Everything Wrong With Utilitarianism

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In this video, I go through what I take to be everything wrong with utilitarianism or at least its most prominent flaws. I discuss issues regarding its application as well as it's underlying presuppositions which ultimately lead to it failing as a normative ethic.
▬ Contents of this video ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
0:00 - Intro
0:41 - What is utilitarianism
1:25 Brilliant
2:36 - The principle of utility
4:36 - Egoism vs Altruism
6:23 - Quality vs Quantity
9:09 Numeric equality Vs Proportional equality
12:46 - Hyper individualism vs Community
16:31 - Consequences vs Teleology
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[@PerspectivePhilosophy]

To try everything Brilliant has to offer-free-for a full 30 days, visit brilliant.org/PerspectivePhilosophy/. The first 200 of you will get 20% off Brilliant’s annual premium subscription.

[@danielsurvivor1372]

Can you make tier list of moral frameworks? I assume you gonna rank Utilitarianism pretty low but I wanna know what you would rank high

[@LouisGedo]

*Utilitarianism =* 🤮

[@Em-gj2sg]

"how much poetry I would need in order to make up for being left at home by my friends" so relatable

[@foodsupply5071]

I would be really interested about a video that summarizes your personal take on which moral theory is the most logical

[@danielsurvivor1372]

Can you make tier list of moral frameworks? Aka Utilitarianism, Kantian ethics, Social Contract theory etc

[@shoresofpatmos]

arthur schopenhauers "Mitleidsethik"

[@danielsurvivor1372]

​@@shoresofpatmos Huh? What were you trying to tell me? 😅

[@LVArturs]

I bet NAP is S+. Only surpassed by jungle law.

[@v.a.n.e.]

consequentialism, deontological ethics, virtue ethics, care ethics, contractualism, egoism, moral relativism, moral nihilism, divine command theory, natural law ethics, feminist ethics, environmental ethics, animal ethics, confucian ethics, buddhist ethics ... to name a few

[@Noblesix_.]

social contract theory... My worst nightmare...

[@danielmcdonald6227]

Just been walking the dog wondering if there is a good video critiquing utilitarianism and then this pops up.

[@Sinthe]

0:27 Woah, that's me. Always cool to see critiques of my beliefs.

[@Noblesix_.]

Aren't you the guy who debated Liquid Zulu a while back?

[@AhmedAlahlam]

You think its cool to see a guy that doesn't comprehend exactly what pleasure and pain is?

[@PanicGW]

I think you're addressing a valid definition of utilitarianism, but to me, it still feels like a strawman because of how much it has evolved. If a utilitarian were to define utility as the actualization of desire and negative utility as the frustration of desire, it side steps most of these critiques.

[@zauberfrosch11]

While I'm not well read on the theory itself, I came into contact with utilitarianism in the context of discussing politics. And from what I gathered it seems to me, that you just didn't look at contemporary utilitarianism but just at the thoughts of people over 100 years ago. Regarding the example of sacrificing an innocent person: It seems you didn't take the time to really think the example and its comsequences through because you didn't think of the longterm consequences. Which is something a utilitarian (or someone who tries to think like one) would/should do. Addressing the "why should I care about other's feelings?" part: I don't think it is possible to convince a person whose attitude is "I don't give a fuck if it's not about negative consequences for myself". And I don't think any moral framework can convince such a person

[@Daz19]

I've found most critiques of utilitarianism to be myopic, they often don't consider long-term consequences, the priciples propergated nor the effects and liabilities of systems.

[@FriedZime]

Utilitarianism can often escape these sort of cases by appeal to hypothetical negative long term consequences. But it cannot escape the scenario if we make it a component of the example that the long term consequences are NOT going to be bad. In other words, if a doctor had the option to save 5 people by killing one person, if this WOULD NOT cause any long term negative consequences, then the doctor would have an obligation to do that, according to act utilitarianism. And another question: What exactly is the scope, in time, regarding these long term consequences? 10 years, 100 years, 1000 years? One can always appeal to hypothetical consequences in the indefinite future to defend those actions that one WANT to say is right. But this seems to suggest that one is not using the principles of utilitarianism to arrive at conclusion as to what to do, but rather one's moral intuitions and desperately try to fit utilitarianism into that.

