Hi Richard. You ask, “People who identify as utilitarians, do you bite the bullet on such cases? And what is the distribution of opinions amongst academic philosophers who subscribe to utilitarianism?”
Those are good questions, and I hope utilitarians or similar consequentialists reply.
It may be difficult to find out what utilitarians and consequentialists really think of such cases. Such theories could be understood as sometimes prescribing ‘say whatever is optimal to say; that is, say whatever will bring about the best results.’ It might be optimal to pretend to not bite the bullet even though the person actually does.
Regarding the opinions among academic philosophers who subscribe to traditional utilitarianism. I don’t know of many such people who are alive, but a few are Torbjörn Tännsjö, Peter Singer, Yew-Kwang Ng (is my impression), and Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek (is also my impression). And Toby Ord has written, “I am very sympathetic towards Utilitarianism, carefully construed.” Tännsjö (2000) says, “Few people today seem to believe that utilitarianism is a plausible doctrine at all.” Perhaps others could list additional currently living academic philosophers who are traditional utilitarians, but otherwise it’s a very small population when talking about a distribution. Here is a list https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_utilitarians#Living, but it includes people who are not academic philosophers, like Krauss, Layard, Lindström, Matheny and Reese, and it lists negative utilitarian David Pearce, and I doubt it is correct regarding the academic philosophers included in the list.
I can’t think of any traditional utilitarian who has discussed the replacement argument (i.e., the one that involves killing and replacing everyone). Tännsjö has bitten a bullet on another issue that involves killing. As I write here https://www.simonknutsson.com/the-world-destruction-argument/#Appendix_Reliability_of_intuitions, Tännsjö thinks that a doctor ought to kill one healthy patient to give her organs to five other patients who need them to survive (if there are no bad side effects). He argues that if this is counterintuitive, that intuition is unreliable partly because it is triggered by something that is not directly morally relevant. The intuition stems from an emotional reluctance to kill in an immediate manner using physical force, which is a heuristic device selected for us by evolution, and we should realize that it is morally irrelevant whether the killing is done using physical force (Tännsjö 2015b, 67–68, 205–6, 278–79). And as I also write in my paper, he has written, among other things, “Let us rejoice with all those who one day hopefully … will take our place in the universe.” I like his way of writing. It is illuminating, he feels straightforward, and he often writes as if he teaches (in a good way). But I could only speculate about what he thinks about the replacement argument against his form of utilitarianism.
Thanks for the informative reply! And also for writing the paper in the first place :)
“Such theories could be understood as sometimes prescribing ‘say whatever is optimal to say; that is, say whatever will bring about the best results.’ It might be optimal to pretend to not bite the bullet even though the person actually does.”
I have to admit I only skimmed the paper, can you explain to me what “bullet” I ought to bite? It seems like a neutral proposition to say, what if we replace “us” with beings of greater well being.
My best guess is that our intuition for self-preservation and our intuition that killing sentient beings is bad most of the time should make me feel like that it would be a horrible idea? I’d rather throw the intuitions out than the framework, so to me this seems like an easy question. But maybe you have other arguments that make me not want to replace us.
To bite the bullet here would be to accept that it would be morally right to kill and replace everyone with other beings who, collectively, have a (possibly only slightly) greater sum of well-being. If someone could do that.
The following are two similar scenarios:
Traditional Utilitarian Elimination: The sum of positive and negative well-being in the future will be negative if humans or sentient life continues to exist. Traditional utilitarianism implies that it would be right to kill all humans or all sentient beings on Earth painlessly.
Suboptimal Paradise: The world has become a paradise with no suffering. Someone can kill everyone in this paradise and replace them with beings with (possibly only slightly) more well-being in total. Traditional utilitarianism implies that it would be right to do so.
To bite the bullet regarding those two scenarios would be to accept that killing everyone would be morally right in those scenarios.
If you actually think that the only thing that matters is wellbeing, then personhood doesn’t matter, so it makes sense that you would endorse these conclusions in this thought experiment.
Hi Richard. You ask, “People who identify as utilitarians, do you bite the bullet on such cases? And what is the distribution of opinions amongst academic philosophers who subscribe to utilitarianism?”
