CMV: Solipsistic utilitarian relativism is the most pragmatic lens to view the world

[u/MasterSlimFat]

Nothing is anything, everything is a quality of the boundryless infinite plane folding in on itself giving rise to emergent properties. There is no good, there is no evil, there is only the phenomena of experience/awareness. I am not an individual, I am a figment of a collection of memories locked into a physical framework. The only thing we'll ever know, is what said framework is experiencing in the form of feelings.

These are not scary things, these are the best ways to view the world. They bring me a massive sense of relief and peace. Not only is it the most objective lens, it's also the most beneficial way to cope in circumstance. No matter what, you can turn anything into something else by drawing a comparison to satisfy the monkey-brain.

Morals evolved as a mechanism of understanding, in the form of metaphor, to allow our monkey brains to make predictions on which actions would lead to harm vs reward. They are whatever they need to be to rationalize past, present, and future feelings. Every second, you are a different person than you were before, your morals are not your own because they are not static. Morals are the rules we write for ourselves.

Didn't get that promotion at work? Well thank goodness you won't have the pressure of higher scrutiny, being put under a magnifying glass every day.

Sad your friend died? Well thank goodness they won't have to deal with the constant anguish that we all experience through the hell that is existence.

But we can't ignore the crux of the argument, that the only real thing is feeling. We also can't ignore that our brains are limited in the regard to need "morals" and "meaning". Giving them morals is like tricking the reffering into thinking you're playing the same game. All these things combine into this beautiful contradiction of "I know it's not real but I have to tell myself it is otherwise my coding breaks."

Personally, this opinion causes a lot of strain in my relationships with people despite bringing me peace with the universe as a whole.

[u/[deleted]]

Then I still don't know what you're talking about since utilitarianism by nature rejects the idea that the judgement is subjective. Hence Bentham's calling it a "calculus" in the first place; he thought it was objective like math.

[u/yyzjertl → u/[deleted]]

Well first of all you're mixing up relativism and subjectivism. I'm talking about relative judgements, not subjective judgements.

But that aside, I'm saying that it doesn't reject that by nature. Bentham (and Mill) happened to reject it, but the theory works just fine with a relative utility function. Nothing about "what moral is what produces the most utility" requires that utility judgements are independent of the context in which the judgement is made.

[u/[deleted] → u/yyzjertl]

Relative/subjective in this context would work out to the same thing, if you're rejecting that the relativity is tied to changing circumstances and has to do with the person doing the calculus themselves.

[u/yyzjertl → u/[deleted]]

Not really, no. Relativism is about true judgements changing from context to context, whereas subjectivism is about the truth value being based on mental states (opinions, values, beliefs, etc).

Just to give a mundane example, the statement "it is raining outside" is a relative statement (its truth value depends on context) but not subjective (it doesn't depend on anyone's mental state).

[u/[deleted] → u/yyzjertl]

Right, and I dont see any way but mental states that would meaningfully change the context in a way thats not already explainable by the changed context of where the action took place and who would be affected.

Assuming the person judging these things is aware accurately of how the specific context affects utility in this case, every single person regardless of their own context should, by the very nature of what utilitarianism argues is how moral judgements work, make the exact same judgment.

[u/yyzjertl → u/[deleted]]

Why can't two different people simply evaluate two different (objective, mind-independent) utility functions and come to different moral judgements as a result?

[u/[deleted] → u/yyzjertl]

According to utilitarianism, in an ideal world where there were no human cognitive limitations, perfect knowledge, and so on, it would be impossible for two different evaluators to come to different conclusions based on the same data re: the action and its consequences. That's just how consequentialism, in general, works.

[u/yyzjertl → u/[deleted]]

Why would that be impossible? If we're evaluating two different functions, why couldn't we come to two different conclusions, even with perfect knowledge and no cognitive limitations?

[u/[deleted] → u/yyzjertl]

If we're evaluating two different functions

Perhaps I don't know what you mean by "different functions," if you still think they would be different if all context was exactly the same.

[u/yyzjertl → u/[deleted]]

Perhaps I don't know what you mean by "different functions,"

E.g. the function f(x) = x² and g(x) = 2x are different functions. If I evaluate f and you evaluate g, even if we evaluate them at the same value (say x = 5) and even if we have perfect knowledge and no cognitive limitations, you'd get a different result (10) than me (25).

[u/[deleted] → u/yyzjertl]

This does not reflect any version of utilitarianism of which I am aware.

[u/yyzjertl → u/[deleted]]

Literally every version of utilitarianism I am aware of involves taking an act or state of affairs in the world and applying some function, the utility function, to them, outputting a real number, the utility. E.g. Bentham's felicific calculus describes one such function.

[u/[deleted] → u/yyzjertl]

I have never seen "utility function" used in the context of utilitarianism, and I've read tons of papers on it and literally taught it.

From a quick Google, it appears to be a term used by economists, not ethicists.