[@rsmlinar1720]

​@@FriedZime not only that. No one can really know long term consequences. You can make somwhat of an educated guess, but many of those have been wrong before, and humanity has always proven itself ferly shortsighted in this regard

[@liamvance966]

On the first critique: It is irrelevant whether you can pragmatically sum up the utility with regards to the theory per say And theoretically I conceptualize summing up the utility by asking myself “if I had to live through everyone’s experience, what action would I choose after knowing everyone’s subjective experience of the consequence” Regarding the second critique: utilitarianism is a normative theory so it is not concerned with the grounding of why one should care about other peoples utility

[@celektus]

Your second response to me seems straight up wrong. Utilitarianism is a theory that contrasts with Egoism (the normative theory), basically every utlitarian philosopher I've ever heard about has stated that the core principle of the theory is that everyone's utility is regarded as equal (or that utility is valuable in the abstract). One of the greatest utilitarian philosophers of all time Henry Sidgwick literally thought that the profoundest problem in ethics was the tension between Egoism and Utilitarianism as being two seemingly intuitive yet opposing views.

[@liamvance966]

@@celektus it is my understanding that ethics is divided in three levels: meta - normative - applied One is concerned with the “grounding” on the meta level Utilitarianism is on the normative level and as such not concerned with grounding Where am I going wrong?

[@celektus]

​@@liamvance966 You are right that there is a distinction like that (although it's not universally accepted and sometimes certain meta-ethical views presuppose or make normative ethical claims and the other way around). What you're misunderstanding I think is that whether we should value everyone's utility or our own (or utility in the abstract) is a normative ethical question and not a meta-ethical one. Meta-ethical questions include questions like "are there moral truths at all?" "what's the nature of moral language?" "how do we come to know moral truths assuming there are some?". These questions are meta-ethical because they're in one way or another questions about ethics as a whole from the point of view of other philosophical disciplines like the epistemology, ontology or philosophy of language etc. Normative ethical questions are about ethical principles and theories, i.e. whether your theory is consequentialist or deontological, whether it's impartial or partial, whether what's ultimately valuable is pleasure or preference-fullfillment. These aren't meta-ethical question because they're about the substance of ethical theories i.e. what the right (or preferred) ethical theory should be like, and within this field people give arguments in favor or against questions like the above. Besides that as I said in my previous comment Utilitarianism is also inherently taking a stance on the issue you brought up. You can't really be a utilitarian and not believe that (at least in practice) your utility matters just as much as that of everyone else, that's just part of what utilitarianism is (if you belive your utility is what's ultimately valuable you'd just be a ethical-egoist). Of course you can basically accept that as part of the theory and not find it necessary to really justify/ground that in a particular discussion, but it's not because it's not a normative ethical question, it is. TL;DR Normative ethics is concerned with questions of grounding ethical principles Meta-ethics is concerned with even more meta questions like "can you ground at all"

[@liamvance966]

@@celektus whether you "should" be an egoist or a utilitarian, for instance, begs the question of what normative theory is applied in the first place. How can I determine which normative theory is "the best", without applying a normative theory to answer that question first?

[@celektus]

​@@liamvance966 What does that have to do with the previous thing we were talking about? Which normative theory is the one we should accept simply is a question discussed in normative ethics because it's about the content of the theories in question and utilitarianism inherently takes a stance on the issue "why one should care about other peoples utility". Do you think it's possible to be a utilitarian and not take a stance on whether other peoples utility matters equally to your own?

[@dissatisfiedphilosophy]

you don’t critique any utilitarian theories that have come about since the 1900s. This is just a Mill and Bentham critique. The fact you have admitted in your video with MajestyOfReason that you “don’t know anything about the analytic sphere” is very clear. I would recommend reading contemporary philosophy before commenting on a contemporary debate

[@SeekingApatheia]

Which contemporary utilitarian deals with these issues?

