Helping Along "Shallow" Utilitarians

[Michael Dickens]

There seem to be a lot of people out there who are familiar with utilitarianism and like it better than any other moral philosophy, but don't understand all the implications or effectively apply utilitarianism to their actions. (I shall call them "shallow utilitarians," for the fact that they have not reached any deep conclusions.)

I've see a number of such people on philosophy forums and the like. These people represent low-hanging fruit in terms of increasing utility: with just a little more work, they could become powerful forces for increasing utility. The question is, how do we best help them along? How do we take someone who's read a few moral dilemmas, maybe watched a few lectures on Mill, and get them to start thinking about seriously increasing utility?

I met such a person recently and I thought about sending him to this forum, but I expect he'd be scared off by the sorts of things we talk about, and wouldn't be likely to understand the assumptions that most of us make (e.g. animal suffering is as valuable as human suffering, you should donate as much as possible to charity, etc.). What sorts of intermediate steps might I offer him?

[peterhurford]

What sorts of intermediate steps might I offer him?

Reading Peter Singer would be a good one. Especially "The Life You Can Save" and "Animal Liberation". Singer seems to be great at getting people to understand applied utilitarianism without sounding too out there.

[RyanCarey]

I'd take a lot of convincing to call these people 'shallow' utilitarians, with all the negative connotations that come with that term, rather than 'inactive' utilitarians...

I agree about giving them something like these Peter Singer books as a sort of call to action

[Michael Dickens]

I'd take a lot of convincing to call these people 'shallow' utilitarians, with all the negative connotations that come with that term, rather than 'inactive' utilitarians...

I agree about giving them something like these Peter Singer books as a sort of call to action

'Inactive' is fine. 'Shallow' was just the first thing I thought of.

I haven't read Animal Liberation or The Life You Can Save, but I've read some of this other books as well as large excerpts from those two, and I agree that Peter Singer is a good idea.

[rehoot]

Here is one way to approach the problem:

I assert that nearly every sane person is already a utilitarian with respect to his or her self. This is easy to see by observing what people do and do not do. What is preferable: to push a pencil through your eye or to eat breakfast? The answer is easy for every sane adult because every sane adult can understand the outcome and make a decision based on the outcome.

Where do people falter when applying utilitarianism more globally: when the beneficiary is somebody else or the benefit to the self requires consideration of a complex chain of events (like the side effects of setting a good example for others or following norms that reflect a preferred social system that benefits all).

There might be ways to appeal to existing instincts as a mean to pursue behavior change. There is a field of study on attitude change, and it is used, for better or worse, by people who want to sell you something, people who want to convert you to their religion or philosophy, people who want to reduce health-risk behaviors, and so on. You can search the Internet or a university library for 'attitude change.' You can start here: Wikipedia. If you have never studied social psychology and are interested, there is an iTunes University course for 'Sociology 150a' as audio and as video (video is on iTunes too).

Efforts to change beliefs or behaviors might need to be targeted to the beliefs or behaviors that are antecedent to the desired outcome (in other words, address some fundamental beliefs that that need to be fixed so that people get the 'right' answer on the higher-level problem). Some ideas:

* Get people to take the perspective of others (this is called 'perspective-taking' and has been studied extensively),

* Get people to appreciate the value of considering future outcomes (there are studies of how people vary in their consideration of consequences but I'm not sure of any attitude-change procedure for it. One measure is called the 'Consideration of Future Consequences Scale' that has been correlated with various pro-social and pro-environmental behaviors).

* Identify a norm that most people follow, then emphasize its importance. One norm is to simply consider others. No sane person pisses on the floor in the grocery store because we are considerate of others (or that is at least the reasoning that could be claimed as the norm). The tactic of explaining what people typically do has been used to reduce alcohol consumption in universities, and I have seen billboards near me using the tactic to get people to stop chewing tobacco.

** another norm might be to emphasize the importance of cognitive consistency---some people simply do not care that they hold beliefs that are contradictory, and the simply avoid scrutinizing their beliefs. They often experience a version of Moore's paradox in which they might have no rebuttle to a rational argument against their belief, but they maintain that belief because they think that there must be a flaw in the rational argument even though they cannot find it.

