Utilitarianism

I know people have talked about this idea before...but I'd like a proper thread for just talking about utilitarian ethics. I guess this could work like a debate, but I think the idea is mostly just to have somewhere to discuss utilitarianism without getting off-topic.

Personally, I'm of the ethical hedonist variety.

I guess you could call my position "it's complicate utilitarianism". No single value or short list of values can capture the follow picture.

This is probably take "hedonism" to literally, but hedonist utilitarianism doesn't even insure the future will be fun. If there was a which to turn the whole universe not merely into wired head, but mindless orgasium it would be the hedonic thing to do, but not the right thing.

Happiness doesn't work either, and for much the same reason.

I guess the main problems with utilitarianism is, A) it doesn't allow you to judge by intent, and B) the majority utterly screwing over the minority for their own benefit is totally fine as long as there is a big enough population difference.

Be careful about importing deontological reasoning in to utilitarianism. It is not about if people are bad or their actions or even if an outcome is good or bad. It is about which outcome is better. Giving food to starving people has a larger benefit than giving more food to people who are mostly well off. Either way what we want is to do the best good we can.

Also, the majority only screws the minority over when there's no other option to maximize happiness. An ethical hedonist's general goal is happiness for all, but the utilitarian part dictates that we should make sacrifices.

Well I would consider "happiness" as more a bad short hand to make people think of what is right and a thousands light years away from being a complete picture but yeah pretty much.

Funny thing that I found with critics of consequentialism/utilitarianism is that all criticisms I read are founded on the consequence of following consequentialism/utilitarianism. Which is based on evaluation the ethics of an action according to its consequence.