Well, you've got a flair for the dramatic! Some thoughts:
This Shrimpified Repugnant Conclusion doesn't stand alone, just like the regular repugnant conclusion doesn't. It looks pretty strange when you pull just the one line out, but the point of my post was that reasoning based only on that conclusion is wrong! It's understandable, but misguided.
You're a theist, right? The problem of evil looks really bad for theism. Like, it seems super unlikely that a God could exist who allows a ton of really awful things to happen all the time. So should we all be atheists? Well, not necessarily! There's lots more evidence and argument to consider—fine tuning and anthropics and psychophysical harmony and whatever else. And then any atheist will also have their whole own class of contradictions and uglinesses to deal with—the cold indifference of the universe and so on.
Just like you can be a theist despite the problem of evil, you can be a utilitarian despite the problem of shrimp suffering. Maybe God is just weird, and maybe the moral structure of the world is just weird.
> When we try to figure out which moral theory is the true one, we must investigate each theory to its logical conclusion. If Libertarianism says that wild animal suffering is not a moral emergency and Utilitarianism says that wild animal suffering is the world’s greatest moral emergency, that’s a huge point in favor of Libertarianism and against Utilitarianism.
This is absolutely right! But (moral) Libertarianism has a host of its own problems to deal with—for example, it implies that it would be permissible to walk by a child drowning in a pond if I simply decided I didn't want to save her. In fact, it seems like it totally ignores *any* ethical obligations simply on the grounds of "nah, don't wanna." I think that's a bigger problem than a conclusion that boils down basically to: "when many billions of things suffer terribly, it's very extremely bad, to the point that even humanity's concerns become secondary."
Same goes for "Kantianism, Virtue Ethics, and Natural Law theory," and whatever else. Utilitarianism wins a lot of very fundamental fights that make each of these alternatives extremely unappealing. Bentham's Bulldog goes through some: https://benthams.substack.com/p/utilitarianism-is-true
> I think that wild animal suffering disproves Utilitarianism.
Nah. It's an unintuitive result! It provides some evidence against it! But you'd need a much much larger case to really *disprove* it.
> Spending your entire life as a slave to shrimp is clearly morally wrong because it is a waste of your life. The exclusive concern for shrimp rather than more lofty ideals flies in the face of morality.
This is question-begging! You're assuming the "face of morality" doesn't care about shrimp.
Ok, last point I want to make: it's ok to be fairly doubtful of utilitarianism on Shrimp Repugnance grounds. But they shouldn't bear on pseudo-utilitarian frameworks like Richard Chappell's Beneficentrism: https://www.goodthoughts.blog/p/beneficentrism. If you're really very uncomfortable with shrimp welfare, just... donate to other utilitarian causes. Plenty of good global health charities out there!
> the cold indifference of the universe and so on.
Wouldn't this be an argument for atheism and not for theism? After all, if our universe is fine-tuned for life, why exactly is the overwhelming majority of it so inhospitable towards life? Whatever the values of certain physical constants are, one would think that a God that fine-tuned the universe for life would make it much more life-friendly, no? And yet Earthly life won't be able to survive in space or on most or all other planets!
BTW, it seems like a possibly correct solution to the problem of evil, if God actually exists, is to portray God as indifferent towards us, rather than as completely good. After all, a completely good God wouldn't assign responsibility for our welfare to chronically incompetent archons whom no one knows actually exist. Rather, he'd at the very least design these archons in such a way that they would always or at least almost always succeed in preventing evil.
Ah, I meant cold indifference in the sense of “there isn’t even any ultimately-good mind out there that cares about us.” But yeah, desolateness seemingly counts in favor of atheism—like, if we’re fine-tuned, why not finer?
Indifferent God might explain evil well, but doesn’t do a good job of explaining existence. It seems unlikely He would create at all, much less create a very large universe. The anthropic argument in particular really only counts for a Good God—it’s good to create, so only something maximally good would be expected to create a massive infinity of people.
I mean, I could imagine an indifferent God creating and then viewing us as entertainment. He’d know what the outcome would be ahead of time, of course, thus making it less likely that he’d create, but maybe he’d still prefer to watch it in real-time?
An indifferent God could also help explain why life was created in the way that it was. Specifically through tiny organisms that gradually became much larger and smarter over millions of years. But of course if God would have wanted entertainment or simply to create humans, then it might have made more sense for him to create humans immediately rather than going through all of these intermediate steps. Atheists use this as an argument in favor of their own side.
