government). That would be very harmful to me, and not at all pleasurable.  I've never been killed, but I assume it's unpleasant and I don't desire it.
 * I suspect you haven't really thought such things through.-- 06:35, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

---

"Saying that "if pleasure is the sole good for each individual, then the aggregate pleasure must be the sole good for the aggregate of individuals" is reasoning from the properties of parts to the properties of wholes. It's like saying that if each boy loves his mother, then the aggregate of boys must love the aggregate of mothers, or that if husbands are male and wives are female, then married couples are hermaphrodites. — Unsigned, by: NL / talk / contribs"

I agree that both Bentham and Mill used fallacious reasoning to justify utilitarianism (Mill also failed in trying to show that the pleasurableness of different feelings differ qualitatively rather than quantitatively and rule utilitarianism is more or less deontology) but utilitarianism is a normative position that can be justified by many different meta-ethical views. They both based their position on psychological hedonism, which probably undermines utilitarianism as a normative stance, and I think it might seem to psychological hedonists that people necessarily desire (their own) pleasure exclusively because the satisfaction of desire is necessarily pleasurable (that and maybe their own projection). I would justify utilitarianism by arguing that the objective value (in/of itself- simpliciter-, not just 'for' people) of pleasure and pain can be realized empirically, through direct experience of pleasure and pain, and although our memories give us the illusion of psychological continuity, there is no stable, persisting ego that exists beyond constantly changing moment to moment experience (Mill also failed in trying to reconcile the assumption of this static, unchanging 'self' with empiricism, from the little I've read of his view on the subject of personal identity). No one has any more of a reason to care about the suffering of their future 'self' than they do anyone else's.

" Pleasures of different people can't be meaningfully added together Saying "his pleasure is -3, her pleasure is -3 and the beggar's is +5, so the pleasure of the aggregate is -1" makes about as much sense as saying "Iowa's temperature is 75, Wisconsin's is 70 and Minnesota's is 68, so the temperature of the tristate area is 213". Society is a collection of distinct persons not a megaperson. — Unsigned, by: NL / talk / contribs"

It's only necessary to talk about the aggregation of anything if objects or phenomenon being aggregated are separated by space or time. Anything that can be measured can be aggregated, measuring pleasure and pain precisely might be practically impossible (we might eventually be able to precisely measure inter-subjectively observable brain activity that corresponds with pleasure/pain) but there's an obvious difference between minor pain and extreme pain. Most people would agree that having 7 migraines a week would be worse than having three migraine a week because the amount of pain migraines cause a single person can be aggregated across time. There may be a problem with aggregating something like intelligence across the population but measuring intelligence to begin with might be problematic. If a group of 10 individuals, each with a 70 IQ, don't collectively have a greater ability to understand or reason (if you accept that broad definition of intelligence) than a single individual with a 200 IQ, then they don't collectively have more intelligence than him or her. Felt emotional experience is concrete, it's not just an abstract concept as intelligence is.

" Different pleasures are incommensurable Can numbers be assigned to pleasures? Perhaps sometimes - I might be able to tell how much more pleasure of taste I get from a Snickers bar than from drinking milk. But surely they cannot be assigned always. Is the pleasure of tasting Snickers greater or less than the pleasure of finally getting my checkbook in balance? We can compare them in quality, but not in quantity. If they can be measured at all, they should be measured on different scales, as temperature is measured in degrees and wind speed is measured in miles per hour"

What all pleasurable feelings have in common is that they are inherently likable. You can like things more or less but there is no qualitatively greater or lesser kind of liking ('more' and 'less' are concepts that apply to quantity, not quality). It might seems otherwise because some pleasurable feelings are stronger than others.

"If you are a utilitarian, you must agree that, in given societies, torturing and killing homosexuals is absolutely justified. You can't say that it is a human right to not to be tortured or killed just for being homosexual, because human rights, in fact, don't really exist. Human rights is a universalist concept that says that everyone is endowed with certain entitlements merely by reason of being human. Utilitarianism clearly does not recognize such thing, because it has no concept of good and evil at all. Murder and rape may reduce the alleged aggregate pleasure in one situation and increase the aggregate pleasure in another situation. Utilitarianism justifies hurting innocent people just in order to make others happy enough to compensate."

