My Philosophy: My justification for Utilitarianism.
This is the way I came to believe Utilitarianism is correct, and why even though morality, and why I strive for it is in the end just to gain social status because that is how we have evolved, I believe that despite that, utilitarianism is fundamentally correct, and humankind and myself just happened to have evolved in a way that discovered it. I do not mean to offend anyone who believes differently than me with this post.
We are all just collections of atoms. There is no reason we are here. Eventually, atoms came together in specific ways to make life that reproduced and made offspring with the same genetic code, which carried instructions to the next organism. Sometimes, those instructions got changed slightly through a mistake; a mutation. After huge spans of time, longer than anyone can even comprehend, organisms mutated in a way that made a creature that had some cells which fired electrical signals in such a way that when something happened that lowered its chances of passing on its DNA, it somehow felt something inherently bad. It felt pain. And because of this, it found some way to make the pain stop. I do not know how electrical signals firing gives rise to consciousness. But that creature, despite the fact that it was stupid beyond comparison to us, it knew that what it was feeling was bad. So it made it stop. And when it did something that helped it pass on its genetic code, it felt happiness. Something inherently good. I cannot explain why pain is bad; if I am stabbed, I try to get the knife out. Why? Because it hurts. Happiness and suffering are the end of reasoning. They are the reason we do everything.
So why don’t I just go and maximize my own happiness? Well, to answer that I first need to define the question, and to define it I need to define what my own happiness is. But we are all just collections of atoms; I cannot define myself. The self is an illusion. So why should I maximize “my” own happiness, if there is no “me”? All I can do is maximize all happiness. Because there is no “me”, when I maximize the happiness of others, “I” will be maximizing “my own” happiness because there is no “I”, and the happiness is not “my own”. It is just happiness and suffering, and I need to maximize it because it is the only reason everything is bad and good.
So that is why I am a utilitarian; because happiness and suffering must be maximized. If I were to maximize happiness for “myself”, that would not be selfish; it would be stupid. Because the pain that others will feel if I let them die to help myself is real, and it will be felt. It will not be felt by anyone, it will just be felt. I am not a utilitarian because I am a hero; I am a utilitarian because pain feels bad and joy feels good.
> And when it did something that helped it pass on its genetic code, it felt happiness. Something inherently good. I cannot explain why pain is bad; if I am stabbed, I try to get the knife out. Why? Because it hurts. Happiness and suffering are the end of reasoning. They are the reason we do everything.
I think you’re completely correct here, I came to be a utilitarian through much the same way. In my case my reasoning stemmed from vegetarianism and considering the morality of raising an animal in a happy environment and then killing it; ultimately I concluded that we were going to die anyway, so the death itself wasn’t the problem—the primary reason killing something was bad was the experiences you denied it.
My only critique would be that I think the reductionist way of getting to it will lose a lot of people. “We are all just collections of atoms” is overly reductionist, and the “just” in particular is false—we’re pretty spectacular collections of atoms, as you later gesture to with the fact that we somehow are capable of experiences which are inherently good and inherently bad.
Thank you for agreeing with me. The reason I used “we are all just collections of atoms” as an argument is because I wanted to show that there is nothing special (apart, of course, from the fact that we can feel pain and joy), about us. I was using it to show that there is no fundamental difference between me and you; or even between me and a wall, for that matter. I was using it to help preface my argument that the self is just an illusion. However, you are right that it might lose some people, and that there are better ways to show that the self is an illusion.
I disagree, everyone is a finite cog in the wheel called life, and the cogs are interconnected, each one turns another one, me being here turns 10-20-500 other life-cogs of different people, people I interact with, my effect on how things end in the end is multiplied by each interaction my cogs have themselves.
Everyone is a cog, a god, small in his own universe, and we modulate and change how the end picture will look like. There is a you, there is a me, every cog is a cog on it’s own. Even if a cog, decides to leave the system, the act of leaving is acting on the system enough to make changes.
I am utilitarian because my universe-machine works better when all cogs are turning in tune, and they are well oiled. Like a watch-mechanism, once every component fits perfectly, chaos would be completely gone. All that would be left would be pure enjoyment and wellbeing.
Enjoyed your writing.
That is an interesting way of thinking about it; I do not necessarily disagree on the arguments I laid out in the original post, I believe we are in agreement there because whether or not you use the “cogs” analogy, my argument essentially still works, because consciousness still gives rise from those electrical signals firing, and pain is bad and happiness is good, and the ultimate goal is to minimize pain and maximize happiness. The cogs analogy works because it also shows how our actions can influence other people’s actions.
However, I disagree on one part. Your argument falls apart when you say that “once every component fits perfectly, chaos would be completely gone. All that would be left would be pure enjoyment and wellbeing.” If everyone was a utilitarian, there would still be suffering because not all suffering is caused by non-utilitarian conscious organisms. Viruses, cancer, similar things will not be stopped by everyone becoming utilitarian. Also, many animals are able to feel pain but are unable to comprehend utilitarianism; they cannot become utilitarian in order to have their cog “fit perfectly” and “entirely eliminate chaos”.
Tell me if I misunderstood your argument, or if I am somewhat missing the point. I enjoyed your writing also.