The zero-point of utilitarianism

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DistractedDodo
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Re: The zero-point of utilitarianism

Post by DistractedDodo »

Thank you for your thoughts!
Scott wrote: February 18th, 2021, 12:55 am The question raises a common issue with utilitarianism. By seeking to quantify everything into a one-dimensional scale of utility, a utilitarian seems to run into a problem with the conversation rate between the generally assumed 'badness' of death with the generally assumed badness of 'pain'. For instance, utilitarian math works when one says that two deaths are doubly worse than one, or half the pain is preferable to twice the pain. Then it's simple math. But converting the negative utility of pain to death units, or vice versa, presents a problem for a utilitarian.
That is for sure an interesting issue, and it ties into another statement of yours which I'll take the liberty of quoting:
Scott wrote: January 23rd, 2021, 9:37 pm You can’t save any human from death ever; we are all going to die very soon. The best you can do is postpone a human's death for a little bit.
I do believe there's a remedy for this, though -- at least in theory. Assume the value of an individual living for a given period is the amount of happiness experienced over that period, minus the amount of discomfort (or whichever other calculation with whichever parameters we want to admit into our utilitarianism) -- and that the value of being dead for any amount of time is zero, since the dead presumably have no consciousness. The "badness" of that person dying at time x rather than time y isn't a simple 1 for 1 death, but rather the amount of happiness-minus-discomfort in the interval from x to y because that value is then lost/nullified. As such, "saving" a life is really just permitting a potential non-zero value for the duration from the time of the saving until whichever other death finds the saved individual, presumably performed in the hope that said non-zero value is positive. This turns the two parameters into a single integral, analogous to the measure of disability-adjusted life years (DALYs). Applying it to a trolley problem with a fat man and five people on the track, we must first make the assumption that all six individuals are likely to experience similar quantities of happiness and discomfort for the remainder of their respective lives if saved; otherwise we get into specifics of who is more worthy of saving. Then, it makes sense to push the fat man onto the tracks simply because the value "lost" is a fifth of the alternative and thus preferable (by a large margin).
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DistractedDodo
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Re: The zero-point of utilitarianism

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Scott wrote: February 18th, 2021, 12:55 am
DistractedDodo wrote: February 2nd, 2021, 2:15 pm If we start with a set of axioms (e.g. pleasure is good, pain is bad) and arrive, though logical reasoning, at some counter-intuitive conclusion, does that justify a change to the axioms themselves?
Yes, at least it can. As you probably already know, it's called a reductio ad absurdum.
Not quite! For reductio ad absurdum to apply, you'd have to show that the counter-intuitive theorem isn't just counter-intuitive but contradicts the set of axioms in our system -- and arbitrarily promoting intuitions to axioms would make them an ad hoc hypotheses.
Scott wrote: February 18th, 2021, 12:55 am Presumably, if a valid logical argument has a counterintuitive conclusion, one would choose to therefore consider it evidence against the axioms rather than evidence for the conclusion to the degree the negation of the axioms (as a set) is less counterintuitive than the assertion of the conclusion.
Only if our ethical system is descriptive rather than normative, though?
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Re: The zero-point of utilitarianism

Post by Eckhart Aurelius Hughes »

DistractedDodo wrote: February 21st, 2021, 1:06 pm
Scott wrote: February 18th, 2021, 12:55 am
DistractedDodo wrote: February 2nd, 2021, 2:15 pm If we start with a set of axioms (e.g. pleasure is good, pain is bad) and arrive, though logical reasoning, at some counter-intuitive conclusion, does that justify a change to the axioms themselves?
Yes, at least it can. As you probably already know, it's called a reductio ad absurdum.
Not quite! For reductio ad absurdum to apply, you'd have to show that the counter-intuitive theorem isn't just counter-intuitive but contradicts the set of axioms in our system...
I believe the exact opposite is the case. In other words, it's because the absurd or counter-intuitive conclusion follows from the axioms (not that it contradicts the axioms) that makes the reductio ad absurdum work.
Scott wrote: February 18th, 2021, 12:55 am Presumably, if a valid logical argument has a counterintuitive conclusion, one would choose to therefore consider it evidence against the axioms rather than evidence for the conclusion to the degree the negation of the axioms (as a set) is less counterintuitive than the assertion of the conclusion.
DistractedDodo wrote: February 21st, 2021, 1:06 pm Only if our ethical system is descriptive rather than normative, though?
I don't personally believe in ethics at all. My words above are just in regard to logic and believablity in general, not ethics.


DistractedDodo wrote: February 21st, 2021, 12:51 pm Thank you for your thoughts!
Scott wrote: February 18th, 2021, 12:55 am The question raises a common issue with utilitarianism. By seeking to quantify everything into a one-dimensional scale of utility, a utilitarian seems to run into a problem with the conversation rate between the generally assumed 'badness' of death with the generally assumed badness of 'pain'. For instance, utilitarian math works when one says that two deaths are doubly worse than one, or half the pain is preferable to twice the pain. Then it's simple math. But converting the negative utility of pain to death units, or vice versa, presents a problem for a utilitarian.
That is for sure an interesting issue, and it ties into another statement of yours which I'll take the liberty of quoting:
Scott wrote: January 23rd, 2021, 9:37 pm You can’t save any human from death ever; we are all going to die very soon. The best you can do is postpone a human's death for a little bit.
I do believe there's a remedy for this, though -- at least in theory. Assume the value of an individual living for a given period is the amount of happiness experienced over that period, minus the amount of discomfort (or whichever other calculation with whichever parameters we want to admit into our utilitarianism) [emphasis added]
I understand what you are saying, and the rest of what you have written seems to follow well enough from the above assumption of yours that I have quoted and bolded.

