Utilitarianism and Murder
I largely base my ethical groundwork around the basis of negative utilitarianism, in minimising potential net suffering. Naturally, death and murder is difficult to condemn using this framework. Most commonly, I say that to live in a society in which murder is permissible would cause suffering to members within it, as a result of feeling unsafe. However, I have found a few issues with the implications: using negative utilitarianism, couldn't one justify murdering their own child? Assuming both parents agree and no one exterior to them would mourn the death of the new-born, and assuming that the death is painless, surely this wouldn't cause any suffering, no? This train of thought derived from my standpoint in regards to abortion: claiming that life is sacred is arbitrary and is fallacious as we destroy cells and plants, but to say that moral worth begins once there is a preference to continue living is just as arbitrary, as no suffering would necessarily arise from exclusively murdering new-borns. As baby's cannot fear their own death, and those who are old enough to will not have to fear it, I don't see an argument, using negative utilitarianism, against parents murdering their baby's. Enlighten me.
Comments (61)
I think you misunderstand NU. Its true that it is primarily concerned with minimising suffering, but that doesnt mean it has no other precepts. NU is also concerned with maximising happiness just like normal utilitarianism, its just a lesser priority than minimising suffering. So while murdering newborns might be ok under the primary precept of NU, it violates other precepts of NU. (Many of which come from utilitarianism, but NU directly references maximising happiness as well as minimising suffering none the less)
So you arent using the proper metrics of NU when you conclude its ok to murder newborns. Once you do, murdering newborns is no longer ok under NU.
You did not place the parents in a context here.Let me do it for you
1st Case:
The child has some rare genetic disorder in which he/she will have amplified pain sensitivity.So then killing the baby is justified because the parents want to reduce suffering for their child.
2nd Case:
They wanted a boy but it was a girl .So now they decided to kill the child.Now it is wrong because the main aim of NU is to reduce suffering(death etc).Now what if the child lives to an age of 100 years and dies happily Or live only up to an age of 12 years and still lives happily.
In the second case the parents are preventing happiness for their child for their own satisfaction. Isn't selfishness wrong in NU?
In addition, it could be argued that the pleasure of the parents is increased, as they no longer have the child that they didn't want, and the child experienced neither pleasure nor pain, so therefore it is ethical.
Here there wouldn't be reason because you didn't pick a decision making entity.In NU actions which minimize suffering are considered good.In the first case I proposed its okay to "murder" the infant because it minimizes suffering.
But just doing for the fun of it isn't going to get us anywhere.
But if you say that the parents are killing the baby because they don't want the infant to live in this cruel world created by a cruel god.Then they should have known that Anti natalism is an option.
Then you are rejecting NU, and your initial query about NU is moot.
Also, NU (and just Utilitarianism) isnt about maximising pleasure, its about maximising net happiness (As a primary precept of Utilitarianism and a secondary precept of NU).
Quoting JacobPhilosophy
The child not experiencing pleasure or pain isnt enough for NU, NU demands that after considering the minimising of the childs suffering you must then consider maximising net happiness of the child. If you do not, as you have not dine here, then you violated NU.
If you do not want to make that consideration and speak of general ethics then you can also just go ahead and not make the minimising suffering consideration as well since as you’ve noticed it doesnt make much sense when you operate in that precept alone.
Quoting JacobPhilosophy
:chin:
Btw I know I am embarrassingly ignorant, but I ask questions in order to gain a deeper understanding, so forgive me.
Well you would make a utilitarian calculation on the babies net suffering and net happiness. Under NU you would first consider minimising suffering and then look at the net happiness.
Im not aware of a strictly Utilitarian/NU precept about when someone is considered a moral agent.
Quoting JacobPhilosophy
Nothing to forgive, asking questions is the essence of philosophy in my opinion.
No need to apologize its just a healthy argument.
However, If one were to reject NU, and merely believe that it is wrong to cause suffering, this would surely justify murdering new-borns, wouldn't it? I'm reinforcing this concept as it do not like it as an outcome and I struggle to figure out how to avoid it. I often see a suffering-less death as equal to never having been born in many regards.
Suppose we have a super infant who can speak and think properly from the moment of his/her birth.
I think its moral under NU to kill the baby if the infant says that he/she does not want to live in this world.
I think its immoral to kill the baby under NU if the infant refuses to die and wants to live in this world.
I think it is amoral to kill the baby under NU if the infant neither derives pain or pleasure from dying or living.
But here we do not have a super infant.How can anything be decided about its wants?
