I just want to say that the comments here have given me a better understanding than the video did. I love the analogies...that really helps me. Thanx guys!!!
I immediately got a bewildered look on my face when she compared one person to 5 people Being saved to demonstrate consequentialism. I think anyone who believes that consequentialism is true and right as a philosophy believes so because they fully understand that life is too complicated. On the other hand, from what I've been able to discern over the course of my life is that anyone who disagrees with consequentialism, they are the ones who oversimplify things. You cannot demonstrate the philosophy of consequentialism by comparing one person to 5 people and saying that consequentialism is like utilitarianism in that the goal is to make the world a better place. Better for who? What if that 1 person that need Ed a larger dose was your own brother or sister Or apparent? And the other 5 people were complete strangers??And that is still an incredibly simplistic comparison. Because you don't know if it is they're sibling compared to strangers, how much do they like their sibling? How beneficial to their life is their siblings life? Does their sibling make their life a living hell? Maybe the other 5 people could be complete strangers come up but their sibling is such a terrible person to them, that they would rather save 5 strangers than their own sibling . The possibilities are absolutely endless.
I too had a problem with that analogy. What if the 5 were war criminals with negative value, and the other is a leading scientist in researching medicine?
One thing I'm not sure about is if the "consequences" includes the cost/reward of making the decision, as opposed to just the cost/reward of having enacted the decision. For example, take the cliched philosophical hypothetical of a runaway train heading towards 5 people tied to the tracks, and you are given the option to switch the train onto a track that has only 1 person tied to it. Now, imagine that I have to kill 5 people to get the opportunity to switch the track. So, now, deciding to switch the track means the train only kills 1 person, but a total of 6 people have died. Why I am confused on this is the use of the term "the ends justify the means", which seems to imply that the means (what I have to do to get a certain outcome) are separate from the ends (the outcome of my actions). Have I misunderstood something with this phrase or its use? I feel that "consequence" should be the entire outcome of a decision. I mean, for example, if you are buying dinner, the level of satisfaction you will get (satiation, taste, quality, etc.) might be tied to how much you spend, but if your finances are not in good shape, then overspending will likely end badly. But that sounds like balancing the means and the ends, which doesn't sound like it's consequentialism. Although, I guess you could consider each step (how much to spend, what to spend that amount on, etc.) as a decision, and then add all the consequences together... Hmm... Philosophy is hard lol
It's not that hard and people tend to be confused about what the consequences are meant to be. A complete consequentialist account of an event would include every conceivable consequence. So no, the end doesn't justify the means, at least not always.
I would say this philosophy does not justify the means, if the means are causing more suffering than needed, hedonism nor utalitarianism would justify it.. it depends on how we define things, though
9 ปีที่แล้ว +47
Wow. This one fell off the end. It's almost like someone trimmed the last 5 minutes of the video
I got a better example: Henry Tandey, - a murderer hired by the state to kill citizens of another country - a soldier in WW1, allegedly could have killed Hitler as a young man. The act of NOT killing Hitler when he had the chance resulted in The Holocaust. Had he murdered Hitler, which most consider murder to be "bad", it would have resulted in nearly 20 million people not being killed. What Henry thought was "good" had the consequences of so many innocent people be murdered. This is assuming Hitler was _actually_ the person in the story. It's hard to tell when it comes to fascist, dictatorial murderers if they're telling the truth. /s
A response to the issue about maximizing consequentialism being difficult is, so what? No one said it's easy to be morally praiseworthy. That is no argument against the validity of consequentialism at all.
ofcourse it is an issue with consequentialism. The bagels might not be a good example. But how can you know that what you are doing will produce good consequences? The world is so fluctuating that we can never predict the outcome accurately. If it is impossible for us to predict the outcome, why are we morally responsible? Aren’t we only morally responsible for what we are capable of doing?
My thoughts exactly. So, it's hard to do the best thing ever all the time. So what? Does anyone have any doubt that donating all the money we use to pay for our clothes, internet, entertainment, etc to save other people from starving to death would be morally praiseworthy? I don't think the fact that very few are willing to sacrifice their privileges can be used against the hypothesis that sacrificing one's privileges would be morally better than not doing it.
Actions have consequences that can be measured, this is called normative ethics. Why is this so difficult to understand? It is making morality more objective by measuring the outcomes of moral decisions.
Satisficing consequentialism sounds good enough for now. "You will know them by their fruit, but not every strawberry has to be the best of your life".
From my perspective, the only problem with consequentialism is its failure to acknowledge that humans generally cannot perfectly predict the consequences of their actions. Morality is more like Poker than Solitaire. You can't know for sure that getting all your chips in with pocket aces pre-flop will guarantee that you will win the pot, but it's an optimal move assuming you get called regardless of a lone outcome because if you manage to find yourself in repeat situations over and over, you will come out a millionaire in the long run. That is to say, the outcome of repeating the action over and over has a high expected value, even if a singular outcome of an effort might cause you to lose all your chips. The acknowledgment of probabilities and navigating unknowns leads to the categorical guides in the presence of unknowns just like the Theory of Poker which would be useless if we played Poker with our hands turned face-up (if unknowns became knowns). From this, I derive a notion of "probabilistic consequentialism". The degree to which categorical vs. consequentialist modes of thought are valid depends on the individual's ability to correctly predict the full, long-term consequences of their actions which is never going to be entirely perfect because that would require an omnipotent level of knowledge. I don't know why philosophers often fail to acknowledge unknowns in their moral dilemmas. Certainly, it is not moral for me to attempt to rescue a drowning person if I knew for certain that it was guaranteed that we'd both die in the process. That would be about as moral as for me to jump off a cliff. We at least have to factor in the estimated probabilities of successfully being able to rescue the person to get anywhere. If we had omnipotent knowledge that there's a 0% chance of success, then there's no point behind the attempt.