Utilitarianism does have a concept of good and evil behavior. Good behavior (according to total-hedonistic-act utilitarianism) maximizes happiness and minimizes suffering. Evil behavior maximizes suffering and minimizes happiness. (Utilitarianism deals with behavior, I would make a distinction between good and evil behavior vs. good and evil character). A utilitarian has to factor in to consideration the well-being of every single being who could possibly be harmed or benefited by their behavior when making a decision, if someone cares about the well-being of the people who could be affected by their decisions (and why else would they factor it into consideration?), they couldn't take pleasure in or be consciously indifferent to their suffering or misfortune. This is why it's meaningless to use, as examples of the evil that utilitarianism can justify, scenarios where the pleasure increased as a result of whatever evil is entirely dependent on a lack of empathy for the people being harmed or disadvantaged. It's one to thing to reluctantly kill an animal to feed your family because they need food to survive and you think their slow death by starvation would be worse than the harm you cause the animal (or their collective happiness greater than the animal's), it's another thing entirely to bully, torture and kill for psychological gratification that you couldn't possibly feel if you cared about their well-being (and consistent utilitarians don't have to 'like' everyone but they absolutely must care about everyone's happiness and suffering). Utilitarians also have a vested interested in promoting compassion and kindness, if not utilitarianism explicitly, and discouraging sadism, cruelty, vengeance and an indifference to the feelings of others for the simple fact that there is going to be more happiness and less suffering in the world if everyone cared about everyone's pleasure and pain.

Reply to the rejoinder to the reply:

Utilitarianism is the only ethical theory worth anything. All arguments to the contrary are hogwash.

Most of the arguments here are addressed at Wikipedia's page on utilitarianism. The aggregating utility argument has been addressed by Parfit, among other philosophers. The predicting consequences argument was addressed by Mill. The fallacy of composition arguments must come from a highly uncharitable reading or misreading of Mill, since he says on like page 2 of Utilitarianism that the "proof" he gives is an inductive one. The first principles of any theory must be admitted without proof. The proof he gives is a list of considerations that should motivate assent to the first principles; it isn't a deductive argument for those principles since such is impossible anyway. It is better thought of as an empirical, inductive argument based on observation. You know, like the way all science works. Ethics should be thought of as the science of morality or a "practical art" to use the Aristotelean terminology employed by Mill.

As a side note, why are people so charitable to people like Kant and hegel but just assume that people like Mill and Hume, who were among the most well educated members of society, were just idiots who would commit themselves to an obvious logical fallacy like the fallacy of composition? Absurd.

There is one argument i wanted to talk about. This is "utilitarianism would justify horrors if it resulted in a net gain in happiness"

First, can we not see the prima facie ridiculousness of this argument? If something is a horror, how can it result in a net gain in happiness? That takes quite a stretch of the imagination.

Let's look at the example of rape.

Would you yourself allow yourself to be raped for the privilege of raping someone? I may be going out on a limb here, but I assume the vast majority of responses to this question will be "no," demonstrating that rape does not in fact lead to a net gain in happiness. What about gang rape? Surely if 100 people rape one person, this would result in a net gain in happiness? Okay, would you allow yourself to be raped 100 times for the privilege of being one out of 100 people to rape someone? Again, I'm guessing that most will say no. By starting with a false premise "rape would lead to more happiness"'you get a false conclusion "rape is the right thing to do." This is an example of drawing a false conclusion by starting with a bad premise and so cannot count as an indictment of the utilitarian calculus. You start with grossly inaccurate assumptions about human nature, and you're going to get a grossly false conclusion.

It's become fashionable to bash utilitarianism since the publication of Rawls. But a close reading of Rawls reveals that he employs the exact same kind of reasoning as that employed by the utilitarian! The so called "veil of ignorance" is essentially the same thing as the "impartial spectator."

The arguments of the OP are absurd and cause me to wonder if the author did not actually read utilitarianism (it's a short book). Judging from the poor quality of the arguments I'm guessing that the author didn't even bother to read the Wikipedia page!
 * It's been three years since NL posted on this debate, so don't hope for a response, my friend.--[[Image:adsig.png|25px|link=User:AD|AD]]talk 21:40, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

I could see that 100 rapists gang-raping a person secretly does produce more utility than when done publicly; the OP's arguments are not absurd and I find your arguments far more absurd than the OP's. Again, you fail to demonstrate how this is a bad premise - only the victim says no and the rapist says yes. It os still, a no against hundred yesses. Moreover, he does not have to agree with that because he is apparently not a utilitarian, ans he does not buy your theories.

"going out on a limb here, but I assume the vast majority of responses to this question will be "no," demonstrating that rape does not in fact lead to a net gain in happiness."- it again depends on the person who is raped; You are just appealing to the majority who are not utilitarians. It is your arguments which are of poor quality - the vast majority may find gang raping themselves cause disutility, but given that that only that one rape happens, I would say that the utilitarian should get him/herself raped. What I see in the arguments of pro-utilitarians is confirmation bias, only considerning hypothetical problems when they want them but refusing to consider them when they do not like them.

Moreover, a modified version of the trolley problem: It is provided that you cause one more net little utility - in any way you define - for the society by torturing, cutting off lims of someone when he is alive and then burning that person alive. Would you torture that person alive, or, would you rather not?

