I don’t think Utilitarians are a sufficiency homogenous group for them all to agree to any kind of specific weighting. And I don’t really see why that is a problem. Each individual utilitarian might be internally coherent, that doesn’t mean the group will agree on anything much or be coherent taken together.
You say you are not a utilitarian, and then you offer a utilitarian argument (my understanding of your argument: fish suffering is worth human enjoyment). Maybe we are using the words differently, but I would say anyone who is trying to weigh up the suffering/pleasure on either side of a decision to determine its morality is fundamentally a utilitarian.
Many (most?) people do not approach ethics in this way at all. They take axioms like “murder is wrong” or “eating fish is natural” and the pleasure or suffering that follows as a consequence of the actions taken is irrelevant to their morality.
True, I didn’t mean that Utilitarians must agree on a weighting, but that each person who makes a Utilitarian-based argument for behavior change must have this weighting as part of their model. And that the conversion factor across individuals is a valid point of disagreement, even among those who share a general framework.
I am neither a utilitarian nor a deontologist (not sure precisely what I am, mostly a “muddled human mess”, with MANY of my actions and beliefs illegible, even to me). But I’m happy to discuss the effects of various frameworks, and I (perhaps mistakenly) took the post to be a utilitarian-like framework for recognizing one kind of suffering, presumably with the intent to reduce it.
I also have no idea what I am. Maybe something in the vein of something I think Hume proposed, where you are a kind of second-order utilitarian. (You use utilitarianism to determine a set of rules of thumb, you then follow those rules of thumb instead of actually being a utilitarian.)
I don’t think Utilitarians are a sufficiency homogenous group for them all to agree to any kind of specific weighting. And I don’t really see why that is a problem. Each individual utilitarian might be internally coherent, that doesn’t mean the group will agree on anything much or be coherent taken together.
You say you are not a utilitarian, and then you offer a utilitarian argument (my understanding of your argument: fish suffering is worth human enjoyment). Maybe we are using the words differently, but I would say anyone who is trying to weigh up the suffering/pleasure on either side of a decision to determine its morality is fundamentally a utilitarian.
Many (most?) people do not approach ethics in this way at all. They take axioms like “murder is wrong” or “eating fish is natural” and the pleasure or suffering that follows as a consequence of the actions taken is irrelevant to their morality.
True, I didn’t mean that Utilitarians must agree on a weighting, but that each person who makes a Utilitarian-based argument for behavior change must have this weighting as part of their model. And that the conversion factor across individuals is a valid point of disagreement, even among those who share a general framework.
I am neither a utilitarian nor a deontologist (not sure precisely what I am, mostly a “muddled human mess”, with MANY of my actions and beliefs illegible, even to me). But I’m happy to discuss the effects of various frameworks, and I (perhaps mistakenly) took the post to be a utilitarian-like framework for recognizing one kind of suffering, presumably with the intent to reduce it.
Thanks for clarifying, that makes sense.
I also have no idea what I am. Maybe something in the vein of something I think Hume proposed, where you are a kind of second-order utilitarian. (You use utilitarianism to determine a set of rules of thumb, you then follow those rules of thumb instead of actually being a utilitarian.)