** another norm to support with attitude change might be that people recognize the need to study ways to identify truth (counteracting the idea of self-evident truths). Nobody builds an airplane without study or does any scientific work without study, yet people believe that their gut feelings can provide them with answers on complex problems like understanding the social consequences of one's actions. People have a strong tendency to believe that they understand truth when in fact they do not (sometimes leading to religious or political wars). People are often unaware of the origins of their own behavior because the processes that control that behavior are unconscious (Johnson et al.); they have illusions of insight, illusions of external agency, illusions of control, they are unaware of the nature of their prejudices, and so forth. Understanding this is impeded by a 'feeling of knowing' that is not anchored to actual knowing. At the very least, a sense of epistemological humility might help---getting people to consider that their beliefs are only tentative and not 100% factual.

anyway, those are some ideas.

[Ubuntu]

I seriously doubt that most utilitarians are ever going to consistently apply utilitarian reasoning to either their judgments when it comes to practical ethical issues or their behavior. This is one reason why I don't consider myself to be a utilitarian (wouldn't want to hold myself up to a higher standard than I can meet) and have no interest in promoting utilitarianism. I'd prefer to identify as a value hedonist because I'd only be making a claim about what is objectively true, not presenting myself as an ethical role model or expressing a personal attitude.

I assert that nearly every sane person is already a utilitarian with respect to his or her self.

I think it's a contradiction to be a utilitarian 'in regard to yourself' but I think this is true if you mean everyone is concerned with their own preference satisfaction, not if you mean happiness, people seem to want things other than pleasure.

Where do people falter when applying utilitarianism more globally:

Applying utilitarian principles to decisions that have a widespread impact is important but I've always wondered why there was never any emphasis on here about maximizing pleasure (or preference satisfaction) in mundane, everyday scenarios (cooking meals for your neighbours, buying a homeless person a coat, buying some kid a playstation, working at a suicide hotline or an animal shelter etc. ) or at least this is the impression I've sometimes gotten from reading the posts on here.

[peterhurford]

Thanks for elaborating on your perspective!

I seriously doubt that most utilitarians are ever going to consistently apply utilitarian reasoning to either their judgments when it comes to practical ethical issues or their behavior.

Why do you think utilitarians won't consistently apply utilitarian reasoning?

This is one reason why I don't consider myself to be a utilitarian (wouldn't want to hold myself up to a higher standard than I can meet)

I don't think anyone on this forum is truly an ideal utilitarian -- its an impossible-to-meet standard where you can just continually be "better". So if you do sincerely think it better to reach the utilitarian ideal and work toward it yourself, I think you can consider yourself a utilitarian.

and have no interest in promoting utilitarianism.

Why not? Though, if you're bad at it, then of course it might not maximize utility to do so!

I'd prefer to identify as a value hedonist because I'd only be making a claim about what is objectively true

What is value hedonism? Why do you think it is objectively true?

not presenting myself as an ethical role model

I don't think people here consider themselves ethical role models; nor is that what utilitarianism is about.

[Ubuntu]

Why do you think utilitarians won't consistently apply utilitarian reasoning?

I'm basing this mostly on some of the posters I've encountered on this site and online generally.

I don't think anyone on this forum is truly an ideal utilitarian -- its an impossible-to-meet standard where you can just continually be "better". So if you do sincerely think it better to reach the utilitarian ideal and work toward it yourself, I think you can consider yourself a utilitarian.

I wouldn't want to unintentionally harm someone, or even just not help them when the opportunity arose, and come off as hypocritical or have them associate my perceived or actual inconsistency with my views.

Why not? Though, if you're bad at it, then of course it might not maximize utility to do so!

1) I think it's futile, most people will likely always adopt the view that is appealing to them, if they're the kind of people who 'analyze' moral issues to begin with, 2) as I said, I just don't think most utilitarians will ever be consistent in their behavior or their practical/applied ethical judgments and 3), this wouldn't be a justification if my doing so would be beneficial and I won't shy away from criticizing something actively harmful like factory farming but I don't have the kind of personality to interfere with other people's lives and 'promote' my views to them, although I like expressing my ethical views and having the discussion itself.

What is value hedonism? Why do you think it is objectively true?

The idea that pleasure is the only intrinsic good and pain is the only intrinsic bad (I think this is mistakenly associated with Epicureanism and similar schools of egoism that are oriented around 'welfare hedonism' since 'intrinsic' implies good/bad simpliciter). I believe it's true because I believe that experience alone is the source of knowledge and I know through first hand experience what pleasure and pain feel like.

I don't think people here consider themselves ethical role models; nor is that what utilitarianism is about.

