An excellent post, and comments, too. Thanks to all.
I was a utilitarian (basically a professional utilitarian) until I wrote my latest book. Working through my doubts led me out of that view. (You can read those chapters - "...Expected Value..." and "...Philosophical Bullet" - free at https://www.losingmyreligions.net/ -- the "Start Reading" line)
I cannot fathom how people believe they have come up with some "new" way of looking at virtue.
The Twitter blurb says it all - "...until you become a god."
If you read the first few pages of Genesis you will see this "philosophy" is as old as the hills. If you look further you will see without fail, irrefutably, that the desire to become god is what has caused, is causing and will cause all the immoral animal brutality found that man has perpetuated against man since Cain bashed Abel's head in. Ludicrous.
I think you're mostly just conflating a description of moral goodness with heuristic usefulness.
My position as an ethical consequentialist is that goodness/badness means something like reasonable Bayesian estimate of increase/decrease in whatever the x0 is. Examining our current linguistic and conceptual classification of experiences in order to get closer to an appreciation of x0 is a key part of the ethical project.
Reducing immense physical suffering and providing life experiences that are widely understood to characterize flourishing for human and nonhuman animals, aren't hubristic claims to the Grand Unified Theory of Well-being; they're the best heuristics we have now for moving the world in the direction of the lodestar whose nature we're continuing to explore.
So to summarize, the argument against utilitarianism is essentially:
1. Nobody can define utility, not even utilitarians
2. Even if you could define it, you can't realistically measure it except in the most trivial of circumstances
3. Even if you could measure it, you can't always tell whether a given action will increase it, let alone maximize it
4. Even if you could maximize it, there is no way a priori reason to believe that maximizing it would necessarily be moral*
So why is anybody attracted to utilitarianism even a little bit? Under what circumstance is it "helpful"?
An excellent post, and comments, too. Thanks to all.
I was a utilitarian (basically a professional utilitarian) until I wrote my latest book. Working through my doubts led me out of that view. (You can read those chapters - "...Expected Value..." and "...Philosophical Bullet" - free at https://www.losingmyreligions.net/ -- the "Start Reading" line)
I cannot fathom how people believe they have come up with some "new" way of looking at virtue.
The Twitter blurb says it all - "...until you become a god."
If you read the first few pages of Genesis you will see this "philosophy" is as old as the hills. If you look further you will see without fail, irrefutably, that the desire to become god is what has caused, is causing and will cause all the immoral animal brutality found that man has perpetuated against man since Cain bashed Abel's head in. Ludicrous.
GOD Bless. Not man bless.
The biggest issue with utilitarianism remains the open question argument by G.E. Moore: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-question_argument
I think you're mostly just conflating a description of moral goodness with heuristic usefulness.
My position as an ethical consequentialist is that goodness/badness means something like reasonable Bayesian estimate of increase/decrease in whatever the x0 is. Examining our current linguistic and conceptual classification of experiences in order to get closer to an appreciation of x0 is a key part of the ethical project.
Reducing immense physical suffering and providing life experiences that are widely understood to characterize flourishing for human and nonhuman animals, aren't hubristic claims to the Grand Unified Theory of Well-being; they're the best heuristics we have now for moving the world in the direction of the lodestar whose nature we're continuing to explore.