Utilitarianism Lecture (Thorough)

[@SvetlanaMinina]

About this "experience machine". I never saw it as a good criticism of utilitarianism. Utilitarianism is about happiness of the greatest number,not just yourself. If there were a machine,that maximizes happiness not only for me,but to many other people, I'd choose the machine without hesitation.

[@mattlogic9647]

maximizes does not mean people will be happy, it means people will be the happiest they can be while also making others as happy as they can be. in other words everyone will be in poverty because there isnt enough money when evenly distributed.

[@brucecrow1142]

Superb overview of utilitarianism - was looking for some background to supplement a course I'm taking in public health ethics. Heard mention of the San Marcos River which is in my neighborhood - a little detective work found video made by Professor Paul Stearns at Blinn College, Brenham, Texas - lucky students to have such coherent lectures!

[@sirsimplexton3151]

I would suggest that the reason some of these utilitarian scenarios seem wrong to us intuitively is because that's not how we think, even if we had a perfect understanding of the full, long-term consequences of a scenario and knew for sure that killing someone was for the greater good. We're not so impartial to think of human beings as statistics (unless we're giving orders from an isolated place that really detaches ourselves from the people we affect) and we're not programmed to kill without being under a perceived threat. I'd suggest that we're "altruistic egoists" with a hard-coded directive to favor not only "self" in that equation, but a notion of "us" (varies from person-to-person, but usually includes family and children by default). The egoist has an "us" mentality built in there with the notion of "us" often broadening with social conditioning. For example, the default stance of a mother is to favor her child and exhibit altruistic behaviors towards her child, but the mother may come to favor someone who is kind to her child and include that person in her "us" group. The tricky part, then, is why should someone care about people who aren't in the "us" group? And they might not so much if feeding on xenophobia or fear, but in a neutral thought experiment like this where we know very little of the people involved to feed our bias, we have a tendency to project our moral values onto others and put ourselves in that scenario. So just as we find it wrong for ourselves or anyone else within that "us" group to kill someone to save some lives, we find it wrong for others to do so. We tend to judge people based on our own standards. And we tend to take on a consequentialist type of thinking if we have a lot of data that we think would have allowed us to understand the potential circumstances better than someone who acted foolishly leading to undesirable consequences. We tend to judge ourselves by intent and others more by consequences unless we were both equally lacking information, and that is rarely the case since the observer, looking in hindsight, will generally always have more information than the subject. A lot of this is based on conjecture but I think that's how our minds work.

[@No_Avail]

Great videos. I was surprised that _Preference_ _Utilitarianism_ wasn't brought up during the Peeping Tom bit. I've always found axiological modifications of this sort (i.e. favoring preferentism over hedonism for human beings) to make for the strongest responses to the non-consequentialist's "Just Plain Wrong" cases where no one is experientially harmed. Of course, this is assuming the average person's dispreference for being spied on always or nearly always outweighs the preference to spy on others. I believe it does. *Edit*: I see now that at the 29:15 mark you do mention Preference Utilitarianism.

[@nonjabulophakathi1886]

Can you please make the example of pulling a lever clear for me for a better understanding

[@occultninja4]

I notice a good bit of the criticisms boil down to whether or not Utilitarianism predicts and values Human Rights, as the criticisms bring up situations where a person's rights are being violated or disregarded in some way I'm the interest of some greater (perceived) good. The root response I feel is to just show that these rights have utilitarian value, can be scientifically shown to be necessary and proper to exist and never be violated, and thus, should always end up dominating moral decisions when they come up. Happiness is the highest goal. Happiness for everyone is what we strive for. Having unaliable rights is pertinent to happiness for everyone. If some person or group is deprived of their unaliable rights, happiness is not at it's maximum and problems, fractures in society and conflicts will arise, because everyone values their rights and aught to, and they are incentivized to fight for those rights. The best case against this is for situations where you would argue that someone has no rights or their rights don't matter, in other words, an enemy or non-human, OR, a robot or AI. For an enemy, being respectful in conflict and war is beneficial to all. That I believe can be shown to be true. For an A.I. that's a can of worms all it's own xD But basically, human rights should have universal utilitarian value that can never be outweighed outside of instance where our 'sense of judgement' would do the same. Compromising the human rights of any person will always lead to more problems than solutions because one of the things everyone values is the universal possession of unaliable human rights by all persons. The question isn't whether or not Utilitarianism will value a person, the question is, what would Utilitarianism or the questioner define as a 'person' who falls under the rule 'all person's have unaliable rights that can never be violated lest dire consequences ensue.'

