Firstly, I want to discuss the 9th objection to utilitarianism: that in our lives, when making decisions, it is completely impractical. I am inclined to completely agree with this assessment. It could be practical, depending on the situation, but by and large, it is simply not. When making every decision, it is too time consuming,and it is also too unrealistic to think that moral agents go through the process of felicific calculus. More likely, a moral agent would take the time to go through this process only when time is available, and only when the consequence could affect them significantly in a negative way. This could be said of the opposite case as well; more or less, the opposite is true, and a moral agent would only take the time when the consequence would affect them in a positive way. However, when you look at it, the result is the same, and it is done in the minority percent of situations.
Secondly, Mills' rebuttal to utilitarianism being the ultimate form of God's will is also impractical as well as void. The initial claim is that utilitarianism is a Godless doctrine, and that its foundation is human happiness, not God's will. Mills' says that God as the creator would will His created beings to be happy, and so utilitarianism is the best way to achieve God's will. I am operating on the assumption that Mills himself was not a Christian- mainly because following Christian doctrine would lead you to operate opposite of a utilitarian mindset. This being the case, I must assert that Mills' rebuttal is incorrect. Within the Bible itself are all of the foundations and answers to the questions that Mills himself seemingly seeks to answer with his own philosophy. What he is effectively doing then, is creating his own doctrine, and trying to reconcile it to a previously created doctrine, without understanding it. Looking completely outside the box, this would be equivalent to me creating a philosophical frame of ideas, and when challenged on the authority of, say, Hinduism, I would say to them: "No, you see, my ideas fit with your ideas because (insert reasons here)", when in fact, I had no real understanding of Hinduism to begin with. Basically, what I am saying, is that Mills' concept of utilitarianism being the ultimate idea of conforming to God's will, is utterly wrong, impractical, and does not make sense. Does anyone have any thoughts? Agree? Disagree?
In response to your first point, we talked about "rule utilitarianism" as well as "act utilitarianism." Sure, not everyone has time every single time they make a moral decision to weigh every single consequence, but that why there is "rule utilitarianism." It allows people to have a set of logical consequences which are very natural and come up almost instinctively in the situation that you would put yourself in. For example, if you were to make an impulse decision to rob a store, you know what those consequences would be immediately, you don't weigh them. You would likely be arrested or have a warrant out for your arrest. It is unlikely that you would get away with it. That is a rule that you know because our government has it already set up. It's an automatic consequence. You only discussed act utilitarianism which left your argument slightly lacking in my opinion.
ReplyDeleteWhile I do agree that it is impractical to apply felicific calculus to every situation, especially those which require immediate action, I disagree with your notion that it can only be applied to a minority of situations. Realistically, most actions allow for some contemplation and allow for general method of felicific calculus to be applied; it is not like we are constantly making life or death decision throughout the day. Lastly, I do not believe Mill was directly referencing Christianity's God when he stated that God wanted to promote the happiness of humans. Instead, it seemed like he was basing his example off of the general form of God, which is supposed to omnibenevolent and wish for the well-being of his people.
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