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A general utility claim: One person suffering from the severest form of migraine is bad. Two persons suffering from the severest form of migraine is twice as ba

A general utility claim: One person suffering from the severest form of migraine is bad. Two persons suffering from the severest form of migraine is twice as bad. Here's another: one person suffering from the severest form of migraine is worse than one person experiencing a mild itch.

recursivedoubts 5y ago
Yeah, that's wrong. The suffering is subjective and calling it "twice as bad" is spurious. This is one of the core errors of utilitarianism, the idea that "utility" can be objectively measured and compared between different humans, and thereby, treat moral reasoning like a math equation.
- sprucevoid 5y ago
  The suffering is only subjective in the sense that a particular migraine is generated in a particular brain where only one person, me the subject, has direct experience access to it. But migrains and brains are biological processes in a physical world. My brain is't magically different from other brains so I can reason to the conclusion that a maximally severe migraine in another person's brain is equally awful and bad. Both my brain and theirs are part of the world and the states of our brains partly constitutes how good or bad the world is at a particular time. A world with two severe migraines is twice as bad as a world with only one.
  - recursivedoubts 5y ago
    "twice as bad" No, it isn't. This is what you need to get through your head: the brains (really, the souls) are always different and there is a huge amount of subjectivity involved in experiencing a migrane, for example. You are trying to make moral reasoning neat and tidy math, using precise-sounding terms like "twice", but it simply isn't. Basic utilitarian reasoning leads to obviously incorrect moral positions such as liquidating a small, troublesome and annoying minority being fine so long as it increases "the greater good". This is where the math leads, and it's all built on a foundation of clay, namely that there exists a mathematically precise, comparable measure of general "utility" that can be compared, summed-up, etc. between moral agents. The whole thing would would be pure comedy, were it not for the fact that intelligent people take it seriously.
    - sprucevoid 5y ago
      You conflate the question of interpersonal wellbeing comparison with both adjacent and orthogonal issues I have said nothing about (level of precision, mathematical modeling, deontic criteria, ...). What I describe is practiced daily in health care priority work and risk mitigation in e.g. macro level infrastructure planning. Meanwhile the utilitarians I know are busy working to end world poverty, eradicate malaria, minimize global pandemic risk, improve health access and end factory farming. The evidence on the severest forms of migraines do not support a huge experiential variation in the people afflicted - they max out suffering for virtually everyone. https://www.preventsuffering.org/cluster-headaches/ https://www.preventsuffering.org/cluster-headaches/
      - recursivedoubts 5y ago
        Yes, many utilitarians end up being good people despite their utilitarianism. They take a best guess at what is right, in a murky, conflicted world, and then work on that, perhaps backfilling a utilitarian just-so story to make themselves feel better. I applaud them for that. But utilitarianism as a philosophy is obviously, and will continue to be, ridiculous for the simple reason that there is no such thing as general utility.
        sprucevoid 5y ago
        I have already given simple examples of interpersonal wellbeing comparisons of a type that are both common-sense and in fact widely put to practical use in health care and risk migitation in all countries in the world. If you want to dispute that then do present evidence, saying "no" is not enough. Here is a simple test: imagine you can press either button A or button B. If you press A 10000 people are spared the severest migraines. If you press B one person is spared a mild scratch. Which should you morally do and why? My answer is: you should do A and the reason why should do A is because we can compare the outcomes in terms of wellbeing and outcome A is comparatively much better than outcome B. What is your answer and why? Anyone denying that interpersonal wellbeing comparisons are possible or that we can in any way aggregate wellbeing ("there is no such thing as general utility") seems forced to say that there is no way to discern a moral difference between choice A and B. Is that really what you believe? If yes how do you put that into practice with regard to choices in everyday life? As for backfilling, it seems to me that some people express aversion to utilitarianism, and portray it as very different from what it really is, as a way to shy away from taking moral responsibility for the consequences of what they do and omit to do. In fact utilitarianism is in the world as it is making similar demands as several other ethical theories https://twitter.com/ben_j_todd/status/1463867302089302019 https://twitter.com/ben_j_todd/status/1463867302089302019

recursivedoubts 5y ago

Yeah, that's wrong. The suffering is subjective and calling it "twice as bad" is spurious. This is one of the core errors of utilitarianism, the idea that "utility" can be objectively measured and compared between different humans, and thereby, treat moral reasoning like a math equation.

