Really excellent article--revisionary intuitionism should be adopted by more people. I've become very irritated by utilitarians treating intuitions as not probative and just biting the bullet on unintuitive counterexample. If anyone is interested, here is my defense of biting the bullet on the 10 counterexamples that Michael provides in his criticism of utilitarianism. https://benthams.substack.com/p/all-my-writings-on-utilitarianism
Utilitarianism has always felt to me like an appeal to a certain kind of ethical intuition - "more good things is good, less bad things is also good" is not particularly controversial, and the rest of the philosophy is just arguing about how to consistently apply that. It mostly struggles when it conflicts with intuitions, but I would say that in the majority of situations the utilitarian arguement makes an intuitive sense, even if it is likely to be unappealing in practice just because it obligates a lot of self-sacrifice (not something unique to Utilitarianism though!).
Most of the formal ethical intuitions you mention look reliable to me, but 4.4 does not. For example, suppose action X is "steal $50 from Alice and give $100 to Bob", and action Y is "steal $50 from Bob and give $100 to Alice". Then it seems both actions are prima facie wrong, but action X & Y is not. (For convenience, suppose this happens with their bank accounts, so there is no issue of invasion of the physical property and so on).
In general, I'd caution against treating such intuitions as infallible. Formal logic has many examples of seemingly correct yet contradicting abstract statements.
The antecedents aren't "X & ~Y is wrong" and "Y and ~X is wrong"; if that were the case, then your counterexample would work. But with the antecedents being "X is wrong" and "Y is wrong" (in all circumstances), your example makes the antecedent false and therefore makes the implication true.
Hm, you're right, my examples are only conditionally wrong. But I'm not sure there are things that are wrong in all circumstances: even torture seems an appropriate punishment in extreme situations.
All in all, I just don't find this intuition as unassailable as intuitions 4.1-4.3.
Huemer uses this case to argue against the idea that harming one person by X amount to benefit another by Y amount, where Y is greater than X, isn't wrong.
Isn't that just utilitarianism restated? Of course, on utilitarian grounds, either X and Y are negative utility, or their conjunction must be positive. But I think my example with Alice and Bob is initially more plausible than principle 4.4, and thus more than utilitarianism, which implies 4.4.
On the other hand, for principles 4.1-4.3, I can't imagine a straightforward example that would contradict those principles. I can't even imagine how such a counterexample would look like. It seems outright impossible.
Right, this will, I think, in combination with other principles entail the falsity of moderate deontoloy. But, of course. if you buy the idea of Huemer's article, you'll trust the intuition behind it more than you trust the intuition behind the counterexample.
Pardon earlier post that just repeats technosentience's point.
Interestingly, G.E. more had remarkably conservative ethical views and grounded that conservatism on our inability to judge the long term consequences of our actions. Another reason ( I forget whether Moore mentioned this is that easy for our self-interest to twist the weigh we way those consequences we do foresee. For the Bloomsbury group on the other hand, _Principia_ had the effect of helping to free them from arbitrary societal constraints, or so they thought. I think Mill was right, as he almost always is social experimentation is crucial for a vibrant, dynamic society and utilitarian thinking while leading sometimes to error, redeems itself in opening up ways of human flourishing that conservative societal norms tend to repress, while at the same time (in a different book) cautioning us to respect commonsense moral rules, so much so that some interpret him as rule-utilitarian.
Is this a counterexample to good intuition 4? I am on a lifeboat that is overcrowded, The only way all of us (20 or so say) can be saved is if two people are thrown over. But if I throw just one person over, that action is just willful murder--we'd all die anyway. so that is wrong. If I throw another person over, same thing. But if I throw 2 people over it is arguably the right thing to do, given some consequentialist assumptions.