I want all beings to experience happiness (to be clear, my concern is with the ratio of actually felt pleasure to pain in the universe and not the number of beings who feel it), even though I don't feel attached to or want a relationship with all beings, but even if I did far more than I do now, I don't think I'd ever be satisfied enough to say that I was actually doing as much as I could to justify calling myself a utilitarian.

[peterhurford]

Me: Why do you think utilitarians won't consistently apply utilitarian reasoning?

Ubuntu: I'm basing this mostly on some of the posters I've encountered on this site and online generally.

Can you elaborate on that? Where do you see the inconsistencies? Is it just that you see people not doing as much as they possibly could do, or is it something else?

~

to be clear, my concern is with the ratio of actually felt pleasure to pain in the universe and not the number of beings who feel it

That's a view I used to hold, though I ended up ditching it in favor of total utilitarianism through the conversation I had here in the thread on "Utilitronium Shockwave". Thus I'm interested in what leads you to this intuition.

Also, how do you feel about future people? How do you feel about the idea that we should voluntarily end the population now and spend all our resources, because in doing so we could make everyone happier (at the expense of all future generations who don't matter in a person-affecting way)?

[Ubuntu]

That's a view I used to hold, though I ended up ditching it in favor of total utilitarianism through the conversation I had here in the thread on "Utilitronium Shockwave".

I thought this was total utilitarianism (a concern for the total amount of pleasure-pain in existence as opposed to the average amount)?

Thus I'm interested in what leads you to this intuition.

Because I think happiness is intrinsically good, I think a universe with a higher ratio of actual happiness-suffering is better than one with a lower ratio of happiness-suffering, even if the average amount of happiness or suffering in the latter is higher (the 'average well-being' of a population is just a statistical construct, it's not real) or it contains more/fewer happy/distressed individuals. I think the greatest good itself is desirable, not the greatest good for the greatest number.

Also, how do you feel about future people?

I think the interests of potential persons hold as much weight as the interests of actual persons.

How do you feel about the idea that we should voluntarily end the population now and spend all our resources, because in doing so we could make everyone happier (at the expense of all future generations who don't matter in a person-affecting way)?

I'm not sure which actions or policies will raise the greatest possible balance of pleasure over pain in practice. I think it would be a good idea to lower the human population (not through genocide or coercion which could theoretically be a necessarily evil but would probably cause more harm than good in practice), I don't know when I stopped thinking of myself as a complete anti-natalist but humans are the only species that have the capacity to improve the quality of life for sentient animals on the planet generally, including the bio-engineering of happy, compassionate human beings who are incapable of extreme suffering, or even spreading sentient life throughout the universe if humans manage to leave the solar system, which is unlikely (maybe sentient AI could be designed who could live on planets inhospitable to biological life or on multi-generational space ships).I don't know if the amount of suffering in the world is or ever will be compensated for by the amount of happiness that does or will exist, I don't know how practical it is that future generations of humans and non-human animals will be genetically engineered to be cheerful, resilient, compassionate and herbivorous, I don't know how difficult life will be in a few hundred years when global warming has drastically accelerated, full-blown anti-natalism may or may not be better.

[peterhurford]

[quote=Ubuntu]Because I think happiness is intrinsically good, I think a universe with a higher ratio of actual happiness-suffering is better than one with a lower ratio of happiness-suffering, even if the average amount of happiness or suffering in the latter is higher (the 'average well-being' of a population is just a statistical construct, it's not real) or it contains more/fewer happy/distressed individuals. I think the greatest good itself is desirable, not the greatest good for the greatest number.[/qoute]

I think I misread you, assuming when you said the amount of people doesn't matter that you didn't think adding happy people would be a way to add happiness. Some people are "person affecting" utilitarians, which only want to maximize the happiness of those who currently exist.

[Simon Rosenqvist]

Since I'm a "shallow" utilitarian, I feel I should explain myself. Let us note that recommending people to become "deep utilitarians" or effective altruists, or what we may call "act utilitarians", depends upon that this is, in fact, what utilitarianism would recommend. However, I believe that this assumption is false, and that in general, act utilitarianism leads to less total pleasure minus pain in the world than following other more efficient utilitarian decision procedures. Let me explain why.

First, of all, consider the following analogy to self-interested pursuit. Suppose we believe that a life with a high level of well-being is the best life to live. But once we are clear on this matter, it remains an open question how to best reach this goal. It is not self-evident that working according to the procedure "try to maximize total pleasure minus pain in your life" will actually maximize total pleasure minus pain in your life. For example, we may live better lives if we focus on our social relations and following some simple principles, such as to walk every day (even when we believe we would feel worse if walking), or to not eat sugar (even when we believe we would feel better if we ate sugar) etc.

