This is a response to this comment, which was too long to post there. The context is a thought experiment involving two buttons; a “fast” button that makes all sentient life to die immediately and painlessly, and a “slow” button that sterilizes all sentient life.
I agree that antinatalism shouldn’t be the term for the idea that sentience sucks and should be done away with, but I think antinatalism isn’t the optimal solution anyway (wrt consequences). (I don’t expect this to be controversial; if all sentient life on this planet were to go extinct through a lack of procreation, there would be a not insignificant probability of it existing after we are gone (through evolution of non-sentient life here into sentient life, or through sentient life already existing elsewhere).)
But what is this right to live and die that you speak of? Is it similar to the right to have kids?
Obviously, I know what you mean by it, but it isn’t that clear-cut. The right to have kids conflicts with the right to live and die as you choose, and the right to live and die as you choose conflicts with other people’s rights to the money that you owe them, et cetera. You can encode morality in terms of a bunch of rights and duties, but then you have to decide which rules to break and which to follow.
You can do this by favoring the “more important” rules over the “less important” rules, but how do you decide which is more “important”?
I cannot see any other useful way of measuring the importance of a rule (in the context of a certain decision) than by the consequences that breaking it would have. In sloppy words, you can justify killing a serial killer because all else being equal there would be fewer kills in total. (Note that the justification is NOT that the serial killer has “given up his rights” because he broke a rule or something like that, because it is impossible to live without breaking any of the rules that people usually agree on.)
Furthermore, I cannot see any other useful way of measuring the magnitude of the consequences than in terms of suffering and/or pleasure experienced. Note that in these discussions, “suffering” usually means “experiences which the experiencer considers undesirable”, and similarly for “happiness”. So there is no inherent vagueness or irreconcilable subjectivity there.
Well, that is one way in which the consent/rights/deontologist view is problematic. Another is that it is based on the notion of a self. Yet another is that it has nothing to say on the atrocities that nature commits: we can’t live and die as we choose because nature might build a couple of healthy, natural tumors in your body and since nature is not a “morally culpable” entity, there is no way to condemn this in such a moral framework. At best you could go look for someone to sue for negligence.
(In the context of the thought experiment, the second button would leave people alive and vulnerable to reality, which in all likelihood would get worse as most of them died and society would no longer be able to provide for them. The consequences would be disastrous, but your moral framework has no way to recognize and take into account this harm, as none of its rules would be broken (except the “minor offense” of pushing the button).)
What is “right” and “wrong” as determined by this intricate web of self/intent/consent/right/culpability/fairness/intuition/respect/privacy is a gray area. That I agree with. However, what is “good” and “bad” in terms of consequences is perfectly black and white, at least in a metaphorical sense. The goodness of an action is an objective property of that action: it is the goodness of reality after that action. We may not always be able to measure/predict this goodness perfectly accurately, but that does not make it any less objective (by which I mean independent of what we think).
What is this “goodness”? This is the only morally loaded question we’re left with. That’s a huge cleanup when compared to the rule-based mess where every rule was potentially controversial. Once we settle this, it’s all clear-cut from there. If you decide that paperclips are good, then it follows that you should always act in such a way as to maximize the number of paperclips in the universe. At any one moment in time, which of the possible actions available to you would maximize this is an indisputable fact of reality.
If we could get people to give up their irrational beliefs (god, natural rights, karma, gaia, et cetera), I am pretty damn sure we could finally agree that it is only suffering and pleasure that matter. We would be united under the common goal of maximizing some combination of those two. In this light, pushing the first button is far superior to pushing the second button. Note that while the antinatalist asymmetry heavily involves the concept of self, it is true on a lower level as well: causing a brain to be created causes more suffering than pleasure because the desire for pleasure and the frustration of said desire manifests as suffering.
2011-10-01 at 21:27:52 |
I press the slow button, but not the fast button.
You seem to be arguing from purely utilitarian premises (which I think are an “irrational belief”). This is why you and I will never agree on this. Still, I agree with you that if one starts from utilitarian premises, the fast button is better than the slow button.
2011-10-03 at 16:39:40 |
I realize that you and I have a fundamental disagreement about that. I simply cannot fathom why anyone would choose deontological morality over consequential morality (and most of the reasons for this are in the post). Clearly, this works both ways, but I’d still like to know at least something more about the location of our disagreement. I still haven’t filled in all the details of my own views; there may be a couple of things I’m missing.
What is it about (my particular flavor of) consequentialism, as compared to (your) deontologism, that you reject? Is it the part about only suffering mattering, or is it that it is impractical, or something else? What would you say about a form of utilitarianism that minimizes not suffering but the number of rules broken, or the total importance of broken rules? (These aren’t rhetorical questions.)
