This is not a fully formulated post. I am still thinking about this topic and my views my change.
Utilitarianism is an ethical theory that determines right from wrong by focusing on outcomes. Utilitarianism holds that the most ethical choice is the one that will produce the greatest good for the greatest number.
I am starting to consider that utilitarianism and especially the utilitarianism that prevalent in today’s public, as something evil and destructive.
How do I define evil? Something that is anti-life. Anti individual life and anti allowing people to live their life fully or live the best life they set for themselves.
So lets go over why it may be evil:
Doing Extreme Things
In a lot of philosophical conversations, you can always get utilitarians, to agree to what might seem to regular human beings, deeply immoral things. Here are some examples:
Killing 1 healthy person to then give all their organs to 5 unhealthy people
Committing necrophilia
Mass rape
Pressing a red button that destroys all life in the universe, but no one will feel pain as it is done (negative utilitarianism)
Basically, you can get utilitarians to ‘bite the bullet’ on the worst things possible as long as you frame it that it brings the most utility to the most people.
Sacrificial Sheep
Utilitarianism doesn’t help you live your own life. It doesn’t give you a set of guidelines to live a better and moral life. It kind of leaves it to yourself to figure it out. Some would say that you are operating on previous morals in the culture left over from religion.
This in itself is anti your life. There is an added layer that you need to think about everyone, but yourself. You are supposed to think about what would bring about the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Even here, I am not clear about how you decide that. The way I see it, it falls into two possible categories:
You can intuitively know what would do the greatest good for the greatest number of people - and take actions based on that knowledge
Someone external tells you what is the best action to take for the greatest number of people for the greatest good and you follow their instructions.
The second option is something I will expand on shortly. But in both cases, you stop your brain from focusing on how to live your life, focus on something external to you and that doesn’t (typically) effect you in any way.
It seems to me like utilitarianism turns you into a sacrificial sheep for benefit of the rest of the herd. I suppose that once you are in the herd, you would expect everyone else to fall in line and be the same. Ie, acting for yourself is selfish and ‘immoral’.
How to Hack People’s Brains
Most people have bought into utilitarianism. It sounds convincing. It sounds ‘good’. However, how do you know what’s the best action to take for the greatest number of people? This is where other people come in.
Now, I would imagine that the types of people utilitarians would accept might be experts in some field that effects a lot of people. This could mean leaders of some collective who understand the people in it or experts in academic fields. This means to me that you outsource your thinking to these experts and most people would follow them blindly.
Assuming I am an expert in such a field, I can amplify my control over your actions by “catastrophising” the perceived end result if no action is taken. You can see this happening in todays discourse and has been happening for decades now. I would say, however, that this sort of catastrophising has been especially bad since 2015.
Outro
There are some other things I still want to mull over. Things like Utilitarian’s preference for the state to use force to solve most if not all problems. But I will leave it at those three things for now.
Just as a note: I am happy to discuss these ideas and even have my mind changed, but rhetorical tactics like whataboutism or disintegrating definitions into meaninglessness would not be of any interest to me.
I wrote a reply.
https://benthams.substack.com/p/philosophical-zombie-hunter-is-wrong