Similarly, it is not self-evident that if people are act utilitarians this leads to more pleasure minus pain in the world than if people followed some other morality. Of course, it might still be more efficient to become an act utilitarian. But to simply assert this is not enough. We need an argument for why act utilitarianism is the best decision procedure.

Nor is it enough to point out that religious dogma, common-sense morality or other moral systems are worse than act utilitarianism. That other systems are worse than act utilitarianism is not in itself an argument in favor of this view. This is because there might be other systems which are even better than act utilitarianism.

Are there any reasons to think that people becoming act utilitarians leads to less total pleasure minus pain in the world? Let me suggest three such reasons:

1. Coordination Problems. Consider the case of a repressive dictator, where the people can overturn him only if they act together, but where if any single person demonstrates on her own, she will be killed for nothing, thereby lowering the total amount of pleasure minus pain. It would be better if everyone demonstrated and democracy was brought about, less good if everyone stayed at home, and even worse if only single individuals demonstrated. Suppose that because of surveillance and a a clamp-down on free media, the people cannot coordinate with each other. The problem is that both (a) everyone staying at home, as well as (b) everyone demonstrating, would lead the individuals to do their best they can. If everyone stays at home, then each individual has done her best. It would be true for each person that, had she gone out to demonstrate, she would have produced a worse outcome by getting killed. A whole group of act utilitarians reasoning like this might therefore come to do their best on their own, without producing the best outcome as a group.

The problem is not so much that a group of act utilitarians cannot reach the best outcome - they certainly could have done so; but rather, the problem is that a moral decision procedure which simply proclaims that we should always rebel against dictators, even if it leads to our own meaningless death, would guarantee success in this case. The conclusion: Utilitarians would in some conditions coordinate better if they were not act utilitarians.

2. Exploitation. In an imperfect world, act-utilitarians face the threat of egoists who cooperate only when their own interests are furthered. In these cases, act utilitarians are exploited by the egoists whenever doing so furthers the interests of the egoist, while the act utilitarian will always act as to further both of their aggregate interests. If we assume that exploitation of act utilitarians will make it less likely for them to remain act-utilitarians, and that it will make it more difficult to convince others to become act utilitarians as well (perhaps because of a certain biological tendency to adopt views which make it possible for us to live decent lives), then such exploitation will over time lead to more egoists and less utilitarians. Groups of act utilitarianism might be open to what in game theory is known as "invasions" of egoists. In some cases, preserving the utilitarian ideals might therefore force us to reject act utilitarianism.

Interestingly enough, it has been suggested that using some simple game theoretic devices, together with the assumption of an imperfect world where we have (a) a substantial number of egoists, and (b) where information about the utility of certain goods is uncertain, then many of our non-act-utilitarian institutions, such as giving less in aid to other countries and allowing gaps in the relative income between people, is actually best explained by utilitarianism being true. These institutions might be seen as the best possible ways in which to avoid exploitation under imperfect circumstances.

3. Inefficiency. Even in a perfect world, it is wholly unclear why it would be more efficient to have people try to do what would be best, rather than blindly following simple principles designed on a utilitarian basis. The human brain uses up to 20% of our available energy, and even with this calculative power we struggle to make correct and rational calculations even on such matters as what to buy for dinner. We are afflicted with psyhological biases, rationalization, and research has shown that we are even less rational in our decision making than previously thought. Add to this that the challenge for calculating consequences is many times more difficult for utilitarians than for egoists, since utilitarians need to consider all the consequences for all people that will ever live, while the egoist considers merely her own life.

Once again, the point is not that act utilitarianism is worse than all other moral systems. It is surely not the worst moral system. But as utilitarians, we should ask ourselves, is act utilitarianism the best system? It seems likely that it is not. To give an example, a mixed system where we sometimes calculate the best consequences, and sometimes blindly follow efficient rules designed on a utilitarian basis, is most likely preferable. Exactly what such a system would look like is an interesting empirical question. But most likely, the result would not be act utilitarianism.

[Pablo Stafforini]

Since I'm a "shallow" utilitarian, I feel I should explain myself.

Thanks for taking the time to write this message, Simon! With all due respect to MTGandP, I don't think "shallow" is an appropriate term to describe people like you.

