Utilitarianism Is Good

Objectivity: Con challenges me to prove that utilitarianism is "objectively good." I don't even know what that means. "Objective" is a slippery word often used for equivocation. I didn't undertake to prove anything about objectivity. I see no difference between "good" and "objective good." My point as a utilitarian is that morality based on promoting happiness at least gets you happiness. That's not a bad thing. Is/Ought Con asks me to show how I break the is/ought barrier. Can't do that. Nobody can do that. I never offered to do that. Other moral systems don't do that, so utilitarianism doesn't suffer by comparison. On the other hand, since we're talking about morality, we're already on the ought side of the barrier. We're deciding how to be good, given that we already want to. If you don't want to be good, morality doesn't interest you. Sociopaths need not apply. Of the moral systems available to those who already want to be good, utilitarianism is a nice workable system with appealing results. As I pointed out in my first post, the appeal of other systems is often an implicit reliance on utilitarianism. Who would espouse, say, virtue ethics without believing that it promotes happiness? Ethics vs. Metaethics If we were discussing ethics (as opposed to metaethics) we'd lay out our starting axioms, and then we'd work out the implications. And maybe we wouldn't even care whether those implications were appealing. Our discussion would be about logic, about things like, "Is this calculation right?" But this discussion is about metaethics, about comparing one system of ethics to others. The appeal is to esthetics, not logic. So we ask things like, "Do you like happiness better than obeying orders?" The issue is taste. Consider comparing tacos to tripe. The discussion consists of, "Look at this. Mmm. The aroma, delightful! Notice the mouth texture. Ah." There's no, "You should prefer tripe or you're making a logical mistake." So, now, look at utilitarianism. It's about making people happy. Do we like happiness? Mmm, delicious! If Con had wanted to have us savor another system for contrast, he could have put up, say, tormenting people forever in Hellfire. "Does that smell good, or what?" Ugh. Prefer happiness. Consequentialism Con says consequentialists would approve attempted murder that saves lives, and condemn attempted life-saving that costs lives. I know little of consequentialism, but, to the extent that Con's description of consequentialism is fair and accurate, I reject it. Intentions are important. Trying to hurt people is bad; trying to help them is good. I don't see how consequentialism would serve as a guide to conduct. "Go and try to either help or hurt that person, depending on which will turn out to have the better result." Weird. I'm not defending that. My utilitarianism is about intentions, about trying to help, about trying to make people happy. Parade of the Horribles Con says that if we adopt utilitarianism and try to make people happy, we will overpopulate; give up our freedom (what Con calls "free will"); give away all our money so we're penniless and miserable; snatch organs from random strangers; encourage psychopaths; humiliate people for our own amusement; abandon justice; and, once we're done gang raping our dates, screw corpses. He has interesting ideas about what causes happiness. To utilitarians, those seem like bad things. They would make people unhappy, so we're against them. Utilitarianism is the morality we want. Smell the happiness, mmm. Incidentally, Con agrees with me that those things are bad. But he hasn't offered any other test of badness. What's bad about them aside from the fact that they cause unhappiness? Con is implicitly trusting you to condemn organ snatching, date rape, and so on. But on what grounds would you do so aside from the fact that they make people unhappy? Con is implicitly trusting your utilitarian instincts. 1. Inconsistency critique Con says utilitarianism has conflicting outcomes. But other systems share that problem. Christianity, for instance, has you turn the other cheek one minute, and stone your children to death the next. If I worked thru Con's example situations, he could just offer more, so working individual problems isn't what's wanted here. Let's have an analogy: Economists are for prosperity. But some economists want to raise taxes to reach that goal, and others want to lower them. Some want more spending, others want less. So the science of economics has all sorts of "inconsistencies." That doesn't make economics bad. But, despite the conflicts in execution, it's good to agree on the goal. You wouldn't want someone in charge of the Federal Reserve Bank if he was against prosperity, and you wouldn't want someone promoting morality with the goal of decreasing happiness. The goal is important. It's the first thing to get right. As the goal of economics should be prosperity, so the goal of morality should be happiness. Else, what would be the point of either? Conclusion Utilitarianism is cool. It is a simple workable moral goal, that everybody except sociopaths can get behind. And sociopaths aren't in the morality game anyway. To the extent that other moral systems conflict with utilitarianism (to the extent that they have unhappiness as a goal) they are bad systems. To the extent that they have no conflict with utilitarianism and incidentally increase happiness, they may be cool. Con hasn't offered a competing moral system for utilitarianism to be compared to. (And this is the last round, so it's too late for him to do so now; I wouldn't be able to respond. Any argument he introduces in this round should be ignored.) So my job isn't to show that utilitarianism is better than some other system. Rather, I just have to show that it has some goodness: the resolution is, "Utilitarianism is good." And I've shown that it is good. As long as we're pursuing the utilitarian goal of happiness, we aren't pursuing unhappiness. Pursuing happiness tends to increase happiness, which all but the unbalanced among us agree is a good thing. Criticisms of utilitarianism tend to take the familiar form of inventing some unhappy situation and trying to blame it on utilitarian principles. Such criticisms are self-defeating because they implicitly rely on our utilitarian instincts. Without those instincts, we wouldn't recognize the badness of the described situations. For instance, gang raping your date is bad because it makes people unhappy. Injustice is bad because it makes people unhappy. Necrophilia is bad because … Hmm. Well, consorting with cadavers does upset the relatives. To the extent that the excuse is that nobody will ever know you carried on with carrion, that rationalization relies on act utilitarianism, which I have disavowed. As a rule utilitarian, I say doing the dead is bad for this reason: If lots of people did it, then some of them would get caught, and net happiness would decrease. (Hmm, I disdain Kant, but that sounded almost Kantian.) Rule utilitarianism, therefore, forbids diddling the departed in any culture where that tends to give offense. (And if our society quits taking offense, well, then, buy condom futures.) So, anyway, utilitarianism is good. It's better than wishing people you don't like into Hellfire. It's better than wanting to take orders from the state. It has no downside that I know of, and it tends to make the world happier. That's a good thing. Vote Pro! Notes and asides: Remember not to vote us points for sources. We have agreed not to count points for sources. The rules of this debate forbid voting points for sources. No Points for Sources. Thanks to DarkVoid for agreeing to this debate, and for the sterling performance he's putting in. He's already my favorite debate partner.