Consequentialism is the most justifiable ethical theory.

YaleMM thank you for your response. //Utility Monster (I've always preferred monster to vampire.) This seems to be the strategy of attacks against utilitarianism. Frequently people go to great extent to find a thought experiment that is not only highly unlikely (in a probability way) but also impossible for the earth we live on. Realistically there aren't any utility monsters and the existence of one is almost logically impossible. Imagine say a 20 year old. If he fed himself to the utility monster then the opportunity cost would be so large it would be impossible for the monster to be more happy. A 20 year old has somewhere around 60 years of utility ahead of him. It would be virtually impossible for even a "monster" to get that much happiness from one meal. So not only does this monster not exist, but if he did, he would have diminishing marginal utility like everyone else does. This means that an overloading of someone utility will never maximize the existence of utility because an individual's utility graph is logarithmic. Furthermore, if you don't like the last response, then it could be said that in this crazy situation it might be right to feed ourselves to the monster. I'll admit that intuitively it seems wrong but we can't really answer that question since we do not live in that type of world. Also, I have made arguments before that utility gained from the direct disutility of others may, in a utilitarian society, be disregarded. The idea functions similar to something like John Locke's ideas of forfeiture. We do not necessarily have to respect the utility of those who get their utility from the disutility of others because there desires are counterproductive and malicious. There are several reasons for this that may root from effects but I don't think it's necessary to analyze them at this point. //Repugnant Conclusion I don't see why it does imply this situation. In your last example you were telling me that we would have less people. Here you're telling me that we would have more people. It has never been proven to me that utilitarianism would ask for a maximal number of people. If anything you could take the same logic and turn it the other way around. We should have a minimum number of people so that everyone can bask in an abundance of resources so as to maximize utility and minimize pain. Just for a quick numbers game I'll show you that more people is not intrinsically good even on a planet where everyone had a positive utility. World: 10 people all with 10 units of happiness. Making 100 units. World After Population Boost Policy X: 99 people with 1 unit of happiness. Making 99 units. Now I know that this is terribly simplified and kind of trivial but the point is to show that more people are not necessarily good. I'd argue that it is impossible to know if any kind of population manipulation could help the total utility, so for this reason we should remain with a free market in regards to population Overall: Both of these arguments have based themselves off of intuitive assumptions that have not been proven and are not necessarily shared by all. I think any kind of disproof of the desirability of these two situations would in itself prove why a utilitarian wouldn't support it. I know its kind of cheap but thats why I say consequentialism is the easiest ethical theory to justify. So, the main point is that, if you were to disprove the morality of these 2 situations then it would almost certainly rest on the undesirability of the outcome. Which if you actually prove that the outcome is not desirable then you have justified why a consequentialist would not support your thought experiments. It's a win-win for a consequentialist. It's almost true by definition. As for the rest: I mistakenly did not clarify that I use ethics and morality interchangeably but I will try to acknowledge your differentiation. Here you have framed me with something I, and most consequentialist do not believe. It is no secret that it would be a shady world if you left moral decisions entirely in the hands of the people. Obviously it would not be acceptable or desirable (by all standards) to give people the right to do anything as long as it was in the name of utility. Specifically for the reasons you have given. It is not acceptable for a standard individual to consider the utility of others and make rash solo decisions. Because of this ANY utilitarian society would address this problem by most likely creating a set of rules. (This is why I think rule and act utilitarian societies converge.) These rules would not be arbitrary or based of the fallible intuition of the select few, but rather off of the assumption that the set of rules that maximizes utility would be the best system. This could be measured in a fairly objective sense. The goals of ethics should be to support a maximally successful economy (keeping in mind diminishing marginal utility) with minimal infringements on the functions of life that people enjoy. But it is specifically for the reasons that you've stated, that a utilitarian society would have a set of rules and not allow each individual to handle complex decisions on his own. The way I see it, this part of our argument could easily be viewed as discourse between 2 utilitarians on what a utilitarian society should look like. For this reason I think rights are not "exceptions" but rather tools for the maximization of utility. Finally: I'm a little unsure about the intricacies of your last paragraph so if I bastardize it, please forgive me. Remember, arguments against the difficulties of deciding what utility is in a practical sense is not necessarily an argument against the philosophy's truth, but rather it's practicality. But if these difficulties exist, then utilitarianism would merely support whatever system produced a successful society. Also, I think utilitarianism can be as relativistic as what you are saying. Of course different people prefer different things and therefore utilitarian societies that encompass different people will almost always differ in appearance. However, the basic goals will be the same for all. My arguments were mainly against those (if there are any) that say that the morality of something is based upon what most people think is moral and of course I used the clichï¿½ example of slavery. The reason for this is that most people thought that slavery was moral.