WEBVTT
00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:14.080
Sometimes there are things that I have to cut out from my main episodes that, in a perfect world, I'd love to include, but they're just too dense or they make the episode too long or they require a set of quite technical terms or concepts to explain.
00:00:14.240 --> 00:00:20.320
Since I want to make my podcast something that any reasonable person can listen to, I try to keep the jargon to a minimum.
00:00:20.480 --> 00:00:25.600
But sometimes I have some parts that feel really crucial to me and that I just love talking about.
00:00:25.839 --> 00:00:30.879
So today we're getting into some more Extra Credit.
00:00:48.079 --> 00:00:55.039
Honestly, any episode where I talk about utilitarianism could have about eight hours of stuff that goes with it.
00:00:55.200 --> 00:01:01.119
It is an ethical framework that has a lot of history and that a lot of scholars have engaged over the last two centuries.
00:01:01.280 --> 00:01:08.159
Also, if you have taken even only one philosophy class in your life, chances are this is one of the things you talked about.
00:01:08.319 --> 00:01:15.519
It's an influential idea, and it has a noticeable impact on the way that we think about thinking about ethics.
00:01:15.840 --> 00:01:30.799
This isn't exactly a super scientific way of measuring this, but I made a list of what are likely the ten most used philosophy textbooks in colleges and universities in the United States since I started as a university student about 20 years ago.
00:01:31.040 --> 00:01:37.120
They include traditional style textbooks, more readable survey type books, and anthologies.
00:01:37.359 --> 00:01:43.040
Every single one has a chapter or major section on utilitarianism, many of them multiple.
00:01:43.359 --> 00:01:50.000
All four textbooks I have used as a professor include major sections on utilitarianism and consequentialism in general.
00:01:50.239 --> 00:01:56.239
It's simply an idea that permeates the way that we think about philosophy and ethics.
00:01:56.480 --> 00:02:04.560
Because of this, I want to dive a little deeper into the way that we use utilitarianism and the way that we think we use utilitarianism.
00:02:04.799 --> 00:02:14.639
When I was in college, I learned about utilitarianism as a way of thinking about how to make informed choices in healthcare in a course called theological bioethics.
00:02:14.879 --> 00:02:17.680
In fact, I credit this course and my professor, Dr.
00:02:17.840 --> 00:02:24.960
Kent Eilers, as the reason why I ended up pursuing philosophy rather than continuing in studying religion, even though Dr.
00:02:25.039 --> 00:02:27.520
Eilers was my systematic theology professor.
00:02:27.840 --> 00:02:28.400
Sorry, Dr.
00:02:28.479 --> 00:02:28.960
Eilers.
00:02:29.360 --> 00:02:36.560
But even in that course, in my first encounters with utilitarianism, it seemed like a kind of alternative ethical theory.
00:02:36.879 --> 00:02:47.840
That is, utilitarianism was the justification you invoked when you wanted to make an ethical choice that seemed to go against commonly held wisdom about justice or fairness.
00:02:48.080 --> 00:02:49.439
Let me give an example.
00:02:57.120 --> 00:03:06.400
In one of my ethics courses, I frequently use a version of the trolley problem that asks students to imagine themselves as a firefighter.
00:03:06.560 --> 00:03:16.879
They have to choose between going to a house with five people in it that's burning down, or going to a museum full of priceless and unique historical artifacts that's on fire.
00:03:17.120 --> 00:03:25.680
Oftentimes, my students will say something like, It's sad that we lose those priceless artifacts, but I would make the right choice and save the people.
00:03:25.840 --> 00:03:31.520
In their mind, the transparently morally upright choice in this situation is to save human lives.
00:03:31.759 --> 00:03:41.520
Making an excuse via utilitarian ethics to save the artifacts instead of the people seems immoral or wrong, or in one student's opinion, evil.
00:03:41.680 --> 00:03:56.400
I'm assuming that you're familiar with the trolley problem here because this is extra credit, so I won't rehash the purpose of the exercise in too much detail, but suffice it to say that the thought experiment is designed to lay out plainly what your personal methods of making that choice are.
00:03:56.639 --> 00:04:08.960
I find that even though we're talking about that problem in the context of utilitarian, or more broadly, consequentialist, ethics, most students don't appear to use utilitarian ethics to answer the question.
00:04:09.199 --> 00:04:12.960
They just say people's lives are more important than objects.
00:04:13.199 --> 00:04:20.079
This reasoning tends to fit with our idea of a duty or rights-based ethical framework, and that makes sense to us.
00:04:20.240 --> 00:04:27.360
But we have to remember that utilitarianism is a method of finding out what the morally upright choice might actually be.
00:04:27.519 --> 00:04:31.759
Additionally, we may also be trying to find out what is merely permissible.
00:04:31.920 --> 00:04:37.920
That is, we might be asking, okay, this isn't gonna make me popular, but is it at least okay to do?
00:04:38.079 --> 00:04:42.319
It won't make me a good guy, but will it at least not make me a bad guy?
00:04:42.560 --> 00:04:55.439
It often feels like using utilitarian ethics gets us to this place where we can at least say, okay, I didn't do a bad thing because, well, look at the good that came from it, even though it seemed like a morally uncomfortable thing to do.
00:04:57.759 --> 00:05:19.600
In order to illuminate the difficulty of using utilitarian ethics as opposed to what we often find ourselves leaning on, a more duty or rights-based ethical framework common to our Western US culture, let's discuss two distinct types of utilitarianism: act utilitarianism and rule utilitarianism.
00:05:19.839 --> 00:05:33.199
First, I want us to understand that these aren't supposed to be competing types of utilitarianism, but rather they represent a way of thinking about their use that aligns with different intentions and contexts.
00:05:33.519 --> 00:05:36.560
Rule utilitarianism is pretty much what it sounds like.
00:05:36.720 --> 00:05:50.240
We use a rule to decide how to weigh the amount of pleasure and pain an action or series of actions will cause, and the best rules, the ones that we should follow, are the ones that overall tend to work most of the time.
00:05:50.399 --> 00:05:52.160
We might call it a rule of thumb.
00:05:52.399 --> 00:05:53.439
Wait your turn in line.
00:05:53.600 --> 00:05:57.360
Or measure twice, cut once, or never put off tomorrow.
00:05:57.600 --> 00:05:58.480
Wait, that's not right.
00:05:58.720 --> 00:06:01.279
Never put off until tomorrow, what you can do today.
00:06:01.600 --> 00:06:10.240
These are rules for conduct that collect into one statement a whole history of ideas about patience, preparedness, or prudence.
00:06:10.480 --> 00:06:16.240
We understand that people with lots of life experience can attest that these rules for living generally pan out.
00:06:16.399 --> 00:06:20.959
No one says, Well, one time I measured twice and I still messed up, so that rule's broken.
00:06:21.199 --> 00:06:26.160
That's just sort of intentionally misunderstanding what the rule is meant to do.
00:06:26.560 --> 00:06:37.600
On the other hand, act utilitarianism is meant to be a method of judging each individual action on its own merits in as close to a vacuum as can be achieved.
00:06:37.839 --> 00:06:44.959
Someone utilizing act utilitarianism is going to say, well, this circumstance may fit with some rule that we tend to think about.
00:06:45.120 --> 00:06:47.920
But this situation is an exception to that rule.
00:06:48.079 --> 00:06:52.160
Or maybe it's a situation where no meaningful precedent exists.
00:06:52.399 --> 00:06:53.279
This happens.
00:06:53.439 --> 00:06:55.680
Think about some kind of historic first.
00:06:55.920 --> 00:07:01.360
For example, Georgiana Simpson was the first black woman to earn a PhD in the United States.
00:07:01.519 --> 00:07:08.800
Up until this point, the utilitarian argument against this happening would have been something like, well, black women don't need PhDs.
00:07:08.879 --> 00:07:14.079
They might be teachers or writers, but they certainly don't need to study things at the level that more educated white folks do.
00:07:14.240 --> 00:07:20.720
It isn't a good use of society's resources to allow her to do this, and it takes away from the work that black women should really be doing elsewhere.
