Utilitarianism is the ethical notion where the most ethical action is the one that brings about the greatest good for the greatest number. This is problematic.
John is a lonely man with no dependants and no friends. John does not want to be eaten. Fred, Boris and Carl decide it would be of benefit to eat John against his wishes.
Moral? I don't think so. (For pedants who want to point out the cannibalism is quite unhealthy, assume John is a dog; utilitarianism can consider animals other than humans.)
Another hypothetical example is brought up in "
The Castle" where the needs of many airline commuters are put before the well-being of Kerrigans, who are the smaller number.
Instead of the Bill Gates foundation, we could have the Eat-Bill-Gates-and-share-all-off-his-money-instead-of-just-a-fraction Foundation. The problem has a solution; negative utilitarianism; immoral acts are those that cause the most harm.
Taking away the Kerrigan's house may cause the greatest good but it also does the greatest harm. If you have negative utilitarianism as a pre-condition of utilitarianism, you filter out the taking of the Kerrigan's home.
"What about altruism?" I hear you ask. Not helping the poor is not immoral within negative utilitarianism because not helping is not an act (nor is any refusal to do something - such as help someone off of a cliff.) After negative utilitarianism, the "moral transaction" drops through to ordinary utilitarianism and helping the poor and saving people from falling to there deaths are deemed moral.
Then there is the pinprick argument which is an argument levelled at negative utilitarianism. The argument at it's most basic goes that by virtue of the number of future generations, the greatest volume of suffering for humanity is yet to come, and that a pinprick for each future living being outweighs the suffering that would be caused if the world was put to death. Hence negative utilitarianism mandates the execution of all life on earth.
There is a problem with this criticism. If one uses negative utilitarianism only to preclude immoral acts and ordinary utilitarianism to promote altruistic acts of morality, there is nothing to mandate killing the world. Negative utilitarianism in this way precludes, it does not mandate.
Strawman arguments (by way of generalism) of this duo of negative and positive utilitarianism exist where supposedly negative utilitarianism is only given preference over positive utilitarianism on the basis of the truthiness of a greater moral urgency in causing harm. Don't believe me?
"Nonetheless, it's unclear how the intellectual coherence of NU can be restored. Less austere versions of NU are all messy. Weakened variants of the principle may capture our intuition that getting rid of a certain amount of suffering has more moral urgency than adding a "corresponding" amount of happiness without discounting the moral value of happiness altogether. This sounds more plausible. However, hybrid ethical systems that give weighted priority to the relief of suffering over the promotion of happiness no longer embody pure NU.
(
DP, "Utilitarianism" aka "
BLTC", 2005)
The notion of filtering the deductive outcomes of inductive arguments is nothing new. Note the similarity of these two arguments.
If x is supported by positive utilitarianism (inductive), but is contradicted by negative utilitarianism (deductive) then the moral status of x is false. If y theorem is confirmed by observation (inductive), but is contradicted by experimentation (deductive) then the truth state of y is false. The former describes negative utilitarianism and the latter science. In both instances, the deductive element applies universally (as per skepticism) and can negate the truth state reguardless of the quality of (or even non-existence) of the inductive observation.
Not at all "messy" (unless you find logic difficult which is no fault of the theory) and not a ring of truthiness nor twee to it. It's simply applied reasoning. While some may appeal to the moral imperative, I don't and nor do a number of other utilitarians I know of. At least for myself if not many others, DP's account of other's views of utilitarianism is in no way accurate (nor I suspect made in good faith).
Now last time I checked, but criticising people for the appeal to emotion that is a call to "moral urgency" (even when actually true) is a tad hypocritical when one uses terms like "less austere" and "no longer embody pure..." Who said that the theory had to meet DP's criteria for purity anyway?
The fact that the application of deductive reasoning to inductive observations is in line with sound reasoning and the fact that the likes of "John cannibalism" don't occur under this model demonstrates it's merit. Its "purity" is irrelevant.