[@dissatisfiedphilosophy]

@@SeekingApatheia Singer most definitely is a solid choice for a contemporary read. He also deals with animal ethics which I know PP cares about.

[@persoro4015]

Are you anti vegan or something

[@SeekingApatheia]

@@dissatisfiedphilosophy A couple points of hesitation. I don't think Singer deals with these issues, at least as far as I know, and also he is generally thought, even by other Utilitarians, to be a rather sloppy scholar. Open to being wrong here, is there a specific work from Singer that deals with some of the contentions brought up by PerspectivePhil here?

[@celektus]

Good video going over some essential critiques any utilitarian should contend with at some point. I only wish you went into more detail and considered some actual responses utilitarians have given to a lot of your objections in the literature. The conception of utilitarianism you go over in the video also seems a little weak to me, it felt like you were mainly talking about the views of Bentham and Mill which at least I find to be the worst utilitarianism has to offer. I can't stand Mill's take on certain kinds of pleasure being qualitatively different in kind or Bentham implying that the utility per individual as opposed to utility in the abstract is what's valuable. Not to mention that both of their justifications for utilitarianism may qualify as some of the worst philosophical arguments ever made by historically significant figures. Basically any major utilitarian philosopher after Mill has far more rigorously defined the relevant concepts of the theory, defended any sort of actual moral epistemology and engaged with difficult questions the theory has to contend with. I think the strongest objection you personally have against the utilitarianism is that it's moral epistemology can't be squared well with Hegels (at least as far as I understand).

[@Sw-qc1zo]

1. Calculate utility: Utilitarianism doesn't mean you'll calculate the precise utility of everything in numbers; you just need an estimate. If there are two options with such a small difference that you have to spend even 10 minutes calculating, the utilitarian thing to do is not to calculate (unless the speed of your decision doesn't matter, in which case, whatever). 2. Egoism vs. altruism: Utilitarianism doesn't have to be selfish; you just need to value other people's satisfaction as much as your own. (Although there's an argument to be made that it's better for everyone to value their happiness slightly more than others' since you're the one who can help yourself best). 3. Quality vs. quantity: It's all abstract, and each person at each moment will have a preference. Long-term health should always be considered, of course. It's all intuitive because that's the point; I'm fundamentally a moral anti-realist. 4. Hanging an innocent to prevent civil unrest: Again, this fails to consider the long term. Even if it's better now for one innocent death than chaos, in the long run, it's terrible to establish such a precedent, which ends up counterbalancing the calculation in the end in favor of not hanging the man. The same applies to slavery, but there's also the fact that many more useful ways to achieve a prosperous society without slavery existing. 5. You mix various types of utilitarianism; I'll just say that 'total' utilitarianism, which considers the total sum of pleasure in the world, is completely foolish. 6. Utilitarianism can obviously be applied to a non-hyper-individualistic mindset; the rest of the chapter has nothing to do with utilitarianism. 7. Teleology question: Motive utilitarianism is literally a thing that exists bruh I consider that utilitarism must be self--reflecting, if we're doing something because we things it's the utilitarist thing to do, but ends up creating suffering, it's simply not the utilitarist thing to do! People suffer when innocents die, when society is unjust, etc, etc. To me, utilitarism is naught but a simple description of how humans think about morality, I have yet to see a reasonable ethical view that, at it's base, can't be considered utilitarist, even if it's wrong.

[@harryevans4513]

When actually listening to arguments between 2 philosophers(anyone well read in these positions), I do not see a relevant difference apart from the fundamental one of where you derive value from. And if you end up agreeing to moral realism (hegelian reasoning to obtain the truths about value, as he usually argues) as the fundamental bedrock of value, then you end up with the exact same theory but calling it different names. So I get that he is only arguing against the early interpretations of utilitarianism, but that is what is required in a video such as this. Now the issue could be when a viewer would be dogmatic and just take his explanation as the final one and just outright reject utilitarianism no matter what nuance you give them.