00:07:20.959 --> 00:07:29.519
But someone, or more likely a lot of some ones, including Simpson herself, would have had to have said, no, that calculation doesn't seem correct.
00:07:29.759 --> 00:07:38.240
The rule of black women don't need advanced degrees doesn't work here, and we're going to insist on setting a new precedent.
00:07:38.480 --> 00:07:49.040
It's important to understand that insofar as we think of our decision-making process as utilitarian, we don't choose just one or the other of these two types, act and rule.
00:07:49.279 --> 00:08:07.199
We use both, and we tend to use rule utilitarianism more because, well, can you imagine having to agonize over every single decision, weighing it on its own individual merits every single time you think about bringing your mom a coffee from Starbucks or navigating an uncomfortable social situation?
00:08:07.439 --> 00:08:11.199
Rules for action act as sort of behavior macros.
00:08:11.519 --> 00:08:20.639
We recognize the kinds of situations where that rule works, and we use them flexibly in lots of different situations, even when we don't know all the details.
00:08:20.879 --> 00:08:26.160
We even tend to think that this is good when the choice turns out to have less than desirable results.
00:08:26.399 --> 00:08:38.559
If I give a man on the street$20, but he uses it to buy a knife that enables him to hold up a convenience store, we don't say, well, I guess you can't be generous or charitable with people because they'll turn around and be monsters.
00:08:38.799 --> 00:08:41.840
No, you don't think that the rule itself is broken.
00:08:42.080 --> 00:08:49.600
It was your limited amount of information and the situation's less than ideal circumstances that led to that negative outcome.
00:08:49.919 --> 00:09:01.279
Well, to be clear, I think that there are plenty of people who use this as an excuse to not care about or be supportive of or charitable toward poor folks or the unhoused or the mentally ill.
00:09:01.440 --> 00:09:11.679
But I think those folks should just come out and say, I don't like being charitable toward people I find socially or morally repugnant, rather than saying that there's a problem with being charitable in general.
00:09:11.919 --> 00:09:13.039
But I digress.
00:09:14.159 --> 00:09:25.360
Okay, so we have act and rule utilitarianism, and we can use these sorts of flavors of utilitarianism to navigate all kinds of situations that life can throw at us.
00:09:25.679 --> 00:09:27.519
This is generally how I teach this.
00:09:27.919 --> 00:09:35.200
If this is the way you tend to think, you can use these functional rules for life that have been shown to generally have positive consequences.
00:09:35.519 --> 00:09:43.200
And then when you don't have a good rule for a weird situation, you can try to be as thoughtful and careful about the elements as you can.
00:09:44.240 --> 00:09:53.919
This is also known as two-level utilitarianism, and it's the method of utilizing utilitarian ethical frameworks described by English philosopher R.
00:09:54.159 --> 00:09:54.240
M.
00:09:54.480 --> 00:09:54.960
Hare.
00:09:55.440 --> 00:10:05.840
In his 1976 paper, Ethical Theory and Utilitarianism, Hare says that we can think of rule utilitarianism as being a sort of intuitive moral thinking.
00:10:06.320 --> 00:10:12.240
We internalize actions that fit with our values based on moral codes expressed by rules.
00:10:12.799 --> 00:10:22.399
Then, when we find ourselves in a situation where those rules seem to fail us, we can enter a more critical mode that looks like act utilitarianism.
00:10:24.879 --> 00:10:30.960
I find this way of thinking about utilitarianism really helpful as a method of teaching ethical thinking.
00:10:31.360 --> 00:10:43.840
Not only does this feel relatively intuitive to many folks, but it also seems to have a flexibility that allows us to bend or break rules and circumstances that seem especially unusual or unprecedented.
00:10:44.799 --> 00:10:51.919
But if I were to teach an advanced level course in utilitarian ethics, I would do all of this on like day one.
00:10:52.320 --> 00:11:01.279
Because then we would have to dive into the Olympic-sized swimming pool of issues that a consequentialist moral theory like utilitarianism has.
00:11:01.679 --> 00:11:12.399
But first, let's do a quick drive-thru trip to the Agra for a special announcement, a cool collab between me and Matthias Austin from the Lord of the Rings AMA podcast.
00:11:21.200 --> 00:11:29.600
Deep down here by the dark water lived old Gollum, a small, slimy creature.
00:11:29.840 --> 00:11:34.080
I don't know where he came from, nor who or what he was.
00:11:34.240 --> 00:11:44.159
He was Gollum, as dark as darkness, except for two big round, pale eyes in his thin face.
00:11:47.120 --> 00:11:53.919
Tolkien's description of Gollum in The Hobbit seems both viscerally vivid and frustratingly vague.
00:11:54.080 --> 00:11:56.960
Perhaps fitting for such an enigma as Gollum.
00:11:57.120 --> 00:11:58.159
What drives him?
00:11:58.320 --> 00:11:59.200
How does he think?
00:11:59.360 --> 00:12:01.679
Should we, like Frodo, pity him?
00:12:01.840 --> 00:12:07.360
Or should we align ourselves more closely with Sam and be skeptical of his every move?
00:12:07.759 --> 00:12:09.039
Hi, I'm Peter.
00:12:09.200 --> 00:12:24.960
I'm a professor of ethics, and I'm excited to announce a crossover podcast event between me and Matthias, a Lord of the Rings AMA podcast Things You Can Do Collaboration that we're calling L-O-T-R AMA Pod and Things You Can Do The Hunt for Gollum's Conscience.
00:12:25.200 --> 00:12:36.480
Matthias and I will discuss Gollum's character, motivations, and the outcomes of his actions in Middle-earth as we try to decide if we pity him, fear him, despise him, or something else.
00:12:36.799 --> 00:12:42.960
LOTR AMA Pod, Things You Can Do, The Hunt for Gollum's Conscience comes out May 8th.
00:12:43.120 --> 00:12:50.159
Subscribe to Things You Can Do and The Lord of the Rings AMA Pod wherever you get your podcasts to download it as soon as it drops.
00:13:06.159 --> 00:13:08.960
And I want to begin with a criticism of my own.
00:13:09.200 --> 00:13:14.559
Now, as far as I can tell, there aren't any major thinkers that have expressed this particular criticism.
00:13:14.720 --> 00:13:26.320
I haven't read anyone who has formulated this opinion before, but also more thinkers are publishing in more journals than ever before, so there's a chance this isn't an original thought.
00:13:26.639 --> 00:13:37.519
Nonetheless, I don't believe I'm relying on the thought or research of any other thinker when I say this, so I'm excited to put some possibly brand new philosophy out there into the world.
00:13:37.759 --> 00:13:47.440
My problem with the distinction between act and rule utilitarianism is that I think the difference between the two collapses easily and without very much scrutiny.
00:13:47.679 --> 00:13:49.759
Now, this in itself is not new.
00:13:49.919 --> 00:14:00.159
Philosophers have made this criticism for over 60 years, but interestingly, they tend to say that rule utilitarianism decomposes into act utilitarianism.
00:14:00.399 --> 00:14:11.519
Both British-Australian philosopher JJC Smart and American philosopher David Lyons argue that rule utilitarianism is just act utilitarianism with more parts.
00:14:11.759 --> 00:14:22.639
So in his paper Extreme and Restricted Utilitarianism, Smart says, Moral rules of the extreme utilitarian view are rules of thumb only.
00:14:22.960 --> 00:14:25.360
But they are not bad rules of thumb.
00:14:25.600 --> 00:14:39.679
But if we do come to the conclusion that we should break the rule, and if we have weighed in the balance of our own fallibility and liability to personal bias, what good reason remains for keeping the rule?
00:14:39.919 --> 00:14:52.399
What Smart seems to be saying here is, hey, even if these are good rules of thumb, if they can just kind of be ignored or superseded when the rule doesn't fit, what makes this any different than act utilitarianism?
00:14:52.639 --> 00:15:03.919
Also, as an aside, I just wanted to point out that Smart, in his paper, uses this hilarious word picture to describe using moral rules in lieu of making moral calculations in the moment.
00:15:04.159 --> 00:15:13.039
He says that if you saw someone drowning in a river, you would likely jump in and try to save them based on the moral rules you follow, not reasoning out that it's good to help someone.
