Utilitarianism vs Virtue Ethics

[jack]

Until recently, I tended to follow an automatically utilitarian approach. After all, people would say, if one action does more good than another, how can it possibly be true than the second is the "right" one?

But it started to bother me, and I started to think maybe you needed both something like utilitarianism and something like virtue ethics.

I imagined using the same language to describe different ways of getting something right that’s somewhat less subjective and emotional than morality, say, the right way to write reliable computer programs.

Some people would say “here is a list of rules, follow them”. But this approach sucks when the technology and understanding get better, because you keep writing code that saves two bytes if it’s compiled on a 1990's 8-bit home computer, because that was a good idea at the time.

Other people would say, “choose whichever outcome will make the code more reliable in the long run”. That’s better than “follow these outdated rules”, but doesn't really tell you what to do hour-by-hour.

In fact, the people who do best seem to be those who have general principles they stick to, like “fix the security holes first”, even if it’s impossible to truly estimate the relative plusses and minusses of avoiding an eventual security breach versus adding a necessary new feature now. But they don’t stick to them blindly, and are willing to update or bypass those principles if the opposite is obviously better in some particular situation.

My thought, which I’m not yet very sure of, is the same applies to morality.

Comments

[the_alchemist.livejournal.com]

It doesn't seem very brain-melty to me, but perhaps I've misunderstood.

In the situation you describe, and assuming that Action A and Action B are incompatible with one another, I imagine a strict Utilitarian would see which of the following would do most overall good:

1) Committing to Action B but doing Action A (if this is possible)
2) Doing Action A without committing to Action B.
3) Committing to Action B without doing Action A.

If they all created an equal amount of overall good, then the Utilitarian could choose at random or according to some other criteria (for example which option increased their own personal utility the most).

Another strict Utilitarian would be likely to praise them for choosing to do whichever of these does most overall good, blame them for doing one of the other options, and neither praise nor blame them if they chose one of two or three 'top-ranking' options.

[jack]

Ah! Perhaps part of the confusion is whether "committing" means "deciding to do B (even if I change my mind in the future)" or "promising to do B (even if I may later break that promise)".

I understood Peter to be using "commitment" in the sense of committing yourself to it, but perhaps the apparent paradox is resolved (as so many are) if you look only at your possible actions.

In that case, if you have a way of enforcing a commitment to B (setting up a contract, or an automated system, etc) it may solve the problem.

And if not, you have to decide which is worse: doing B now, or promising to do B and breaking your word, reducing your ability to convincingly promise to do B in future similar situations. This always seems to be the difficult bit in utilitarianism -- comparing an immediate bad thing against "this will make society worse in the long term".

[ptc24]

Yes, you got me correctly.

One of the things to wonder about is whether there are intrinsically binding commitments - I mean in a causal sense rather than a moral sense. Whether there's some thought you can think, some action you can take, that makes you more likely to act in a certain way, over and above the effects of other people seeing you make a commitment and building expectations around it. Or, if not commitments, things which are commitment-like.

If it wasn't at all possible, how much would people trust each other?

Also, extrinsic stuff. Imagine I'm writing a textbook on medical ethics. Suppose there's a chapter on whether you can kill your patients to get their organs and save more people (yes, yes, vexatious old chestnut, but bear me out). Supposing I write, "yes, go on, it's for the best" - is writing that for the best, if it will cause people to be afraid to go to hospital for fear of having their organs stolen? People don't have to wait for doctors to get caught stealing organs, they only have to read my textbook. Now generalise my medical ethics textbook to moral guidance in general.

[jack]

is writing that for the best, if it will cause people to be afraid to go to hospital for fear of having their organs stolen?

I suspect this actually happens. Not so much with killing someone for organ donation, which is pretty unlikely, but things like "We TELL everyone they should just always do X because Jesus said so. And maybe we occasionally bend the rules, but we only talk about that circumspectly with other priests". Which I always thought was a bit paternalistic, but also seems to actually serve a practical function.

Or, I remember a slightly more plausible medical dilemma where you're treating a murderous dictator, and should you make a "mistake"? And I think the right answer might be "probably not, but always strenuously deny you'd even consider it"...

[ptc24]

Well, many sorts of priest have titles that are based on some word for "father", so it's not surprising that some of the things they do might be paternalistic. It does seem like a trap for loss of integrity, a good way to end up with a priesthood full of hypocrites.

(Possibly mechanism for intrinsically binding commitments - maintaining a facade of integrity is too difficult? too slow? too error-prone? too likely to become corrupt?)

These problems with integrity etc. are one thing that persuades me the Act Utilitarianism isn't the right thing; neither as a decision procedure nor as a standard of rightness. At least not Act Utilitarianism as commonly conceived; some of these odd decision theories I mentioned a while back might let you talk about something that behaves rather differently which maybe you could still call "Act"; I'm not sure whether that's an abuse of the terminology, though.

Thought experiment: if people were learning a happiness-maximising morality by trial and error or some other gradual learning process, what sort of thing would they converge on?

All of that said, it might be worth reading Sidgwick's The Methods of Ethics, or at least dipping into chapters. That is, if you don't mind wading through pages and pages of not very good writing.

[emperor]

House does the "treating an evil dictator" thing.

[the_alchemist.livejournal.com]

Perhaps part of the confusion is whether "committing" means "deciding to do B (even if I change my mind in the future)" or "promising to do B (even if I may later break that promise)".

I understood Peter to be using "commitment" in the sense of committing yourself to it ...

Still confused about whether you mean "deciding", "promising" or something else (e.g. ensuring that you will be physically compelled to do it).

I don't think that's relevant to the basic method of deciding which option is most utilitarious* though - it just means you have a different number of options to consider.


This always seems to be the difficult bit in utilitarianism -- comparing an immediate bad thing against "this will make society worse in the long term".

Yes, this is difficult! But trying to do it and doing it imperfectly is often better than not trying.

And if it's not worth the effort of not trying, then not trying is the utilitarian thing to do.


* Nb this probably isn't a word.