If you were a hardcore utilitarian, what would you spend all your time doing?

Say your only goal in life is to maximize the overall happiness of everyone. Individuals are considered equal, but some individuals may have interests that have more weight that others' interests. For example, giving $2 to a starving hobo does more than spending $2 on a birthday card. Spending time to learn a language is better than spending time to learn a video game combo.

Of course, you're rarely picking between just a few choices. There are tons of better things you should be doing with your time and resources, so think of the big picture. Recreational activities such as posting on this internet forum doesn't make the world a better place, so you would quit. You want to serve your own interests as well, so you would still masturbate, but not very often.

Let's decide what utilitarians should actually do if they are to follow through with their theory. Never mind the questions about whether you would rape your kids to save a host of strangers. You will probably not encounter any of the weird scenarios mentioned in the literature. Even if you do, how you spend most of your time is still up to you. The question of "What should utilitarians do with their free time?" seems more important than asking what they would do in fixed situations they'll likely never face.

Obviously, the answer is dependent on the utilitarian's skills.

Some suggestions:

- Move to a third-world country and help people first-hand. Overall impact may be low.

- Devote to becoming a doctor, lawyer, social worker, midwife, or to any career that benefits many people directly.

- Devote to becoming a scientist, politician, artist, spy, or to any career that has the potential to benefit few or lots of people significantly.

- Any time you have money saved up, donate it to a cause more worthwhile than personal goals.

- Gather as much wealth as possible to donate to charity. The way the wealth is gathered doesn't matter as long as people aren't hurt too bad in the process.

- Become an influential public figure and convert others to become utilitarians. Since most people can't think for themselves, it's alright to indoctrinate them. In the end, they will do more good than you alone can do.

Well, the obvious response is to become either a scientist or an influential philosopher/large-scale ethical role model. The problem with either, however, is also obvious: what if your effort doesn't achieve anything? What if you spend years working on a cure for some social or medical ill and someone beats you to it by a week? Or worse -- what if you never get anywhere, whether that means finding no cure or influencing no-one to act more morally?

Thus it would seem that to be a truly effective utilitarian, you'd need to devote some time to sure-fire utility, such as becoming a doctor (in becoming a doctor you're pretty much certain to help at least SOMEONE in some rather large way, for instance) and use that experience of creating utility and making decisions for maximum utility in your everyday life to reach and teach others how to act morally.

I am a utilitarian myself (an admittedly fairly hypocritical one). I choose to devote my life to the creation of art, which I believe is nothing if not a utilitarian pursuit.

Excellent, excellent thread idea by the way. Really has me thinking and I'll be following this thread closely.

One could argue that suicide or (selective) mass murder is in many ways the best way to benefit the world, although I would not be that person.

The trick is to take a good look at the world and at yourself and see what you can do best to benefit society.

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Originally Posted by simonj

One could argue that suicide or (selective) mass murder

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Indeed...

This is something I keep coming to argumentatively, which disturbs me...

I'd probably devote my time helping the uneducated (poor schools, troubled teens, adult literacy programs). I was raised to believe that education is the foundation for your life, not the status you were born into or the situations of your surroundings. The more educated you become, the more opportunities are opened to you, so helping others gain access to these opportunities would probably bring the most happiness to everyone all around.

How would a utilitarian rationalise not wiping out the human race? No humans = no unhappiness = maximum happiness.

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Originally Posted by benzss

How would a utilitarian rationalise not wiping out the human race? No humans = no unhappiness = maximum happiness.

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Then there'd be no utility at all. Happiness isn't the absence of unhappiness, you know.

Utility = happiness, no?

I mean if the aim is to maximise happiness, killing everyone would achieve maximum utility.

I'm just speculating here btw.

No, there'd be no happiness.

(Also, utility isn't necessarily happiness; it depends whether you're going by traditional or preference utilitarianism, and I'm the latter.)

Ok, then if I were a hardcore utilitarian I'd invent a healthy pill that makes everybody very happy and productive, then force everybody to take it.

A hardcore traditional utilitarian.

Are you asking or telling?

Telling. Traditional utilitarians equate utility with happiness. Preference utilitarians equate utility with the genuine satisfaction of preferences.

I would think travelling to a third-world country and helping out the people there.

It seems like you wouldn't be doing much, but this isn't necessarily the case, because there are plenty of like-minded people out there already. As lovely anecdotal evidence, a friend who my father met in university, is working out in Africa right now. Ostensibly, it is on behalf of the Baha'i Faith, but really he's organizing and directing a humanitarian organization. He's travelled from place to place working for the Faith, but settled in Sudan (I think), where he organizes his employees and volunteers, runs the food programs and communicates directly on behalf of his little district of the third world to the first. His personal impact has been made from the first 5 or so years he spent as one of the field workers, helping people in individual villages, but as an administrator, he effectively organizes and runs an operation on a shoestring budget.

I can't say I understand why people look down on volunteering in a third-world country, or think that it's less important than being a doctor.

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Originally Posted by coqauvin

I can't say I understand why people look down on volunteering in a third-world country, or think that it's less important than being a doctor.

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I don't know anyone who woulld suggest that. That's baffling.

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Originally Posted by mutton

- Move to a third-world country and help people first-hand. Overall impact may be low.

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whoops I read this wrong.