It's not that the unknown probability of results is not taken into account for no reason at all. For the sake of convenience, philosophers need to throw those uncertainties away so that they can argue effectively under the assumption of certainty. Rather than pondering to the fact that there are so many unpredictable events out there, we should appreciate how utilitarianism can help us a lot in predictable cases such as the doctor's dilemma presented in the video.
@@BB-sq3jr I find the probability aspect crucial though to get to the heart of how individuals tend to make moral value judgments about their own actions. For example, take the positive value we tend to assign to honesty and the negative value of deception. I find most people tend to be more categorical here and see even a deception that produces net positive results to be immoral. Take an example of a husband who successfully cheats on his wife without getting caught, making both him and indirectly his wife much happier in the process because he becomes more cheerful, doesn't catch any STIs, and this secret affair just improves everyone's relationships. I think most of us would still see this as immoral and I would say due to probabilistic factors. Such a net positive result is likely very improbable to occur from cheating on our partners. We condemn this in a similar way Poker players condemn someone going all-in under the gun with 72 offsuit and winning against pocket aces (a type of play that would certainly bankrupt players in the long run if they repeat it even if they get lucky a few times). It also almost certainly leads towards net negatives if people make this a habit of cheating on their partners left and right. So I would argue that the reason people tend to be more categorical here is that the probabilities and unknowns yield a negative "expected value" (-EV). It might sometimes yield a lucky good outcome here and there, but it's heavily weighted towards the negative.
@@BB-sq3jr Similar case with the Golden Rule. I would argue that the only reason the Golden Rule is "categorical" is that it tackles unknowns/probabilities and is actually trying to optimize based on "probable consequences". If we knew for certain with omnipotent knowledge that aiding a stranger would result in the person being murdered by that stranger, then I doubt any of us who isn't a psychopath would encourage applying the Golden Rule in that scenario. Yet the chance of that happening given the typical unknowns seems very improbable. More likely, someone who adheres to the Golden Rule will maximize their probability of making allies and minimize their probability of making enemies which helps improve their odds of surviving/flourishing. Similar case with health. For example, Jeanne Calment lived to be 122-years old absent lung disease even though she was a smoker starting from 21 all the way to 117. Yet the probability of most people living to be 122-years old smoking cigarettes each day for almost a hundred years seems extremely low, so we call smoking "unhealthy" from a "probabilistic consequentialist" perspective (which is the true meaning of "categorical" in my opinion) given that it's generally correlated with a significantly increased likelihood (not guarantee) of shorter lifespans and multiple diseases.
I can see where you're getting at in the first reply you made. The initial gain from cheating may deceptively seem more positive than negative. However, any rational people would say that a society with high occurrence of cheating will almost certainly crumble due to trust issues within partners, etc. This is the reason why some philosophers had proposed another concept of utilitarianism, which is called "Rule Utilitarianism". Rule Utilitarianism basically adds that you should seek to improve the overall positive value by looking at the long term effect of your moral choices. So instead of going "this seems nice" at first glance, you should think critically and try to look at the bigger picture, and then you will realize that your initial choice based on basic utilitarianism (Act Utilitarianism) may not always be morally right.
@@BB-sq3jr I'll have to look into "rule utilitarianism". That makes a whole lot more sense to me just from an empirical standpoint of how I observe our human tendencies. I come from a STEM background just getting my feet wet with philosophy, but I often get this introductory impression like philosophy is working towards hypothetical questions of a sort that would require omnipotent knowledge of the universe to answer. I'm currently lost in so many "-isms" in ethics and metaethics when I'm just trying to scientifically figure out how human beings work and what they all share in common throughout cultures and history. I also seem to note that we are creatures of habit and that this tends to factor into our assessments. For example, take the idea of "Once a cheater, always a cheater." While I'm sure that's not always true, it's probably often true. I think that factors into how we assess these things morally since we not only seem to assess probable consequences independent of actual consequences but tend to consider a likelihood of the same undesirable actions being repeated by the same individuals multiple times. I'd tie it back to health with addictions like smoking again since few people rarely smoke like one cigarette every few weeks without starting to become addicted to the point of smoking on a daily basis.
Couldnt keeping a promise just be included into the good? Surely there is a point at which other factors outweigh the moral significance of a promise, meaning that it could fit right into the moral calculus. I see no problem in how demanding consequentialism can be, for several reasons: first, if you agree with the premises then you should agree with the conclusion no matter how demanding. second, why do we have to label only the option that maximizes good consequences *the* right action? I propose that actions can be right to different degrees, meaning that donating some money is moral while donating more money is even more moral.
You're presenting the weakest form consequentialism and utilitarianism. Very few philosophers these days take act consequentialism seriously, and instead opt for rule consequentialism. Rule consequentialists do not hold the idea that we should just arbitrarily "do enough" and then whatever, your fine if you feel you've done enough. Rule consequentialists believe in living a life in alignment to principle's and rules that yield good consequences. For example, one of these rules (certainly among others) might be living your life in accordance to the non-aggression principle. The rule consequentialist is also absolutely not required to say that it is rationally imperative to maximize pleasure at all costs, constantly going one step further and further, as many can clearly see the pragmatic problems and tragedy of the commons issues that would likely ensue. Which would lead to widespread failure of pleasure, and therefor not rational.
