Utilitarianism is flawed

Utilitarianism for the betterment of societyBefore I address my opponent’s rebuttals I shall reinforce my position that Utilitarianism would be the best system for the betterment of society, since I share burden of proof.Happiness: a mix of pleasure, contentedness, joy and absence of painHappiness is an excellent measure for the betterment of society because while we all have individual preferences, most if not all people seek happiness.- Progress and technological innovations are created to satisfy needs and growing demands which make people content.- Security and safety to reduce pain.- Entertainment to bring joy- Justice and fairness to prevent unhappiness.These are generally, all things that we would consider to improve society.Utilitarianism aims to maximize happiness in a practical reasoned approach, by balancing cost and benefit to the best possible effect regardless of personal biases of morality or any ideology.A utilitarian for example would not pursue justice for justice’s own sake rather we pursue justice because of its positive effects. Logic and reason has always proven to be the best approach to resolving any situation involving decision making. Fallacies I apologize if my opponent felt I strawmanned his point but given that he gave the example that torture for fun could be utilitarian, I had difficulty on my part conceiving such a situation, given society’s abhorrence of torture using it for petty reasons would result in much anger and unhappiness so the example had to be extreme enough to justify it and that scenario was frankly the best I could come up with, also I didn’t consider motive to be a factor since at the time my concern was to make it a utilitarian scenario not one of motivism though after our discussion on comments I guess its clear now that both are not necessarily mutually exclusive. But since we’re pointing out fallacies now I guess I should point out that my opponent's arguments has also invoked a fallacy twice now, which I overlooked the first time since it might've been just coincidence, in his first example he propped up a baby which yes I changed to child in an attempt dampen the fallacy rather than just negate it, which I think was quite fair of me, but even his new analogy still uses the same fallacy using a little girl this time who instead of tortured is now horribly mutilated.... and raped... before being killed... as if that wasn't enough. This is a clear use of the “appeal to emotion fallacy” Appeals to emotion are intended to draw visceral feelings from the acquirer of the information [1] Harm to children and more so to babies tend to illicit strong emotions in people because they are helpless and we are inclined to protect them, thus by using a baby and in the second example a “little girl” my opponent attempted to draw out our natural bias to make my position look worse for justifying it. Let us be fair here, children or not when we look at it rationally and without bias, the value of one life is no different from that of any other average person, at what age does ones life begin to lose value? Possibly when you’re over 60 but even that is arguable. So child or not, the life of one will never outweigh the lives of many from a utilitarian perspective, even if its a little girl. The problem of non-responsibility In a turn of irony I now contend that my opponent is invoking a straw man argument here. The purpose and argument for utilitarianism is to promote rational thinking and analysis of a situation rather than emotional, moral or religious dogma, as a superior approach to maximizing happiness, by seeking to balance cause and effect to achieve the best possible outcome. Yet my opponent exaggerates his interpretation of utilitarianism to beyond reason by suggesting that any single possible factor that influenced the outcome no matter how indirectly would be accountable, essentially tantamount to chaos theory’s butterfly effect. we could just change the story to that a piece of dirt fell from a tree into your friends ice-cream causing him to not be able to eat it. That way only your actions lead to the negative consequence and no one else's (unless we want to start accusing the man who planted the tree there and that certainly would be a prospect). By this statement even if it was just included offhandedly, admits that the logic of his own argument entertains that even a man who planted the tree years prior would be a “prospect”, which used in this context means potential candidate for accountability. Happiness in this life or the afterlife I don’t acknowledge the limitless happiness of the afterlife as it has no bearing on this world I merely understand that that’s what these people aim for, and having once been a Christian myself the mere belief that you are going to heaven for being good gives you a sense of satisfaction and security in life, regardless of wether or not it is true. As for the Monks I will admit it’s merely my opinion and I while I would contend that I do have grounds given its human nature to seek satisfaction, its not strong argument but then again neither is the assumption that they don’t want to be happy, its hard to argue what’s in other peoples heads. Self-ownership objection I had thought that I made my position quite clear that in utilitarianism sacrifices can be deemed necessary for the greater good in the torture analogy, I merely pointed out that the resulting unhappiness must also be taken into consideration, as to avoid misinterpretation by putting things in proper perspective. One individual’s “right to live” in certain situations can indeed be sacrificed for the “right to live” of the many, but such a thing cannot be implemented liberally lest it result in a society of fear where everyone has the feeling of expendability to an extent that leads to mass discontent. If the situation and needs of society demands it, voluntary sacrifice would be preferred since it has less societal repercussions and in fact we already promote this behavior by recognizing heroic sacrifices and martyrdom. Forcibly sacrificing someone for the many is a last resort option. Motivism VS Utilitarianism After our brief exchange in the comments I believe I now understand my opponents position, and so will attempt again to compare motivist views to utilitarian Let’s go with a simple analogy. In a position of two options A) Save a single life B) Save 100 lives Utilitarianism would only justify option B. My opponent would also pick B because he is has the insight to prioritize the greatest good, which is also happens to be a utilitarian objective but since he was motivated by the greatest good its also consistent with Motivism. So clearly we can both come to the same conclusion justified by both Utilitarianism and Motivism for the best outcome. However Utilitarianism can only go with option B by default, because the primary concern is the best results, there is no other justifiable option, a Utilitarian cannot pick A and justify it Motivism on the other hand is not restricted to that standard, it is concerned by intentions, and therefore can also justify picking the worse option A. To demonstrate this weakness let's say the one person was a friend just to make it more believable choice. If a Motivist picked option A because he wanted to save his friend, that would be justified by Motivism, wanting to save a life is a good intent, he may have not saved the 100 lives but he didn’t intend to kill them either so he had no bad intentions, so a Motivist in this situation can justifiably make the worse choice while a Utilitarian cannot, regardless of emotional biases it would be un-utilitarian to pick one person over the many. This is a logical construct based on both philosophies I would enforce with this logic that Utilitarianism is therefore superior to Motivism, for the betterment of society because it holds itself firmly to a results based standard, whereas Motivism is based on intentions. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org...