Really excellent article--revisionary intuitionism should be adopted by more people. I've become very irritated by utilitarians treating intuitions as not probative and just biting the bullet on unintuitive counterexample. If anyone is interested, here is my defense of biting the bullet on the 10 counterexamples that Michael provides in his criticism of utilitarianism. https://benthams.substack.com/p/all-my-writings-on-utilitarianism
As for the organ harvesting doctor specifically, here's my defense of harvesting their organs. https://benthams.substack.com/p/opening-statement-for-the-organ-harvesting
Richard has a great article about this, showing that the organ harvesting example picks out various morally non-salient features, and a more fair test of our intuitions ends up being much less morally clear. https://rychappell.substack.com/p/ethically-alien-thought-experiments?utm_source=%2Fprofile%2F32790987-richard-y-chappell&utm_medium=reader2
I think Savulescu has an even better version of this. http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2013/10/winchester-lectures-kamms-trolleyology-and-is-there-a-morally-relevant-difference-between-killing-and-letting-die/
Our starting intuitions are clearly not utilitarian--at least in many cases. Utilitarians must do the hard work of revising them.
Utilitarianism has always felt to me like an appeal to a certain kind of ethical intuition - "more good things is good, less bad things is also good" is not particularly controversial, and the rest of the philosophy is just arguing about how to consistently apply that. It mostly struggles when it conflicts with intuitions, but I would say that in the majority of situations the utilitarian arguement makes an intuitive sense, even if it is likely to be unappealing in practice just because it obligates a lot of self-sacrifice (not something unique to Utilitarianism though!).
Most of the formal ethical intuitions you mention look reliable to me, but 4.4 does not. For example, suppose action X is "steal $50 from Alice and give $100 to Bob", and action Y is "steal $50 from Bob and give $100 to Alice". Then it seems both actions are prima facie wrong, but action X & Y is not. (For convenience, suppose this happens with their bank accounts, so there is no issue of invasion of the physical property and so on).
In general, I'd caution against treating such intuitions as infallible. Formal logic has many examples of seemingly correct yet contradicting abstract statements.
The antecedents aren't "X & ~Y is wrong" and "Y and ~X is wrong"; if that were the case, then your counterexample would work. But with the antecedents being "X is wrong" and "Y is wrong" (in all circumstances), your example makes the antecedent false and therefore makes the implication true.
Hm, you're right, my examples are only conditionally wrong. But I'm not sure there are things that are wrong in all circumstances: even torture seems an appropriate punishment in extreme situations.
All in all, I just don't find this intuition as unassailable as intuitions 4.1-4.3.
Huemer uses this case to argue against the idea that harming one person by X amount to benefit another by Y amount, where Y is greater than X, isn't wrong.
Isn't that just utilitarianism restated? Of course, on utilitarian grounds, either X and Y are negative utility, or their conjunction must be positive. But I think my example with Alice and Bob is initially more plausible than principle 4.4, and thus more than utilitarianism, which implies 4.4.
On the other hand, for principles 4.1-4.3, I can't imagine a straightforward example that would contradict those principles. I can't even imagine how such a counterexample would look like. It seems outright impossible.
Right, this will, I think, in combination with other principles entail the falsity of moderate deontoloy. But, of course. if you buy the idea of Huemer's article, you'll trust the intuition behind it more than you trust the intuition behind the counterexample.
Pardon earlier post that just repeats technosentience's point.
Interestingly, G.E. more had remarkably conservative ethical views and grounded that conservatism on our inability to judge the long term consequences of our actions. Another reason ( I forget whether Moore mentioned this is that easy for our self-interest to twist the weigh we way those consequences we do foresee. For the Bloomsbury group on the other hand, _Principia_ had the effect of helping to free them from arbitrary societal constraints, or so they thought. I think Mill was right, as he almost always is social experimentation is crucial for a vibrant, dynamic society and utilitarian thinking while leading sometimes to error, redeems itself in opening up ways of human flourishing that conservative societal norms tend to repress, while at the same time (in a different book) cautioning us to respect commonsense moral rules, so much so that some interpret him as rule-utilitarian.
Is this a counterexample to good intuition 4? I am on a lifeboat that is overcrowded, The only way all of us (20 or so say) can be saved is if two people are thrown over. But if I throw just one person over, that action is just willful murder--we'd all die anyway. so that is wrong. If I throw another person over, same thing. But if I throw 2 people over it is arguably the right thing to do, given some consequentialist assumptions.