To crib on Pete McCutchen's pithy observation below:
If the natural state of life produces more misery than pleasure, then not only is the natural conclusion to destroy all life on earth - it's also, as Simon noted above - that Nature itself is evil. For any Believers out there, that must also mean that any Creator is morally evil, because creating Life that results in net suffering is morally evil when He should have chosen instead not to make anything at all.
Taking it in another direction, it suggests that the only moral life is one in which we do nothing, create nothing, affect nothing. The only 'moral' life would be a sort of drug-induced coma, where we experience nothing but the body-buzz of a morphine drip. In that case, any thoughts we would have would arguably be net negative - consciousness without agency or ability to act would surely be hell - so, consciousness could be argued to be net misery as well (hey - "ignorance is bliss," is it not?). We have to constantly observe and navigate fears, anxieties, threats and that is only partially off-set by moments of wonder, pleasure, and bliss. I guess consciousness is also evil.
And why stop at animals and living things? Why stop even at 'pleasure' and 'pain'? Is it better for a rock to exist only to be eventually destroyed? The Law of Entropy suggests that all systems progress to a state of disorder. If disorder is the fate of all things, could we not draw a parallel between misery and disorder- order is the exception and not the rule, therefore, the Universe itself, even devoid of life, promotes disorder and is therefore evil.
Libertarianism can be grounded in what you describe as the “purest” form of utilitarianism, which is to say that libertarian law produces outcomes that statistically normal people like.
"Exterminating humanity is not morally good. It is evil."
A properly conceived utilitarianism wouldn't desire to exterminate humanity, and wouldn't even care that much about wild animal suffering. In fact, a technologically advanced humanity is necessary to bring hedonic utilitarianism to its highest flourishing. While wild animal suffering is a massive source of disutility, it is worth first noting that there is trillions and trillions times more unconscious matter in the universe than there is matter currently conscious and suffering. Next it is worth noting that it is even theoretically possible to use advanced technology to turn unconscious matter into an artificially constructed mind that is designed to perpetually feel as much pleasure as possible. From these two premises the ultimate conclusion of utilitarianism becomes clear: the highest good is to use technology to convert as much matter in the universe as possible into as many artificial pleasure-minds as possible. This refutes your reductio ad absurdum in two ways. First, it shows that there is a moral end that completely swamps and replaces wild animal suffering as the chief cause of moral concern for utilitarians. Second, it shows that utilitarianism does not imply the good of human extinction, because either humans or human-constructed superintelligences are necessary to construct the technology needed to convert the universe's matter into pleasure-minds. So, the discussion of utilitarianism's most surprising conclusion should shift from anything involving wild animal suffering or voluntary human extinction, and should instead focus on directing human technological progress towards the final end of maximizing the number of artificial minds in perpetual bliss throughout the universe.
I'm talking about the Utilitarians who currently exist, who are deeply concerned about animal welfare. In theory there could be Utiltarians who are focused on what you're talking about, but there don't seem to be many of them, at least not right now.
I'm mostly a utilitarian, and I don't generally give a fuck about animal suffering. I care about dogs and cats, because they are companion animals (and cute), but that's about it.
While that's true, I would argue that that's proof they haven't taken utilitarianism far enough and haven't arrived at its true furthest conclusion, rather than proof that utilitarianism has been taken too far as you seem to be implying. Therefore utilitarianism can still be defended and justified despite many of its proponents not recognizing its true implications.
Why? Did you even read his piece? It basically directly addresses this argument that some moral claim cannot be true because that would feel weird and icky if it were true.
This was a nice post, although I am not sure it is really debunking Utilitarianism. Personally, my current view of morality is a sort of anti-realist contractualism of the sort I think Hobbes and Gauthier would subscribe to
I have a moral theory called Cheesecaketarianism. According to Cheesecaketarianism, the morally right thing to do in any situation is the thing that maximizes the amount of Blueberry Cheesecake in the Universe.
Some people think Cheesecaketarianism is clearly wrong, but really all we know is that Cheesecaketarianism differs greatly from most people’s moral intuitions!
I’ve repeatedly argued that if the shrimp-welfare people are right, the correct conclusion is to destroy all life on Earth
welcome to the wonderful world of racing to build unaligned superintelligence
Well, you've got a flair for the dramatic! Some thoughts:
This Shrimpified Repugnant Conclusion doesn't stand alone, just like the regular repugnant conclusion doesn't. It looks pretty strange when you pull just the one line out, but the point of my post was that reasoning based only on that conclusion is wrong! It's understandable, but misguided.
