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Responses to utilitarianism (Nozick's experience machine (Three main…
Responses to utilitarianism
'Morality' by Bernard Williams
There is broad usage of the term 'utilitarianism' which is not accurate - really people should say 'consequentialism' to refer to any teleological theories
4 strengths of utilitarianism:
Non-transcendental: no appeal to anything outside of human life - can be followed without having religious beliefs
Basic good of happiness is minimally problematic - all people do want to be happy - therefore a reasonable aim
Moral issues can be determined by empirical calculation of consequence (though they are not necessarily easy)
Happiness becomes a common currency of moral thought
The system is biased to favour monetarily quantifiable things, as the value system of the capitalist society in which the system was developed emphasises economic values
Criticism: major technical difficulties with the theory - can values be quantified in this way? How to weigh up various happinesses against each other?
Utilitarians must resort to cost-benefit analysis, as the theory provides no mechanism for dealing with unmeasurable values
Rule utilitarianism is preferable because it avoids the criticism of not being able to calculate the consequences in every situation by allowing agents to form moral tules
'Utilitarianism: For and Against' by John Smart and Bernard Williams
Mill took an intermediate position on hedonism, due to his focus on pleasure being necessary condition for goodness, but higher and lower pleasure provide a qualitative analysis of experience
Bentham was a hedonistic act-utilitarian and Moore was an ideal utilitarian because of his belief that states of mind have intrinsic value that is separate from their pleasantness
Mill is a quasi-ideal utilitarian - pleasantness of some form is ideal
Bentham would not disagree with Mill that a philosopher's mind is preferable to a fool's - but for Bentham preference would not be intrinsic
Milner's rats compared to people working for the stimulation of happiness - suggests that perhaps qualities other than hedonistic pleasure are valuable
Does fecundity play a role in the resulting happiness of an experience? Perhaps veridical pleasure is better than fake, because it has a chance of producing future pleasures
Sensual physical pleasures like drinking for example often lead to long term pain etc, and intellectual/higher pleasures often lead to future pleasures like mental improvement and social harmony
Nozick's experience machine
Asks us to imagine that there is an experience machine that could give you any experience you want, with the ability to make you think the stimulus comes from a real experience, however in reality you'd be floating in a tank with electrodes in your brain
Does the veridicality of experience matter?
If we are plugged in for our whole lives we are limited to a man-made reality instead of an external reality
Nozick aimed to refuse hedonism - hedonist would have no reason to choose real life over the machine
Crisp: 'full hedonism' is the idea that welfare consists in what is pleasurable and what makes things pleasurable is that they produce pleasure in the moral agent
Dream example: would a dream life full of pleasure be as good as the real thing?
Three main things that have value apart from pleasure: (accomplishment, personhood and authentic understanding)
We want to do certain things
We want to be a certain kind of person
We want to be able to make contact with a reality deeper than one that is entirely man-made
Criticism from Crisp:
Accomplishment is always an means to pleasure:
'Human beings have developed dispositions and understandings of good that, though apparently non-hedonistic, are in fact securely based on their capacity for the promotion of enjoyment'
Criticism from Crisp: someone who has neither pain nor pleasure in their life would not aspire to accomplishment, hence it is only valuable in terms of the pleasure it produces
The opinion of someone who is not having a veridical experience is not one of a competent judge, because they are not aware of the fact that their experience is not veridical - so there is something more valuable in the veridical
Mill himself mentions money being a means to happiness: 'money is desired not for the sake of an end, but as part of the end'
Sumner: externalist vs. internalise theories of pleasure
Externalist: subjective desire in the agent is what qualifies an experience as pleasurable
Internalist: there is a common and unanalysable trait to all pleasurable experiences which makes them pleasurable
Sumner: 'J. S. Mill, for instance, would have rejected the idea of a life spent passively plugged into an experience machine just as scornfully as Nozick'
e.g. 2 futures, one with success and one with the illusion of success (but everyone actually hates you) - no reason to prefer the veridical version
If happiness lies outside the experience itself, how can we ever know that we're happy
'Principia Ethica' by G. E. Moore
Hedonism is a form of naturalistic ethics - it is good because it is involved with the definition of the word 'good' - criticises hedonism of committing the naturalistic fallacy
Pleasure is not definable in terms of 'good' because good is a primitive term, meaning it is not definable
Urmson
An action is justified as being right if it is in accordance with a moral rule and wrong if it violates a moral rule + a moral rule is correct if it promotes happiness
by 'secondary principles', Mill means moral rules
Agents should, for the most part, follow these rules without difficulty, but should always refer back to the first principle of utility in difficult moral dilemmas, or when secondary principles conflict
Urmson's rule utilitarian interpretation of Mill
Mill found an action to be justified as being right when it is in accordance with moral rule, which are shown to be correct by showing that recognition of the rule promotes welfare/happiness
e.g. breaking promises should be forbidden by rule, rather than situational grounds
Mill's reference to the tendencies of action are proof of his allegiance to rule utilitarianism