Consequentialism begs the question. We know "for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction" The moment of the action, a consequence is in place. It's a given. To say "consequentialism is a entirety of all actions as a whole" or "a means to an end" is a semantical sleight of hand. In it's raw form, consequentialism states: "consequences happen because of consequences." Fallacy.
Simple question. What if there is a large group of people who gain immense pleasure from genocide and cannibalism? Do you allow them to develop and thrive as a subculture? They could claim they are depopulating, reprocessing and recycling humans as a tool in their culture to fight global warming.
Consequentialism cannot answer that question. That has to do with the distinction between the good and the right. Before something can be called right, the good has to be qualified as morally positive. Taking pleasure in acting in an evil way is immoral. Maximising this form of good is useless to consequentialism. We have deontology to compensate for this failure in the consequentialistic theory
Perhaps, but it should be considered that despite one's best efforts to break down language to its simplest form, there will still be prerequisite knowledge for some things.
Not quite. What you’ve said is more like “Good consequences justify bad actions.” But what consequentialism states is that “Actions which lead to good consequences are by definition good.” It’s also mainly a normative ethical framework. So it’s primarily a way of trying to define what’s good overall, and then to establish general rules of conduct for us to live by. So it’s more like saying “Anything leading to good consequences is itself morally good, but the further away from good consequences anything leads, the worse it morally is. That’s how you should live.” Defining what’s good is where it gets tricky, but say you decided “Having lots of money is the greatest good for everyone, because having lots of money maximizes choice.” Since making money is the greatest good, everything you do should be geared to making money. Things that don’t make you money, like keeping promises, being humble, working at something that doesn’t make the most money, exercising, being faithful to your spouse, aren’t good actions. If you have children, it should primarily be to make money, or it won’t be a good action. Pimping your kids into the sex trade is a good action. The person who pays you the most money to have sex with your infant children is the best person. And your ugly child who draws the least money is the worst person. It doesn’t have to be money, although I chose that example because many people today seem motivated along the exact lines I described above. But you can choose nearly anything as the greatest good and consequentialism will quickly become fiendishly complicated. I hope that helps?
Well obviously if there is no other catch and one saves 5 while the other saves 1 it's obvious that you would save the 5 even from a deontology standpoint.
It's kind of like that one crack baby South Park episode the exploited to crack babies in a game of crack baby basketball and made money off of them but as a result of that making money off of that they use that money to take care of them and made a crack baby orphanage it was a necessary evil exploiting them so they could have a better orphanage even though the fact that they were exploding them is bad they wanted the most amount of good for the most amount of people.
Or like Robin Hood stealing from the rich and giving to the poor even though Robin Hood did a bad action stealing from the rich his actions were justified because he gave it to people who needed more than him.
Kinda reminds me of Karma, except distilled down past even Newton's 3rd law to being near meaningless as it doesn't consider everything. But I suppose this vid would be more of an overview than anything in depth a 5 minutes. Also Bagel, toast? Girl, you ain't been broke enough to have a bowl of rice and an egg for half your daily food intake, because you couldn't afford the bread and the toaster. Experience a couple months of that kind of starvation and you'll appreciate what ya got better. Toast is fuckin amazing, don't buy the bagel and save for your retirement for when you can't work anymore instead of giving your money away. Because Medicare and welfare food stamps are VERY picky, and you'll probably not qualify.
Spending that extra $1 on the begel is maximizing the good. The begal will bring a little joy to someone. While Oxfam is going to take the dollar combine it will other funds and spend those funds to help many people diluting the effect of that single dollar to practically nothing. A little joy is better than practically no joy at all.
Why would putting the dollar into a fund that helps many people dilute the dollar's value? It would seem to increase its value; a dollar spent in the third world can buy more hunger satisfaction than it can when spent on a single bagel in an affluent country. It may be that a charity buys food for a large group of people, but that group is made up of individual meals that were purchased with individual dollars. Each dollar allows it to buy more food.
Chimfish All else being equal, whether I donate a single $1 to the charity or not isn't going to make any detectable difference in anyone's life. If I donated $500 it might. But we are not talking about $500, we are talking about $1. And I'm hungry and want a begel more than I want that out of proportion sense of goodness I'd get by giving away my $1. I wait until I write $500 check to get that feeling.
cgm778 I doubt that the intention here was to make people consider donating literally only a single dollar. I think the point of the bagel example was to make people consider the extent of good a dollar spent in one situation can buy compared to the same dollar spent otherwise. If somebody accepts that to be true about the dollar mentioned in the example, then it would seem to follow logically that they should probably be donating much more money as well. My question here is about your claim that the single dollar does less good when donated to Oxfam than it does when used to buy the bagel. It may be true that $1 does only a small amount of good when donated to Oxfam, but that doesn't show why the good it is does is therefore _less_ than when used to buy a bagel. In your comparison, you've only considered the satisfaction of your hunger versus the sense of goodness you'd experience by giving money away. I think the good feelings you get from giving to charity are a relevant factor, but the much more important factor is the good the dollar would do when used to buy an additional dollar worth of food for poor people (and I think that was the point being made in the video as well).
