To object to Alex’s statement, I have to agree with the rejection of the experience machine. Although your desires are being fulfilled and you have a fake happiness, it could be taken away instantly upon exit of the machine. Wouldn’t that be a harsh reality to realize that all of your happiness wasn’t real? Wouldn’t this downtrodden realization outweigh the false pleasures of the machine? It would be severely depressing to find out that you did not actually accomplish what you thought you did in that machine. On the other hand, the struggle of gaining achievement really is a value because it is something that can’t be taken away. It isn’t false, and you aren’t hooked up to some machine. You’re really doing something and are happy because of your efforts, unlike the experience machine where you don’t have to do anything or put forth any effort to achieve. Nothing in life truly comes for free; we must work for our accomplishments. It is hard work and determination that reaches our goals, not short-cuts. Because false happiness can be taken away, this leads to the conclusion that real happiness comes from a struggle, and the happiness you gain from a struggle cannot be taken from you. No matter how hard the struggle, the gain is always worth it. The harder the struggle, the more it magnifies how much you appreciate the achievement.
The seventh objection to utilitarianism, the experience machine, is not a very great argument. Being happy does not require us to be in the experience machine, but experience in itself is where true happiness lies. The feeling of pleasure is heightened when the action is actually completed, and not fake. People actually want to live, not just feel like it. There is much satisfaction out of knowing you have done something yourself. Often there are feelings of guilt or doubt on oneself if they have experienced something themselves with too much help from another. Pleasure in itself is more than just the experience that is why utilitarianism cannot be explained as living through the experience machine.
Since no one has mentioned the experience machine, I would like to address that objection of Harwood's. The experience machine is simply a metaphor used to test a true hedonist to see whether or not there are other intrinsic values besides pleasure. Harwood argues that utilitarianism requires us to enter the machine and spend our entire lives in it. However, if we are in the experience machine we are not maximizing the most happiness for the most people as a true utilitarian would do. We are merely adhering to our own pleasure and satisfactions. We cannot measure the validity of utilitarianism based on the experience machine because not all characteristics of a utilitarian can be measured and tested in this particular machine.
I would have to agree with Alex on his statement and say that the experience machine is a legitimate argument to refute utilitarianism. This is a good argument against utilitarianism because it says that we only have only one intrinsic value. This cannot be true because everyone values more things then just pleasure. Lets suppose that the only thing that we did value was pleasure. Wouldn't actually experiencing the pleasure mean something to an individual? One example that comes to mind is experiencing love for example. Isn't going the through the feelings and experiences of loving someone important to us? If we were to be in the experience machine and "experience" a loving relationship and then realize that we never really did go through it, we would definitely be upset. This point alone proves that the experience machine is a good argument against the ideas of utilitarianism.
Harwood's ninth objection to utilitarianism says that bigots and sadists are morally right under utilitarianism (this is one of the reasons why Harwood is refuting utilitarianism). However, sadists and bigots would actually be wrong under utilitarianism because they are not maximizing the most amount of pleasure/happiness for the most amounts of people. The victim and his/her friends and family would feel a great deal of unhappiness. Although the satisfaction of the bigots and sadists are being met, it does not measure up to the amount of unhappiness being felt.
For the objection titled Utilitarianism is Unjust, I agree with Harwood that it is not fair to allow people guilty of crimes to go free solely based on the fact that they have a cure for something. They deserve to pay their debt to society by serving time or something else of the equal nature. The one exception I could agree with is if they were given a shorter sentence because they have the cure, much like criminals who give up other criminals are sometimes given shorter sentences because of their cooperation. This is seen as moral, so I think having something that will help society could lower a punishment, but definitely not erase it completely. On the case about the sheriff framing an innocent man just to calm down the mob, that is very immoral and it will not solve anything because the guilty person is still out there and will probably strike again. On these points, I also do not agree with utilitarianism.
The eleventh objection that Harwood suggests is that utilitarianism is too secretive, undemocratic, and elitist. The quote that he places from Winston Churchill is a classic; however I am not sure if his application of the rule is quite right. I don’t understand how after all of the faults that he finds in Utilitarian views and beliefs how he can believe it will be an upgrade from democracy. Sure there are strong and weak points to both, but I do think that advantage has to go to democracy. I am also not sure that it is possible to write off this objection as quickly as Harwood does. There is some truth to the points that he makes, as certain aspects of this theory are in fact undemocratic and elitist. When you have to make decisions based purely on the outcome and don’t take into consideration the people involved. It can be a very cold-hearted theory that fails to take into consideration what all those involved have to say. This makes the theory very undemocratic, and although it may sound like a good idea on paper I don’t believe that utilitarianism would work in life. The flaws that are contained in this theory are impossible to overcome. What happens when to goods conflict, but end up with the same amount of utils? There are too many loopholes to figure out and it would be hard to overturn an entire type of government. Hey, take a look at Iraq.
