Don’t know if I am preaching to the choir, but with how much libs try to use the trolley problem to support their favorite war criminal, it got me thinking just how cringe utilitarianism is.
Whatever utilitarianism may be in theory, in practice, it just trains people to think like bureaucrats who belive themselves to be impartial observers of society (not true), holding power over the lives of others for the sake of the common good. It’s imo a perfect distillation of bourgeois ideology into a theory of ethics. It’s a theory of ethics from the pov of a statesman or a capitalist. Only those groups of people have the power and information necessary to actually act in a meaningfully utilitarian manner.
It’s also note worthy just how prone to creating false dichotomies and ignoring historical context utilitarians are. Although this might just be the result of the trolley problem being so popular.
The problem with that stupid trolley problem meme is not that it implies utilitarianism, but that it’s myopic question-begging that very precisely controls what is and isn’t considered “relevant” information. Also it just plain lies even within that narrow scope about who is on the chopping block in a blue regime.
I have nothing to add but would like to extend my appreciation for reading that something begs-the-question and the term being used correctly.
It’s ground I’ve ceded to popular use but it still bugs me to hear. That being said begging the question isn’t the best name for the fallacy either. It does sound better in misuse, like it’s an upgrade from asking a question cause begging is the next level of asking for something. In theory I’m not a prescriptivist language wise but in practice I’m a word nerd and kinda like some of the rules. Also to be a linguistic descriptivist you have to allow for the prescriptivists to influence language as well, they’re just as much part of the process of development. Dialectics ect. But you can’t really say you’re against interfering with a language developing and then tell a major part of that development process to stop. Some stuff goes and some stuff is kept and you need people who want both and victories on either end for a good solid development and even if you didn’t it would happen anyway cause we need at least some framework to teach language to children in the modern world. These are things I care way more about than I should. But also this is a thread about philosophy so I guess that’s fitting into the crowd just fine.
I’m mostly ambivalent to it, but I remember in a political philosophy class I took back in college, we went over what utilitarians said about US democracy, and it was funny as fuck to see all these jackasses shift from “yes, consequentialism is where it’s at, the outcome determines the moral worth of an action!” to “… uh, actually it’s the process that really makes a government democratic…”
Whatever utilitarianism may be in theory, in practice, it just trains people to think like bureaucrats who belive themselves to be impartial observers of society (not true), holding power over the lives of others for the sake of the common good.
Yeah that’s the problem. It’s fine in the abstract, but the moment rubber hits the road the question of “who gets to decide what the best utility is” throws a wrench in the work. Similar to “we should have a system where the most qualified candidate gets hired.”
It doesn’t help that the most prominent critique of utilitarianism is the Nietzschean “you’re holding back the ubermensches!” one, which is problematic on so many levels. So libs hear “utilitarianism has problems” and they immediately assume the person is a Randite sociopath.
Similar to “we should have a system where the most qualified candidate gets hired.”
Funny you mention that, I was thinking about making a post about how most bourgeois ideology just seems to be some flavour of meritocracy.
Both utilitarianism and meritocracy are imo the bourgeois ideologies that together form the justification of modern liberal/elitist society.
There’s a certain analogy there to virtue and piety under feudalism. The rule by nobility and aristocracy is good because they’ve been anointed by God, which means their rule will be moral and just because that anointing brings them closer to godliness. Please ignore the literal backstabbing and adultery they’re doing.
Meritocracy isn’t really a ‘bourgeois’ ideology in the sense that it originated from favouring the bourgeoisie in some sense. However, meritocracy is still garbage, both in the sense that it is actually understood academically (i.e. broadly, where the relevant merits can be anything from one being skilled and/or knowledgeable to one being rich to one being an inheritor of a fief), and in the sense that it is understood more popularly (i.e. the skilled and knowledgeable people should be rewarded based on this particular merit). I’d argue that people should be provided for based on their capabilities and input (i.e. an old person shouldn’t be required to work 16 hours a day, 6 days a week to be able to satisfy their basic needs, while a person who does more should probably also be given more). I see no sense in having some people live in luxury (at the expense of everybody else) simply based on them proving that they have some merit in the past.
Well, the “academic” version of meritocracy would be more accurately described as the division of labor (which is happens to be something that grew exponentially with capitalism), while the popular notion of meritocracy is how the bourgeoise justify their rule.
I’m sure you have heard of the argument defending the bourgeoise as deserving power because they “work hard, are creative and skilled”. In fact, that is the most common argument in their favour I have encountered. You also hear similar justifications for colonialism and slavery.
RE the trolly problem itself and the application in voting, the libs are probably correct that a less bad thing is worse than a worse thing (tautological correctness being the best kind of correctness).
The way to side step this argument, on a simple utilitarian account, and which I don’t really see articulated, is that we are not at the trolly switch. By arguing that the democrats should do more to reduce harm than just positioning themselves at 99pct of damage of the GOP, and aiming to create a block of constituents that could plausibly withhold support for the Dems unless they did better, you may create a world that presents fewer people tied on a proverbial trolly track, when you get to it in the voting booth. It’s just of no use affirmatively broadcasting that you will support whatever the Dems give you; this very plausibly contributes to worse aggregate outcomes.
trolley problem