00:15:13.279 --> 00:15:19.600
But this could have the unfortunate consequence of you accidentally rescuing a drowning Adolf Hitler.
00:15:19.840 --> 00:15:21.360
Yes, he really says that.
00:15:21.600 --> 00:15:28.879
Whereas an extreme utilitarian would, if he had time, work out the probability of the man's being the villainous dictator.
00:15:28.960 --> 00:15:34.080
And if the probability were high enough, he would, on extreme utilitarian grounds, leave him to drown.
00:15:34.320 --> 00:15:39.679
Just goes to show you that Godwin's law was in full effect long before the invention of the internet.
00:15:40.240 --> 00:15:47.600
Alright, so Smart and Lions seem to think that rule utilitarianism is just act utilitarianism with some shortcuts.
00:15:47.759 --> 00:15:57.120
The rules are helpful, but when we get down to it, if we can choose to not use the rule when we feel like it, they don't really make up the substance of our moral sense.
00:15:57.360 --> 00:16:03.840
To Smart, especially, to say something like, it's wrong to steal, except in the case of Jean Valjean who was starving.
00:16:04.080 --> 00:16:16.480
Well, that's really to say something like, it just so happens that the way I describe the right behavior fits with the idea of don't steal more times than not, but in the end, there's something greater that we appeal to.
00:16:16.720 --> 00:16:26.320
In short, according to Smart, rules just describe act utilitarianism pretty well most of the time, but they don't determine it.
00:16:26.639 --> 00:16:32.240
To be honest, when I was researching this, I was kind of flabbergasted by this approach.
00:16:32.559 --> 00:16:38.639
To me, it kind of seems like saying, well, if the rule doesn't work once, well then it really isn't a rule, is it?
00:16:38.799 --> 00:16:40.080
It's just a description.
00:16:40.320 --> 00:16:43.440
And that well, that's certainly a way to think.
00:16:43.759 --> 00:16:46.320
And I'm not even saying it's necessarily a bad one.
00:16:46.559 --> 00:16:54.080
If I have a computer program that works according to the rules of programming, but only most of the time, I have a computer program that doesn't work.
00:16:54.320 --> 00:17:00.639
But let's be honest, this is not the way that I think that we think about how the world works.
00:17:00.879 --> 00:17:06.559
There are plenty of times where the moral rule of thumb, don't steal, seems to not work very well.
00:17:06.720 --> 00:17:14.799
I mentioned Jean Valjean, I feel quite strongly that someone who is starving should absolutely steal, and even steal from me.
00:17:14.960 --> 00:17:21.119
Please, I'll just leave loaves of bread strewn around my yard for any starving French peasants to nab on their way through town.
00:17:21.359 --> 00:17:31.839
But also consider that doing things like leaking information to the press to hold public officials accountable, or helping an undocumented refugee escape persecution in their home country.
00:17:32.000 --> 00:17:34.880
Heck, think about the scene at the end of The Sound of Music.
00:17:35.119 --> 00:17:40.240
The nuns sabotage the Nazi vehicles to allow the von Trapp family to escape.
00:17:40.400 --> 00:17:54.079
These are situations where we often feel pretty strongly that not only did they not do something morally blameworthy, we also praise them or judge their actions to be praiseworthy and not just permissible.
00:17:54.319 --> 00:17:55.440
Why is that?
00:17:55.680 --> 00:18:04.160
Well, I think Smart would say that it's because the rule itself is just a descriptor, and that the real principle is in the act.
00:18:04.400 --> 00:18:08.799
That is to say, the principle of utility as described by Bentham and Mill.
00:18:08.960 --> 00:18:13.920
The rules help us act expeditiously, but they don't give us reason to act.
00:18:14.240 --> 00:18:17.039
I actually think the opposite.
00:18:19.039 --> 00:18:21.200
So here's my hypothesis.
00:18:21.519 --> 00:18:28.160
What we describe as act utilitarianism, that's just actions motivated by a rule.
00:18:28.400 --> 00:18:30.799
Maximize pleasure, minimize pain.
00:18:31.039 --> 00:18:35.279
But we've seen that as a rule, that is really broad, right?
00:18:35.440 --> 00:18:37.680
It can be hard to know how to do that.
00:18:37.839 --> 00:18:44.000
So we have the rules that Bentham describes for us fecundity and location and certainty and the rest.
00:18:44.160 --> 00:18:47.759
So what do we do in situations where we need more guidance?
00:18:48.000 --> 00:18:50.319
Well, we make more rules, of course.
00:18:50.559 --> 00:18:54.720
This maybe sounds legalistic, but it is practically how we function.
00:18:54.880 --> 00:18:56.319
It's how programming works.
00:18:56.640 --> 00:19:03.759
Do this action if there is this condition, unless there is this condition, until there is this condition.
00:19:03.920 --> 00:19:06.240
It's how we go about solving everyday problems.
00:19:06.480 --> 00:19:10.720
Put the laundry into the washer unless you have something with a big grass stain.
00:19:10.880 --> 00:19:15.200
Then you pull that out and pre-treat it and put the laundry into the dryer.
00:19:15.359 --> 00:19:21.200
But if it's a wool cardigan, well then you have to hang it up to dry instead of cooking it in the dryer.
00:19:21.440 --> 00:19:37.599
I'm interested in pursuing this idea further because I think that the way, even that John Stuart Mill describes utilitarianism, is more like, hey, these rules tend to work, than Bentham, who says that weighing pleasure and pain can give us scientific certainty.
00:19:37.759 --> 00:19:43.440
I wonder if this isn't why we tend to think of Mill and not Bentham when we talk about utilitarianism?
00:19:43.599 --> 00:19:52.720
Dying on the whole I can measure how much happiness you have with science seems like a pretty good reason to think Bentham hadn't discovered a moral theory for the ages.
00:19:52.880 --> 00:19:59.039
I feel this way because of something I didn't really appreciate about Mill until I started working on this episode.
00:19:59.279 --> 00:20:04.880
Many modern thinkers who engage utilitarianism seem to think of it as a sort of moral calculus.
00:20:05.039 --> 00:20:09.200
And I mean this in not exactly a flattering way.
00:20:09.359 --> 00:20:21.039
It's important to understand that many of these thinkers are continuing in the tradition of Kant, specifically with regard to trying to find objective, unchanging answers to moral questions.
00:20:21.279 --> 00:20:33.839
In order for philosophy generally, and ethics specifically to be a science and therefore legitimate, it needs to be able to provide answers that are just as reliable as, say, mathematics or physics.
00:20:34.000 --> 00:20:36.880
And that's definitely a possible way to look at ethics.
00:20:37.039 --> 00:20:44.000
But I don't personally take that tact, and I also think it tends to create more problems than it solves.
00:20:44.240 --> 00:20:59.519
So while Mill himself acknowledges this need for exactness and objectivity, he also does so in the context of his vision for society, a place where people coexist as equals, and with the understanding that everyone is indeed equal.
00:20:59.839 --> 00:21:04.000
Mill wasn't just a navel-gazing ivory tower philosophro.
00:21:04.160 --> 00:21:07.119
He argued before British Parliament for women's suffrage.
00:21:07.279 --> 00:21:09.599
He believed in empowering labor unions.
00:21:09.839 --> 00:21:15.279
Remember, this was in the middle of the Industrial Revolution in Britain when working conditions were abominable.
00:21:15.519 --> 00:21:24.319
He thought the dogged pursuit for uncapped economic growth was a recipe for the destruction of the environment and the decline of human happiness.
00:21:24.559 --> 00:21:42.000
Mill believed in a society that sought to make the lives of all people as good as possible, because, as he says, quote, society between equals can only exist on the understanding that the interests of all are to be regarded equally.
00:21:42.640 --> 00:21:55.599
The base condition for a society that is able to function according to a utilitarian moral framework is one in which the people have a sense of the interests of others as also their own.
00:21:55.839 --> 00:22:03.839
Honestly, to me, this sounds a lot more like a duty or A sense of virtue than it does a calculation of utility.