But, with respect, I would personally totally reject the assumption above, for multiple reasons, including but not limited to the following three reasons:

(1) In the same way there is a seeming so-called "badness" in one feeling pain in and of itself there is also just as much if not more of a so-called "badness" in death in and of itself. In other words, in the same way one could say that it is in itself "better" to feel pleasure than pain, one can just as reasonably say that is in itself directly "better" to live and later die than never live at all, regardless of and not because of any ratio between pleasure and pain.

(2) I believe there is a yin-yang balance between discomfort and comfort (just as there is a yin-yang balance between birth and death, and between creation and destruction). So in some deeper spiritual sense at least life always averages to the zero-point on such material scales.

(3) I believe the dimension between inner peace (a.k.a. contentment) and its opposite (i.e. discontent) transcends the one dimension between comfort and discomfort (e.g. pain), and thus it requires thinking more than one-dimensionally. In other words, despite the human mind's tendency to think one-dimensionally, and even worse to think in overly binary black-and-white us-verus-them terms, such simplification isn't rational or consistent with reality. I believe that alleged fact is a big part of why terms like "good" and "bad" are confusing if not inherently nonsensical. In analogy, the two-dimensional imaginary number plane cannot be translated into a one-dimensional number line. A complex number requires two parts. There is no singular 'good' and singular 'bad' and those kind of one-dimension-oritented words can only have meaning in a given context with arbitrary assumptions about what specific dimension is being considered the dimension of good and bad in that particular context and discussion. When presented ourselves to make an actual choice between different options, we can ask (1) which choice would minimize the total or average amount of pain felt, or (2) which choice would maximize the amount of human life years experienced total or on average, or (3) which choice would maximize the amount of inner peace experienced. Those three questions alone give three completely different dimensions of value that cannot reasonably be expressed on a singular one-dimensional number line, but rather require a 3-dimensional expression (e.g. X,Y,Z). And those are just three questions. Putting everything into three dimensions would be nearly as absurd as putting it into one.

In my personal spiritual approach to life, I gladly embrace discomfort and pain with inner peace. To me, no amount of pain-avoidance or pleasure-obtainment is worth sacrificing one iota of inner peace or spiritual liberation. I'll eat piles and piles of negative utility for breakfast with inner peace. If the contentment of inner peace is represented by the X axis and bodily pleasure/pain is represented by the Y axis, then even 0.00001 of X is worth infinitely more than one billion Y to me in terms of what I choose for myself to have, which doesn't mean I would force someone else to eat negative utility against their will just because that's what I would choose for myself. I believe these different dimensions of various qualities cannot be consistently and reasonably synthesized into a single dimension of value, which is why my philosophy also calls for respecting others' freedom such that if someone else would sacrifice lots of inner peace for just a little short bit of comfort or bodily pleasure, I cannot and would not say they are "wrong" or that they chose the "bad" over the "good" because--I believe--that kind of talk has no meaning without among other issues (1) disrespecting their freedom and (2) rejecting the diverse uncompressable multi-dimensionality of reality by irrationally rating everything on a one-dimensional scale. Indeed, the concept of freedom itself--not just political freedom but spiritual freedom--provides another whole dimension besides the three mentioned already (death/life, comfort/discomfort, inner peace/discontentment). The dimension of freedom is the dimension of choice. Indeed, that dimension is often in practice most influential to me and my choices. For example, whether or not a fat man consents to being pushed in front of a train is generally the most influential factor to me in my choice of whether or not to push him in front of a train.

For those reasons and more, I would whole-heartedly reject the bolded assumption right off the bat.

With that said, the rest of what you wrote as following from that assumption seems to work well enough if the assumption is assumed, such that someone's life would be seen as worthless if their expected bodily pleasure or other one-dimensional measurement of utility happened to be balanced in a yin-yang-like way with its opposite (e.g. discomfort or pain etc.)--no matter how much the person wanted to live and refused to consent to being killed.
My entire political philosophy summed up in one tweet.

"The mind is a wonderful servant but a terrible master."

I believe spiritual freedom (a.k.a. self-discipline) manifests as bravery, confidence, grace, honesty, love, and inner peace.
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Re: The zero-point of utilitarianism

Post by HJCarden »

DistractedDodo wrote: February 21st, 2021, 12:02 pm
That is very interesting -- thank you for elaborating! While I can appreciate the practical value of an ethical system reflecting intuitive beliefs about morality, though, aren't you at risk of accepting moral relativism? And also, isn't it the responsibility of ethics, philosophy, and even academia in general to challenge the layman's intuitions and insist on whichever idea is logically superior, regardless of whether that idea is intuitive or convenient? To use an extreme example, if a majority of a population were, say, racist, wouldn't your approach require any viable ethical system to accommodate the belief that one set of races race is superior to another -- simply on the grounds that it has to capture the population's beliefs on the subject?
It might appear that I am at risk of accepting moral relativism in this, but I would like to think that any objective morality would be able to enumerate what is part of a culture, and what is real morality. One of my philosophy professors would frequently ask "Do you think its okay to throw a baby off of a tall building? Do you think its EVER a GOOD thing to do to throw a baby off the top of a building?" I think that rejecting moral relativism can be done in an analgous manner to how I heard a philosopher talking about virtue theory once. She was saying that while different cultures might have different values, you can say that a samurai and a crusader are brave in the same way. When keeping cultures from accepting relativism, one might then say that we know that racism is wrong, in the same way that a culture that accepts racism as a part of their daily life can figure out that it is wrong if they understand the issue well enough.
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