[@jhing4181]

Thank you for this very informative and comprehensive video

[@JonathanB00K3R]

I know I've been asking you to do a lot of different things lately. But could you do a video on W.D Ross and his ethical theory? Thanks :)

[@JonathanB00K3R]

I have been studying, not only Utilitarianism, but many of Mill's other essays and was always intrigued with how Mill brought to my attention that our internal subjective feeling, or sanction, is one of the few "binding forces" or "forces of obligations" for almost any ethical system. Furthermore I was listening to a conversation between Sam Harris and a psychologist at Yale, and they came to the conclusion that its better for people to feel a Buddhist type of compassion, rather than empathy, because empathy causes suffering in the person experiencing it. Yoda would agree as well since pain leads to suffering, and suffering, leads to hate, hate, leads to the dark side. Bhhuahahah

[@teachphilosophy]

lol, good insights and good to hear from you again. :) I recently read (maybe in the marshmallow test book) how empathy can paralyze and make people miserable... prefrontal cortex-mediated empathy/compassion is needed ... anyway, Yoda understands.

[@Aliens-Are-Our-Friends2027]

1. You are already happy aka content 2. Pleasure is not happiness

[@scarpaz]

Great review! Thanks for making this video.

[@MUhammadRizwan-cq8ht]

excellent description about the topic.

[@matteo-ciaramitaro]

Peeping Tom example, can we invoke that the Epicurean idea that subject thinks this is what will make them happiest, but really it's making them less happy, they only think it's making them happy. or is that incompatible with the framework

[@TheLoveMonkey]

I would like other's opinions on a moral dilemma. A chronically lonely, socially challenged man lives in an egalitarian intentional community of about 50 people. This man develops an intimate relationship with someone who is not a member of his community. The relationship partner applies for membership in this community to be closer to the male partner. Community legislation says that if at least four full members of that community don't want a provisional member to become a full member, they can block it. Is it moral under utilitarianism for members who are not chronically lonely or socially challenged and also have intimate partners as members of that community, but also don't like the provisional member, to block her from becoming a member? Does the legislation promote or hinder happiness since it doesn't consider the interests of the majority of members? I see this as the lesser of two bad outcomes. While not blocking her membership is good for the lonely man it is bad for at least four people. And blocking her membership is bad for the lonely man. I think the degree of pain of each individual, including the provisional member, should be taken into consideration as well as the level of pre- and post-decision happiness of everyone involved.

[@mariosterleng8485]

Hi, nice video,learning a lot. I'm doing a business ethics course, can you recommend a book that states the author,dateand page number on what is utilitarianism.

[@zeke5793]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't a true follower of utilitarianism deny that each human is equal. I mean that someone who saves lives is objectively worth more than a serial killer. Otherwise, the logic of the person would be inconsistent

[@cameronchristensen6413]

at base level theyre equal

[@DenizzDogan]

Thank you! This is very helpful!

[@arturaskarpicius5926]

Thank you for this video! Amazing preparation for exam! :)

[@zeke5793]

What’s intrinsically valuable about rights though? Doesn’t it all boil down to positive and negative utility in the end?

[@babysharkdoodoodoo454]

Thank you

[@kenshikenji]

Please consider my new branch of utilitarianism called evolutionary utilitarianism (evo-utilitsrianism) where we should only care about the utility of the evolutionary perfect entity

[@faisalmadani5242]

Pleasure and fullfilling desires although they are part of being human they rather the animal parts we as humans have evolved beyond animals and their capablitues and chartaristics for that being a full and complete animal means to grow reproduce move and percieve and deficiency in any of those will make this animal less and not complete. But humans although they should have these qualities they have 2 more which are reson and language so a human a full and complete human should rrason and use language thus ppl should aspire to things beyond material short term happinees to things of higher qualities like practicing logic or miditating.

[@faisalmadani5242]

Ulitartasim may work in isolated or poor devoloping small scale socuety in times of neccety and necety only

[@benjamingurevitch4097]

Theres no reason not to kill the teenager for their organs