Some reflections on the Michael Huemer Richard Yetter-Chappell debate about utilitarianism and laying out an ethical intuitionist critique of utilitarianism.
I don’t know that I have a lot to add here, other than to say that this was a well written piece, and utilitarianism is way over rated. As you say, it seems to be a little useful, but only alloyed with other systems.
Maybe I'm not thinking clearly tonight (if so, apologies). If I understand correctly, the essay boils down to "When making any decision, take into account the chance that you may be mistaken." Which seems both reasonable and obvious.
I guess the natural counterargument would be something like this:
In principle, for every moral intuition there exists an equal and opposite intuition, and a-priori it doesn't seem like there should be any reason to favor one over the other or to assign more probability to one than the other. For example, in your moral nihilist vs. utilitarian trolley problem, maybe your nihilist has an intuition that life is terrible and killing people is actually a net positive for them. Call P the probability this intuition is true and call P' the probability that the intuition that pulling the lever is wrong is true. It's not immediately clear to me, a-priori, that P'>P. Our calculation might then, in practice, resolve to ordinary utilitarianism in any given situation if P=P' (i.e. our moral intuitions in each direction carry equal weight). I've made a similar objection to Pascal's Wager, incidentally.
I suppose then the counterargument is that we might have to give some weight to the number of people who have any given moral intuition, which could entail that P'>P.
I don’t know that I have a lot to add here, other than to say that this was a well written piece, and utilitarianism is way over rated. As you say, it seems to be a little useful, but only alloyed with other systems.
Maybe I'm not thinking clearly tonight (if so, apologies). If I understand correctly, the essay boils down to "When making any decision, take into account the chance that you may be mistaken." Which seems both reasonable and obvious.
Very interesting piece.
I guess the natural counterargument would be something like this:
In principle, for every moral intuition there exists an equal and opposite intuition, and a-priori it doesn't seem like there should be any reason to favor one over the other or to assign more probability to one than the other. For example, in your moral nihilist vs. utilitarian trolley problem, maybe your nihilist has an intuition that life is terrible and killing people is actually a net positive for them. Call P the probability this intuition is true and call P' the probability that the intuition that pulling the lever is wrong is true. It's not immediately clear to me, a-priori, that P'>P. Our calculation might then, in practice, resolve to ordinary utilitarianism in any given situation if P=P' (i.e. our moral intuitions in each direction carry equal weight). I've made a similar objection to Pascal's Wager, incidentally.
I suppose then the counterargument is that we might have to give some weight to the number of people who have any given moral intuition, which could entail that P'>P.