Chimfish I was just commenting on the example of the begel and the single binary choice of buying a begel or donating the money to Oxfam. My contention is buying the begel is justified because it will make a meaningful difference in one life while donating a single $1 to oxfam will not. But just for the fun of it let's assume that it's not justifiable and the only justifiable thing to do is send the money to Oxfam. If that is so then spending $15 on a full meal is even less justifiable. Owning a car or a house would be the very heart of dark selfishness. The only justifiable life would be one in which you only spent just enough to keep yourself alive and working so you can earn more money to give to the needy, at least until there was no one less needy than you. Do you think that is correct conclusion? If not then how do you justify spending any amount more than $1 on yourself instead of donating it to Oxfam?
cgm778 Yes, I think that is the correct conclusion. Utilitarianism would seem to morally oblige you to give all of your money away until the point where the next dollar given away would do more harm than good. You mention that the bagel will make a meaningful difference in one life if used to buy a bagel but it won't do so if sent to Oxfam. Why would the pleasure you get from your $1 worth of food be any less than what someone else gets from an equivalent amount of food (let alone a starving person)? What if instead of sending the $1 you were able to actually ship the bagel to a hungry person? Wouldn't the hungry person having the bagel do _at least_ as much good as it does you?
LOL satisficing Consequentialism is needed for us Humans becase we are limited in actions and we don't know exactly what is exactly the best thing to do for ourselves
Rene Descartes Is it not a false dichotomy to assume that any one school of thought is always preferable or more effective than the other? Most circumstances are probably better served by your preference, but factors such as expediency might dictate the consequentialist approach or some combination of both.
Andrew Wells What areas in sexual ethics? Surely we could say the same thing about deontological theories in general as well. Are they therefore not a viable or credible model?
What a collection of straw-man arguments. It seems like the speaker didn't think any of the cases through. For instance: 1. If a better option exists, that doesn't mean the worse action is wrong. They might be both wrong or both good. 2. Keeping a promise to your jihadi friend to fly a plane at the world trade center is not a good deed. 3. Consequentialism and utilitarianism don't mean maximizing *pleasure*, but maximizing the *thing that we deem valuable*. Which you can decide yourself. 4. Intentions matter for deciding if a person is good or bad, but not if an action is good or bad. Good people can do bad things and bad people can do good things by accident.
Since when am I supposed to give a flying crap about the ultimate well-being of other people? This theory of ethics flies directly in the face of 50 years of economics and biology - theories with actual empirical data, mathematical formalism, and predictive capacity. Do philosophers not understand that we can logically derive cooperative behaviors out of rote self-interest and social interdependence?
I think she thinks deterrence is the ultimate goal, when everything preceding her thoughts are also goals. Precedence is an exercise not a goal, as misunderstanding is a fluctuation of power, not a thought . . . she motions things on to change stuff, instead of motioning on the power she needs to discourage precedence . . . #Confusion I tried, forgive me if you do not understand, it might be I am stupid, and basing energy on forms of thought
Could you be more specific? I know she posited two contradictory ideas, but I can't see any obverse flaws in her presentation that would trigger skepticism from me.
AntiCitizenX What philosophers do understand is how not to resort to fallacious arguments. The argument you are making is so amateur they actually had to give it a name: "*appeal to nature*." Think about it brainiac, if behavior/action X is observed in nature should we, *therefore*, do behavior/action X? And was that supposed to be your "logical derivation;" or did you have something else in mind? Please share. I have a bit of university background in mathematics, economics and game theory. So, please, don't hold back.
Jeremy Howson *And was that supposed to be your "logical derivation;" or did you have something else in mind? Please share. I have a bit of university background in mathematics, economics and game theory* Game theory itself is the mathematical model by which cooperative behavior can be derived entirely from self-interested agents. They did teach you about the iterated prisoner's dilemma in your study of game theory, right? They did teach you how such models apply to many testable real-world conditions, right?
![PHILOSOPHY - Epistemology: The Problem of Skepticism [HD]](/img/n.gif)
I just want to say that the comments here have given me a better understanding than the video did. I love the analogies...that really helps me. Thanx guys!!!
I immediately got a bewildered look on my face when she compared one person to 5 people Being saved to demonstrate consequentialism. I think anyone who believes that consequentialism is true and right as a philosophy believes so because they fully understand that life is too complicated. On the other hand, from what I've been able to discern over the course of my life is that anyone who disagrees with consequentialism, they are the ones who oversimplify things. You cannot demonstrate the philosophy of consequentialism by comparing one person to 5 people and saying that consequentialism is like utilitarianism in that the goal is to make the world a better place. Better for who? What if that 1 person that need Ed a larger dose was your own brother or sister Or apparent? And the other 5 people were complete strangers??And that is still an incredibly simplistic comparison. Because you don't know if it is they're sibling compared to strangers, how much do they like their sibling? How beneficial to their life is their siblings life? Does their sibling make their life a living hell? Maybe the other 5 people could be complete strangers come up but their sibling is such a terrible person to them, that they would rather save 5 strangers than their own sibling . The possibilities are absolutely endless.
I too had a problem with that analogy. What if the 5 were war criminals with negative value, and the other is a leading scientist in researching medicine?
One thing I'm not sure about is if the "consequences" includes the cost/reward of making the decision, as opposed to just the cost/reward of having enacted the decision. For example, take the cliched philosophical hypothetical of a runaway train heading towards 5 people tied to the tracks, and you are given the option to switch the train onto a track that has only 1 person tied to it. Now, imagine that I have to kill 5 people to get the opportunity to switch the track. So, now, deciding to switch the track means the train only kills 1 person, but a total of 6 people have died.