Those are good questions, and I hope utilitarians or similar consequentialists reply.
It may be difficult to find out what utilitarians and consequentialists really think of such cases. Such theories could be understood as sometimes prescribing ‘say whatever is optimal to say; that is, say whatever will bring about the best results.’ It might be optimal to pretend to not bite the bullet even though the person actually does.
Regarding the opinions among academic philosophers who subscribe to traditional utilitarianism. I don’t know of many such people who are alive, but a few are Torbjörn Tännsjö, Peter Singer, Yew-Kwang Ng (is my impression), and Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek (is also my impression). And Toby Ord has written, “I am very sympathetic towards Utilitarianism, carefully construed.” Tännsjö (2000) says, “Few people today seem to believe that utilitarianism is a plausible doctrine at all.” Perhaps others could list additional currently living academic philosophers who are traditional utilitarians, but otherwise it’s a very small population when talking about a distribution. Here is a list https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_utilitarians#Living, but it includes people who are not academic philosophers, like Krauss, Layard, Lindström, Matheny and Reese, and it lists negative utilitarian David Pearce, and I doubt it is correct regarding the academic philosophers included in the list.
I can’t think of any traditional utilitarian who has discussed the replacement argument (i.e., the one that involves killing and replacing everyone). Tännsjö has bitten a bullet on another issue that involves killing. As I write here https://www.simonknutsson.com/the-world-destruction-argument/#Appendix_Reliability_of_intuitions, Tännsjö thinks that a doctor ought to kill one healthy patient to give her organs to five other patients who need them to survive (if there are no bad side effects). He argues that if this is counterintuitive, that intuition is unreliable partly because it is triggered by something that is not directly morally relevant. The intuition stems from an emotional reluctance to kill in an immediate manner using physical force, which is a heuristic device selected for us by evolution, and we should realize that it is morally irrelevant whether the killing is done using physical force (Tännsjö 2015b, 67–68, 205–6, 278–79). And as I also write in my paper, he has written, among other things, “Let us rejoice with all those who one day hopefully … will take our place in the universe.” I like his way of writing. It is illuminating, he feels straightforward, and he often writes as if he teaches (in a good way). But I could only speculate about what he thinks about the replacement argument against his form of utilitarianism.
Thanks for the informative reply! And also for writing the paper in the first place :)
“Such theories could be understood as sometimes prescribing ‘say whatever is optimal to say; that is, say whatever will bring about the best results.’ It might be optimal to pretend to not bite the bullet even though the person actually does.”
I think we need to have high epistemic standards in this community, and would be dismayed if a significant number of people with strong moral views were hiding them in order to make a better impression on others. (See also https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/CfcvPBY9hdsenMHCr/integrity-for-consequentialists)
I have to admit I only skimmed the paper, can you explain to me what “bullet” I ought to bite? It seems like a neutral proposition to say, what if we replace “us” with beings of greater well being.
My best guess is that our intuition for self-preservation and our intuition that killing sentient beings is bad most of the time should make me feel like that it would be a horrible idea? I’d rather throw the intuitions out than the framework, so to me this seems like an easy question. But maybe you have other arguments that make me not want to replace us.
To bite the bullet here would be to accept that it would be morally right to kill and replace everyone with other beings who, collectively, have a (possibly only slightly) greater sum of well-being. If someone could do that.
The following are two similar scenarios:
Traditional Utilitarian Elimination: The sum of positive and negative well-being in the future will be negative if humans or sentient life continues to exist. Traditional utilitarianism implies that it would be right to kill all humans or all sentient beings on Earth painlessly.
Suboptimal Paradise: The world has become a paradise with no suffering. Someone can kill everyone in this paradise and replace them with beings with (possibly only slightly) more well-being in total. Traditional utilitarianism implies that it would be right to do so.
To bite the bullet regarding those two scenarios would be to accept that killing everyone would be morally right in those scenarios.
If you actually think that the only thing that matters is wellbeing, then personhood doesn’t matter, so it makes sense that you would endorse these conclusions in this thought experiment.
I know this is very late, but I wrote a piece a while ago about this. I bite the bullet. https://benthams.substack.com/p/against-conservatism-about-value