Sterling Harwood's third objection against utilitarianism stated that utilitarianism is unjust. Utilitarianism is often criticized for failing to treat retributive justice as having intrinsic moral importance. Since utilitarian only value pleasure, so they just want to maximize the utility they could generate. As they do that, they didn't take what is moral into a count; in their mind only the utility they could generate value the most over all other things. Utilitarianism is unjust because they violate the individual rights in the society. I think act-utilitarian favour the wise and the one that have power in the society. For example, in the sheriff case, the angry mod have power to press the personnel in the community to come up with a person to convince him not to kill more people in the community. I said the angry mod have power because he is able to press the authority in the community to do things. The life boat and the scientific genius murder cases provide the utilitarian favour the wise. They value wise people’s life more than the ordinary people in the society. The wise didn't receive the same amount of punishment for their wrong doing. They have lighter punishment sometimes may not have any punishment because they could help to generate more utility for the community. In conclusion, utilitarianism doesn't work in real life.
I agree with Harwood's argument that utilitarianism is unjust. Justice is not always the same as maximizing happiness or satisfaction in the world. In fact, acts of justice can quite plausibly result in anger, conflict, and violence among people. For example, imagine that a minority of people in a society are heavily discriminated against, and the large minority are happy about the discrimination because it affords them greater privileges. Any act that challenges this state of affairs, like a protest march or an act of civil disobedience will result in strong dissatisfaction among the majority, as well as fear and strife among the minority. However, does that make this act morally wrong? I think most reasonable people would agree that standing up against oppression would be just whether or not it yields a net increase in happiness. Therefore, I believe utilitarianism is not compatible with justice.
I agree with Harwood’s objection that utilitarianism makes interpersonal comparisons of utility. Utilitarianism is based on what gives the person the most amount of satisfaction. There should not be a comparison made between individuals about who has the most amount of utility. For example one person might find it sufficient to have 30 utile while another person might only need 15 utile. Does that make the first person twice as good as the second person? No. Different people have different levels of satisfaction. Also, I do not think that people should know what other peoples’ levels of satisfaction are. A person who needs more things to be satisfied should not be worried about what other people think of him. The comparison between people is one of the objections that I have with utilitarianism.
I disagree with Dallas’s point about how we should give shorter sentences to criminals who may have a cure for something. First, everything is arbitrary. We don’t know if the criminal could really cure anything. And how can people come up with what exceptions that are acceptable? Or who would hold the authority to come up with these exceptions? Additionally, if letting these criminals serve a shorter sentence because they can benefit the society, this could show to other criminals that there’s easier ways out. Thus, wouldn’t most criminals want to take advantage of the law which would ultimately defeat the law’s purpose of regulation good and evil? Basically, I’m saying that this exception wouldn’t help. Thus, its true that Harwood’s objection saying that utilitarianism is unjust. We shouldn’t allow people guilty of crime free based on the fact that they have a cure for something.
I am responding to both Mike and Brian. The utilitarian does not care about the multiple things in life such as love. In their eyes love would bring the most good. That is the important concept. Love would only be reasonable if it created the most good. Mike brings up the more reasonable argument that the experience machine is self centred in nature. The role of the utilitarian is to maximize the most good for all. This machine would violate that important rule. A utilitarian should not even be able to enter it because of this rule. The only way a utilitarian would-be able to argue back at this statement is if every person on the planet had this machine and all entered it at the same time. In total the experience machine doesn't violate any rule about multiple values because utilitarians don't care about that stuff in the first place. The selfishness of the machine is a more reasonable argument.
I am responding to both Mike and Brian. The utilitarian does not care about the multiple things in life such as love. In their eyes love would bring the most good. That is the important concept. Love would only be reasonable if it created the most good. Mike brings up the more reasonable argument that the experience machine is self centred in nature. The role of the utilitarian is to maximize the most good for all. This machine would violate that important rule. A utilitarian should not even be able to enter it because of this rule. The only way a utilitarian would be able to argue back at this statement is if every person on the planet had this machine and all entered it at the same time. In total the experience machine doesn't violate any rule about multiple values because utilitarians don't care about that stuff in the first place. The selfishness of the machine is a more reasonable argument.