00:22:04.079 --> 00:22:13.200
The duty to see others' interests as important as your own is the prerequisite for understanding the use of utilitarian principles.
00:22:14.960 --> 00:22:21.039
My tentative conclusion is that Mill describes utilitarianism almost like a kind of deontology.
00:22:21.200 --> 00:22:29.680
That is to say, he describes it like an orientation toward a moral duty rather than a scientific endeavor with immutable results.
00:22:29.920 --> 00:22:40.559
Now, I'm leaving this as a provisional conclusion because, well, I don't study Bentham and Mill as deeply and carefully as I do other scholars, and I could find out tomorrow that I'm wrong.
00:22:40.720 --> 00:22:47.680
That's why I generally tend to hold my own conclusions as kind of eternally provisional, and I teach others to do so as well.
00:22:47.920 --> 00:22:52.799
There's no shame in changing your mind when you have better evidence and better conclusions.
00:22:53.039 --> 00:22:58.720
So maybe I'll keep testing this idea and find out that, you know, I don't think it works as well as I thought it did at first.
00:22:58.960 --> 00:23:05.920
But until then, I think it's really problematic to teach utilitarianism as a sort of moral mathematics.
00:23:06.160 --> 00:23:12.720
I think it's weird to get caught up in debates about whether, as Shelley Kagan says, consequentialism demands too much of us.
00:23:12.880 --> 00:23:13.680
That's the thing.
00:23:13.920 --> 00:23:19.839
Consequentialism, and really all these ideas of ethical frameworks, don't demand things of us.
00:23:20.160 --> 00:23:23.839
We use them to demand things of ourselves.
00:23:24.079 --> 00:23:38.720
The purpose of going through all these weird little arguments and picking and prodding at these ideas, it's not to see which is the prettiest ethical theory, it's to put them to the test and see if they're able to help us become the kinds of people we're trying to be.
00:23:40.480 --> 00:23:51.759
At the end of Star Trek II, The Wrath of Khan, Commander Spock repairs the Starship Enterprise's damaged warp drive by exposing himself to lethal levels of radiation.
00:23:52.000 --> 00:24:01.519
He saves the ship from being destroyed by the massive explosion emanating from the Genesis device, and he sacrifices himself to protect his crew.
00:24:25.039 --> 00:24:25.759
Outweigh.
00:24:28.480 --> 00:24:30.079
The needs of the few.
00:24:36.400 --> 00:24:44.799
To Spock, it made perfect sense that the needs of the hundreds of people on board outweighed his need to stay alive.
00:24:45.039 --> 00:24:52.720
His courage resulted from his moral calculation, his moral sense that it was worth it to give his life for everyone else.
00:24:52.880 --> 00:25:00.720
To honor his friend, Captain Kirk makes the newly formed Edenic Genesis Planet Spock's final resting place.
00:25:00.960 --> 00:25:08.079
But after Captain Kirk, Scotty, Sulu, and the others discover that Spock's soul has been transferred into Dr.
00:25:08.240 --> 00:25:15.359
McCoy's body and that there's a chance to bring their friend back if they reunite his soul with his body, they're faced with a dilemma.
00:25:15.599 --> 00:25:27.200
Travel back to the new planet has been restricted by the Federation, and Captain Kirk is specifically under orders that he is not to go there for any reason, not even to rescue Spock's body.
00:25:27.440 --> 00:25:34.480
Fleet Admiral Morrow tells Kirk, consider it a quarantined planet and a forbidden subject.
00:25:34.799 --> 00:25:37.599
So Kirk and his friends risk everything.
00:25:37.839 --> 00:25:44.000
Under direct orders to stay out of it, instead, they steal the Enterprise.
00:25:44.559 --> 00:25:55.920
Crippled from its recent battles and piloted only by Scotty, Sulu, and Chekhov, the Enterprise escapes a pursuing ship, the technologically advanced Excelsior.
00:25:56.240 --> 00:25:59.519
But not before Kirk's resolve is tested once more.
00:25:59.680 --> 00:26:09.119
The captain of the Excelsior gives Kirk a final chance to turn back to avoid the pain and punishment his choices will cause him and others.
00:26:09.519 --> 00:26:12.000
Excelsior closing to 4,000 meters, sir.
00:26:12.160 --> 00:26:13.680
Scotty, we'll need everything you have.
00:26:13.839 --> 00:26:14.480
I sir.
00:26:14.559 --> 00:26:16.079
What drives standing by?
00:26:18.480 --> 00:26:19.200
Kirk.
00:26:20.160 --> 00:26:23.119
You do this, you'll never sit in the captain's chair again.
00:26:24.160 --> 00:26:25.119
What's speed?
00:26:25.519 --> 00:26:25.920
Ice.
00:26:33.680 --> 00:26:45.680
Without knowing anything about the more fortuitous of the consequences of his actions, Kirk ends up being uniquely positioned to travel through time and save Earth from a civilizational level catastrophe.
00:26:45.920 --> 00:26:52.960
Kirk decided that it was more important for him to save his friend than to maintain his good standing in the Federation.
00:26:53.200 --> 00:27:09.680
Spock saved the ship, and to get him back, Kirk sacrifices his rank, his duty to Starfleet, the Enterprise itself, all because, as we learn, he believed that the needs of the one outweighed the needs of the many.
00:27:13.680 --> 00:27:27.839
I think that when we debate how our ethical frameworks function and the way that they can influence us to act, we have to remember that their purpose is not to decide what is important for us, we decide what's important.
00:27:28.079 --> 00:27:35.519
I often tell my students when they ask about how hard my class is or something like that, I say, math doesn't give you a grade.
00:27:35.839 --> 00:27:36.400
I do.
00:27:36.640 --> 00:27:45.039
And by that I mean I don't really care how many points out of a hundred you got, or whether you were within a tenth of a percent of a B or an A or whatever.
00:27:45.200 --> 00:27:48.640
The numbers are just guidelines that help me make decisions.
00:27:48.880 --> 00:27:50.880
They are not the decision makers.
00:27:51.119 --> 00:27:51.680
I am.
00:27:51.920 --> 00:28:02.799
Likewise, we have to remember that ethical frameworks are ways to illuminate to ourselves what it is that we value and what kind of person we are trying to be.
00:28:03.680 --> 00:28:08.079
But a spotlight is useless if it's pointed at empty space.
00:28:08.240 --> 00:28:12.640
There has to be something there to illuminate, to shine a light on, to point out.
00:28:12.880 --> 00:28:19.039
In all this conversation of moral math, let's remember that utilitarianism can be a useful calculator.
00:28:19.200 --> 00:28:24.559
But a calculator is useless without someone punching in the numbers.
00:28:25.599 --> 00:28:26.720
Thanks for listening.
00:28:26.880 --> 00:28:30.720
See you next time when we'll talk about some more things you can do.
00:28:34.880 --> 00:28:37.039
Thanks for listening to Extra Credit.
00:28:37.119 --> 00:28:38.000
Uh a couple things.
00:28:38.079 --> 00:28:45.039
First, uh thanks to Bonnie Grace for the use of her song Neptune, and Stationary Sign for the use of their song Sneaky Theft.
00:28:45.279 --> 00:28:48.480
Also, yes, you did hear that little circus music tune in there.
00:28:50.799 --> 00:28:56.559
That's Entry of the Gladiators by Julius Fuchik, performed by the Black Diamond Band.
00:28:56.880 --> 00:29:02.559
Also, I know that for all you Star Trek purists out there, Kirk was an admiral at the time he stole the Enterprise.
00:29:02.640 --> 00:29:07.279
I'm just saying Captain Kirk because that's how people who aren't total trekkies tend to think of him.
00:29:07.519 --> 00:29:13.200
And also, to placate you, I have plans to do a whole mini ethicsode on Stealing the Enterprise.
00:29:13.359 --> 00:29:14.880
So you can look forward to that.
00:29:15.119 --> 00:29:23.440
Also, if you've got suggestions for movies, TV shows, or other popular media that you'd like to see me do a mini ethicsode on or an extra credit, let me know.
00:29:23.680 --> 00:29:28.240
Shoot me an email at thingsyoucandopod at gmail.com.
