“Evil is not just a goodness minimization problem” makes sense, but “Badness is not just a goodness minimization problem” doesn’t make sense to me. Your analysis hinges on a concept of evil as distinct from merely bad.
In the trolley problem, sacrificing the one to save the five will always lead to less badness, because fewer people are dead in the resulting state of the world than would otherwise be. This is why utilitarianism always chooses to sacrifice the one to save the five, ceteris paribus. Whether less badness is the same thing as less evilness is not considered, because utilitarianism has only one concept of utility. There may be additional contextual facts, e.g. that the person making the decision is employed as a switch operator. But unless these facts influence the resulting world-state (i.e. the number of casualties), they will not factor into the utility calculation.
Therefore, I do not think that your analysis works with utilitarianism. Though it may work for other ethical systems.
Utility, as measured, is necessarily relative. By this I don’t mean that it is theoretically impossible to have an objective measure of utility, only that it is practically impossible; in reality / in practice, we measure utility relative to a baseline. When calculating the utility of doing something nice for somebody, it is impractical to calculate their current utility, which would include the totality of their entire experience as summed in their current experience.
Rule utilitarianism operates in the same fashion much more straightforwardly, considering utility from an act as the average deviation from a relative position, which I think it is safe to call “normal”.
Once we observe that utility is measured from a relative baseline, a normal, then it is meaningful to talk about acts which are of negative utility; the meaningful comparison is not to an absolute number, but to a relative measure, which any given act can fall beneath.
Insofar as we treat utilitarianism as having an absolute number which cannot be measured by which is the important criteria, “badness” itself is meaningless; badness compared to what? Now, you might say that the correct point of measurement is to the highest-positive-utility act; that utilitarianism says that all acts are measured relative to this. But this is not a position I believe is universally supported; certainly Karl Popper argued against this view of utilitarianism, proposing the framework of negative utilitarianism (I think he invented it?) as a solution to problems he saw with this worldview. Negative utilitarianism measures two distinct values, prioritizing one over the other.
Assuming we do stick to a relative measure, once we observe that acts, or the failure to act, can be of negative, neutral, or positive value, with respect to that relative “normal”, it is meaningful to talk about negative-utility acts as distinct from an inaction relative to a positive-utility act. We can then call negative-utility acts “evil”, neutral acts “bad” (I think a better term here is “suboptimal”), and good acts “good”, and in doing so, recover an important part of the way most human beings experience ethics, which includes a component we call “evil”, as distinct from “good”, which itself is distinct from “neutral”.
Or, to put all this another way—our moral intuitions do not in fact say that goodness and evil are fungible, and in particular, that somebody who murders somebody for every seven lives he saves is anything like a good person, and insofar as utilitarianism doesn’t acknowledge this, it fails to actually be a good representation of human ethics, which is to say, the ethics we actually care about. It should add up to normality, after all.
Now, you might say that the correct point of measurement is to the highest-positive-utility act; that utilitarianism says that all acts are measured relative to this. But this is not a position I believe is universally supported; certainly Karl Popper argued against this view of utilitarianism, proposing the framework of negative utilitarianism (I think he invented it?) as a solution to problems he saw with this worldview.
Total Act Utilitarianism is what comes to mind when I think of a “standard” utilitarian theory. Your theory seems like a kind of rule or non-total variant. Your alterations would be much unliked by someone like Peter Singer, who thinks that we have an obligation to help people simply because us doing so could improve their lives. Where you see neutrality, he would see obligation.
It should add up to normality, after all.
I disagree, and I think that you are more of a relativist than you are letting on. Ethics should be able to teach us things that we didn’t already know, perhaps even things that we didn’t want to acknowledge.
As for someone who murders fewer people than he saves, such a person would be superior to me (who saves nobody and kills nobody) and inferior to someone who saves many and kills nobody.
Where you see neutrality, he would see obligation.
In what sense is it an obligation? By what mechanism am I obligated? Do I get punished for not living up to it?
You use that word, but the only meaningful source of that obligation, as I see it, is the desire to be a good person. Good, not neutral.
I disagree, and I think that you are more of a relativist than you are letting on. Ethics should be able to teach us things that we didn’t already know, perhaps even things that we didn’t want to acknowledge.
