CDR: Re: Insurance: My Last Post

[Kevin Elliott]

At 16:56 -0700 10/25/00, Nathan Saper wrote:
>I am fairly familar with utilitarian thought.  My specific form of
>utilitarianism is act utilitarianism, which means that each individual
>action is evaulated, instead of using utilitarian ideas to form a
>complete system of moral thought.

The problem with act utilitarianism is that in whatever form it takes 
it leaves itself much to open to the problems of personal view point. 
Hitler felt himself completely justified in murdering all the jews 
because he felt they were causing an enormous amount of pain to the 
rest of the population. He would have been justified under your 
framework IF it could be shown they were causing sufficient pain, 
although that would necessarily be enormous amount of pain.

>The reason why I use "the least pain for the greatest number" instead of
>"the greatest happiness for the greatest number" is because the latter
>justifies many not-so-great acts under act utilitarianism.  Consider
>this example:
>
>      There is going to be a Sado-Masachism (sp?) convention, which
>      will be attended by 10,000 S&M-ers.  They kidnap a poor person,
>      bring him to their convention, and electrically shock him.  This
>      delights the crowd, but devastates the poor person.  Under the
>      common definition of utilitarianism, this act is justified
>      because it pleasures 10,000, while hurting only 1.  However,
>      under my definition, this act is not justified because it creates
>      a lot of pain, whereas not doing it does not create any pain.

This is a problem with any formulation of act utilitarianism.  Any 
formulation of act utilitarianism inherently falls victim to a set of 
extreme circumstances that result in outcomes which are clearly 
immoral (see the Hitler example above for a counter example).  That's 
why I'm not an act utilitarianist....
-- 

"As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both 
instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly 
unchanged.  And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware 
of change in the air--however slight--lest we become unwitting 
victims of the darkness."
-- Justice William O. Douglas
____________________________________________________________________
Kevin "The Cubbie" Elliott 
<mailto:kelliott at mac.com>                             ICQ#23758827