LINK Contro l'utilitarismo

While utilitarians often urge self-sacrifice, they rarely preach other-sacrifice.  But given their principles, they totally should!  Moller’...

prospect of exploiting others for the greater good thus terrifies us. Of course, it’s rare that harming innocents will produce much good, but it....

Esempio...

Grandma is a kindly soul who has saved up tens of thousands of dollars in cash over the years. One fine day you see her stashing it away under her mattress, and come to think that with just a little nudge you could cause her to fall and most probably die. You could then take her money, which others don’t know about, and redistribute it to those more worthy, saving...

Bottom line...

...The problem, then, is that most people don’t seem able to accept even that they ought to aspire to such behavior, let alone engage in it. ”  In other words, utilitarians don’t preach other-sacrifice, but fail to practice what they preach.  They barely even preach it!  Suspicious, to say the least...

Governing Least: What’s Really Wrong with Utilitarianism, by Bryan Caplan https://www.econlib.org/governing-least-whats-really-wrong-with-utilitarianism/

Dibattito sull'utilitarismo. Caplan vs Summer

Dibattito sull' utilitarismo. Caplan vs Summer

• Una serie di controesempi confutano l'u.
• risposta standard: l evol. ha inoculato dei bias nelle ns. intuizioni morali.
• controreplica: xchè allora postulare la sofferenza come male e la felicità come bene nn è un bias?
• la caricatura dell utilitarismo si rifiuta di guardare all utilitarismo delle regole concentrandosi sui buchi dell utilitarismo degli atti
• ma l ut. degli atti si può sempre trasformare in utilitarismo delle regole. es.: regola: punire il colpevole a meno che...
• critica: calcolare le conseguenze richiede tempo... risposta: nulla impedisce di calcolare a spanne
• critica: calcolare è impossibile... risposta: quello che conta è la propensione utilitarista... controreplica: se onesta conduce a conclusioni assurde
• critica: l u. ci chide troppo. singer accetta la critica e macchia d ipocrisia la sua proposta... altri cercano di modificare u. con il concetto di supererogatorio oppure il precetto di uguaglianza... altri trasformano u. da etica individuale a precetto x le politiche pubbliche
• critica: le preferenze degli individui nn sono confrontabili... risposta: a volte è necessario farlo e noi stessi lo facciamo... controrisp: ma l utilitarismo fa di un inconveniente un cardine
• most hard-line utilitarians concede that the standard counter-examples seem extremely persuasive.... think that pushing one fat man in front of a trolley to save five skinny kids... is morally obligatory. But the opposite moral intuition in their heads refuses to shut up.
• The smart utilitarian answer blames evolution. Scott Sumner: …………Other "counterexamples" take advantage of illogical moral intuitions that have evolved for Darwinian reasons,
• But what's the epistemically sound response to the specter of evolved bias? "Be agnostic about every belief that, regardless of its truth, helps your genes," is tempting. But it's also absurd.... every moral philosophy - including utilitarianism - agrees that a happy life is better than (a) death, or (b) suffering. But evolutionary heavily favors these value judgments!... Should we therefore dismiss our anti-death, anti-suffering views as "illogical moral intuitions that have evolved for Darwinian reasons"?..nihilist, who bites even more bullets than the utilitarian, can enthusiastically agree.
• None of this means that moral intuition is infallible. Serious intuitionists question their moral intuitions all the time.
• ………Suppose that a sheriff were faced with the choice either of framing a Negro for a rape... whom the sheriff knows not to be guilty)—and thus preventing serious anti-Negro riots... In such a case the sheriff, if he were an extreme utilitarian, would appear to be committed to framing the Negro………….
• this story might be quoted as part of a justification for moving from act to rule utilitarianism... the rule "do not punish an innocent person";.... However, McCloskey asks, what about the rule "punish an innocent person when and only when to do so is not to weaken the existing institution of punishment and when the consequences of doing so are valuable"?
• Predicting consequences... consequences are inherently unknowable...the Three Mile Island effect.[91]... ma... From the beginning, utilitarianism has recognized that certainty in such matters is unobtainable and both Bentham and Mill said that it was necessary to rely on the tendencies
• Utilitarismo troppo esigente... Too demanding[edit] Act utilitarianism not only requires everyone to do what they can to maximise utility, but to do so without any favouritism.... The well-being of strangers counts just as much as that of friends, family or self. "What makes this requirement so demanding is the gargantuan number of strangers in great need
• One response to the problem is to accept its demands. This is the view taken by Peter Singer... Others argue that a moral theory that is so contrary to our deeply held moral convictions must either be rejected or modified.[98]
• One approach is to drop the demand that utility be maximized. In Satisficing Consequentialism, Michael Slote argues for a form of utilitarianism where "an act might qualify as morally right through having good enough consequences,
• Robert Goodin takes yet another approach and argues that the demandingness objection can be "blunted" by treating utilitarianism as a guide to public policy rather than one of individual morality.
• AGGREGAZIONE UTILITÀ. The objection that "utilitarianism does not take seriously the distinction between persons"[105]
• A response to this criticism is to point out that whilst seeming to resolve some problems it introduces others.

continua

Esperimenti mentali

Il miglior modo per confutare la teoria etica dell' utilitarismo consiste nel presentare casi concreti che ne denuncino l' assurdità: esempio, se un riccone è particolarmente avido la teoria prevede che il poco posseduto dal povero spensierato venga trasferito nelle sue disponibilità.

A questo punto all' utilitarista non resta che mettere in sospetto la validità dello strumento che avete usato: l' esperimento mentale.

Ma: "... weird hypotheticals are philosophers' equivalent of controlled experiments. When a scientist wants to test a physical theory, he sets up weird laboratory conditions that make it easy to find an exception to the theory. Similarly, when a philosopher wants to test a moral theory, he sets up weird examples that make it easy to find an exception to the theory..."

Il resto continua pure a leggerlo qua.