00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:14.080
Sometimes there are things that I have to cut out from my main episodes that, in a perfect world, I'd love to include, but they're just too dense or they make the episode too long or they require a set of quite technical terms or concepts to explain.
00:00:14.240 --> 00:00:20.320
Since I want to make my podcast something that any reasonable person can listen to, I try to keep the jargon to a minimum.
00:00:20.480 --> 00:00:25.600
But sometimes I have some parts that feel really crucial to me and that I just love talking about.
00:00:25.839 --> 00:00:30.879
So today we're getting into some more Extra Credit.
00:00:48.079 --> 00:00:55.039
Honestly, any episode where I talk about utilitarianism could have about eight hours of stuff that goes with it.
00:00:55.200 --> 00:01:01.119
It is an ethical framework that has a lot of history and that a lot of scholars have engaged over the last two centuries.
00:01:01.280 --> 00:01:08.159
Also, if you have taken even only one philosophy class in your life, chances are this is one of the things you talked about.
00:01:08.319 --> 00:01:15.519
It's an influential idea, and it has a noticeable impact on the way that we think about thinking about ethics.
00:01:15.840 --> 00:01:30.799
This isn't exactly a super scientific way of measuring this, but I made a list of what are likely the ten most used philosophy textbooks in colleges and universities in the United States since I started as a university student about 20 years ago.
00:01:31.040 --> 00:01:37.120
They include traditional style textbooks, more readable survey type books, and anthologies.
00:01:37.359 --> 00:01:43.040
Every single one has a chapter or major section on utilitarianism, many of them multiple.
00:01:43.359 --> 00:01:50.000
All four textbooks I have used as a professor include major sections on utilitarianism and consequentialism in general.
00:01:50.239 --> 00:01:56.239
It's simply an idea that permeates the way that we think about philosophy and ethics.
00:01:56.480 --> 00:02:04.560
Because of this, I want to dive a little deeper into the way that we use utilitarianism and the way that we think we use utilitarianism.
00:02:04.799 --> 00:02:14.639
When I was in college, I learned about utilitarianism as a way of thinking about how to make informed choices in healthcare in a course called theological bioethics.
00:02:14.879 --> 00:02:17.680
In fact, I credit this course and my professor, Dr.
00:02:17.840 --> 00:02:24.960
Kent Eilers, as the reason why I ended up pursuing philosophy rather than continuing in studying religion, even though Dr.
00:02:25.039 --> 00:02:27.520
Eilers was my systematic theology professor.
00:02:27.840 --> 00:02:28.400
Sorry, Dr.
00:02:28.479 --> 00:02:28.960
Eilers.
00:02:29.360 --> 00:02:36.560
But even in that course, in my first encounters with utilitarianism, it seemed like a kind of alternative ethical theory.
00:02:36.879 --> 00:02:47.840
That is, utilitarianism was the justification you invoked when you wanted to make an ethical choice that seemed to go against commonly held wisdom about justice or fairness.
00:02:48.080 --> 00:02:49.439
Let me give an example.
00:02:57.120 --> 00:03:06.400
In one of my ethics courses, I frequently use a version of the trolley problem that asks students to imagine themselves as a firefighter.
00:03:06.560 --> 00:03:16.879
They have to choose between going to a house with five people in it that's burning down, or going to a museum full of priceless and unique historical artifacts that's on fire.
00:03:17.120 --> 00:03:25.680
Oftentimes, my students will say something like, It's sad that we lose those priceless artifacts, but I would make the right choice and save the people.
00:03:25.840 --> 00:03:31.520
In their mind, the transparently morally upright choice in this situation is to save human lives.
00:03:31.759 --> 00:03:41.520
Making an excuse via utilitarian ethics to save the artifacts instead of the people seems immoral or wrong, or in one student's opinion, evil.
00:03:41.680 --> 00:03:56.400
I'm assuming that you're familiar with the trolley problem here because this is extra credit, so I won't rehash the purpose of the exercise in too much detail, but suffice it to say that the thought experiment is designed to lay out plainly what your personal methods of making that choice are.
00:03:56.639 --> 00:04:08.960
I find that even though we're talking about that problem in the context of utilitarian, or more broadly, consequentialist, ethics, most students don't appear to use utilitarian ethics to answer the question.
00:04:09.199 --> 00:04:12.960
They just say people's lives are more important than objects.
00:04:13.199 --> 00:04:20.079
This reasoning tends to fit with our idea of a duty or rights-based ethical framework, and that makes sense to us.
00:04:20.240 --> 00:04:27.360
But we have to remember that utilitarianism is a method of finding out what the morally upright choice might actually be.
00:04:27.519 --> 00:04:31.759
Additionally, we may also be trying to find out what is merely permissible.
00:04:31.920 --> 00:04:37.920
That is, we might be asking, okay, this isn't gonna make me popular, but is it at least okay to do?
00:04:38.079 --> 00:04:42.319
It won't make me a good guy, but will it at least not make me a bad guy?
00:04:42.560 --> 00:04:55.439
It often feels like using utilitarian ethics gets us to this place where we can at least say, okay, I didn't do a bad thing because, well, look at the good that came from it, even though it seemed like a morally uncomfortable thing to do.
00:04:57.759 --> 00:05:19.600
In order to illuminate the difficulty of using utilitarian ethics as opposed to what we often find ourselves leaning on, a more duty or rights-based ethical framework common to our Western US culture, let's discuss two distinct types of utilitarianism: act utilitarianism and rule utilitarianism.
00:05:19.839 --> 00:05:33.199
First, I want us to understand that these aren't supposed to be competing types of utilitarianism, but rather they represent a way of thinking about their use that aligns with different intentions and contexts.
00:05:33.519 --> 00:05:36.560
Rule utilitarianism is pretty much what it sounds like.
00:05:36.720 --> 00:05:50.240
We use a rule to decide how to weigh the amount of pleasure and pain an action or series of actions will cause, and the best rules, the ones that we should follow, are the ones that overall tend to work most of the time.
00:05:50.399 --> 00:05:52.160
We might call it a rule of thumb.
00:05:52.399 --> 00:05:53.439
Wait your turn in line.
00:05:53.600 --> 00:05:57.360
Or measure twice, cut once, or never put off tomorrow.
00:05:57.600 --> 00:05:58.480
Wait, that's not right.
00:05:58.720 --> 00:06:01.279
Never put off until tomorrow, what you can do today.
00:06:01.600 --> 00:06:10.240
These are rules for conduct that collect into one statement a whole history of ideas about patience, preparedness, or prudence.
00:06:10.480 --> 00:06:16.240
We understand that people with lots of life experience can attest that these rules for living generally pan out.
00:06:16.399 --> 00:06:20.959
No one says, Well, one time I measured twice and I still messed up, so that rule's broken.
00:06:21.199 --> 00:06:26.160
That's just sort of intentionally misunderstanding what the rule is meant to do.
00:06:26.560 --> 00:06:37.600
On the other hand, act utilitarianism is meant to be a method of judging each individual action on its own merits in as close to a vacuum as can be achieved.
00:06:37.839 --> 00:06:44.959
Someone utilizing act utilitarianism is going to say, well, this circumstance may fit with some rule that we tend to think about.
00:06:45.120 --> 00:06:47.920
But this situation is an exception to that rule.
00:06:48.079 --> 00:06:52.160
Or maybe it's a situation where no meaningful precedent exists.
00:06:52.399 --> 00:06:53.279
This happens.
00:06:53.439 --> 00:06:55.680
Think about some kind of historic first.
00:06:55.920 --> 00:07:01.360
For example, Georgiana Simpson was the first black woman to earn a PhD in the United States.
00:07:01.519 --> 00:07:08.800
Up until this point, the utilitarian argument against this happening would have been something like, well, black women don't need PhDs.
00:07:08.879 --> 00:07:14.079
They might be teachers or writers, but they certainly don't need to study things at the level that more educated white folks do.
00:07:14.240 --> 00:07:20.720
It isn't a good use of society's resources to allow her to do this, and it takes away from the work that black women should really be doing elsewhere.
