That’s a get out of utilitarianism free card. Many people’s preferences include terms for acting in accordance with their own nonutilitarian moral systems.
Preference utilitarianism isn’t a tool for deciding what you should prefer, it’s a tool for deciding how you should act. It’s entirely consistent to prefer options which involve you acting according to whim or some nonutilitarian system (example: going to the pub), yet for it to dictate—after taking into account the preferences of others—that you should in fact do something else (example: taking care of your sick grandmother).
There may be some confusion here, though. I normally think of preferences in this context as being evaluated over future states of the world, i.e. consequences, not over possible actions; it sounds like you’re thinking more in terms of the latter.
Yeah, I sometimes have trouble thinking like a utilitarian.
If we’re just looking at future states of the world, then consider four possible futures: your (isolated hermit) granddaughter exists and has a happy life, your granddaughter exists and has a miserable life, your granddaughter does not exist because she died, your granddaughter does not exist because she was never born.
It seems to me that if utilitarianism is to mean anything then the utility of the last two options should be the same—if we’re allowed to assign utility values to the history of whether she was born and died, even though both possible paths result in the same world-state, then it would be equally valid to assign different utilities to different actions that people took even if they turned out the same, and e.g. virtue ethics would qualify as a particular kind of utilitarianism.
If we accept that the utility of the last two options is the same, then we have an awkward dilemma. Either this utility value is higher than option 2 - meaning that if someone’s life is sufficiently miserable, it’s better to kill them than allow them to continue living. Or it’s lower, meaning that it’s always better to give birth to someone than not. Worse, if your first granddaughter was going to be miserable and your second would be happy, it’s a morally good action if you can do something that kills your first granddaughter but gives rise to the birth of your second granddaughter. It’s weirdly discontinuous to say that your first granddaughter’s preferences become valid once she’s born—does that mean that killing her after she’s born is a bad thing, but if you set up some rube goldberg contraption that will kill her after she’s born then that’s a good thing?
It seems to me that if utilitarianism is to mean anything then the utility of the last two options should be the same—if we’re allowed to assign utility values to the history of whether she was born and died, even though both possible paths result in the same world-state, then it would be equally valid to assign different utilities to different actions that people took even if they turned out the same, and e.g. virtue ethics would qualify as a particular kind of utilitarianism.
Whatever action I take right now, eventually the macroscopic state of the universe is going to look the same (heat death of the universe). Does this mean the utilitarian is committed to saying that all actions available to me are morally equivalent? I don’t think so. Even though the (macroscopic) end state is the same, the way the universe gets there will differ, depending on my actions, and that matters from the perspective of preference utilitarianism.
What, then, would you say is the distinction between a utilitarian and a virtue ethicist? Are they potentially just different formulations of the same idea? Are there any moral systems that definitely don’t qualify as preference utilitarianism, if we allow this kind of distinction in a utility function?
Do you maybe mean the difference between utilitarianism and deontological theories? Virtue ethics is quite obviously different, because it says the business of moral theory is to evaluate character traits rather than acts.
Deontology differs from utilitarianism (and consequentialism more generally) because acts are judged independently of their consequences. An act can be immoral even if it unambiguously leads to a better state of affairs for everyone (a state of affairs where everyone’s preferences are better satisfied and everyone is happier, say), or even if it has absolutely no impact on anyone’s life at any time. Consequentialism doesn’t allow this, even if it allows distinctions between different macroscopic histories that lead to the same macroscopic outcome.
I’d presume that many people’s preferences include terms for the expected well-being of their descendants.
That’s a get out of utilitarianism free card. Many people’s preferences include terms for acting in accordance with their own nonutilitarian moral systems.
Preference utilitarianism isn’t a tool for deciding what you should prefer, it’s a tool for deciding how you should act. It’s entirely consistent to prefer options which involve you acting according to whim or some nonutilitarian system (example: going to the pub), yet for it to dictate—after taking into account the preferences of others—that you should in fact do something else (example: taking care of your sick grandmother).
There may be some confusion here, though. I normally think of preferences in this context as being evaluated over future states of the world, i.e. consequences, not over possible actions; it sounds like you’re thinking more in terms of the latter.
Yeah, I sometimes have trouble thinking like a utilitarian.
If we’re just looking at future states of the world, then consider four possible futures: your (isolated hermit) granddaughter exists and has a happy life, your granddaughter exists and has a miserable life, your granddaughter does not exist because she died, your granddaughter does not exist because she was never born.
It seems to me that if utilitarianism is to mean anything then the utility of the last two options should be the same—if we’re allowed to assign utility values to the history of whether she was born and died, even though both possible paths result in the same world-state, then it would be equally valid to assign different utilities to different actions that people took even if they turned out the same, and e.g. virtue ethics would qualify as a particular kind of utilitarianism.
If we accept that the utility of the last two options is the same, then we have an awkward dilemma. Either this utility value is higher than option 2 - meaning that if someone’s life is sufficiently miserable, it’s better to kill them than allow them to continue living. Or it’s lower, meaning that it’s always better to give birth to someone than not. Worse, if your first granddaughter was going to be miserable and your second would be happy, it’s a morally good action if you can do something that kills your first granddaughter but gives rise to the birth of your second granddaughter. It’s weirdly discontinuous to say that your first granddaughter’s preferences become valid once she’s born—does that mean that killing her after she’s born is a bad thing, but if you set up some rube goldberg contraption that will kill her after she’s born then that’s a good thing?
Whatever action I take right now, eventually the macroscopic state of the universe is going to look the same (heat death of the universe). Does this mean the utilitarian is committed to saying that all actions available to me are morally equivalent? I don’t think so. Even though the (macroscopic) end state is the same, the way the universe gets there will differ, depending on my actions, and that matters from the perspective of preference utilitarianism.
What, then, would you say is the distinction between a utilitarian and a virtue ethicist? Are they potentially just different formulations of the same idea? Are there any moral systems that definitely don’t qualify as preference utilitarianism, if we allow this kind of distinction in a utility function?
Do you maybe mean the difference between utilitarianism and deontological theories? Virtue ethics is quite obviously different, because it says the business of moral theory is to evaluate character traits rather than acts.
Deontology differs from utilitarianism (and consequentialism more generally) because acts are judged independently of their consequences. An act can be immoral even if it unambiguously leads to a better state of affairs for everyone (a state of affairs where everyone’s preferences are better satisfied and everyone is happier, say), or even if it has absolutely no impact on anyone’s life at any time. Consequentialism doesn’t allow this, even if it allows distinctions between different macroscopic histories that lead to the same macroscopic outcome.
No, deontologists are simply allowed to consider factors other than consequences.