One of the greatest things that can be done is creating wealth for people, so as a hardcore utilitarian I would be an entrepreneur and create an extremely successful business. Once I learned how to do that well and make lots of money, I'd use that money to start and invest in new entrepreneurial ventures to create even more wealth. This would be extremely worthwhile to society as I'd be giving people what they wanted and for reasonable prices. After building up enough wealth I'd create firms for the sole purpose of investing in entrepreneurial ventures based on the knowledge I gained. Of course I'd automatically be giving money to an extremely inefficient form of charity (government), but if it ended up getting smarter and allowed me to spend money how I want instead of taking it from me and thinking it knows better what to do with it, then I'd donate to private charities for worthwhile causes.

This would all continue on long after my death. So yeah, that's the most I could do as a hardcore utilitarian (with any decent level of probability).

I've never seen utilitarianism as a wholistic individual philosophy; it's always been a philosophy of governance.

Trying to use it to decide questions where other things besides utilitary (i.e by which I assume we are talking about happiness) is a factor, or where all others things are not equal, seems to me a pretty half-assed thing to do. Happiness is a great thing in itself, but at the end of the day, it's only 1 thing out of a whole range of things that humans value.

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Originally Posted by MrShrike

I've never seen utilitarianism as a wholistic individual philosophy

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Well that's because it absolutely cannot be, by nature.

Classical or traditional utilitarians (I've been through this with Ben but I'll just explain it for clarity's sake) equate happiness with utility.

Most modern utilitarians (commonly called Preference Utilitatians) equate the satisfaction of preferences with utility.

The difference is that the "happiness" cannot be falsely achieved; eg. through a virtual reality lie, a happy pill, etc. As I said to Ben, another valuable point is that gives reason for people to be treated preferentially over other creatures, because people can be defined as "creatures which are capable of having preferences".

Ok.

But wait, happiness cannot be falsely achieved? Is that their contention or are you treating that as a fact?

Uh, sorry, neither. I didn't say that very well. The difference between the two is that the UTILITY cannot be falsely achieved. A classical utilitarian would be satisfied by a happy pill or a Matrix-like existence in a false virtual world. A preference utilitarian would not be satisfied by those, unless it was a person's preference simply to be happy (as opposed to being made happy by having their preferences fulfilled).

mutton's last point/option seems best (Become an influential public figure and convert others to become utilitarians). In considering each of the proposals you guys have posted, I wonder if the proposals are too "first-order". Here's what I mean:

You could devote your life to working first-hand in a developing country, e.g. digging wells or distributing mosquito nets. Call this a "first-order" approach. Alternatively, you could devote your life to convincing people to devote their lives to working first-hand in a developing country. Call this a "second-order" approach. Alternatively again, you could devote your life to convincing people to devote their lives to convincing people to devote their lives to working first-hand in a developing country. This would be a "third-order" approach. And so on.

Presumably one could convince at least two people to devote their lives to some favored utilitarian proposal. But this alone exceeds the utility you would have produced alone (assuming a number of things, of course: that they are as able as you, that they otherwise would not have devoted their lives to the cause, etc.).

Though it might take a distinctive and abstract method, presumably one could convince one person to convince two people to devote their lives to some favored utilitarian proposal - this too would exceed the utility you would have produced alone.

If this is right - that one could multiply produced utility by convincing many to do what you would otherwise do alone - then the first-order proposals are not ideal.

Rather, this suggests a good approach would be something like what gwahir suggests: being an influential role-model. I think an inspiring ethics professor would be a good utilitarian. One would likely have a mix of second- and higher- order influence (and on far more than 2 people!) which, through the ripple effect, would produce a ton of utility.


That's my main point. In what follows I just comment on specific points in people's posts.


gwahir raises the problem of what if you're unsuccessful? Maybe you should go for some sure-fire utility? I take the root problem to apply to the individual, viz. how can I produce the most good? I don't take the problem to apply to everyone, viz. what is it that, if everyone were to do it, would produce the most good? Probably it would be bad for everyone to try and find a cure for cancer - if everyone fails, we're screwed. But since not everyone is trying to find a cure for cancer, I think it could very well be that I should, and that I should at the expense of sure-fire activities. At the individual level, a utilitarian should just do whatever activities would produce highest expected utility (we might say "regardless of each of their chances of success", but really those chances are built into the utility calculations, hence "expected").

benzss suggests maybe utilitarians should wipe out everyone, since eliminating unhappiness maximizes happiness. I'm with gwahir in thinking that this would just eliminate happiness as well. However, there might be a case to be made that there is more unhappiness than happiness in the world, and so eliminating both would be favorable. We might not find this convincing as our lives are on the whole quite fortunate, but consider the collective suffering of all those who are not as lucky as first-worlders.

simonj has us wonder whether suicide or selective mass murder would be best on utilitarian grounds. One traditional problem for utilitarians is that it seems nothing is intrinsically wrong, that anything is permitted (indeed required) if the expected utility is highest. One traditional response is that into the expected utility calculations we factor in the chance that our immoral act (e.g. framing or killing an innocent) will be discovered by the general public. Arguably while the chance can often be extremely small, the immense disutility that would result from that small chance obtaining would determine that we should not take the risk. In considering whether suicide or selective mass murder may well be best on utilitarian grounds, we should keep this caveat in mind.

Sisyphus that was probably the best first post made in the history of these forums. I have nothing else to add besides that.