Why I am confused on this is the use of the term "the ends justify the means", which seems to imply that the means (what I have to do to get a certain outcome) are separate from the ends (the outcome of my actions). Have I misunderstood something with this phrase or its use?
I feel that "consequence" should be the entire outcome of a decision. I mean, for example, if you are buying dinner, the level of satisfaction you will get (satiation, taste, quality, etc.) might be tied to how much you spend, but if your finances are not in good shape, then overspending will likely end badly. But that sounds like balancing the means and the ends, which doesn't sound like it's consequentialism. Although, I guess you could consider each step (how much to spend, what to spend that amount on, etc.) as a decision, and then add all the consequences together... Hmm... Philosophy is hard lol
It's not that hard and people tend to be confused about what the consequences are meant to be. A complete consequentialist account of an event would include every conceivable consequence. So no, the end doesn't justify the means, at least not always.
I would say this philosophy does not justify the means, if the means are causing more suffering than needed, hedonism nor utalitarianism would justify it.. it depends on how we define things, though
Wow. This one fell off the end. It's almost like someone trimmed the last 5 minutes of the video
sorry steve
I got a better example:
Henry Tandey, - a murderer hired by the state to kill citizens of another country - a soldier in WW1, allegedly could have killed Hitler as a young man. The act of NOT killing Hitler when he had the chance resulted in The Holocaust.
Had he murdered Hitler, which most consider murder to be "bad", it would have resulted in nearly 20 million people not being killed. What Henry thought was "good" had the consequences of so many innocent people be murdered.
This is assuming Hitler was _actually_ the person in the story. It's hard to tell when it comes to fascist, dictatorial murderers if they're telling the truth. /s
A response to the issue about maximizing consequentialism being difficult is, so what? No one said it's easy to be morally praiseworthy. That is no argument against the validity of consequentialism at all.
I agree some people wants life to be easy...they dont understand that in the mist of the tempest there is Strenght
ofcourse it is an issue with consequentialism. The bagels might not be a good example. But how can you know that what you are doing will produce good consequences? The world is so fluctuating that we can never predict the outcome accurately. If it is impossible for us to predict the outcome, why are we morally responsible? Aren’t we only morally responsible for what we are capable of doing?
My thoughts exactly. So, it's hard to do the best thing ever all the time. So what? Does anyone have any doubt that donating all the money we use to pay for our clothes, internet, entertainment, etc to save other people from starving to death would be morally praiseworthy? I don't think the fact that very few are willing to sacrifice their privileges can be used against the hypothesis that sacrificing one's privileges would be morally better than not doing it.
more confused now that i watched this...
Emerson Guzman damn I think your right 👍 🤯
Actions have consequences that can be measured, this is called normative ethics. Why is this so difficult to understand? It is making morality more objective by measuring the outcomes of moral decisions.
Agreed!
The Good Place brought me here.
Haha buddy! Same
The good place dragged me into taking masters in philosophy 😂
@@tuttingjunior4657 sooooo...bartender?
Satisficing consequentialism sounds good enough for now. "You will know them by their fruit, but not every strawberry has to be the best of your life".
From my perspective, the only problem with consequentialism is its failure to acknowledge that humans generally cannot perfectly predict the consequences of their actions. Morality is more like Poker than Solitaire. You can't know for sure that getting all your chips in with pocket aces pre-flop will guarantee that you will win the pot, but it's an optimal move assuming you get called regardless of a lone outcome because if you manage to find yourself in repeat situations over and over, you will come out a millionaire in the long run. That is to say, the outcome of repeating the action over and over has a high expected value, even if a singular outcome of an effort might cause you to lose all your chips.
The acknowledgment of probabilities and navigating unknowns leads to the categorical guides in the presence of unknowns just like the Theory of Poker which would be useless if we played Poker with our hands turned face-up (if unknowns became knowns). From this, I derive a notion of "probabilistic consequentialism". The degree to which categorical vs. consequentialist modes of thought are valid depends on the individual's ability to correctly predict the full, long-term consequences of their actions which is never going to be entirely perfect because that would require an omnipotent level of knowledge.
I don't know why philosophers often fail to acknowledge unknowns in their moral dilemmas. Certainly, it is not moral for me to attempt to rescue a drowning person if I knew for certain that it was guaranteed that we'd both die in the process. That would be about as moral as for me to jump off a cliff. We at least have to factor in the estimated probabilities of successfully being able to rescue the person to get anywhere. If we had omnipotent knowledge that there's a 0% chance of success, then there's no point behind the attempt.
It's not that the unknown probability of results is not taken into account for no reason at all. For the sake of convenience, philosophers need to throw those uncertainties away so that they can argue effectively under the assumption of certainty.
Rather than pondering to the fact that there are so many unpredictable events out there, we should appreciate how utilitarianism can help us a lot in predictable cases such as the doctor's dilemma presented in the video.
@@BB-sq3jr I find the probability aspect crucial though to get to the heart of how individuals tend to make moral value judgments about their own actions. For example, take the positive value we tend to assign to honesty and the negative value of deception. I find most people tend to be more categorical here and see even a deception that produces net positive results to be immoral.
Take an example of a husband who successfully cheats on his wife without getting caught, making both him and indirectly his wife much happier in the process because he becomes more cheerful, doesn't catch any STIs, and this secret affair just improves everyone's relationships.
