Registered: Dec 2000
Location: NZ
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Utilitarianism and Hitlers Mum.

So, I was sitting down pondering Utilitarianism and Hitlers mother the other day, as you do. And something interesting occured to me...

Background.

Utilitarianism is a philosophy that tries to sidestep making judgements about the objective good and come up with a mathematical formula for finding out what the morally 'right' action is.

It breaks down in to two different isms.

Act utilitarianism (AU): an act is right iff it is in accordance with the set of actions which would maximise the overall utility.

Rule utilitarianism (RU): An act is right iff it is in accordance with the rule set which would maximise the overall utility.

Usually, you can find examples to refute one, but not the other.

Anyway... I started pondering utilitarianism and hitlers mother because Im wanking around with the deductive logic of non-cognitivism (or the lack there of) at the moment. It seems to me that the non-cognitivist would claim that moral beliefs are impossible to prove because they have no basis in scientific fact. It seems to me that there is a vital difference between a moral belief and other types of beliefs though.

We can believe that it was snowing on long island on january the fifth, one thousand years ago. In theory, this can be proven (although hard), because you can find empirical evidence that will lead to a fact about whether or not it was snowing. It could only be that it was a)snowing or b) not snowing. Same with future events, it can only be that it a) will snow in the future or b) it will not snow in the future...

But.. with moral judgements, one will never know the TRUTH of an action without looking at the action in context (or hindsight and foresight). It is only by looking back that we can say that it was not a good thing that hitlers mum brought him in to the world. (OK...lets not get too metaphysical here, I am going to overlook the fact that Hitler MAY have prevented greater evil for the sake of my argument)

But...

Under AU Hitlers mother did the morally right act by being an effective parent and not letting little adolph play in the traffic

Under RU She did the right thing by following the general rule that one should be a good mother.

Yet, advocates of both AU and RU would say that the birth of hitler was a bad thing (from a moral point of view) because the death of six million jews did not maximise the overall utility.

So, advocates of utillitarianism would have to hold Hitlers mother responsible for
a) Acting in accordance with actions (do what a good mother would do) that results in consequences that seem to be counter intuitive to our moral sense
or
b)Acting in acordance with a Rule (be a good mother) that seems to result in the same thing.

Either way, Hitlers mother suddenly becomes morally culpable for the death of six million jews (by utilitarian standards) by acting like a good utilitarian.

The only way this could have been prevented would be if Hitlers mum was psychic and able to see the end result of her giving birth to young adolph...

So, either the Utilitarians are wrong, or infanticide is moral...

Thoughts....

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The only real difference between those who enforce these rules and the 'freelance tax collectors' with balaclavas and flick knives is that members of the second group are more honest. They don't tell you that you're being mugged 'for the good of society.'

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could you define "overall utility"?

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smile on, mighty jesus

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quote:

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Originally posted by Buddha's Penis!:
could you define "overall utility"?

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was she really a good mother?. She didn't educate her child well.

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oh for fucks sake

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quote:

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Originally posted by mori-man:
was she really a good mother?. She didn't educate her child well.

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overall utility = overall 'good' or 'happyness' - Utilitarians measure actions in terms of (eg) if you had $5 dollars and could buy yourself a jug of beer, or buy 5 kids in a 3rd world country immunisations shots, you would measure the amount of 'utility' (or happiness, goodness etc) you having your beer against the amount of utility buying the kids immunisation shots would generate... so, unless drinking beer made you really exstatically and orgasmically overly happy to the point of being in a coma of pleasure, buying the immunisation shots would be the best thing to do with your money.

(interesting side note, under total utilitarianism, to make the world a happier place, the right thing to do would be kill all the unhappy people...hahaha)

So, yeah, you have to think of it in terms of a mathematical formula:

Your five dollars gets:

you a beer = one unit of happiness
kids a life = onehundred units of happiness
etc.

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The only real difference between those who enforce these rules and the 'freelance tax collectors' with balaclavas and flick knives is that members of the second group are more honest. They don't tell you that you're being mugged 'for the good of society.'

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i would think that not raising him would have been for the greatest good, if we stay away from the above-mentioned supposing of the holocaust being positive (in some way).

seems like muffy found some sort of faliure in that system. utilitarianism doesn't sound like a very sound philosophy.

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smile on, mighty jesus

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Or "greatest good".

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lego lady the dungeon is the best place in lego land!! YES LEGO MAN i agree!! but what is behind the wall over there!! NOTHING LEGO LADY PLEASE KEEP DRINKING THE DUNGEON WINE!!!

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quote:

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Originally posted by Buddha's Penis!:
i would think that not raising him would have been for the greatest good, if we stay away from the above-mentioned supposing of the holocaust being positive (in some way).

seems like muffy found some sort of faliure in that system. utilitarianism doesn't sound like a very sound philosophy.

