You are allowed to assign non-linear utilities to things. This is common in cases where we’re considering money: Utility = Log(Money) is a common thing to hear. You don’t need to discard a utilitarian framework to do that, you just need a utility function that drops off.
It’s somewhat stranger to assign non-linear utilities to ‘number of lives saved’ over the range 1-1000, and the explanations I can think of for why one might do that are not entirely flattering.
Being unflattering isn’t an objection to stating a truth. If my utility function does not correspond to a perfect moral standard, then I wish to know that my utility function does not correspond to a perfect moral standard. If I then so desire, I can attempt to change myself.
In practice, a lot of the utility of saving someone’s life will be from the internal good feelings and the reputational benefits of having done it. Neither of those are anything likelinear. There may be also an intellectual desire to do what ought to be done, but for almost all people concerning distant strangers it will usually be at most comparable to the immediate practical benefits of doing something. There’s little point in trying to discuss utility maximization by assuming implicitly that utility = morality.
Much like many previous examples of decision theories, it seems to me that by introducing scenarios involving “saving lives” or “burning to death”, writers are tangling any further thought and discussion up into emotive moral extremes instead of focusing on the actual topic.
You are allowed to assign non-linear utilities to things. This is common in cases where we’re considering money: Utility = Log(Money) is a common thing to hear. You don’t need to discard a utilitarian framework to do that, you just need a utility function that drops off.
It’s somewhat stranger to assign non-linear utilities to ‘number of lives saved’ over the range 1-1000, and the explanations I can think of for why one might do that are not entirely flattering.
Being unflattering isn’t an objection to stating a truth. If my utility function does not correspond to a perfect moral standard, then I wish to know that my utility function does not correspond to a perfect moral standard. If I then so desire, I can attempt to change myself.
In practice, a lot of the utility of saving someone’s life will be from the internal good feelings and the reputational benefits of having done it. Neither of those are anything like linear. There may be also an intellectual desire to do what ought to be done, but for almost all people concerning distant strangers it will usually be at most comparable to the immediate practical benefits of doing something. There’s little point in trying to discuss utility maximization by assuming implicitly that utility = morality.
Much like many previous examples of decision theories, it seems to me that by introducing scenarios involving “saving lives” or “burning to death”, writers are tangling any further thought and discussion up into emotive moral extremes instead of focusing on the actual topic.