4 ms·

>"selfish utilitarianism" I get it, you're a Kant stan but come on, that phrase is literally oxymoronic.

voidhorse 9y ago
Hehe fair enough. There is an argument latent here drawing upon Horkheimer's observations that the collective, under the increased technologization and automation of society, has become a proxy for the individual, or perhaps more accurately replaced the romantic/enlightenment notion of individual, which would indeed cause a sort of paradox in which utilitarianism, the collective being by proxy identified with or being an extension of the self, would be selfish. All that aside, I was not being precise in my terminology--I was simply trying to express that most of the students were utilitarian so long as a few conditions held: (a.) they were either in the group that benefited or persons they know/social groups they interact with benefited and (b.) they were not in the minority that suffered negative effects form the utilitarian decision to simply benefit the majority. (c.) They could somewhat offload responsibility for the moral choice by claiming they were simply making a more 'objective' decision by working based on quantities and benefiting the majority (in reality as per (a.) often really just working off a sublimation of their own interests) Now, sophisticated utilitarians who actually know what they are talking about don't fall prey to this sort of stuff--I'm talking about the average American who is utilitarian to the extent he heard the term summarily defined once and now considers the benefit to the majority the de facto best choice in every situation and does so with little reflection--as stated prior, his utilitarian bent often suddenly disappears when he suffers as the minority in the decision or when he isn't a member of the benefited majority (in which case he simply doesn't take a stance and considers the decision to not concern him). Similar charges could probably be leveled against Kantians, but I think Kant's theory enjoys a bit more immunity from these sorts of adherents as it has not been popularized like utilitarianism--chances are you'll come across the term 'utilitarian' in everyday life at some point whereas you're not likely to hear anything about Kantian morality outside of an academic, or perhaps in a rare case judicial, context.

Hehe fair enough. There is an argument latent here drawing upon Horkheimer's observations that the collective, under the increased technologization and automation of society, has become a proxy for the individual, or perhaps more accurately replaced the romantic/enlightenment notion of individual, which would indeed cause a sort of paradox in which utilitarianism, the collective being by proxy identified with or being an extension of the self, would be selfish. All that aside, I was not being precise in my terminology--I was simply trying to express that most of the students were utilitarian so long as a few conditions held: (a.) they were either in the group that benefited or persons they know/social groups they interact with benefited and (b.) they were not in the minority that suffered negative effects form the utilitarian decision to simply benefit the majority. (c.) They could somewhat offload responsibility for the moral choice by claiming they were simply making a more 'objective' decision by working based on quantities and benefiting the majority (in reality as per (a.) often really just working off a sublimation of their own interests) Now, sophisticated utilitarians who actually know what they are talking about don't fall prey to this sort of stuff--I'm talking about the average American who is utilitarian to the extent he heard the term summarily defined once and now considers the benefit to the majority the de facto best choice in every situation and does so with little reflection--as stated prior, his utilitarian bent often suddenly disappears when he suffers as the minority in the decision or when he isn't a member of the benefited majority (in which case he simply doesn't take a stance and considers the decision to not concern him). Similar charges could probably be leveled against Kantians, but I think Kant's theory enjoys a bit more immunity from these sorts of adherents as it has not been popularized like utilitarianism--chances are you'll come across the term 'utilitarian' in everyday life at some point whereas you're not likely to hear anything about Kantian morality outside of an academic, or perhaps in a rare case judicial, context.