Utilitarianism
Such a statement is very significant coming from a Christian scholar.
So, if ‘ought’ is what makes you survive, and the end desires make you survive, then indeed utility is synonymous with (non-authoritative) oug ht. But if you consider the ‘authoritative ought’, then it becomes a meaningless expression of opinion. If authoritative ‘ought’ is separate from personal opinion, it could be an expression of social contract theory, but then it is still meaningless, as this would be expressing how things are which is not in line with morality. It would, however, enable the possibility that we could alter the social contract – converting ‘good’ to my new terms and shifting ‘authoritative/opinion ought’ to be in line with ‘n on- authoritative ought’ which is already in line with utility.
A newmorality
I propose to continuemy development of utilitarianismby reference to a newword I’m inventing: g88d. The definition of ‘g88d’ is as follows: an adjective which describes actions, intentions, or people that ‘maxim ize utility for the maximum number of people. ’ For example, saving ten people instead of one person 16 is a g88d action. This is an analytic definition. People may start to make claims such as ‘ We should/ought to do g88d, ’ but really this would just be an expression of their preference for satisfying the desires of as many people as possible (i.e. they should really be saying ‘ We want/desire to fulfil the desires of as many people as possible. ’ ) Next we actively choose to define ‘g88d’ as that which maxim izes utility for the greatest number. We do not do this for any other reason than for the sake of doing it. If we had defined ‘good’ as that which you ought to do, thenwe can get no further in any definition and theword ‘good’ is useless to us. There’s no part of ‘g88d’ which implies we ought to do it, but I’m sure every rational being who sees utility would desire to maximize it. This is because we, as humans, desire more of what we desire. So, it is rational that – as a descriptive statement – we want to maximize utility. It is impossible to claim rationally that you do not want to maximize utility because, by definition, utility is what you desire as an end. What about the ‘ for the maximum number of people ’ part of g88d’s definition? After all, aren’t we selfish creatures? I have met people who only desire to maximize their own utility. Whilst I may desire to maximize as many people’s utility as possible, to say that being altruistic is better than being selfish without valid reason is false. 17 Just because your intuition suggests altruism is better does not mean everyone’s does, so intuition is not reason for altruism being ‘better’. I have no argument to claim one is worse or better than the other as any such argument would be circular. I propose we can make another word: ‘g66d’. ‘G66d’ means ‘that whichmaxim ize s utility only for itself.’ So , without providing justification we can simply choose to define g88d in that way, and g66d in another way; it’s only the utility part of g88d-utilitarianism which is descriptive. 18 16 In a trolley problem situation. Ideally, the utilitarian action is to save all eleven people. 17 There is no empirical or logical justification which does not require preconceived ideas of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ or does not rely on emotion-backed opinion. 18 Humans do evolutionarily desire to be altruistic. But not in an egalitarian way: We care more about people who are closer to us genetically. So first we prioritize ourselves, then family, and then people who look like us. We could make a third word: g44d which means maximizing utility for everyone with a coefficient of how similar they are to us.
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