2011-10-03 at 20:19:34 |
I don’t reject just one specific kind of consequentialism, I reject all consequentialism, no matter how it’s justified. There are many reasons for that. Consequentialism alone cannot be justified because you need some pre-existing deontological standard to evaluate what is a good and a bad outcome; but once we’ve established some deontological standard for moral evaluation, there’s no reason to switch to some consequentialist method unless you’ve established that consequences are particularly relevant, which I have never found to be true. But most importantly, utilitarian calculations are impossible from a logical standpoint, which renders the vast majority of consequentialist frameworks impossible to use. Finally, consequentialism implies by its very structure that human lives are not primary but are means to an end, something which I consider extremely evil (of course, you can decide to choose a standard which holds existing human lives as primordial, but then, again, why use consequentialism at all?).
“I simply cannot fathom why anyone would choose deontological morality over consequential morality (and most of the reasons for this are in the post).”
Yes, you give a few reasons to reject deontological reasoning in your entry. They seem rather bizarre to me. I can go through them if you wish.
“I still haven’t filled in all the details of my own views; there may be a couple of things I’m missing.”
No, I think the deontological/consequentialist difference is a profound one, as far as I can tell from my arguments with others. It’s not really something that changes because of a few missing facts. It’s really about how you see the world and the role of human beings at a fundamental level.
“What is it about (my particular flavor of) consequentialism, as compared to (your) deontologism, that you reject?”
See above.
“Is it the part about only suffering mattering, or is it that it is impractical, or something else?”
Actually, that’s not quite what you said. You said: “it is only suffering and pleasure that matter.” I don’t know that I would agree with that, but I do agree that they are both salient facts in a sea of facts, and that we should concentrate on them, especially suffering (most people already concentrate on pleasure, so there’s little point in rehashing that).
“What would you say about a form of utilitarianism that minimizes not suffering but the number of rules broken, or the total importance of broken rules? (These aren’t rhetorical questions.)”
Surely it is not the sheer number of rules broken or followed that is important. For instance, a Buddhist monk is not likely to be considered particularly wrong for talking to a woman alone (although he would be reproached for it), while he would be immediately kicked out for committing murder. Breaking one rule in each case yields very different consequences, not for the person or for the society (although these are also true) but for how we see his commitment to the ruleset. “Importance” is perhaps a more relevant term, although then we’d have to discuss more technical issues of how to measure importance.
What would I think about such a utilitarianism? I’d say that it would just be an overlay on a deontological system to try to measure… what? What is the utility of such an overlay? What does it measure?
2011-10-03 at 20:30:39 |
After reading my comment, I want to make just a little precision: when I say that I’ve never found consequences to be relevant, by that I mean actual consequences. I don’t deny that expected consequences (i.e. what would typically happen from such and such action) can be relevant, for example in a court case.
2011-10-10 at 20:03:58 |
Yes, I think you are right about our differences having to do with how we view human beings. Still, there are some passages in your comment that utterly boggle me, such as the part about consequences not being (particularly) relevant (what???). Also I’m not sure what you mean by utilitarian calculations being logically impossible, though I can see a couple of plausible meanings.
You ask what the hypothetical “deontological utilitarianism” would “measure”, but I don’t understand why you would use that word “measure”. What does an engine measure? You don’t use an engine to measure anything, you use it to perform work. Similarly, you don’t use utilitarianism to measure anything, you use it to make decisions. Just in case you had a misunderstanding about this.
Anyway, this exchange has given me some new things to think about. Thanks for elaborating.
2011-10-10 at 20:26:38 |
“Yes, I think you are right about our differences having to do with how we view human beings. Still, there are some passages in your comment that utterly boggle me, such as the part about consequences not being (particularly) relevant (what???).”
What about it? What I mean basically is that consequences are secondary to the rule itself.
“Also I’m not sure what you mean by utilitarian calculations being logically impossible, though I can see a couple of plausible meanings.”
I mean precisely that: it is logically impossible to make any utilitarian calculation, because comparing subjective states (whether in the same person or between people) in a numerical manner is impossible.
“You ask what the hypothetical “deontological utilitarianism” would “measure”, but I don’t understand why you would use that word “measure”. What does an engine measure? You don’t use an engine to measure anything, you use it to perform work. Similarly, you don’t use utilitarianism to measure anything, you use it to make decisions. Just in case you had a misunderstanding about this.”
Then it’s useless as an addition to a deontological system. The rules are there to help you make decisions. You don’t need utilitarianism for that. The only area where utilitarianism can be useful is when two valid rules conflict, but even then, it’s important to remember that we’re really talking about personal preference, not utilitarian calculations.
“Anyway, this exchange has given me some new things to think about. Thanks for elaborating.”
Very good!