[@fromeveryting29]

Wonderful video. The great issues I've seen with utilitarianism is one of scope and speculation. For one utilitarianism relies on speculating about future outcomes. Let's take the usual "crop deaths tho" case. It assumes utilitarian motivations for veganism, and that killing and eating 1 cow + some crops, will "cause/demand less suffering" than only eating crops and other plant foods for a given time. It's impossible to know that. - We can't make accurate predictions about how much suffering we will produce. - We are not isolated individuals, we don't personally "cause" X outcome. - We don't have acess to other individuals mental states, it's un-quantifiable. *In other words utilitarianism relies on quantification of completely un-quantifiable properties.* We don't know just how many "suffering points" a cow experiences in their time in the slaughterhouse, say, compared to an unknown number of "crop death" animals we don't even know how quickly or even if they were harmed or killed. It's PURE unfounded speculation. And second. The problem of scope. How far into the future am I supposed to speculate about the harm "I cause", and to how many individuals? Lets's say I shoot one animal to "spare the crop deaths" and cause less suffering. But to whom, and how long, should I do my calculation? How far does my "personal" consequences go, before others are also involved in producing X outcome? Again, impossible to decide, and therefor impossible to measure. Our actions have unlimited ammounts of consequences, and it's not clear within utilitarianism how large a scope you should account for. Every action we might do to produce short term ulitily, might lead someone else to have to do an action that causes more than we would have done if we did that ourselves. One can go on and on and on and find reasons that basically justify whatever action one wants to take, and it would be equally plausible than any other. Basically, utilitarianism relies on calculating un-calculable, unknowable abstracts, that don't consider the individual. In my estimation it is completely inoperable and useless as an ethical theory (by itself) for this reason alone. It should not guide our actions. Both Vaush and Cosmic Skeptic has illustrated exactly what I mean. They both have found ways to rationalize why their actions don't bring negative utility, because of pure speculation about unquantifiable metrics. They have failed to see that ethics are relational, normative and require social action. Veganism is a social cause, not a calculation. So is socialism or whatever else. We CAN quantify and promote how we treat others, how we speak about them, what we tolerate and not. That IS a working ethical system.

[@v.a.n.e.]

too many assumptions and a complete misunderstanding of utilitarianism. assessment of the expected consequences of an action are mainly based on the best available evidence and reasoning, as should be done in modern society that aspires to be grounded on scientific principles. a potential criticism of utilitarianism may be based on the accuracy of initial predicting the consequences of the action that are not yet subject to experience and reflection, but this is only the case until the necessary knowledge is obtained, which is the real power of utilitarianism at the same time. the rest of your comment is not focused or even meaningful and the only effort you put into caricaturing this whole thing

[@thomasipkiss8793]

Love this channel. Appreciate your work!

[@Akash_Vegan]

Thank you for keeping me thinking. Thinking is what gives my life meaning.

[@deemstars]

The problem is your calculator isn't a TI-89

[@RipNTara]

I needed this.

[@Lunar_Pendragon]

We all needed this.

[@thelevelbeyondhuman]

Woah, your production seems slicker than ever. Very nice stuff PP.

[@highroller-jq3ix]

What I heard the high speed youtubers adhering to was a self-described form of utilitarianism that sought the greatest good by definition, not full-blown, by the Bentham utilitarianism. The problem with so many philosophy students is that they take these categories and turn them into absolutes because they love their jargon and their philosophospeak.

[@Petran892]

How long will you have the 30% off for your course?

[@SenorFlake]

Thanks PP, now I can just refer people to this video. Awesome video, you made very strong case so eloquently. Good lord, you are a superb essayist. Is this the rise of PP essays?

[@HomingAsatoMass]

As a utilitarian, I found this video to be very uninsightful, but I'm also interested in what the fans of PP see in it that I may be missing. So, if you were going to refer another utilitarian to this video, which points in it would you say are most likely to convince them against utilitarianism and why?