You're a theist, right? The problem of evil looks really bad for theism. Like, it seems super unlikely that a God could exist who allows a ton of really awful things to happen all the time. So should we all be atheists? Well, not necessarily! There's lots more evidence and argument to consider—fine tuning and anthropics and psychophysical harmony and whatever else. And then any atheist will also have their whole own class of contradictions and uglinesses to deal with—the cold indifference of the universe and so on.
Just like you can be a theist despite the problem of evil, you can be a utilitarian despite the problem of shrimp suffering. Maybe God is just weird, and maybe the moral structure of the world is just weird.
> When we try to figure out which moral theory is the true one, we must investigate each theory to its logical conclusion. If Libertarianism says that wild animal suffering is not a moral emergency and Utilitarianism says that wild animal suffering is the world’s greatest moral emergency, that’s a huge point in favor of Libertarianism and against Utilitarianism.
This is absolutely right! But (moral) Libertarianism has a host of its own problems to deal with—for example, it implies that it would be permissible to walk by a child drowning in a pond if I simply decided I didn't want to save her. In fact, it seems like it totally ignores *any* ethical obligations simply on the grounds of "nah, don't wanna." I think that's a bigger problem than a conclusion that boils down basically to: "when many billions of things suffer terribly, it's very extremely bad, to the point that even humanity's concerns become secondary."
Same goes for "Kantianism, Virtue Ethics, and Natural Law theory," and whatever else. Utilitarianism wins a lot of very fundamental fights that make each of these alternatives extremely unappealing. Bentham's Bulldog goes through some: https://benthams.substack.com/p/utilitarianism-is-true
> I think that wild animal suffering disproves Utilitarianism.
Nah. It's an unintuitive result! It provides some evidence against it! But you'd need a much much larger case to really *disprove* it.
> Spending your entire life as a slave to shrimp is clearly morally wrong because it is a waste of your life. The exclusive concern for shrimp rather than more lofty ideals flies in the face of morality.
This is question-begging! You're assuming the "face of morality" doesn't care about shrimp.
Ok, last point I want to make: it's ok to be fairly doubtful of utilitarianism on Shrimp Repugnance grounds. But they shouldn't bear on pseudo-utilitarian frameworks like Richard Chappell's Beneficentrism: https://www.goodthoughts.blog/p/beneficentrism. If you're really very uncomfortable with shrimp welfare, just... donate to other utilitarian causes. Plenty of good global health charities out there!
> the cold indifference of the universe and so on.
Wouldn't this be an argument for atheism and not for theism? After all, if our universe is fine-tuned for life, why exactly is the overwhelming majority of it so inhospitable towards life? Whatever the values of certain physical constants are, one would think that a God that fine-tuned the universe for life would make it much more life-friendly, no? And yet Earthly life won't be able to survive in space or on most or all other planets!
BTW, it seems like a possibly correct solution to the problem of evil, if God actually exists, is to portray God as indifferent towards us, rather than as completely good. After all, a completely good God wouldn't assign responsibility for our welfare to chronically incompetent archons whom no one knows actually exist. Rather, he'd at the very least design these archons in such a way that they would always or at least almost always succeed in preventing evil.
Ah, I meant cold indifference in the sense of “there isn’t even any ultimately-good mind out there that cares about us.” But yeah, desolateness seemingly counts in favor of atheism—like, if we’re fine-tuned, why not finer?
Indifferent God might explain evil well, but doesn’t do a good job of explaining existence. It seems unlikely He would create at all, much less create a very large universe. The anthropic argument in particular really only counts for a Good God—it’s good to create, so only something maximally good would be expected to create a massive infinity of people.
I mean, I could imagine an indifferent God creating and then viewing us as entertainment. He’d know what the outcome would be ahead of time, of course, thus making it less likely that he’d create, but maybe he’d still prefer to watch it in real-time?
An indifferent God could also help explain why life was created in the way that it was. Specifically through tiny organisms that gradually became much larger and smarter over millions of years. But of course if God would have wanted entertainment or simply to create humans, then it might have made more sense for him to create humans immediately rather than going through all of these intermediate steps. Atheists use this as an argument in favor of their own side.
