Nil Desperandum wrote:
First: A rat whose brain has been so wired that its pleasure center will be stimulated when it presses on a bar will press on the bar, continuously, until it dies of starvation. Human beings, I imagine, would be horrified to think of its being "right" to hook up people so that they would experience continuous pleasure to the point of ultimate starvation. But, since we're observing Advocatus Diaboli here, maybe we should consider whether we ought really to be horrified by such a prospect, or whether is simply a failure of our imagination that prevents us from seeing such an arrangement as good. Yes, the rat ultimately dies--but so do we all--and during its life, it experiences *continuous pleasure*. What more could you want? If you say, "Well, I'd like to have a wife, kids, a family"--what is the good in them but for the pleasure they bring you? If you say, "Well, I'd like to have knowledge and power"--what is the good in them but for the pleasure they bring you?

Second: There is a difference between considering what is intrinsically good for a single individual, on one hand, and what is good for all of us jointly, on the other. My welfare--the satisfaction of my needs and desires, as well as the experiencing of what I don't even realize would please me--is certainly what I aim at; and if the freedom to pursue such satisfactions as I see fit is itself a need or desire, then it too is part of what I am at; and thus my happiness is what I aim at. And the satisfaction of your needs and desires, etc., is what you aim at; and so on for each individual. But the real question of ethics is how to handle social interactions. If we're to aim at maximizing joint individual happinesses *because we want to maximize each individual's happiness*, we're going to have to impose constraints on how the greatest overall happiness is achieved so as not to achieve it by harming any particular individual. We might, say, try to maximize average happiness while minimizing the unhappiness that any individual experiences. Translating the aim of happiness for oneself into the aim of happiness for everybody poses a formidable technical problem, if nothing else.

But if it *were* clear how to achieve maximal overall happiness in an unobjectionable way, would that be the most moral thing to do? Even if the way of doing it were to hook us up like those rats and continuously stimulate our pleasure centers (but if the freedom to make our own choices as to how to achieve the satisfaction of our needs and desires were itself desired, then at least the illusion of such freedom might also be needed, and something more Matrix-like than simply the continuous stimulation of the pleasure center might be needed)? Why or why not?

Odin wrote:
What value or virtue distinguishes them?

Odin wrote:


I would just add that by utilitarian standards doing what is right isn't based on your knowledge of what outcome might arise, but what outcome does in fact arise.

So if two things were true -

Heaven exists and is the happiest thing ever.

Person A will go to Heaven.

The forced conclusion would be that the moral thing to do is to kill that person. And remember utilitarianism isn't contingent upon proving the outcome. It only matters whether it is true in fact. In fact, heaven is or is not existing, and in fact, person A will or won't go to heaven. Whether you are aware of these things is irrelevant to their truth. So if it is true, then the moral thing to do is to murder everyone who will go to heaven.

I expect the utilitarians will say that it has to increase aggregate happiness in this world. lol its always interesting to see people construct arbitrary additions to cover the holes in their moral theories that only arise because the theories themselves are bs. The worst is the people who actually think there are higher and lower pleasures.