[@AhmedAlahlam]

3:30 NO. Pleasure its every feeling that is good and pain every feeling that is bad. Just because an action its painful to do doesnt mean its bad and vice versa. For example drugs(or any action like scrolling on social media) are pleasurable but after some time when your brain gets tolerant to the dopamine and other chemicals it realeses on the brain (in other words "getting used to), it stops giving pleasure AND it still has its secondary effects, drugs have very studied ones but other stuff like social media gaming etc too.

[@natesk1e]

Always my favorite perspective on philosophy! ❤

[@LoneWolfPvP]

you deserve so many more subs man you bring something totally unique to the table. you should debate more popular youtubers like you did vaush and destiny considering you're able to come out on top so far in every debate.

[@highroller-jq3ix]

Not at all. His attempts to defend Catholicism fall just as short as those of every other apologist. An apologist is definitionally a compromised intellectual and shit philosopher.

[@bronumero7334]

A utilitarian-action will always fail whenever nuance is added to the equation.

[@x-b5516]

I love videos like this 😍😍, and I like the sponsor too they really good learning tool

[@sebastianpalominos3706]

damm such good video and articulation of the argument.

[@Em-gj2sg]

incredible thumbnail

[@konyvnyelv.]

Could you comment on Italy's recent ban on lab grown meat?

[@oreoiscool3409]

Yeah I heard about that too. It's so dumb and it's gonna hurt Italy's economy too.

[@wiener_process]

So... I would like to add a bit of rumination on the subject from a mathematician's perspective. It mostly addressed the implied logical/mathematical claims utilitarianism implicitly makes. At least to my understanding. Utilitarianism, at least as it is commonly presented, seems to suffer from conflating several concepts that seem similar, but are nevertheless fairly distinct. Namely, the ability to compare, the ability to find a maximum (or alternatively a supremum), and the ability to quantify. It takes moral outcomes and attempts to compare them. This in itself requires considerable presupposition on the set of potential moral outcomes. If we take for granted that such a set can exist (which is in itself not clear), there has to be a relation on that set satisfying particular axioms. Therefore not only must moral outcomes constitute a set, it has to be a rather particular set. Even if that is satisfied, there is no guarantee that such a set will have an optimal element. It is not even guaranteed that any two elements will be comparable. Therefore even if I am capable of comparing various moral outcomes, it doesn't mean I can find one that is the best. So then, isn't a possible solution to assign some kind of number to each moral outcome and compare them that way? Well, not really. In general, if I have a utility function that somehow induces comparability on the set of moral outcomes, it would necessitate that I am able to compare the outcomes in the first place. On the other hand, the converse implication doesn't hold. Therefore the ability to quantify outcomes in a way that is meaningful for their comparison only adds more constraints to the problem. Furthermore, in practical terms, we would want to know what the function looks like, so that we can use it, but that only adds more problems into the mix. All in all, this is not a condemnation of utilitarianism, just a few elementary logical challenges such a model invites, challenges that in my opinion need to be rigorously solved in order for that model to be taken seriously. That is something I haven't really seen, however philosophers are often not stupid, so perhaps someone has already addressed these issues. If so, I'd be glad if a potential reader pointed me in the proper direction.

[@Shimansaji]

My biggest problem with utilitarianism is that it’s an idealist moralist philosophy; and it seems PP agrees and gives plenty of examples. Kudos!

[@bellumthirio139]

I feel like the issue you're getting at is that utilitarianism is a subjective / non-universal ethic.

[@Skylark725]

The example of the racist majorities you made really reminded me of an anti-act-consequentialist argument made by Tom Regan that really cemented my non-utilitarianism. He gave a real life example where some children tortured another child and derived satisfaction from it. Then, he simply asks, are we really supposed to consider their satisfaction as important in evaluating the deed? Are we to suppose if his suffering was outweighed by their joint pleasure that it was okay? Intuitively their sadistic pleasures do not figure into our consideration and we do not need to calculate pluses against minuses to know it’s wrong. Tom Regan video: kzbin.info/www/bejne/l3atc6NjfL2gp6M

[@harryevans4513]

I think one caveat in the example is about how do you fundamentally ground pleasure. In this case, if it's not a fundamental pleasure to cause harm to another sentient being, then you could still continue with a utilitarian framework and the children aren't getting pleasure from the act while the one child is suffering pain.