"If something is a horror, how can it result in a net gain in happiness?": Argumentum ad Absurdum. It can, in theory, result in net gain happiness, for example. It is up to you to prove that this can not result in net happiness - because it is you who seems to make this ridiculous claim. Moreover, drug testing on the mentally disabled, raping the disabled are acceptable in utilitarianism if everyone looks for everyone else's utility (which is an infinite loop of chains) - if there were no Kantians or those who support absolite morality, to object it without looking for someone else's answer. Given that Joker conducts experiments, for example, it is still possible to gain net utility from horror; this 'horror cannot derive net happiness' is still a confirmation bias of the utilitarians not wishing to hear the other side.

I agree that utilitarianism has no 'evils' but I don't think why is it meaningless to argue that here - it is still possible to gain some minor net utility involving major disutility - for example, drug testing on sentient beings, etc.

Reply to the Assumption that utilitarianism is useless

Utilitarianism is a guide to human behaviour
I believe that utilitarianism is the most authentic way to describe how we make decisions and, by virtue of that characteristic alone, holds the promise of helping us to achieve the highest moral good!

This idea has offended people for years but it’s truth is inescapable. Everything we do is to seek pleasure, even if this pleasure exists only as the absence of pain. All of our choices whether they be judged good or bad are governed by this simple powerful pull towards pleasure.

We show this in our simple actions. You feel an irritation on the side of the nose and it raises your sense of discomfort, you have dealt with similar discomforts in the past with a simple action that has rid you of the discomfort and brought you pleasure. It is a learned reaction to a stimuli that you have performed hundreds of thousands of times. And so in response to this powerful pull of pleasure, you scratch your nose.

Not all pleasures are equal however. The more we learn about our universe, the more we understand that some pleasures are more lasting and encompass more than one dimension. For instance, you will dismiss the pleasure of laying in bed after the alarm goes off because you know there is a greater pleasure to be gained. You endure the assault of the light as you turn it on and face the dread of the first drops of water that splatter on your chest in the shower. You go to work and endure the sometimes banal existence for hours on end so that at the end of the week you can get the pleasure that comes from having food in the fridge, a warm bed to sleep in and a roof over your head. When you come to believe that one pleasure has more utility than others, you will pursue that pleasure over others until that belief is undone.

It is this belief in what pleasures have more utility than others that accounts for much of the variety in behavior you see around you. Not everyone believes that they can derive pleasure from dutifully going to work every day or even denying an urge to scratch an itch in certain situations. These powerful beliefs, many of which are formed early in life propel us into tragic conflicts or amazing friendships.

The human race has progressed to a higher state because of this hidden understanding. In spite of our denial of the role of pleasure in our lives most of us have come to believe that adhering to some kind of moral code will bring a more lasting and useful pleasure.

When talking about sin, most people would say that you sin when you do something bad. They will often define sin as specific types of actions like stealing or killing. They believe that the evil is in the act itself.

But when you understand that the nature of human beings is to seek the highest pleasure you begin to see sin differently. You see that people rate and pursue pleasures according to their knowledge of how useful these pleasures are. People will give up the comfort of a bed and the pleasure of sleep to get a good pay check. They will give up the pleasure of a comfortable relatively easy job to set off on the pursuit of a fortune that could take many years. And having made that fortune they will often give up the majority of it to save a loved one if that loved one provides access to a pleasure they cannot get in any other way. The same sort of pleasure that you feel when you have an experience of being connected to everything around you in some special way.

This pleasure is the one that ultimately drives and directs your activities, you become aware somehow when one of your actions takes you further from it. When we talk about sin by defining what we should have done to achieve a pleasure we get closer to the nature of sin. People sometimes say, “its a sin that I couldn’t go to that concert…” meaning that there was an opportunity to have a pleasurable experience and they made the wrong choice in missing it. It is very similar when we miss the opportunity to connect with our loved ones or everything around us, deep down we know we could have had a higher pleasure if we had foregone a lower pleasure.

When we succumb to experiencing the pleasures of giving in to anger, vengeance or physical pleasures instead of pursuing one that would serve us better we know its a sin. The difference is that we do not say it in that way. But if we view it in that way, we realize that there is no need for forgiveness just knowledge and focus. When we steal, kill or act in a vengeful or deceitful way we are giving up the chance to experience the highest pleasure. If we were more aware of this someone might say, “its a sin that I didn’t connect with that guy instead of stealing his car”.

If we really understood the nature of sin we would view sinful acts as deluded and misguided instead of selfish and evil. We would all seek the ultimate rush but make the world a better place in doing so.

Knowledge of the true lasting pleasure associated with so-called altruistic acts is what is missing from our society.

If we celebrated these pleasures and the rush associated with them the way we do sex in our society then rape would soon become extinct.