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so, the greater good doesn't count future circumstances? i thought this was supposed to be an analysis in hindsight?

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smile on, mighty jesus

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quote:

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Originally posted by Buddha's Penis!:
so, the greater good doesn't count future circumstances? i thought this was supposed to be an analysis in hindsight?

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Your No Fun Anymore

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If I'm going to die for a word, my word is poon-tang

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surely hitler didn't independantly become what he was, social and cultural influence, upbringing. Maybe he was abused as a child, do we know. He may have been menatly fucked up as a youngster, you are assuming he had an ideal upbringing, do they excist?.

master and slave, you know you like the real decisions to be taken out of your hands. Else why are you here and not there?

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oh for fucks sake

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Originally posted by Paint CHiPs:

For one, what do you mean in terms of "non-cognitivists"?
non-cognitivism is a type of non-realism. It is the idea that you can not assign true or false values to a moral proposition, as a moral proposition is merely a 'feeling' (emotivism etc).. sometimes called the 'boo-hoorah' theory, as it says statements of type : Killing is wrong, is merely your way of saying 'boo to killing' rather than expressing any factual claims about the act of killing.

Secondly, why should we assume de facto that Hitler's mother was psychic?
I'm not saying we should. My point was that for the utilitarian claim to make any sense, for us to be able to do any act in accordance with a rule set, to evaluate the moral 'rightness' of such an act, you would HAVE to be psychic... which makes the theory stupid...

I could get all philosophical with you and say that in the end the holocoust was good for mankind (which I actually believe), but you already told me not to.
Woah! You think it was good for mankind. I'm actually interested in hearing why...most people just say it possibly could have been good for man kind...please, ignore my request not to get too metaphysical... (I was really only trying to rule out 'if a butterfly farts in china will there be a tidal wave in america?' kind of stuff)

So instead I would say that since Hitler's mother had no idea that her son would be anything but an upstanding member of society, she did the right thing by birthing and then raising him.
Well, I would probably go along with you there, my point (again) was that the utilitarian would have to bite the bullet and concede that rule and act utilitarianism seems to come up with counter intuitive results...

In retrospect, perhaps, she should have killed the bastard. But by that logic I should kill any children I have because they may cause more suffering then good.
My point entirely

So I'm not entirely sure where the utilitarian aspect comes into play at all.

huh?... I guess I didn't make my point very well...




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The only real difference between those who enforce these rules and the 'freelance tax collectors' with balaclavas and flick knives is that members of the second group are more honest. They don't tell you that you're being mugged 'for the good of society.'

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quote:

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Originally posted by MuffyTheVampyreLayer:

In retrospect, perhaps, she should have killed the bastard. But by that logic I should kill any children I have because they may cause more suffering then good.
My point entirely
[/B]

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quote:

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Originally posted by Paint CHiPs:
Theory is irrelevent without real world applications.

I will get to the rest tomorrow maybe, but that was my main point.

I think you are misrepresnting utilitarianism by saying that it has to be true in all cases at all times to be valid.

Me go sleep now.

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Was Hitler's mother the 'dirty bugger' who cut off one of Hitler's balls 'when he was small'? Do even English people know what I am talking about?

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I want to live and I want to love
I want to catch something that I might be ashamed of

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Seriously, however, you might say that the situation created Hitler. Else you could do behavioural eugenics to remove anyone who has a 'behaviourally dangerous' genetic set-up. Hitler didn't personally kill all those people, other people did, and some of them were pretty inventive, in a horrible sort of way, themselves. I think that utilitariansim would advocate the exercise of control over potentially dangerous situations, but then governments, especially the US, British and French, have tried this and it doesn't seem to work either.


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I want to live and I want to love
I want to catch something that I might be ashamed of

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quote:

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Originally posted by Smug Git:
Was Hitler's mother the 'dirty bugger' who cut off one of Hitler's balls 'when he was small'? Do even English people know what I am talking about?

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/me sings
Hitler! Has only got one ball!
The other, is in the Albert hall!
His mother!
That dirty bugga!
She cut it off him, when he was small!

*cough*
I used to love that song as a kid.

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OFF

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quote:

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Originally posted by Dacarlo:
/me sings
Hitler! Has only got one ball!
The other, is in the Albert hall!
His mother!
That dirty bugga!
She cut it off him, when he was small!

*cough*
I used to love that song as a kid.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Smug Git:

I thought that it was supposed to be the real words to it. Damn my grandad! You'll be telling me next that undoing my belly-button won't cause my bum to fall off...

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You'll be surprised to hear that Santa isnt real either then?



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OFF

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quote:

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Originally posted by Dacarlo:
You'll be surprised to hear that Santa isnt real either then?

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Say it's not so


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I want to live and I want to love
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quote:

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Originally posted by Paint CHiPs:
Theory is irrelevent without real world applications.

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