Two thought experiments that made me realize I care more about grand aesthetics than I gave credit to:
If two beings were equally happy, but one is wireheaded and one is living at a pinnacle of cultural excellence, which do I value more?
I’m pulled towards the latter, and I don’t find a “well that’s just your aesthetic preferences bro” rebuttal convincing grounds to entirely dismiss this preference.
Would I want my children to live a life of intense happiness afforded by extreme comfort or a slightly less happy life afforded by a pursuit of deep, lasting meaning?
I think the latter; I’m willing to trade some utility for grandeur.
I could still reconcile these views with total utilitarianism if I say that grandeur and excellence are important elements of total utility (or at least the total utility I care about). But I’m weary of this move since (1) you could always just redefine total utility to dismiss any critique of total utility and (2) it would make my definition of total utility different than many other people’s definition of total utility, which seems OK with experience-machine-style / extreme comfort utility.
Also, a point on word choice: I’m weary of “cultural excellence” as the thing to be caring about under this critique. I’m worried “culture” invites critiques of specific-culture elitism (e.g., western elitism) and is too transient across the grand time-scales we might care about. I’m more drawn to “civilization excellence” or “enduring meaning” as phrases that capture something about the world I intrinsically care about beyond just total utility.
Utility = well-being = what’s worth caring about for an individual’s sake. It’s an open normative question what this is. So you should feel totally free, conceptually, to include more than just hedonic states in your account of utility, if that’s what you find all-things-considered most plausible! Hedonism is not a “definition” of utility, but just one candidate account (or theory) of what constitutes it.
It can be a tricky taxonomic question whether putative objective values (like “excellence”) are best understood as components of well-being, or as non-welfare values. One test is to ask: is it specifically for your child’s sake that you prefer that they have the grander-but-slightly-less-happy life? Or is it just that you think this makes for an impersonally better world (potentially worth a very mild cost to your child)? The former option suggests that you see grandeur as a component of well-being; the latter would instead be a non-welfare value.
On the broader methodological question of when we should revise our theory of value vs rejecting the consequentialist idea that promoting value is foundational to ethics, see my old blog post: ‘Anti-Consequentialism and Axiological Refinements’. The key idea:
So when faced with [objections to classical utilitarianism], it’s worth asking not just whether the action seems wrong, but whether the outcome is really desirable in the first place. If not, the consequentialist has a simple response: the act is indeed wrong, precisely because it doesn’t maximize what’s (genuinely) good.
Thank you for such a thoughtful response! This helps clear up some confusion and gives me more to think about. The perks of accessible discourse with an academic philosopher ;)
Wow, I found this post really thought provoking.
Two thought experiments that made me realize I care more about grand aesthetics than I gave credit to:
If two beings were equally happy, but one is wireheaded and one is living at a pinnacle of cultural excellence, which do I value more?
I’m pulled towards the latter, and I don’t find a “well that’s just your aesthetic preferences bro” rebuttal convincing grounds to entirely dismiss this preference.
Would I want my children to live a life of intense happiness afforded by extreme comfort or a slightly less happy life afforded by a pursuit of deep, lasting meaning?
I think the latter; I’m willing to trade some utility for grandeur.
I could still reconcile these views with total utilitarianism if I say that grandeur and excellence are important elements of total utility (or at least the total utility I care about). But I’m weary of this move since (1) you could always just redefine total utility to dismiss any critique of total utility and (2) it would make my definition of total utility different than many other people’s definition of total utility, which seems OK with experience-machine-style / extreme comfort utility.
Also, a point on word choice: I’m weary of “cultural excellence” as the thing to be caring about under this critique. I’m worried “culture” invites critiques of specific-culture elitism (e.g., western elitism) and is too transient across the grand time-scales we might care about. I’m more drawn to “civilization excellence” or “enduring meaning” as phrases that capture something about the world I intrinsically care about beyond just total utility.
Glad you liked the post!
Utility = well-being = what’s worth caring about for an individual’s sake. It’s an open normative question what this is. So you should feel totally free, conceptually, to include more than just hedonic states in your account of utility, if that’s what you find all-things-considered most plausible! Hedonism is not a “definition” of utility, but just one candidate account (or theory) of what constitutes it.
See our chapter on ‘Theories of Well-Being’ at utilitarianism.net for more detail.
It can be a tricky taxonomic question whether putative objective values (like “excellence”) are best understood as components of well-being, or as non-welfare values. One test is to ask: is it specifically for your child’s sake that you prefer that they have the grander-but-slightly-less-happy life? Or is it just that you think this makes for an impersonally better world (potentially worth a very mild cost to your child)? The former option suggests that you see grandeur as a component of well-being; the latter would instead be a non-welfare value.
On the broader methodological question of when we should revise our theory of value vs rejecting the consequentialist idea that promoting value is foundational to ethics, see my old blog post: ‘Anti-Consequentialism and Axiological Refinements’. The key idea:
Thank you for such a thoughtful response! This helps clear up some confusion and gives me more to think about. The perks of accessible discourse with an academic philosopher ;)