I’m not saying the decisions are difficult, I’m saying the way to reach the decision isn’t well-defined. I’m trying to point out the shortcomings I see in utilitarianism to address your overall view. Please let me know if I make an incorrect assumption/conclusion. From your definition, a utilitarian perspective says that an action is moral if it “promotes the greatest utility/happiness for the greatest number of people”. It seems fair to rephrase it as: An action is moral if the consequences of taking the action have greater utility than the consequences of not taking it.
This is another ridiculous hypothetical, but I think it illustrates the problem I have with a utilitarian perspective on whether an action is moral. Let’s say man is walking in the park on a nice sunny day, and an attacker jumps out of the bushes and stabs him (in an attempt to murdering them). The victim goes to the hospital, but at some point during his recovery, they find he has a cancerous tumor that he didn’t know about. Because they found it, they were able to treat it and he recovered. (Full disclosure, I think they did this in Scrubs, but I’m not sure which episode.)
Was the attacker’s action moral? A utilitarian view says that it is if the utility after stabbing him is greater the utility if he weren’t stabbed. We can test this, but our conclusion drastically changes, depending on when you look.
No Stab: The man has a lovely day, he goes home, and watches Scrubs on Netflix. The attacker is a bit miffed that he didn’t get to stab him, I guess. (For simplicity, I’m gonna leave the attacker out of the other ones).
Stab: The man is rapidly losing blood and is in extreme pain. This more than offsets whatever jollies the attacker got, I suppose.
Conclusion: No Stab > Stab
I run into my first major problem here, because you can list dozens of utility changes that only happen if he is stabbed: - A witness vomits because the sight of blood makes him queasy: - U - The EMT who saved the man feels a sense of pride and relief because he had 3 DOA’s earlier that day: + U - A guy swerves to let the ambulance by, but he hits a pothole which throws his wheels out of alignment: - U
Those are all real changes in utility, but no one could have predicted it, and it could have happened totally differently. It doesn’t make sense to me that an action could go from moral to immoral based on random chance. Shouldn’t the city take some of the blame for the pothole at least?
No Stab: The man’s tumor is undiagnosed, and he has no symptoms. His work week was normal, but his boss is a dick.
Stab: The man is undergoing chemotherapy, which has unpleasant side effects. But his prognosis is good, so his spirits are high.
Conclusion: ???
My next big issue is with the whole idea of maximizing utility. Happiness and sadness
No Stab: Sadly, he died from the undiagnosed cancer, which is incredibly distressing to his friends and family.
Stab: The man is in full remission, and he has a whole new outlook. He finally got the nerve to ask out the cute barista, and they’re seeing Blue Man Group on Friday.
Conclusion: Stab > No Stab
So, we’ve looked at 3 different time points and received 3 different answers. I could be entirely wrong in how I’ve interpreted a utilitarian approach, but my main point is that the maxim of “promoting the greatest happiness for the greatest number” is clearly a noble goal, but it’s too ambiguous to be a foundation for the “best source of morality”. Unforeseeable events often have an immense impact on utility, but I don’t see why that affects the moral judgment of an action. In this scenario, the consequences were better because of dumb luck, as opposed to a change in ethical human behavior.
It’s possible that it’s more applicable to large scale ideas and it wasn’t meant to overanalyze every mundane decision. You could argue that slavery is immoral because freedom produces greater happiness for a greater number. If that’s the case, though, I still don’t think it is the “best source” if there’s no way you can use it to live more ethically. (Well, I guess “Always shoot Hitler if given the opportunity” is a good rule of thumb.) In 200 years, if people look back and judge my actions as immoral, I would rather it follow a revolution in society or ethical thought, as opposed to some chance occurrence that happens after I die. To be clear, there is a lot of value to utilitarianism, but I don’t think it is sufficient to describe all ethical behavior.