Similarly, it is not self-evident that if people are act utilitarians this leads to more pleasure minus pain in the world than if people followed some other morality. Of course, it might still be more efficient to become an act utilitarian. But to simply assert this is not enough. We need an argument for why act utilitarianism is the best decision procedure.

I agree. Though, strictly speaking, proponents of act utilitarianism as a decision procedure only need to show that act utilitarianism is a better decision procedures than the known alternatives. There might be many decision procedures superior to act utilitarianism which we are ignorant of, and this wouldn't necessarily show that these act utilitarians are wrong.

Even in a perfect world, it is wholly unclear why it would be more efficient to have people try to do what would be best, rather than blindly following simple principles designed on a utilitarian basis. The human brain uses up to 20% of our available energy, and even with this calculative power we struggle to make correct and rational calculations even on such matters as what to buy for dinner. We are afflicted with psyhological biases, rationalization, and research has shown that we are even less rational in our decision making than previously thought. Add to this that the challenge for calculating consequences is many times more difficult for utilitarians than for egoists, since utilitarians need to consider all the consequences for all people that will ever live, while the egoist considers merely her own life.

I completely agree that it would be suboptimal to try to calculate the consequences of each of our actions right before acting, both for the reasons you note and for reasons that others have noted (Toby Ord has written an entire doctoral thesis on the subject). But I don't think folks here are actually claiming that act utilitarianism is the best decision procedure, or the best one we know. Rather, I think the predominant position here is closer to R. M. Hare's "two-level utilitarianism". On this approach, there is a kind of cognitive division of labor where one spends a fraction of one's time thinking carefully (individually or collectively, as we do here on Felicifia) about what one ought to do in various circumstances and the rest of the time acting on these conclusions without thinking too much about them. For example, instead of considering whether you should use contraception as you are about to engage in sexual intercourse, you write an essay addressing this question in "the cool hour" of reflection and then act on your conclusions whenever situations of that sort arise in the future.

Out of curiosity, may I ask what sort of decision procedure do you yourself follow?

[Simon Rosenqvist]

Pablo: I agree, I find Hare's discussion of a "two level utilitarianism" very interesting, and while sketchy, definitely the right way to go. While I don't follow a very well thought-out decision procedure myself, I believe that any good decision procedure should include at least the following principles:

Assumption: Common-sense morality is the so far most effective way of increasing total pleasure minus pain, since it has produced the world containing the most utility to date.

1) Cooperation: Unless demanded otherwise, cooperate with common-sense morality ("the Sleeper").

2) Tie-Breaker: Whenever the rules of common-sense morality conflict, advocate the rule which generate the most expected utility ("the Judge").

3) Rule-Revising: In any of the following areas, initiate processes for changing common-sense morality when deemed necessary:
(i) where you possess professional status which is appraised by the norms of common-sense,
(ii) there exists no prior guidance from common-sense morality ("the Politician").

4) Coordination: Whenever encountering a clear majority of utilitarians with high-quality information, and where there is negligible risk for exploitation by non-utilitarians or utilitarians possessing low-quality information, engage in projects designed to maximize expected utility ("the Radical").

[Pablo Stafforini]

Assumption: Common-sense morality is the so far most effective way of increasing total pleasure minus pain

Since the plausibility of most of your principles is critically sensitive to this assumption, let me ask: What grounds do you have for thinking that the assumption is true? You write that common-sense morality "has produced the world containing the most utility to date" but it is unclear to me what you mean by that.

[peterhurford]

Once again, the point is not that act utilitarianism is worse than all other moral systems. It is surely not the worst moral system. But as utilitarians, we should ask ourselves, is act utilitarianism the best system? It seems likely that it is not.

I accept your premise that the optimal decision procedure with regard to utilitarianism is probably not trying to be an act utilitarian all the time -- in "How a Utilitarian Crosses The Street" I agree as much and decide to use two-level utilitarianism instead.

However, I disagree that this premise yields the conclusion means "commonsense morality" or avoiding effective altruism is the optimal outcome. Significant utility stands to be gained by optimal donation and/or optimal job selection, and I think the burden of proof has been met. For example, a policy that it's totally okay for rich people to spend their millions on yachts seems hardly utility maximizing.

Hence, if one is motivated to actually be a utilitarian (follow utilitarianism as a personal lifestyle / life philosophy), I'd argue that effective altruism (or, rather, "non-shallowness") is an imperative.