I think most of us would still see this as immoral and I would say due to probabilistic factors. Such a net positive result is likely very improbable to occur from cheating on our partners. We condemn this in a similar way Poker players condemn someone going all-in under the gun with 72 offsuit and winning against pocket aces (a type of play that would certainly bankrupt players in the long run if they repeat it even if they get lucky a few times). It also almost certainly leads towards net negatives if people make this a habit of cheating on their partners left and right. So I would argue that the reason people tend to be more categorical here is that the probabilities and unknowns yield a negative "expected value" (-EV). It might sometimes yield a lucky good outcome here and there, but it's heavily weighted towards the negative.
@@BB-sq3jr Similar case with the Golden Rule. I would argue that the only reason the Golden Rule is "categorical" is that it tackles unknowns/probabilities and is actually trying to optimize based on "probable consequences". If we knew for certain with omnipotent knowledge that aiding a stranger would result in the person being murdered by that stranger, then I doubt any of us who isn't a psychopath would encourage applying the Golden Rule in that scenario. Yet the chance of that happening given the typical unknowns seems very improbable. More likely, someone who adheres to the Golden Rule will maximize their probability of making allies and minimize their probability of making enemies which helps improve their odds of surviving/flourishing.
Similar case with health. For example, Jeanne Calment lived to be 122-years old absent lung disease even though she was a smoker starting from 21 all the way to 117. Yet the probability of most people living to be 122-years old smoking cigarettes each day for almost a hundred years seems extremely low, so we call smoking "unhealthy" from a "probabilistic consequentialist" perspective (which is the true meaning of "categorical" in my opinion) given that it's generally correlated with a significantly increased likelihood (not guarantee) of shorter lifespans and multiple diseases.
I can see where you're getting at in the first reply you made. The initial gain from cheating may deceptively seem more positive than negative. However, any rational people would say that a society with high occurrence of cheating will almost certainly crumble due to trust issues within partners, etc. This is the reason why some philosophers had proposed another concept of utilitarianism, which is called "Rule Utilitarianism".
Rule Utilitarianism basically adds that you should seek to improve the overall positive value by looking at the long term effect of your moral choices. So instead of going "this seems nice" at first glance, you should think critically and try to look at the bigger picture, and then you will realize that your initial choice based on basic utilitarianism (Act Utilitarianism) may not always be morally right.
@@BB-sq3jr I'll have to look into "rule utilitarianism". That makes a whole lot more sense to me just from an empirical standpoint of how I observe our human tendencies. I come from a STEM background just getting my feet wet with philosophy, but I often get this introductory impression like philosophy is working towards hypothetical questions of a sort that would require omnipotent knowledge of the universe to answer. I'm currently lost in so many "-isms" in ethics and metaethics when I'm just trying to scientifically figure out how human beings work and what they all share in common throughout cultures and history.
I also seem to note that we are creatures of habit and that this tends to factor into our assessments. For example, take the idea of "Once a cheater, always a cheater." While I'm sure that's not always true, it's probably often true. I think that factors into how we assess these things morally since we not only seem to assess probable consequences independent of actual consequences but tend to consider a likelihood of the same undesirable actions being repeated by the same individuals multiple times. I'd tie it back to health with addictions like smoking again since few people rarely smoke like one cigarette every few weeks without starting to become addicted to the point of smoking on a daily basis.
It may be demanding but I have no issue justifying some egoism. After all, gotta take care of thyself so that you can maximize good.
great video, thanks for breaking it down for us!
Is there an English version?
The pinky promise paradigm sounds more like a Deontological approach. Then again everything is relative :)
Couldnt keeping a promise just be included into the good? Surely there is a point at which other factors outweigh the moral significance of a promise, meaning that it could fit right into the moral calculus.
I see no problem in how demanding consequentialism can be, for several reasons:
first, if you agree with the premises then you should agree with the conclusion no matter how demanding. second, why do we have to label only the option that maximizes good consequences *the* right action? I propose that actions can be right to different degrees, meaning that donating some money is moral while donating more money is even more moral.
the comment section is lit
EDIT: also good vid thank u :^)
You're presenting the weakest form consequentialism and utilitarianism. Very few philosophers these days take act consequentialism seriously, and instead opt for rule consequentialism. Rule consequentialists do not hold the idea that we should just arbitrarily "do enough" and then whatever, your fine if you feel you've done enough. Rule consequentialists believe in living a life in alignment to principle's and rules that yield good consequences. For example, one of these rules (certainly among others) might be living your life in accordance to the non-aggression principle. The rule consequentialist is also absolutely not required to say that it is rationally imperative to maximize pleasure at all costs, constantly going one step further and further, as many can clearly see the pragmatic problems and tragedy of the commons issues that would likely ensue. Which would lead to widespread failure of pleasure, and therefor not rational.
Talk to Vaush
No matter how you slice it, a paradox is a consequence of all rational thought that aims to govern human morality.
okay so .. where's the flaw in that?
Your answer is not satisficing lollll... but we may had say the same... let me ask you a question. what do you mean a Paradox is a consequence? lol
anyone? help me what are the consequences of impartiality? this is my topic for the ethics sub.
so no more bagels for me
TIL bagels are immoral
Please define "enough" in reference to satisfying consequentialism.
Thank you, Helped Alot!
This was shown to us students in Online Class in University -_-
Thank you for this video
Consequentialism begs the question.
