8 ms·

"The point is that saving multiple lives produces greater utility than allowing one person to live, so if utility is your only consideration it is fine to murde

"The point is that saving multiple lives produces greater utility than allowing one person to live, so if utility is your only consideration it is fine to murder people to save lives." That depends on what utility function you're using.

emodendroket 8y ago
I can't think of one that avoids this problem. Can you?
- perl4ever 8y ago
  I did throw out "probability/quality adjusted years of life gained" to address the obviously grossly inadequate metric of counting "lives gained/lost".
  - emodendroket 8y ago
    That can't really be it, can it? Then we just add patients who need a blood transfusion, two who need corneas, someone who needs a liver, and so on, until we're positive that the expected value of life is higher.
    - perl4ever 8y ago
      This seems to me kind of like saying if you pick an arbitrary number k, and an infinite sum from 1..n, there must be a point at which the sum is greater than k. But if the sum is finite, it may be less than k for any n. And if you're talking about real life, the total benefit is uncertain too. So I am not at all convinced that this kind of utilitarianism easily leads to decisions that we don't see in real life. I kind of think that society does use something like the measure of utility I described - we just don't talk about it a lot. For instance, doctors will refuse to do an operation on someone who is sufficiently old and frail. Courts will award less to an elderly victim of medical error. And so on. Edit/post script: Also, I think you implicitly are assuming that utility is one dimensional, and that you can add up quality of life changes and balance them against lives ended. That does not necessarily seem valid or essential to some form of utilitarianism.
      - emodendroket 8y ago
        > Edit/post script: Also, I think you implicitly are assuming that utility is one dimensional, and that you can add up quality of life changes and balance them against lives ended. That does not necessarily seem valid or essential to some form of utilitarianism. It seems that way to me. What difference does it make to utility whether a life ended naturally or unnaturally? Indeed, death from organ failure is probably much more painful than whatever I might do as an unethical doctor. Once you're looking at utility + non-utilitarian considerations like "murder is wrong," it's simply not utilitarianism anymore. Since we're hung up on details, let's look at other examples: * You're a judge in a frontier town with only a rudimentary justice system wherein the only possible punishment is hanging the accused person on the spot after they are found guilty. A townsperson is accused of witchcraft. You know this defendant is not guilty, because there is no such thing as witchcraft, but you are also certain that if you rule that the defendant is not guilty a riot will break out and several people will be killed. Therefore, the utility-maximizing option would seem to be falsely finding the defending guilty and ordering execution. Is that the ethical thing to do? * You are preparing a body for burial. The body is to be buried with several pieces of precious jewelry, per the family's request. You know that if you steal the jewelry, replace it with costume jewelry, pawn the real jewelry, and use the funds to buy your friends dinner, nobody will be any the wiser, and you will have maximized utility by using the jewelry to bring your friends happiness rather than burying it. Ethical?
        perl4ever 8y ago
        You seem to be hung up on utilitarianism implying a particular one dimensional utility metric. I don't see why that is necessary, to call something "utilitarianism". Why can't utilitarianism be conceived of as parameterizable? Without arguing for any particular ethical system, I think the world as it exists operates largely on a utilitarian basis, just with a less simplistic utility metric, similar to what I mentioned twice. Is acting according to this "ethical"? I have no interest in debating that. Your examples are starting to sound like things I believe have happened frequently in history, unethical or not. Edit/post script: I am not so sure that rules like "don't murder" are in conflict with utilitarianism as I think of it existing. Maybe if you look at moral choices as an optimization process, simple rules function as heuristics to deal with uncertainty, bias and lack of information on utility.

emodendroket 8y ago

I can't think of one that avoids this problem. Can you?

perl4ever 8y ago
I did throw out "probability/quality adjusted years of life gained" to address the obviously grossly inadequate metric of counting "lives gained/lost".
- emodendroket 8y ago
  That can't really be it, can it? Then we just add patients who need a blood transfusion, two who need corneas, someone who needs a liver, and so on, until we're positive that the expected value of life is higher.
  - perl4ever 8y ago
    This seems to me kind of like saying if you pick an arbitrary number k, and an infinite sum from 1..n, there must be a point at which the sum is greater than k. But if the sum is finite, it may be less than k for any n. And if you're talking about real life, the total benefit is uncertain too. So I am not at all convinced that this kind of utilitarianism easily leads to decisions that we don't see in real life. I kind of think that society does use something like the measure of utility I described - we just don't talk about it a lot. For instance, doctors will refuse to do an operation on someone who is sufficiently old and frail. Courts will award less to an elderly victim of medical error. And so on. Edit/post script: Also, I think you implicitly are assuming that utility is one dimensional, and that you can add up quality of life changes and balance them against lives ended. That does not necessarily seem valid or essential to some form of utilitarianism.
    - emodendroket 8y ago
      > Edit/post script: Also, I think you implicitly are assuming that utility is one dimensional, and that you can add up quality of life changes and balance them against lives ended. That does not necessarily seem valid or essential to some form of utilitarianism. It seems that way to me. What difference does it make to utility whether a life ended naturally or unnaturally? Indeed, death from organ failure is probably much more painful than whatever I might do as an unethical doctor. Once you're looking at utility + non-utilitarian considerations like "murder is wrong," it's simply not utilitarianism anymore. Since we're hung up on details, let's look at other examples: * You're a judge in a frontier town with only a rudimentary justice system wherein the only possible punishment is hanging the accused person on the spot after they are found guilty. A townsperson is accused of witchcraft. You know this defendant is not guilty, because there is no such thing as witchcraft, but you are also certain that if you rule that the defendant is not guilty a riot will break out and several people will be killed. Therefore, the utility-maximizing option would seem to be falsely finding the defending guilty and ordering execution. Is that the ethical thing to do? * You are preparing a body for burial. The body is to be buried with several pieces of precious jewelry, per the family's request. You know that if you steal the jewelry, replace it with costume jewelry, pawn the real jewelry, and use the funds to buy your friends dinner, nobody will be any the wiser, and you will have maximized utility by using the jewelry to bring your friends happiness rather than burying it. Ethical?
      - perl4ever 8y ago
        You seem to be hung up on utilitarianism implying a particular one dimensional utility metric. I don't see why that is necessary, to call something "utilitarianism". Why can't utilitarianism be conceived of as parameterizable? Without arguing for any particular ethical system, I think the world as it exists operates largely on a utilitarian basis, just with a less simplistic utility metric, similar to what I mentioned twice. Is acting according to this "ethical"? I have no interest in debating that. Your examples are starting to sound like things I believe have happened frequently in history, unethical or not. Edit/post script: I am not so sure that rules like "don't murder" are in conflict with utilitarianism as I think of it existing. Maybe if you look at moral choices as an optimization process, simple rules function as heuristics to deal with uncertainty, bias and lack of information on utility.