[@harryevans4513]

Then the issue is to have the knowledge of what pleasure and pain are in a universal sense.

[@Skylark725]

@@harryevans4513 According to utilitarians there are single universal properties of ‘being in pain’ or ‘having pleasure’. Of course there’s a metaphysical question of how you define that and what the predicative intension of ‘pleasure’ is and what it’s underlying nature is. However, it seems highly contentious to say those kids aren’t experiencing pleasure. If you want to say it’s not valuable pleasure by appealing to Mill’s idea of competent judges and higher-lower pleasure distinctions that’s fine but does appear to be ad hoc and seems to abandon pure utilitarianism as there has to be some underlying property that isn’t pleasure which regulates this distinction between valuable and non-valuable pleasures if it isn’t just subjective.

[@Skylark725]

@@harryevans4513 A better solution is to be a non-hedonic consequentialist as the empirical psychological literature has rendered implausible the idea that humans only fundamentally value pleasurable stimuli. You can be a sort of quasi-utilitarian and appeal to a looser idea of happiness that isn’t a simple sensory experience. Alternatively, there are indirect forms of consequentialism like rule consequentialism and dispositionalism.

[@Skylark725]

@@harryevans4513 I agree this is often overlooked. I think we would approach it linguistically. For natural kind terms like ‘water’ which is synonymous with ‘H20’ we have an operational definition. What fixes the meaning of ‘water’ is whatever underlying property instantiates the phenomenal properties found in samples of what we would call water such as transparency, wetness, liquidity etc. Likewise, the property that grounds the meaning of ‘pain’ is whatever underlying nature property is grounding our operational identifiers.

[@rollingr0ck]

I can't help but feel that many of your critiques presuppose the necessity of an objective standard in order for something to be valid. If a utilitarian was of the thought that everything outside their mind could not be either objective or known for certain, why would they accept many of these critiques as meaningful?

[@neoepicurean3772]

Is this basically what Alasdair MacIntyre is trying to get across?

[@PerspectivePhilosophy]

Yes with a Hegelian twist

[@dissatisfiedphilosophy]

@@PerspectivePhilosophy i just wrote a paper for a class abt taking Macintyre’s work with Hegel’s thoughts on the state! Great minds think alike

[@MagicBrianTricks]

Your critique is the difficulty in identifying the most morally good action, not the morally good action itself.

[@PerspectivePhilosophy]

Not at all. If you watch to the end I point out that consequentialism is itself reliant a different conception of value.

[@kraanfloris]

I have a video suggestion. Can you do a video about how your concept of God intersects with animal rights and veganism? For instance, how will you respond to the problem of animal suffering / of evil? Is the case for animal rights stronger or less strong given the existence of God? Love your videos, I learned a lot

[@PerspectivePhilosophy]

100% I am discussing that very topic with another creator soon

[@kraanfloris]

@@PerspectivePhilosophy Awesome!

[@foodsupply5071]

It feels like the criticism on why we should value universal pain over our own pain is pretty much a criticism for any moral theory People are opportunists and I haven’t seen any explanation ever on what reason would be able to prevent someone from saying „well I don’t care about right and wrong so I am just going to do what I want“

[@benjaminscott-warren776]

The reason to universalise value is because it is irrational to arbitrarily prioritise one’s own subjectivity. In, ‘I deserve to have the chocolate bar because I am me and you are not me’, there is no objective grounding for the judgement and so it is irrational. Problem is utilitarians can’t make this argument because it puts moral grounding in the rational process of ethics and not in the consequences.