00:07:20.959 --> 00:07:29.519
But someone, or more likely a lot of some ones, including Simpson herself, would have had to have said, no, that calculation doesn't seem correct.
00:07:29.759 --> 00:07:38.240
The rule of black women don't need advanced degrees doesn't work here, and we're going to insist on setting a new precedent.
00:07:38.480 --> 00:07:49.040
It's important to understand that insofar as we think of our decision-making process as utilitarian, we don't choose just one or the other of these two types, act and rule.
00:07:49.279 --> 00:08:07.199
We use both, and we tend to use rule utilitarianism more because, well, can you imagine having to agonize over every single decision, weighing it on its own individual merits every single time you think about bringing your mom a coffee from Starbucks or navigating an uncomfortable social situation?
00:08:07.439 --> 00:08:11.199
Rules for action act as sort of behavior macros.
00:08:11.519 --> 00:08:20.639
We recognize the kinds of situations where that rule works, and we use them flexibly in lots of different situations, even when we don't know all the details.
00:08:20.879 --> 00:08:26.160
We even tend to think that this is good when the choice turns out to have less than desirable results.
00:08:26.399 --> 00:08:38.559
If I give a man on the street$20, but he uses it to buy a knife that enables him to hold up a convenience store, we don't say, well, I guess you can't be generous or charitable with people because they'll turn around and be monsters.
00:08:38.799 --> 00:08:41.840
No, you don't think that the rule itself is broken.
00:08:42.080 --> 00:08:49.600
It was your limited amount of information and the situation's less than ideal circumstances that led to that negative outcome.
00:08:49.919 --> 00:09:01.279
Well, to be clear, I think that there are plenty of people who use this as an excuse to not care about or be supportive of or charitable toward poor folks or the unhoused or the mentally ill.
00:09:01.440 --> 00:09:11.679
But I think those folks should just come out and say, I don't like being charitable toward people I find socially or morally repugnant, rather than saying that there's a problem with being charitable in general.
00:09:11.919 --> 00:09:13.039
But I digress.
00:09:14.159 --> 00:09:25.360
Okay, so we have act and rule utilitarianism, and we can use these sorts of flavors of utilitarianism to navigate all kinds of situations that life can throw at us.
00:09:25.679 --> 00:09:27.519
This is generally how I teach this.
00:09:27.919 --> 00:09:35.200
If this is the way you tend to think, you can use these functional rules for life that have been shown to generally have positive consequences.
00:09:35.519 --> 00:09:43.200
And then when you don't have a good rule for a weird situation, you can try to be as thoughtful and careful about the elements as you can.
00:09:44.240 --> 00:09:53.919
This is also known as two-level utilitarianism, and it's the method of utilizing utilitarian ethical frameworks described by English philosopher R.
00:09:54.159 --> 00:09:54.240
M.
00:09:54.480 --> 00:09:54.960
Hare.
00:09:55.440 --> 00:10:05.840
In his 1976 paper, Ethical Theory and Utilitarianism, Hare says that we can think of rule utilitarianism as being a sort of intuitive moral thinking.
00:10:06.320 --> 00:10:12.240
We internalize actions that fit with our values based on moral codes expressed by rules.
00:10:12.799 --> 00:10:22.399
Then, when we find ourselves in a situation where those rules seem to fail us, we can enter a more critical mode that looks like act utilitarianism.
00:10:24.879 --> 00:10:30.960
I find this way of thinking about utilitarianism really helpful as a method of teaching ethical thinking.
00:10:31.360 --> 00:10:43.840
Not only does this feel relatively intuitive to many folks, but it also seems to have a flexibility that allows us to bend or break rules and circumstances that seem especially unusual or unprecedented.
00:10:44.799 --> 00:10:51.919
But if I were to teach an advanced level course in utilitarian ethics, I would do all of this on like day one.
00:10:52.320 --> 00:11:01.279
Because then we would have to dive into the Olympic-sized swimming pool of issues that a consequentialist moral theory like utilitarianism has.
00:11:01.679 --> 00:11:12.399
But first, let's do a quick drive-thru trip to the Agra for a special announcement, a cool collab between me and Matthias Austin from the Lord of the Rings AMA podcast.
00:11:21.200 --> 00:11:29.600
Deep down here by the dark water lived old Gollum, a small, slimy creature.
00:11:29.840 --> 00:11:34.080
I don't know where he came from, nor who or what he was.
00:11:34.240 --> 00:11:44.159
He was Gollum, as dark as darkness, except for two big round, pale eyes in his thin face.
00:11:47.120 --> 00:11:53.919
Tolkien's description of Gollum in The Hobbit seems both viscerally vivid and frustratingly vague.
00:11:54.080 --> 00:11:56.960
Perhaps fitting for such an enigma as Gollum.
00:11:57.120 --> 00:11:58.159
What drives him?
00:11:58.320 --> 00:11:59.200
How does he think?
00:11:59.360 --> 00:12:01.679
Should we, like Frodo, pity him?
00:12:01.840 --> 00:12:07.360
Or should we align ourselves more closely with Sam and be skeptical of his every move?
00:12:07.759 --> 00:12:09.039
Hi, I'm Peter.
00:12:09.200 --> 00:12:24.960
I'm a professor of ethics, and I'm excited to announce a crossover podcast event between me and Matthias, a Lord of the Rings AMA podcast Things You Can Do Collaboration that we're calling L-O-T-R AMA Pod and Things You Can Do The Hunt for Gollum's Conscience.
00:12:25.200 --> 00:12:36.480
Matthias and I will discuss Gollum's character, motivations, and the outcomes of his actions in Middle-earth as we try to decide if we pity him, fear him, despise him, or something else.
00:12:36.799 --> 00:12:42.960
LOTR AMA Pod, Things You Can Do, The Hunt for Gollum's Conscience comes out May 8th.
00:12:43.120 --> 00:12:50.159
Subscribe to Things You Can Do and The Lord of the Rings AMA Pod wherever you get your podcasts to download it as soon as it drops.
00:13:06.159 --> 00:13:08.960
And I want to begin with a criticism of my own.
00:13:09.200 --> 00:13:14.559
Now, as far as I can tell, there aren't any major thinkers that have expressed this particular criticism.
00:13:14.720 --> 00:13:26.320
I haven't read anyone who has formulated this opinion before, but also more thinkers are publishing in more journals than ever before, so there's a chance this isn't an original thought.
00:13:26.639 --> 00:13:37.519
Nonetheless, I don't believe I'm relying on the thought or research of any other thinker when I say this, so I'm excited to put some possibly brand new philosophy out there into the world.
00:13:37.759 --> 00:13:47.440
My problem with the distinction between act and rule utilitarianism is that I think the difference between the two collapses easily and without very much scrutiny.
00:13:47.679 --> 00:13:49.759
Now, this in itself is not new.
00:13:49.919 --> 00:14:00.159
Philosophers have made this criticism for over 60 years, but interestingly, they tend to say that rule utilitarianism decomposes into act utilitarianism.
00:14:00.399 --> 00:14:11.519
Both British-Australian philosopher JJC Smart and American philosopher David Lyons argue that rule utilitarianism is just act utilitarianism with more parts.
00:14:11.759 --> 00:14:22.639
So in his paper Extreme and Restricted Utilitarianism, Smart says, Moral rules of the extreme utilitarian view are rules of thumb only.
00:14:22.960 --> 00:14:25.360
But they are not bad rules of thumb.
00:14:25.600 --> 00:14:39.679
But if we do come to the conclusion that we should break the rule, and if we have weighed in the balance of our own fallibility and liability to personal bias, what good reason remains for keeping the rule?
00:14:39.919 --> 00:14:52.399
What Smart seems to be saying here is, hey, even if these are good rules of thumb, if they can just kind of be ignored or superseded when the rule doesn't fit, what makes this any different than act utilitarianism?
00:14:52.639 --> 00:15:03.919
Also, as an aside, I just wanted to point out that Smart, in his paper, uses this hilarious word picture to describe using moral rules in lieu of making moral calculations in the moment.
00:15:04.159 --> 00:15:13.039
He says that if you saw someone drowning in a river, you would likely jump in and try to save them based on the moral rules you follow, not reasoning out that it's good to help someone.