sprucevoid 5y ago
The suffering is only subjective in the sense that a particular migraine is generated in a particular brain where only one person, me the subject, has direct experience access to it. But migrains and brains are biological processes in a physical world. My brain is't magically different from other brains so I can reason to the conclusion that a maximally severe migraine in another person's brain is equally awful and bad. Both my brain and theirs are part of the world and the states of our brains partly constitutes how good or bad the world is at a particular time. A world with two severe migraines is twice as bad as a world with only one.
- recursivedoubts 5y ago
  "twice as bad" No, it isn't. This is what you need to get through your head: the brains (really, the souls) are always different and there is a huge amount of subjectivity involved in experiencing a migrane, for example. You are trying to make moral reasoning neat and tidy math, using precise-sounding terms like "twice", but it simply isn't. Basic utilitarian reasoning leads to obviously incorrect moral positions such as liquidating a small, troublesome and annoying minority being fine so long as it increases "the greater good". This is where the math leads, and it's all built on a foundation of clay, namely that there exists a mathematically precise, comparable measure of general "utility" that can be compared, summed-up, etc. between moral agents. The whole thing would would be pure comedy, were it not for the fact that intelligent people take it seriously.
  - sprucevoid 5y ago
    You conflate the question of interpersonal wellbeing comparison with both adjacent and orthogonal issues I have said nothing about (level of precision, mathematical modeling, deontic criteria, ...). What I describe is practiced daily in health care priority work and risk mitigation in e.g. macro level infrastructure planning. Meanwhile the utilitarians I know are busy working to end world poverty, eradicate malaria, minimize global pandemic risk, improve health access and end factory farming. The evidence on the severest forms of migraines do not support a huge experiential variation in the people afflicted - they max out suffering for virtually everyone. https://www.preventsuffering.org/cluster-headaches/ https://www.preventsuffering.org/cluster-headaches/
    - recursivedoubts 5y ago
      Yes, many utilitarians end up being good people despite their utilitarianism. They take a best guess at what is right, in a murky, conflicted world, and then work on that, perhaps backfilling a utilitarian just-so story to make themselves feel better. I applaud them for that. But utilitarianism as a philosophy is obviously, and will continue to be, ridiculous for the simple reason that there is no such thing as general utility.
      - sprucevoid 5y ago
        I have already given simple examples of interpersonal wellbeing comparisons of a type that are both common-sense and in fact widely put to practical use in health care and risk migitation in all countries in the world. If you want to dispute that then do present evidence, saying "no" is not enough. Here is a simple test: imagine you can press either button A or button B. If you press A 10000 people are spared the severest migraines. If you press B one person is spared a mild scratch. Which should you morally do and why? My answer is: you should do A and the reason why should do A is because we can compare the outcomes in terms of wellbeing and outcome A is comparatively much better than outcome B. What is your answer and why? Anyone denying that interpersonal wellbeing comparisons are possible or that we can in any way aggregate wellbeing ("there is no such thing as general utility") seems forced to say that there is no way to discern a moral difference between choice A and B. Is that really what you believe? If yes how do you put that into practice with regard to choices in everyday life? As for backfilling, it seems to me that some people express aversion to utilitarianism, and portray it as very different from what it really is, as a way to shy away from taking moral responsibility for the consequences of what they do and omit to do. In fact utilitarianism is in the world as it is making similar demands as several other ethical theories https://twitter.com/ben_j_todd/status/1463867302089302019 https://twitter.com/ben_j_todd/status/1463867302089302019