[@foodsupply5071]

@@benjaminscott-warren776 I don’t disagree that this is a problem with utilitarianism but I don’t see a better alternative and I personally would like some constructive videos instead of only criticism. Because in the end you have maybe convinced people that utilitarianism is wrong but you haven’t given an alternative. In the end you only have the option to hold onto what you know or sink into despair because you don’t know what to believe anymore

[@coolbanana165]

Has he done a video on his source of morality?

[@Z-e-a-l]

I can't put my finger on it but there are holes in the logic he presents... Tho i gotta give some slack cus no one is perfect. We are all still learning at the end of the day... Till the end of our days...

[@mariaangelova8275]

So cool! Didn't know about this brilliant thing -- nice!

[@Pitts_not_Pitty]

Just read Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, that outlines how pure utilitarian thinking can lead to monstrous actions!!

[@dissatisfiedphilosophy]

all throughout this video you are presupposing personhood as a persisting existent concept. Can you cash this out? It seems that without personhood being cashed out, you are just speaking about incoherent notions of “I.”

[@korpen2858]

Isn't politics intrinsically utilitarian just with rules like "don't hurt people" put on top?

[@PerspectivePhilosophy]

Absolutely not. If you watch the end it outlines why, the practices and institutions of our society determine our conception of success at least partly. So to presuppose a good is impossible since its created and evaluated by the act of being political.

[@morocotopo3905]

I would also add the psychoanalytic problem of jouissance: why does the subject find pleasure in pain? Why do we, for instance, constantly get stuck in toxic relationships?, Etc, (animal flesh, alcohol, drugs, etc). I don't think utilitarianism can give a satisfactory and not patronising answer to this. I find your alignment of utilitarianism with individualism and the modern subject spot on, very interesting.

[@HomingAsatoMass]

Why would utilitarianism have to give a satisfactory answer to why people get stuck in toxic relationships? It's about how people ought to act, not an explanation of why they are currently acting a certain way.

[@rob12231]

Utilitarianism and its modern "adherents" remind me of those who refer to themselves as "effective altruists"- it sounds good in theory (naturally) but hasn't really been thought through or properly/critically analyzed. In general, we should probably try and avoid identifying with any single theory (especially closed ones), a notion which seems to me antiquated.

[@jamesthomas5025]

Preference Utilitarianism

[@highroller-jq3ix]

You need to study some psychology. Most of your "revelations" about selfhood and identity have been obvious to quality thinkers for a long time. Of course the individual is in ongoing negotiation between internal psychological (to include imagining "religious" experience) states and external factors, to include socialization.

[@thegoat-ishere4414]

I can say proudly I went vegan because of this guy

[@MrCastleJohnny]

are you jay dyer?

[@stanimirvelinov2472]

Im in the philosophy of EVIL Why? Because it has no moral theory, no pilosofy theory, no rules,no reason, only mindless fun and "do wath ever the FUCK i want" thipe of atitude, wich i respect. :)

[@gamefreak23788]

Despite all of your criticisms, I still think utilitarianism is the best moral framework. People's happiness seems to be the most important thing to consider when acting.

[@nixpix814]

Why do I hear so many socialists defending consequentialism? Shouldnt socialism be more on the deontological side?

[@Veegan4theanimals]

💚🌱✌🏻🙏🏻

[@PanicGW]

Now do everything wrong with deontology.

[@killerskiely100]

Vaush self identifying as Utilitarian is funny, not surprising it's the same as Destiny's more than likely it's the first moral system he heard about from his Irish laddie days and held onto it since then.

[@sigigle]

Vaush just uses it to try and justify his bad faith. He literally said he thinks its ok to lie if he thinks it serves his cause. Destiny went through a phase of philosophy and then gave up.

[@AnarchoTak]

vaush copied like 95% of all of destiny's positions. he was a orbitor.

[@SeraphimVolker]

Utilitarianism sounds like Communism but "moral."

[@highroller-jq3ix]

Yes, we should turn to Aristotle, the misogynist elitist, for our definitions and measures of equality.

[@highroller-jq3ix]

If only those utilitarians had a handy holy spirit to provide them something more than intuitions--maybe even a virgin pregnancy.