We know "for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction" The moment of the action, a consequence is in place. It's a given.
To say "consequentialism is a entirety of all actions as a whole" or "a means to an end" is a semantical sleight of hand.
In it's raw form, consequentialism states: "consequences happen because of consequences."
Fallacy.
Simple question. What if there is a large group of people who gain immense pleasure from genocide and cannibalism? Do you allow them to develop and thrive as a subculture? They could claim they are depopulating, reprocessing and recycling humans as a tool in their culture to fight global warming.
Consequentialism cannot answer that question. That has to do with the distinction between the good and the right. Before something can be called right, the good has to be qualified as morally positive. Taking pleasure in acting in an evil way is immoral. Maximising this form of good is useless to consequentialism. We have deontology to compensate for this failure in the consequentialistic theory
Such is the way of the world. It has happened since the dawn of time and will always happen.
Watch Zootopia as a clear example of this.
The best teacher uses simple language to explain complex things. Here you failed!
Perhaps, but it should be considered that despite one's best efforts to break down language to its simplest form, there will still be prerequisite knowledge for some things.
Umm I don't see this as complicated. 🤷🏽♀️ seems simple to me. 🤷🏽♀️
Is this a language barrier issue?? I'm not sure why you don't find this simple. It's quite simple. Truly. 🤷🏽♀️ she describes each new term.
Why dont you just say my IQ is low?
@@afrofeast because I wouldn't know just because you didn't understand something. ESL isn't low I.Q. it's just a language barrier.
Can someone explain me what's Holistic Consequentialism ? Or does it has any other term ? Please help out a novice.
Almost like you don't understand consequentialism
So... consequentialism = "the end justifies the means"?
Not quite. What you’ve said is more like “Good consequences justify bad actions.” But what consequentialism states is that “Actions which lead to good consequences are by definition good.”
It’s also mainly a normative ethical framework. So it’s primarily a way of trying to define what’s good overall, and then to establish general rules of conduct for us to live by. So it’s more like saying “Anything leading to good consequences is itself morally good, but the further away from good consequences anything leads, the worse it morally is. That’s how you should live.”
Defining what’s good is where it gets tricky, but say you decided “Having lots of money is the greatest good for everyone, because having lots of money maximizes choice.”
Since making money is the greatest good, everything you do should be geared to making money. Things that don’t make you money, like keeping promises, being humble, working at something that doesn’t make the most money, exercising, being faithful to your spouse, aren’t good actions.
If you have children, it should primarily be to make money, or it won’t be a good action. Pimping your kids into the sex trade is a good action. The person who pays you the most money to have sex with your infant children is the best person. And your ugly child who draws the least money is the worst person.
It doesn’t have to be money, although I chose that example because many people today seem motivated along the exact lines I described above. But you can choose nearly anything as the greatest good and consequentialism will quickly become fiendishly complicated.
I hope that helps?
@@danopticon Absolutely, thank you
how is this different to Teleology?
Well obviously if there is no other catch and one saves 5 while the other saves 1 it's obvious that you would save the 5 even from a deontology standpoint.
It's kind of like that one crack baby South Park episode the exploited to crack babies in a game of crack baby basketball and made money off of them but as a result of that making money off of that they use that money to take care of them and made a crack baby orphanage it was a necessary evil exploiting them so they could have a better orphanage even though the fact that they were exploding them is bad they wanted the most amount of good for the most amount of people.
Or like Robin Hood stealing from the rich and giving to the poor even though Robin Hood did a bad action stealing from the rich his actions were justified because he gave it to people who needed more than him.
What if the ismists just leave well enough alone?
wait a dman minute how dafuq i can predict future or consequences
His head looks weird.
oof I'm glad I wasn't the only one
Kinda reminds me of Karma, except distilled down past even Newton's 3rd law to being near meaningless as it doesn't consider everything. But I suppose this vid would be more of an overview than anything in depth a 5 minutes.
Also Bagel, toast? Girl, you ain't been broke enough to have a bowl of rice and an egg for half your daily food intake, because you couldn't afford the bread and the toaster.
Experience a couple months of that kind of starvation and you'll appreciate what ya got better. Toast is fuckin amazing, don't buy the bagel and save for your retirement for when you can't work anymore instead of giving your money away. Because Medicare and welfare food stamps are VERY picky, and you'll probably not qualify.
lol Karma... is it real or is it our conscience that makes us feel guity
1:55
Spending that extra $1 on the begel is maximizing the good. The begal will bring a little joy to someone. While Oxfam is going to take the dollar combine it will other funds and spend those funds to help many people diluting the effect of that single dollar to practically nothing. A little joy is better than practically no joy at all.
Why would putting the dollar into a fund that helps many people dilute the dollar's value? It would seem to increase its value; a dollar spent in the third world can buy more hunger satisfaction than it can when spent on a single bagel in an affluent country. It may be that a charity buys food for a large group of people, but that group is made up of individual meals that were purchased with individual dollars. Each dollar allows it to buy more food.
Chimfish All else being equal, whether I donate a single $1 to the charity or not isn't going to make any detectable difference in anyone's life. If I donated $500 it might. But we are not talking about $500, we are talking about $1. And I'm hungry and want a begel more than I want that out of proportion sense of goodness I'd get by giving away my $1. I wait until I write $500 check to get that feeling.
cgm778 I doubt that the intention here was to make people consider donating literally only a single dollar. I think the point of the bagel example was to make people consider the extent of good a dollar spent in one situation can buy compared to the same dollar spent otherwise. If somebody accepts that to be true about the dollar mentioned in the example, then it would seem to follow logically that they should probably be donating much more money as well.
