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Bentham's Mugging (2022)

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Re: Bentham's Mugging (2022)

#31

Post by jefftk »

alphazard wrote: post #29

The most pressing problem facing utilitarians has never been choosing between principled vs. consequentialist utilitarianism. It's how to take a vector of utilities, and turn it into a single utility. What function do I use? Do I sum them, is it the mean, how about root-mean-squared? Why does your chosen function make more sense than the other options? Can I perform arithmetic on utilities from two different agents,…

> What function do I use?

Traditionally you use sum, which gets you total utilitarianism. Some have advocated avg which gets you average utilitarianism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average_and_total_utilitariani...

> root-mean-squared

Why?

> Can I perform arithmetic on utilities from two different agents?

This is called "interpersonal utility comparison", and there's a ton of literature on it. Traditionally utilitarians have accepted it, and without it ideas like "sum the utility across everyone" don't make sense.

Re: Bentham's Mugging (2022)

#33

Post by jefftk »

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: post #15

Bentham brought up a good point: > Fair enough. But, even so, I worry that giving you the money would set a bad precedent, encouraging copycats to run similar schemes. I don’t understand how it was logically defeated with escalation as in the story. Would it be wrong for a Utilitarian to continue arguing against this precedent, saying that the decision to be mugged removes overall Utility because now anyone who can b…

I'm also confused why they drop this point. I don't give in to this kind of threat because I expect overall a policy of giving in leads to worse outcomes.

Re: Bentham's Mugging (2022)

#34

Post by smif »

throwaway101223 wrote: post #27

> Here's the thing: there is, clearly, more utility in me keeping my finger than in you keeping your measly ten pounds. How is this clear? This is one of the things I find strange about academic philosophy. For all the claims about trying to get at a more rigorous understanding of knowledge, the foundation at the end of the day seems to just be human intuition. You read about something like the Chinese Room or Mary’s…

I think the point here is that it's subverting and redirecting Bentham's own utilitarianism against itself. How does the utilitarian decide which one of those has more utility? That's a rhetorical question and it's sort of immaterial how that question gets answered, because regardless of how they decide, the dialogue is structurally describing how utilitarianism is vulnerable to exploitation of this type.

Re: Bentham's Mugging (2022)

#35

Post by HWR_14 »

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: post #15

Bentham brought up a good point: > Fair enough. But, even so, I worry that giving you the money would set a bad precedent, encouraging copycats to run similar schemes. I don’t understand how it was logically defeated with escalation as in the story. Would it be wrong for a Utilitarian to continue arguing against this precedent, saying that the decision to be mugged removes overall Utility because now anyone who can b…

As an act utilitarian, the utilitarian was trying to evaluate the consequences of the act, not a rule that could be followed in multiple instances. Therefore, credibly claiming that the act will be a secret removes any consideration of motivating other people or being judged by other people, etc. (Missing from the story was a promise by the mugger not to repeat this with the utilitarian every day).

Re: Bentham's Mugging (2022)

#36

Post by HWR_14 »

jefftk wrote: post #33
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: post #15

Bentham brought up a good point: > Fair enough. But, even so, I worry that giving you the money would set a bad precedent, encouraging copycats to run similar schemes. I don’t understand how it was logically defeated with escalation as in the story. Would it be wrong for a Utilitarian to continue arguing against this precedent, saying that the decision to be mugged removes overall Utility because now anyone who can b…

I'm also confused why they drop this point. I don't give in to this kind of threat because I expect overall a policy of giving in leads to worse outcomes.

Act utilitarians specifically don't believe in evaluating the overall consequences of a policy. Rule utilitarians do that. That is, in fact, the major difference between the two.

Re: Bentham's Mugging (2022)

#37

Post by jefftk »

HWR_14 wrote: post #36
jefftk wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also confused why they drop this point. I don't give in to this kind of threat because I expect overall a policy of giving in leads to worse outcomes.

Act utilitarians specifically don't believe in evaluating the overall consequences of a policy. Rule utilitarians do that. That is, in fact, the major difference between the two.

Good point, I phrased it poorly. Because of the effects of the specific action, I think an act utilitarian should still refuse to be mugged in this case.

The policy I was describing is just a mental shortcut, a part of adapting morality to human beings. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-level_utilitarianism for more in this direction.

Re: Bentham's Mugging (2022)

#38

Post by slibhb »

Micaiah_Chang wrote: post #25
tylerhou wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does have to do with utilitarianism — if you change the mugger to harming Bentham, the situation is different. In that situation, many other reasonable moral theories would agree with utilitarianism. In the original situation, where the mugger is harming themselves, the critique is that utilitarianists are required to treat their own interests as exactly the same as other people’s interests. It doesn’t matter if s…

Yes, the point of the GP comment is exactly this, if Bentham becomes an agent that goes for C, he also explicitly discourages the mugger from being an agent that would cut off their fingers for a couple of bucks. Notice that what Bentham is altering is their strategy and not their utility. If they could spend 10 dollars to treat gangrene and save the fingers, they would do it. It's not clear many other morality syste…

> practitioners of other moralities curiously form epicycles defending why the status quo is fine anyway

This is exactly what the Bentham in the story is doing!

Re: Bentham's Mugging (2022)

#39

Post by jefftk »

HWR_14 wrote: post #35
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: post #15

Bentham brought up a good point: > Fair enough. But, even so, I worry that giving you the money would set a bad precedent, encouraging copycats to run similar schemes. I don’t understand how it was logically defeated with escalation as in the story. Would it be wrong for a Utilitarian to continue arguing against this precedent, saying that the decision to be mugged removes overall Utility because now anyone who can b…

As an act utilitarian, the utilitarian was trying to evaluate the consequences of the act, not a rule that could be followed in multiple instances. Therefore, credibly claiming that the act will be a secret removes any consideration of motivating other people or being judged by other people, etc. (Missing from the story was a promise by the mugger not to repeat this with the utilitarian every day).

I don't see why the utilitarian should trust a mugger's promises of secrecy or non-replicability though?

Re: Bentham's Mugging (2022)

#40

Post by hamishrayner »

jefftk wrote: post #39
HWR_14 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an act utilitarian, the utilitarian was trying to evaluate the consequences of the act, not a rule that could be followed in multiple instances. Therefore, credibly claiming that the act will be a secret removes any consideration of motivating other people or being judged by other people, etc. (Missing from the story was a promise by the mugger not to repeat this with the utilitarian every day).

I don't see why the utilitarian should trust a mugger's promises of secrecy or non-replicability though?

The mugger is a Deontologist in this scenario and therefore does not lie. If the utilitarian couldn't trust the mugger's promises, the whole scenario would fall apart as they couldn't trust the mugger's promise to cut off their finger.
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