What are the most significant criticisms (or flaws) of utilitarianism?
utility monsters
the classic is-ought
>>7399839
>utility monsters
>look up example
>it's about eating a cookie
God damn it philosophy.
bumping for interest
Let's say you're perfectly healthy. Now let's say a doctor has 5 patients who are all productive members of society. However they're all gonna die unless they get a transplant. One needs a new liver, another kidneys, another heart etc. Should the doctor be able to take away your organs in order to save 5 lives? All for the greater good.
>>7400058
That isn't a criticism of utilitarianism, is it?
its not individualist at all
Dude why are you cross posting in Lit? Just reply to the thread in his pls, it's a slow board as it is. I'll be happy discuss crtiques of it if you ask me there.
>>7400311
Yes. That is actually how Bentham died.
>>7400345
Are you trying to say Bentham was mudered by or Doctor or did he just donate his organs m8?
>>7400366
*a Doctor. He gave his organs post mortem m8
Who decides what is usefull or not? This is the base problem with utilitarianism: Utility is in the eye of the beholder.
marx
nietzsche
>>7399826
I always found the experience machine, which is really just a restatement of Aristotle's " life for grazing animals" critique, to be a very solid criticism of any moral system which prioritizes pleasure.
>>7400384
Can you expand upon that @ >>>/his/317086?
>>7400320
Oh piss off
~kyu~
>>7399826
I'm actually studying this in class, these are the main points:
Naturalistic fallacy: Just because pleasure is naturally appealing to humans doesn't mean it is right or should be the basis of moral judgements.
Happiness is subjective: You can't accurately judge how each person will react to an action and what happiness will be derived from an individual, let alone an entire society.
Minorities: Those in the minority who do not receive happiness are ignored over the majority receiving happiness.
Contradicts with our inate morals: Utilitarianism doesn't care about a person's intentions, only their actions, and it doesn't matter if these actions are traditionally wrong or right. For example, the imprisonment of an innocent person following a search for a serial killer: most people would say that this is unjust and morally wrong, but according to utilitarianism it is right as long as it brings about mass happiness from those who were scared before. Or, if you save a kid from drowning and he grows up to be a serial killer, despite the fact that the initial action of saving him was right, because it's your fault that he grew up and caused mass unhappiness, you are in the wrong.
>>7399826
It doesn't take into account the intentions of an action.
And there's no limit to what the 'ends' may be. You can easily justify the holocaust with utilitarianism by claiming that if it was successful, there would have been world peace afterwards.
>>7400058
Yes, but the probability of me helping more than 5 people with the 70+ years I have left to live ought weigh the immediate utility of giving my own life.
Its about cost benefit analysis and there is more benefit in saving myself that saving those people.
Also there are people that ride motorcycles, they can donate their fresh organs anyway.
There are no good criticisms, it's all idealist nonsense.
>>7400808
>It doesn't take into account the intentions of an action.
Intentions don't matter.
>You can easily justify the holocaust with utilitarianism by claiming that if it was successful, there would have been world peace afterwards.
Hypotheticals don't matter. Consequences, what actually occurs, are what matter.
>>7400326
I'm sorry, you must be mistaken; I only posted this here.
>>7400378
This. You can essentially define utility however you want.
There's as many versions of utilitarianism as there are utilitarians.
>>7401131
(still OP here) That being said, we might as well
move this to >>>/his/317086 so there's a concentration of the discussion.
>>7401139
Hist is basically pol 2.0 so let's keep it here to be honest family.
>>7399826
Well, suppose that I don't want the greatest amount of pleasure for myself. Should you still act to administer pleasure to me against my will? You're trying to administer this universal standard on people who have their own individual standards for themselves which may conflict with that. You might say that you know better than they do what is best for them, but is that really your place to decide? I'm not sure that there's a compelling reason to think that. Then of course we have the problem of the different kinds of pleasure and pain. The differences are not just quantitative, but qualitative, and how do you weigh those different kinds of pleasure against each other, pain against each other, and then pleasure and pain against each other? Even if you do come up with some universal standard by which you can weigh everything against each other or near enough, which would be a pretty difficult task, and I don't know how you could be objective about that or make especially compelling subjective arguments for one particular standard, but you still run into the problem again of your universal standard coming into conflict with someone's individual standard.
>>7401407
tl;dr. Read Mill, faggot.
There are many detailed criticisms of why it could not 'work', and they are easy to look up and in fact you should be able to make your own critical remarks when reading about utilitarianism. But in my opinion the best criticism is that it has nothing to do with ethics, virtue, the good, .... It's mathematical hedonism.
>>7401079
Jesus christ you're dense.
>>7401225
You just switched terms but nothing changed. Well being is as ambivalent as 'utility', and yes, different utilitarians have actually filled it in differently.
I just really wish his had the same amount of people willing to discuss this.
>>7402498
It has everything to do with virture and goodness. You can argue that the way it arrives to what is called a "good" action is wrong but that it doesn't concern virture or goodness.
>>7401225
Kek, a manmade term is "objective".
le greatest happiness principle meme
>>7400784
this
>muh consequences
>>7399826
1. Everyone should try to do their best, but this is ultimately up to each one of us, because no one can force others, and one will never manage to find what actions wil utilizie the most in the name of the good
2. Therefore everyone should follow Kant (deontology) or Aristotle (virtue ethics)
3. But Kantian categorical imperative takes for granted that the maxim one should want to become a golden rule and a law is something positive, which is very well does not have to be.
3. Inner virtue ethics is the truth. Each one for himself.
>>7399826
I just went through parsons criticism of utlitarism. Parson claims that under utilitarism no social order would be possible because everyone would foul everyone else.
Look it up, i just wrote like 30 pages about it for university, i'm too fucking exhausted to explain it again
>>7399826
This >>7399839
But also individual sentiment. A father is way more likely to divert a train onto 5 people if it means he saves his own daughter.
In order words, utilitarianism fails to even acknowledge our most essential human characteristic; the fact that we love ourselves and our closest family and friends more than any stranger, and that this fact is at odds with concept of maximizing well-being for *everyone*.
Would anyone be intrested in a serires of threads talking about ethics, ethical theoires, meaning of ethical language etc?