My question here is about your claim that the single dollar does less good when donated to Oxfam than it does when used to buy the bagel. It may be true that $1 does only a small amount of good when donated to Oxfam, but that doesn't show why the good it is does is therefore _less_ than when used to buy a bagel.
In your comparison, you've only considered the satisfaction of your hunger versus the sense of goodness you'd experience by giving money away. I think the good feelings you get from giving to charity are a relevant factor, but the much more important factor is the good the dollar would do when used to buy an additional dollar worth of food for poor people (and I think that was the point being made in the video as well).
Chimfish I was just commenting on the example of the begel and the single binary choice of buying a begel or donating the money to Oxfam. My contention is buying the begel is justified because it will make a meaningful difference in one life while donating a single $1 to oxfam will not. But just for the fun of it let's assume that it's not justifiable and the only justifiable thing to do is send the money to Oxfam. If that is so then spending $15 on a full meal is even less justifiable. Owning a car or a house would be the very heart of dark selfishness. The only justifiable life would be one in which you only spent just enough to keep yourself alive and working so you can earn more money to give to the needy, at least until there was no one less needy than you. Do you think that is correct conclusion? If not then how do you justify spending any amount more than $1 on yourself instead of donating it to Oxfam?
cgm778 Yes, I think that is the correct conclusion. Utilitarianism would seem to morally oblige you to give all of your money away until the point where the next dollar given away would do more harm than good.
You mention that the bagel will make a meaningful difference in one life if used to buy a bagel but it won't do so if sent to Oxfam. Why would the pleasure you get from your $1 worth of food be any less than what someone else gets from an equivalent amount of food (let alone a starving person)? What if instead of sending the $1 you were able to actually ship the bagel to a hungry person? Wouldn't the hungry person having the bagel do _at least_ as much good as it does you?
LOL satisficing Consequentialism is needed for us Humans becase we are limited in actions and we don't know exactly what is exactly the best thing to do for ourselves
Creator of us , God Ugly Only Knows !
What?
Turkish caption please.
emre yıldız gobble, gobble
Will Way much wow, such clever.
emre yıldız Haha Emre I am joking of course! Hopefully they can help you w/ that : ) Best of luck to you fellow student
I don't know why anyone is a consequentialist. I'm more in the camp of virtue ethics and the natural law theory of Aristotle/Aquinas.
Rene Descartes Arh Natural Law I think is terrible (esp. in sexual ethics). Virtues ethics I think is the one to beat. Definitely a good theory.
Rene Descartes Is it not a false dichotomy to assume that any one school of thought is always preferable or more effective than the other? Most circumstances are probably better served by your preference, but factors such as expediency might dictate the consequentialist approach or some combination of both.
namzarf , I didn't say consequences don't matter at all. I just meant that it's not the only thing that matters.
Andrew Wells What areas in sexual ethics? Surely we could say the same thing about deontological theories in general as well. Are they therefore not a viable or credible model?
What a collection of straw-man arguments. It seems like the speaker didn't think any of the cases through. For instance:
1. If a better option exists, that doesn't mean the worse action is wrong. They might be both wrong or both good.
2. Keeping a promise to your jihadi friend to fly a plane at the world trade center is not a good deed.
3. Consequentialism and utilitarianism don't mean maximizing *pleasure*, but maximizing the *thing that we deem valuable*. Which you can decide yourself.
4. Intentions matter for deciding if a person is good or bad, but not if an action is good or bad. Good people can do bad things and bad people can do good things by accident.
5. The demanding-ness of a moral code is completely irrelevant to its truth value.
Mikko Haavisto Good people can do bad things?lf so,why should we still label them as "good people"?
This was awful
Since when am I supposed to give a flying crap about the ultimate well-being of other people? This theory of ethics flies directly in the face of 50 years of economics and biology - theories with actual empirical data, mathematical formalism, and predictive capacity. Do philosophers not understand that we can logically derive cooperative behaviors out of rote self-interest and social interdependence?
I think she thinks deterrence is the ultimate goal, when everything preceding her thoughts are also goals. Precedence is an exercise not a goal, as misunderstanding is a fluctuation of power, not a thought . . . she motions things on to change stuff, instead of motioning on the power she needs to discourage precedence . . . #Confusion I tried, forgive me if you do not understand, it might be I am stupid, and basing energy on forms of thought
Could you be more specific? I know she posited two contradictory ideas, but I can't see any obverse flaws in her presentation that would trigger skepticism from me.
AntiCitizenX What philosophers do understand is how not to resort to fallacious arguments. The argument you are making is so amateur they actually had to give it a name: "*appeal to nature*." Think about it brainiac, if behavior/action X is observed in nature should we, *therefore*, do behavior/action X?
And was that supposed to be your "logical derivation;" or did you have something else in mind? Please share. I have a bit of university background in mathematics, economics and game theory. So, please, don't hold back.
systematic progression?
Jeremy Howson
*And was that supposed to be your "logical derivation;" or did you have something else in mind? Please share. I have a bit of university background in mathematics, economics and game theory*
Game theory itself is the mathematical model by which cooperative behavior can be derived entirely from self-interested agents. They did teach you about the iterated prisoner's dilemma in your study of game theory, right? They did teach you how such models apply to many testable real-world conditions, right?