00:15:13.279 --> 00:15:19.600
But this could have the unfortunate consequence of you accidentally rescuing a drowning Adolf Hitler.
00:15:19.840 --> 00:15:21.360
Yes, he really says that.
00:15:21.600 --> 00:15:28.879
Whereas an extreme utilitarian would, if he had time, work out the probability of the man's being the villainous dictator.
00:15:28.960 --> 00:15:34.080
And if the probability were high enough, he would, on extreme utilitarian grounds, leave him to drown.
00:15:34.320 --> 00:15:39.679
Just goes to show you that Godwin's law was in full effect long before the invention of the internet.
00:15:40.240 --> 00:15:47.600
Alright, so Smart and Lions seem to think that rule utilitarianism is just act utilitarianism with some shortcuts.
00:15:47.759 --> 00:15:57.120
The rules are helpful, but when we get down to it, if we can choose to not use the rule when we feel like it, they don't really make up the substance of our moral sense.
00:15:57.360 --> 00:16:03.840
To Smart, especially, to say something like, it's wrong to steal, except in the case of Jean Valjean who was starving.
00:16:04.080 --> 00:16:16.480
Well, that's really to say something like, it just so happens that the way I describe the right behavior fits with the idea of don't steal more times than not, but in the end, there's something greater that we appeal to.
00:16:16.720 --> 00:16:26.320
In short, according to Smart, rules just describe act utilitarianism pretty well most of the time, but they don't determine it.
00:16:26.639 --> 00:16:32.240
To be honest, when I was researching this, I was kind of flabbergasted by this approach.
00:16:32.559 --> 00:16:38.639
To me, it kind of seems like saying, well, if the rule doesn't work once, well then it really isn't a rule, is it?
00:16:38.799 --> 00:16:40.080
It's just a description.
00:16:40.320 --> 00:16:43.440
And that well, that's certainly a way to think.
00:16:43.759 --> 00:16:46.320
And I'm not even saying it's necessarily a bad one.
00:16:46.559 --> 00:16:54.080
If I have a computer program that works according to the rules of programming, but only most of the time, I have a computer program that doesn't work.
00:16:54.320 --> 00:17:00.639
But let's be honest, this is not the way that I think that we think about how the world works.
00:17:00.879 --> 00:17:06.559
There are plenty of times where the moral rule of thumb, don't steal, seems to not work very well.
00:17:06.720 --> 00:17:14.799
I mentioned Jean Valjean, I feel quite strongly that someone who is starving should absolutely steal, and even steal from me.
00:17:14.960 --> 00:17:21.119
Please, I'll just leave loaves of bread strewn around my yard for any starving French peasants to nab on their way through town.
00:17:21.359 --> 00:17:31.839
But also consider that doing things like leaking information to the press to hold public officials accountable, or helping an undocumented refugee escape persecution in their home country.
00:17:32.000 --> 00:17:34.880
Heck, think about the scene at the end of The Sound of Music.
00:17:35.119 --> 00:17:40.240
The nuns sabotage the Nazi vehicles to allow the von Trapp family to escape.
00:17:40.400 --> 00:17:54.079
These are situations where we often feel pretty strongly that not only did they not do something morally blameworthy, we also praise them or judge their actions to be praiseworthy and not just permissible.
00:17:54.319 --> 00:17:55.440
Why is that?
00:17:55.680 --> 00:18:04.160
Well, I think Smart would say that it's because the rule itself is just a descriptor, and that the real principle is in the act.
00:18:04.400 --> 00:18:08.799
That is to say, the principle of utility as described by Bentham and Mill.
00:18:08.960 --> 00:18:13.920
The rules help us act expeditiously, but they don't give us reason to act.
00:18:14.240 --> 00:18:17.039
I actually think the opposite.
00:18:19.039 --> 00:18:21.200
So here's my hypothesis.
00:18:21.519 --> 00:18:28.160
What we describe as act utilitarianism, that's just actions motivated by a rule.
00:18:28.400 --> 00:18:30.799
Maximize pleasure, minimize pain.
00:18:31.039 --> 00:18:35.279
But we've seen that as a rule, that is really broad, right?
00:18:35.440 --> 00:18:37.680
It can be hard to know how to do that.
00:18:37.839 --> 00:18:44.000
So we have the rules that Bentham describes for us fecundity and location and certainty and the rest.
00:18:44.160 --> 00:18:47.759
So what do we do in situations where we need more guidance?
00:18:48.000 --> 00:18:50.319
Well, we make more rules, of course.
00:18:50.559 --> 00:18:54.720
This maybe sounds legalistic, but it is practically how we function.
00:18:54.880 --> 00:18:56.319
It's how programming works.
00:18:56.640 --> 00:19:03.759
Do this action if there is this condition, unless there is this condition, until there is this condition.
00:19:03.920 --> 00:19:06.240
It's how we go about solving everyday problems.
00:19:06.480 --> 00:19:10.720
Put the laundry into the washer unless you have something with a big grass stain.
00:19:10.880 --> 00:19:15.200
Then you pull that out and pre-treat it and put the laundry into the dryer.
00:19:15.359 --> 00:19:21.200
But if it's a wool cardigan, well then you have to hang it up to dry instead of cooking it in the dryer.
00:19:21.440 --> 00:19:37.599
I'm interested in pursuing this idea further because I think that the way, even that John Stuart Mill describes utilitarianism, is more like, hey, these rules tend to work, than Bentham, who says that weighing pleasure and pain can give us scientific certainty.
00:19:37.759 --> 00:19:43.440
I wonder if this isn't why we tend to think of Mill and not Bentham when we talk about utilitarianism?
00:19:43.599 --> 00:19:52.720
Dying on the whole I can measure how much happiness you have with science seems like a pretty good reason to think Bentham hadn't discovered a moral theory for the ages.
00:19:52.880 --> 00:19:59.039
I feel this way because of something I didn't really appreciate about Mill until I started working on this episode.
00:19:59.279 --> 00:20:04.880
Many modern thinkers who engage utilitarianism seem to think of it as a sort of moral calculus.
00:20:05.039 --> 00:20:09.200
And I mean this in not exactly a flattering way.
00:20:09.359 --> 00:20:21.039
It's important to understand that many of these thinkers are continuing in the tradition of Kant, specifically with regard to trying to find objective, unchanging answers to moral questions.
00:20:21.279 --> 00:20:33.839
In order for philosophy generally, and ethics specifically to be a science and therefore legitimate, it needs to be able to provide answers that are just as reliable as, say, mathematics or physics.
00:20:34.000 --> 00:20:36.880
And that's definitely a possible way to look at ethics.
00:20:37.039 --> 00:20:44.000
But I don't personally take that tact, and I also think it tends to create more problems than it solves.
00:20:44.240 --> 00:20:59.519
So while Mill himself acknowledges this need for exactness and objectivity, he also does so in the context of his vision for society, a place where people coexist as equals, and with the understanding that everyone is indeed equal.
00:20:59.839 --> 00:21:04.000
Mill wasn't just a navel-gazing ivory tower philosophro.
00:21:04.160 --> 00:21:07.119
He argued before British Parliament for women's suffrage.
00:21:07.279 --> 00:21:09.599
He believed in empowering labor unions.
00:21:09.839 --> 00:21:15.279
Remember, this was in the middle of the Industrial Revolution in Britain when working conditions were abominable.
00:21:15.519 --> 00:21:24.319
He thought the dogged pursuit for uncapped economic growth was a recipe for the destruction of the environment and the decline of human happiness.
00:21:24.559 --> 00:21:42.000
Mill believed in a society that sought to make the lives of all people as good as possible, because, as he says, quote, society between equals can only exist on the understanding that the interests of all are to be regarded equally.
00:21:42.640 --> 00:21:55.599
The base condition for a society that is able to function according to a utilitarian moral framework is one in which the people have a sense of the interests of others as also their own.
00:21:55.839 --> 00:22:03.839
Honestly, to me, this sounds a lot more like a duty or A sense of virtue than it does a calculation of utility.
