Utilitarianism

[Armoured]

@Orthodoxjay1 and I were just starting to get into a discussion about "greatest good for greatest number" in another thread, which seems worthy of it's own discussion.

My last post, in case you missed it:

what kind of Orwellian talk is this

Um... huh? "greatest good for greatest number"? It's the fundamental concept behind triage, and a school of ethics and philosophy called "Utilitarianism". Taken to extremes it is problematic, but as a general principle, I find it pretty sound.

Utilitarianism - Wikipedia

 

[Paidiske]

The biggest issue with utilitarianism as an ethical method, is that it assumes that we are good at predicting the outcomes of our actions.

Now, sometimes we have to do the best we can in that regard (triage is a good example), but human beings are notoriously bad at predicting outcomes; we think the outcome will be what we want it to be, or we misjudge other possible outcomes, overlook various possibilities, etc.

So in general, utilitarianism can be a flawed approach because it rests on us predicting accurately what will produce the greatest good; and we often - to put it bluntly - suck at that.

I'm not saying it never has its place - (and what would The Wrath of Khan have been without it, I ask you?) but just pointing out that, like all approaches, it can have some problems.

 

[Armoured]

The biggest issue with utilitarianism as an ethical method, is that it assumes that we are good at predicting the outcomes of our actions.

Now, sometimes we have to do the best we can in that regard (triage is a good example), but human beings are notoriously bad at predicting outcomes; we think the outcome will be what we want it to be, or we misjudge other possible outcomes, overlook various possibilities, etc.

So in general, utilitarianism can be a flawed approach because it rests on us predicting accurately what will produce the greatest good; and we often - to put it bluntly - suck at that.

I'm not saying it never has its place - (and what would The Wrath of Khan have been without it, I ask you?) but just pointing out that, like all approaches, it can have some problems.

Oh, it absolutely has it's flaws. And like I say, taken to it's logical extreme, you end up with ideas like mandatory organ donations and specialist slavery.

But generally speaking, assuming reasonable participants, it's petty good, so far as human philosophies go.

And yes, I agree humans can be bad at long term predictions. Indeed, my initial support for, and participation in, the war in Iraq was based on Utilitarian ideals, and look how that turned out? We can only work with the information we have. But I would temper that by saying it is therefore our duty to have as much of the best information as possible before making such decisions, to minimise the chance of such predictive failures.

It's better than every man for himself, at least.