This is a point of divergence, and I find that what ethical systems “teach us” is an area full of skulls. (However, I am, in fact, far LESS of a relativist than I am letting on; I am in fact a variant of absolutist.)
As for someone who murders fewer people than he saves, such a person would be superior to me (who saves nobody and kills nobody) and inferior to someone who saves many and kills nobody.
Question: Would a version of yourself who did not believe in your ethics, and saw “neutral” as a perfectly valid thing to be, be happier than the version of yourself that exists?
Some moral theories have zero “slack”: everything that is not mandatory (morally good) is forbidden (morally evil). It seems that yours is not one of them, but they do exist.
I suppose that people who adhere to them think that any other system is morally repugnant, and they can have that opinion if they want, but it seems completely impractical and downright counterproductive even if there was some absolute standard by which they could be said to be “correct”.
One way of understanding these “zero slack” theories is not that they approve/condemn things as morally good vs morally evil, but rather that they provide a single ordering of actions from best to worst. There is no negative (evil) half of the spectrum. Some things are just worse than others, and you should aspire to the best that you can, an idea which I don’t think is counterproductive at all.
You use that word, but the only meaningful source of that obligation, as I see it, is the desire to be a good person.
Yes, but then it sounds like those who have no such altruistic desire are equally justified as those who do. An alternative view of obligation, one which works very well with utilitarianism, is to reject personal identity as a psychological illusion. In that case there is no special difference between “my” suffering and “your” suffering, and my desire to minimize one of these rationally requires me to minimize the other. Many pantheists take such a view of ethics, and I believe its quasi-official name is “open individualism”.
This is a point of divergence, and I find that what ethical systems “teach us” is an area full of skulls.
You would prefer that we had the ethical intuitions and views of the first human beings, or perhaps of their hominid ancestors?
Yes, but then it sounds like those who have no such altruistic desire are equally justified as those who do. An alternative view of obligation, one which works very well with utilitarianism, is to reject personal identity as a psychological illusion. In that case there is no special difference between “my” suffering and “your” suffering, and my desire to minimize one of these rationally requires me to minimize the other. Many pantheists take such a view of ethics, and I believe its quasi-official name is “open individualism”.
I think this requires an assumption that there exists on obligation to end our own suffering; I find that a curious notion, because it presupposes that there is only one valid way to exist.
You would prefer that we had the ethical intuitions and views of the first human beings, or perhaps of their hominid ancestors?
What bearing do their ethical intuitions have on me?
(What bearing do my ethical intuitions have on future hominids?)
I think this requires an assumption that there exists on obligation to end our own suffering
The obligation in this theory is conditional on you wanting to end your own suffering. If you don’t care about your own suffering, then you have no reason to care about the suffering of others. However, if you do care, then you must also care about the suffering of others.
“Evil is not just a goodness minimization problem” makes sense, but “Badness is not just a goodness minimization problem” doesn’t make sense to me. Your analysis hinges on a concept of evil as distinct from merely bad.
In the trolley problem, sacrificing the one to save the five will always lead to less badness, because fewer people are dead in the resulting state of the world than would otherwise be. This is why utilitarianism always chooses to sacrifice the one to save the five, ceteris paribus. Whether less badness is the same thing as less evilness is not considered, because utilitarianism has only one concept of utility. There may be additional contextual facts, e.g. that the person making the decision is employed as a switch operator. But unless these facts influence the resulting world-state (i.e. the number of casualties), they will not factor into the utility calculation.
Therefore, I do not think that your analysis works with utilitarianism. Though it may work for other ethical systems.
Utility, as measured, is necessarily relative. By this I don’t mean that it is theoretically impossible to have an objective measure of utility, only that it is practically impossible; in reality / in practice, we measure utility relative to a baseline. When calculating the utility of doing something nice for somebody, it is impractical to calculate their current utility, which would include the totality of their entire experience as summed in their current experience.
Rule utilitarianism operates in the same fashion much more straightforwardly, considering utility from an act as the average deviation from a relative position, which I think it is safe to call “normal”.
Once we observe that utility is measured from a relative baseline, a normal, then it is meaningful to talk about acts which are of negative utility; the meaningful comparison is not to an absolute number, but to a relative measure, which any given act can fall beneath.