To crib on Pete McCutchen's pithy observation below:
If the natural state of life produces more misery than pleasure, then not only is the natural conclusion to destroy all life on earth - it's also, as Simon noted above - that Nature itself is evil. For any Believers out there, that must also mean that any Creator is morally evil, because creating Life that results in net suffering is morally evil when He should have chosen instead not to make anything at all.
Taking it in another direction, it suggests that the only moral life is one in which we do nothing, create nothing, affect nothing. The only 'moral' life would be a sort of drug-induced coma, where we experience nothing but the body-buzz of a morphine drip. In that case, any thoughts we would have would arguably be net negative - consciousness without agency or ability to act would surely be hell - so, consciousness could be argued to be net misery as well (hey - "ignorance is bliss," is it not?). We have to constantly observe and navigate fears, anxieties, threats and that is only partially off-set by moments of wonder, pleasure, and bliss. I guess consciousness is also evil.
And why stop at animals and living things? Why stop even at 'pleasure' and 'pain'? Is it better for a rock to exist only to be eventually destroyed? The Law of Entropy suggests that all systems progress to a state of disorder. If disorder is the fate of all things, could we not draw a parallel between misery and disorder- order is the exception and not the rule, therefore, the Universe itself, even devoid of life, promotes disorder and is therefore evil.
Libertarianism can be grounded in what you describe as the “purest” form of utilitarianism, which is to say that libertarian law produces outcomes that statistically normal people like.
I was always a Utility Monster fan myself
"Exterminating humanity is not morally good. It is evil."
A properly conceived utilitarianism wouldn't desire to exterminate humanity, and wouldn't even care that much about wild animal suffering. In fact, a technologically advanced humanity is necessary to bring hedonic utilitarianism to its highest flourishing. While wild animal suffering is a massive source of disutility, it is worth first noting that there is trillions and trillions times more unconscious matter in the universe than there is matter currently conscious and suffering. Next it is worth noting that it is even theoretically possible to use advanced technology to turn unconscious matter into an artificially constructed mind that is designed to perpetually feel as much pleasure as possible. From these two premises the ultimate conclusion of utilitarianism becomes clear: the highest good is to use technology to convert as much matter in the universe as possible into as many artificial pleasure-minds as possible. This refutes your reductio ad absurdum in two ways. First, it shows that there is a moral end that completely swamps and replaces wild animal suffering as the chief cause of moral concern for utilitarians. Second, it shows that utilitarianism does not imply the good of human extinction, because either humans or human-constructed superintelligences are necessary to construct the technology needed to convert the universe's matter into pleasure-minds. So, the discussion of utilitarianism's most surprising conclusion should shift from anything involving wild animal suffering or voluntary human extinction, and should instead focus on directing human technological progress towards the final end of maximizing the number of artificial minds in perpetual bliss throughout the universe.
I'm talking about the Utilitarians who currently exist, who are deeply concerned about animal welfare. In theory there could be Utiltarians who are focused on what you're talking about, but there don't seem to be many of them, at least not right now.
I'm mostly a utilitarian, and I don't generally give a fuck about animal suffering. I care about dogs and cats, because they are companion animals (and cute), but that's about it.
While that's true, I would argue that that's proof they haven't taken utilitarianism far enough and haven't arrived at its true furthest conclusion, rather than proof that utilitarianism has been taken too far as you seem to be implying. Therefore utilitarianism can still be defended and justified despite many of its proponents not recognizing its true implications.
Maybe all philosophy is just gay and retarded
This is kind of inference is wrong and Silas Abrahamsen explained why: https://wonderandaporia.substack.com/p/surely-were-not-moral-monsters
Abrahamsen is wrong.
Why? Did you even read his piece? It basically directly addresses this argument that some moral claim cannot be true because that would feel weird and icky if it were true.
Yes, and I am writing a response.
I look forward to reading it!
Lol
This was a nice post, although I am not sure it is really debunking Utilitarianism. Personally, my current view of morality is a sort of anti-realist contractualism of the sort I think Hobbes and Gauthier would subscribe to
> I think that wild animal suffering disproves Utilitarianism.
It certainly demonstrates that that some formulations of utilitarianism differ greatly from most people's moral intuitions.
I have a moral theory called Cheesecaketarianism. According to Cheesecaketarianism, the morally right thing to do in any situation is the thing that maximizes the amount of Blueberry Cheesecake in the Universe.
Some people think Cheesecaketarianism is clearly wrong, but really all we know is that Cheesecaketarianism differs greatly from most people’s moral intuitions!