00:22:04.079 --> 00:22:13.200
The duty to see others' interests as important as your own is the prerequisite for understanding the use of utilitarian principles.
00:22:14.960 --> 00:22:21.039
My tentative conclusion is that Mill describes utilitarianism almost like a kind of deontology.
00:22:21.200 --> 00:22:29.680
That is to say, he describes it like an orientation toward a moral duty rather than a scientific endeavor with immutable results.
00:22:29.920 --> 00:22:40.559
Now, I'm leaving this as a provisional conclusion because, well, I don't study Bentham and Mill as deeply and carefully as I do other scholars, and I could find out tomorrow that I'm wrong.
00:22:40.720 --> 00:22:47.680
That's why I generally tend to hold my own conclusions as kind of eternally provisional, and I teach others to do so as well.
00:22:47.920 --> 00:22:52.799
There's no shame in changing your mind when you have better evidence and better conclusions.
00:22:53.039 --> 00:22:58.720
So maybe I'll keep testing this idea and find out that, you know, I don't think it works as well as I thought it did at first.
00:22:58.960 --> 00:23:05.920
But until then, I think it's really problematic to teach utilitarianism as a sort of moral mathematics.
00:23:06.160 --> 00:23:12.720
I think it's weird to get caught up in debates about whether, as Shelley Kagan says, consequentialism demands too much of us.
00:23:12.880 --> 00:23:13.680
That's the thing.
00:23:13.920 --> 00:23:19.839
Consequentialism, and really all these ideas of ethical frameworks, don't demand things of us.
00:23:20.160 --> 00:23:23.839
We use them to demand things of ourselves.
00:23:24.079 --> 00:23:38.720
The purpose of going through all these weird little arguments and picking and prodding at these ideas, it's not to see which is the prettiest ethical theory, it's to put them to the test and see if they're able to help us become the kinds of people we're trying to be.
00:23:40.480 --> 00:23:51.759
At the end of Star Trek II, The Wrath of Khan, Commander Spock repairs the Starship Enterprise's damaged warp drive by exposing himself to lethal levels of radiation.
00:23:52.000 --> 00:24:01.519
He saves the ship from being destroyed by the massive explosion emanating from the Genesis device, and he sacrifices himself to protect his crew.
00:24:25.039 --> 00:24:25.759
Outweigh.
00:24:28.480 --> 00:24:30.079
The needs of the few.
00:24:36.400 --> 00:24:44.799
To Spock, it made perfect sense that the needs of the hundreds of people on board outweighed his need to stay alive.
00:24:45.039 --> 00:24:52.720
His courage resulted from his moral calculation, his moral sense that it was worth it to give his life for everyone else.
00:24:52.880 --> 00:25:00.720
To honor his friend, Captain Kirk makes the newly formed Edenic Genesis Planet Spock's final resting place.
00:25:00.960 --> 00:25:08.079
But after Captain Kirk, Scotty, Sulu, and the others discover that Spock's soul has been transferred into Dr.
00:25:08.240 --> 00:25:15.359
McCoy's body and that there's a chance to bring their friend back if they reunite his soul with his body, they're faced with a dilemma.
00:25:15.599 --> 00:25:27.200
Travel back to the new planet has been restricted by the Federation, and Captain Kirk is specifically under orders that he is not to go there for any reason, not even to rescue Spock's body.
00:25:27.440 --> 00:25:34.480
Fleet Admiral Morrow tells Kirk, consider it a quarantined planet and a forbidden subject.
00:25:34.799 --> 00:25:37.599
So Kirk and his friends risk everything.
00:25:37.839 --> 00:25:44.000
Under direct orders to stay out of it, instead, they steal the Enterprise.
00:25:44.559 --> 00:25:55.920
Crippled from its recent battles and piloted only by Scotty, Sulu, and Chekhov, the Enterprise escapes a pursuing ship, the technologically advanced Excelsior.
00:25:56.240 --> 00:25:59.519
But not before Kirk's resolve is tested once more.
00:25:59.680 --> 00:26:09.119
The captain of the Excelsior gives Kirk a final chance to turn back to avoid the pain and punishment his choices will cause him and others.
00:26:09.519 --> 00:26:12.000
Excelsior closing to 4,000 meters, sir.
00:26:12.160 --> 00:26:13.680
Scotty, we'll need everything you have.
00:26:13.839 --> 00:26:14.480
I sir.
00:26:14.559 --> 00:26:16.079
What drives standing by?
00:26:18.480 --> 00:26:19.200
Kirk.
00:26:20.160 --> 00:26:23.119
You do this, you'll never sit in the captain's chair again.
00:26:24.160 --> 00:26:25.119
What's speed?
00:26:25.519 --> 00:26:25.920
Ice.
00:26:33.680 --> 00:26:45.680
Without knowing anything about the more fortuitous of the consequences of his actions, Kirk ends up being uniquely positioned to travel through time and save Earth from a civilizational level catastrophe.
00:26:45.920 --> 00:26:52.960
Kirk decided that it was more important for him to save his friend than to maintain his good standing in the Federation.
00:26:53.200 --> 00:27:09.680
Spock saved the ship, and to get him back, Kirk sacrifices his rank, his duty to Starfleet, the Enterprise itself, all because, as we learn, he believed that the needs of the one outweighed the needs of the many.
00:27:13.680 --> 00:27:27.839
I think that when we debate how our ethical frameworks function and the way that they can influence us to act, we have to remember that their purpose is not to decide what is important for us, we decide what's important.
00:27:28.079 --> 00:27:35.519
I often tell my students when they ask about how hard my class is or something like that, I say, math doesn't give you a grade.
00:27:35.839 --> 00:27:36.400
I do.
00:27:36.640 --> 00:27:45.039
And by that I mean I don't really care how many points out of a hundred you got, or whether you were within a tenth of a percent of a B or an A or whatever.
00:27:45.200 --> 00:27:48.640
The numbers are just guidelines that help me make decisions.
00:27:48.880 --> 00:27:50.880
They are not the decision makers.
00:27:51.119 --> 00:27:51.680
I am.
00:27:51.920 --> 00:28:02.799
Likewise, we have to remember that ethical frameworks are ways to illuminate to ourselves what it is that we value and what kind of person we are trying to be.
00:28:03.680 --> 00:28:08.079
But a spotlight is useless if it's pointed at empty space.
00:28:08.240 --> 00:28:12.640
There has to be something there to illuminate, to shine a light on, to point out.
00:28:12.880 --> 00:28:19.039
In all this conversation of moral math, let's remember that utilitarianism can be a useful calculator.
00:28:19.200 --> 00:28:24.559
But a calculator is useless without someone punching in the numbers.
00:28:25.599 --> 00:28:26.720
Thanks for listening.
00:28:26.880 --> 00:28:30.720
See you next time when we'll talk about some more things you can do.
00:28:34.880 --> 00:28:37.039
Thanks for listening to Extra Credit.
00:28:37.119 --> 00:28:38.000
Uh a couple things.
00:28:38.079 --> 00:28:45.039
First, uh thanks to Bonnie Grace for the use of her song Neptune, and Stationary Sign for the use of their song Sneaky Theft.
00:28:45.279 --> 00:28:48.480
Also, yes, you did hear that little circus music tune in there.
00:28:50.799 --> 00:28:56.559
That's Entry of the Gladiators by Julius Fuchik, performed by the Black Diamond Band.
00:28:56.880 --> 00:29:02.559
Also, I know that for all you Star Trek purists out there, Kirk was an admiral at the time he stole the Enterprise.
00:29:02.640 --> 00:29:07.279
I'm just saying Captain Kirk because that's how people who aren't total trekkies tend to think of him.
00:29:07.519 --> 00:29:13.200
And also, to placate you, I have plans to do a whole mini ethicsode on Stealing the Enterprise.
00:29:13.359 --> 00:29:14.880
So you can look forward to that.
00:29:15.119 --> 00:29:23.440
Also, if you've got suggestions for movies, TV shows, or other popular media that you'd like to see me do a mini ethicsode on or an extra credit, let me know.
00:29:23.680 --> 00:29:28.240
Shoot me an email at thingsyoucandopod at gmail.com.