Harwood's fourth objection says that utilitarians do not take promises seriously enough. Harwood's primary example in this objection is a person who makes a promise to his dying mother promising to beautify her grave and put flowers on it on her birthday every year. Harwood states that a utilitarian would not keep that promise because his time, money, and energy can be better spent doing other things. But what if that person really does enjoy putting flowers on his mother's grave? What if that is the main way he chooses to spend his resources? Then keeping this promise is in the utilitarians best interest. Alternatively, imagine that the person does take the utilitarian approach and ignore the promise made to his mother by investing his time and energy into something he truly enjoys: stalking young girls. Although this person broke the promise, the result does not generate much pleasure for all the people involved (mainly the girls being stalked). Therefore, keeping the promise would be in the utilitarian’s best interest. I think that when utilitarians break promises, it is for legitimate reasons, such as saving a person's life. Harwood illustrates how utilitarians operate in regards to promises by offering the example that a person who is meeting a friend for lunch helps victims from a car crash on the way to the restaurant, and as a result is late for lunch. Harwood says that the difference between a utilitarian and a non-utilitarian would be whether or not the person that was late apologized to their friend. However, I think that this is just a matter of social graces. Although the utilitarian might seem rude in not offering an apology for being late, I think that the friend would be rude in even expecting one, meaning that their time is worth more than someone's life. Therefore, I do not agree with Harwood's objection that utilitarians don't take promises seriously enough.
The eleventh objection that Harwood gives against utilitarianism is that it is too secretive, elitist, and undemocratic. He sees utilitarianism in this way because there is no way one can determine how many units of pleasure, utils, are generated in a single action. There is no mathematical formula to help one figure this out. This leaves utilitarianism to be too subjective. One person may believe that an action has more utils, but another person may think it has less. And since there is no formula to generate an amount of utils a specific action creates, there is no way to know which person is correct. Utilitarianism is very subjective because of this problem. I agree with former posts that a moral system should allow a person a set of rules/standards that can be followed and can be easily understood. But utilitarianism does not provide this. There is no way for any one to understand how to apply utilitarianism, because there is no formula to describe what the more pleasurable act is, what action will provide the most utility. Therefore, utilitarianism is too secretive, because the average person could not understand the system, and it is elitist and undemocratic because only a select few ‘determine’ the meaning of certain actions. Therefore utilitarianism cannot be a usable moral system.
On the second objection from Harwood, Utilitarianism will eliminate the suererogation, which is the self-sacrifice above and beyond the duty. So in the reading they gave you an example of the army retreating and there are 2 armies you can help. For utilitarian they will go with the more people with less sacrifice. The lower risk one is to just leave the 2 soldiers and run away. This will maximize their satisfaction. I would agree that the utilitarians will eliminate the supererogation. Either rule or act-utilitarian will help the soldiers because there is no such rule to help soldiers who is not able to be helped and the act-utilitarians will go with the maximized satisfaction. Now what if the there was only one soldier who is retreating and 4 soldiers needs help? Will the man go and help? If he is utilitarian he would not because there is a possibility that you may die by helping the 4 and that would not be the best consequence they could have. Overall utilitarian only looks for the best consequence they can have. They are not the type who will sacrifice for others because the consequence will be less by sacrificing. Utilitarian will never have a supererogation in them.
Expanding upon the first rule, I agree with the assessment that rule-utilitarianism is redundant, in that rule-utilitarianism and act-utilitarianism are synonymous. Because of the infinite number of differing situations, it seems ridiculous to create a rule for every possible occurrence. However, in providing so many exceptions to rules, that is exactly what we are doing. But if we provide so many exceptions, to allow for every possible circumstance, what purpose do the rules serve? Furthermore, in rule-utilitarianism, any time that a certain rule doesn’t produce the best outcome, rule-utilitarianism advocates amending the rule so the greatest good will still be attained, despite the violated principle. Because this is what happens, what is the purpose of constructing rules at all? We might as well identify the morality of each act independently.
The ninth objection that claims that sadists are morally right under utilitarianism is not valid. Saying that people who produce pain for their own enjoyment are producing the most pleasure is not accurate. They are in fact doing the opposite of this.
I agree with Harwood's second rule, which states that utilitarianism eliminates supererogation, because he goes on to disprove it. Moral self-sacrifice beyond the call of duty is sometimes necessary to maximize satisfaction. By carrying the wounded soldier to safety, both lives will be saved, maximizing the overall satisfaction.
One of Harwood's objections against utilitarianism suggests that utilitarianism fails to take promises seriously enough. What this objection is essentially doing is putting utilitarianism squarely against commonsense morality. An example of this would be if you promise someone who is dying that you’ll visit their grave every month. After going a few times a utilitarian would realize that he could and should completely discount his pledge with the person. You realize that the person will never know if you visit or not so what’s the point to keep the promise. So in the end the utilitarian would realize that life is for the living and he should spend his time and energy doing what will maximize his own satisfaction. Common sense morality would tell us that if we made a promise to someone who was dying we should try and keep it no matter what. I would have to agree with this objection against utilitarianism. If everyone made promises with the intent of never keeping them who would you be able to trust. People would make promises and only uphold the ones that were convenient for them too.