Insofar as we treat utilitarianism as having an absolute number which cannot be measured by which is the important criteria, “badness” itself is meaningless; badness compared to what? Now, you might say that the correct point of measurement is to the highest-positive-utility act; that utilitarianism says that all acts are measured relative to this. But this is not a position I believe is universally supported; certainly Karl Popper argued against this view of utilitarianism, proposing the framework of negative utilitarianism (I think he invented it?) as a solution to problems he saw with this worldview. Negative utilitarianism measures two distinct values, prioritizing one over the other.
Assuming we do stick to a relative measure, once we observe that acts, or the failure to act, can be of negative, neutral, or positive value, with respect to that relative “normal”, it is meaningful to talk about negative-utility acts as distinct from an inaction relative to a positive-utility act. We can then call negative-utility acts “evil”, neutral acts “bad” (I think a better term here is “suboptimal”), and good acts “good”, and in doing so, recover an important part of the way most human beings experience ethics, which includes a component we call “evil”, as distinct from “good”, which itself is distinct from “neutral”.
Or, to put all this another way—our moral intuitions do not in fact say that goodness and evil are fungible, and in particular, that somebody who murders somebody for every seven lives he saves is anything like a good person, and insofar as utilitarianism doesn’t acknowledge this, it fails to actually be a good representation of human ethics, which is to say, the ethics we actually care about. It should add up to normality, after all.
Total Act Utilitarianism is what comes to mind when I think of a “standard” utilitarian theory. Your theory seems like a kind of rule or non-total variant. Your alterations would be much unliked by someone like Peter Singer, who thinks that we have an obligation to help people simply because us doing so could improve their lives. Where you see neutrality, he would see obligation.
I disagree, and I think that you are more of a relativist than you are letting on. Ethics should be able to teach us things that we didn’t already know, perhaps even things that we didn’t want to acknowledge.
As for someone who murders fewer people than he saves, such a person would be superior to me (who saves nobody and kills nobody) and inferior to someone who saves many and kills nobody.
In what sense is it an obligation? By what mechanism am I obligated? Do I get punished for not living up to it?
You use that word, but the only meaningful source of that obligation, as I see it, is the desire to be a good person. Good, not neutral.
This is a point of divergence, and I find that what ethical systems “teach us” is an area full of skulls. (However, I am, in fact, far LESS of a relativist than I am letting on; I am in fact a variant of absolutist.)
Question: Would a version of yourself who did not believe in your ethics, and saw “neutral” as a perfectly valid thing to be, be happier than the version of yourself that exists?
Some moral theories have zero “slack”: everything that is not mandatory (morally good) is forbidden (morally evil). It seems that yours is not one of them, but they do exist.
I suppose that people who adhere to them think that any other system is morally repugnant, and they can have that opinion if they want, but it seems completely impractical and downright counterproductive even if there was some absolute standard by which they could be said to be “correct”.
One way of understanding these “zero slack” theories is not that they approve/condemn things as morally good vs morally evil, but rather that they provide a single ordering of actions from best to worst. There is no negative (evil) half of the spectrum. Some things are just worse than others, and you should aspire to the best that you can, an idea which I don’t think is counterproductive at all.
Yes, but then it sounds like those who have no such altruistic desire are equally justified as those who do. An alternative view of obligation, one which works very well with utilitarianism, is to reject personal identity as a psychological illusion. In that case there is no special difference between “my” suffering and “your” suffering, and my desire to minimize one of these rationally requires me to minimize the other. Many pantheists take such a view of ethics, and I believe its quasi-official name is “open individualism”.
You would prefer that we had the ethical intuitions and views of the first human beings, or perhaps of their hominid ancestors?
Yes.
I think this requires an assumption that there exists on obligation to end our own suffering; I find that a curious notion, because it presupposes that there is only one valid way to exist.
What bearing do their ethical intuitions have on me?
(What bearing do my ethical intuitions have on future hominids?)
The obligation in this theory is conditional on you wanting to end your own suffering. If you don’t care about your own suffering, then you have no reason to care about the suffering of others. However, if you do care, then you must also care about the suffering of others.