If morality is a stage ,then:A stage which is nice and strong is moral
A stage which is dirty and weak is immoral(supposing moral is greater than immoral) A stage which is non existent but still can be build into strong(moral)
or weak(immoral) stages is amoral.(supposing that amoral actions can be viewed as immoral or moral)
But in the infant case there is no idea of stage.
I am no philosophy student but please correct me if I am wrong.
I think you are correct, under NU suffering is the qualifier for moral agency.
Quoting JacobPhilosophy
Well a newborn can suffer, so again that is only part of the calculation made under NU. You must also consider the net happiness.
It seems like you reject NU but do not want to reject it. Is there some reason you think NU is what you should be subscribing to?
Ok, I understand. :up:
It is difficult to state why murder is unethical, using pleasure-based systems, so I usually accept that so long as a being has a preference to continue living, they have the right for that not to be taken away for an unjust reason. (This applies to animals, as I am vegan).
That coincides with your brand of egoism. Im more of a social contract guy myself, and I dont much buy into principal based ethics. I think you are right about tactical compassion as the basis or origin of morals, but there is also a strong biological basis in empathy as well. Its not tactical to have compassion for an injured child or animal for example. (Well, not necessarily anyway).
Linking this to the forum subject matter, it could be argued that the reason we do not murder new borns is because we were naturally selected to do so.
That surely has something to do with it, we are social creatures and thats where it all comes from. Once we soar on the wings of reason, thats where things get interesting ethically.
Do you really? Do you actually live your life according to these principles?
I think NU needs to take consent into consideration to make sense. As in the goal should not be: minimize suffering, it should be: do no harm (defined as any act done without consent). When phrased that way parents can’t kill their children because that would be inflicting harm (since the child can’t give consent) and one can’t justify harm done today to reduce suffering tomorrow.
I know this isn’t NU anymore but it’s what I use personally due to having problems with NU
If you nuke the planet, you guarantee a certain amount of suffering with the hope that it will prevent some greater amount of suffering in the future. But you can't ever be sure it will, since you're gone. Oh well, what's done is done, I guess.
But anyway, all of this assumes a whole lot about humanity, e.g. that it has a manifest destiny to save the world, as if humans are masters of the world and not simply a product (or an abberration) of it. Instead of letting nature run its course and aligning their will with that of nature's, humans must undergo this Promethean effort to wrestle nature into alignment with their will.
I am not thinking it should be amoral.It is nothing.The infant should be left.But anyways Karl popper(philosopher who introduced NU) knew that it would entail the possibility of killing people.
Well if you add up all the suffering of 7 billion people over long periods of time it would be more than the nuke eventually. Especially considering that as we keep growing in number all of us individually suffer more.
Quoting darthbarracuda
I’m not sure what you mean here. Save the world through nuclear Armageddon? And besides I only brought up that point to show how ridiculous negative utilitarianism can be
This is assuming life continues to exist as it does, and that nature does not take a different course.
Quoting khaled
Fair enough.
Too, taking your position - painless death, no one to mourn the death, ergo ok to kill - to its logical conclusion means that we can kill people who have no friends or family so long as a painless death can be assured but then that flies against our moral intuitions that killing people (even painlessly, even if such people don't have friends or family) is outright immoral.
I think this topic is now wandering outside NU because in NU our only goal is to remove suffering and I think the baby is neither happy nor suffering now.So we can justify its killing even in positive utilitarianism because as you said killing the baby is fun for the parents and no on outside mourns for the infants death.
I just want to clarify that I find the concept of murdering a baby naturally repulsive (obviously). The debate isn't whether it's ok to kill a baby, it is WHY is it immoral, so that I can alter my ethical groundwork.
The nature of death in a pleasure/pain based system is a difficult issue. I do not believe (painless) death is a negative experience for the individual experiencing it. Naturally, in a pleasure/pain based system one seeks external suffering caused by death. This is where I am currently struggling.
In regards to abortion: in my opinion, once a being is sentient and has a preference to live, that preference should not be contradicted unless absolutely necessary. These are my thoughts in regards to animal agriculture also. However, it seems rather arbitrary to say that the preference to live has moral value, when it causes neither pleasure nor pain to anyone involved
Currently, the way I solve this conundrum is through the basis that ethics derived from contractarianism, and such strategic compassion led to enate biological empathy, that we now extend to anything that has a preference to live.
The key thing with grounding your ultimately subjective morals is in being consistent. For example, I think it is wrong to kill and eat a severely mentally handicapped orphan if I don't have to, therefore I do not eat meat.
I think it is wrong to kill a baby, but the baby has sentience, which distinguishes it from early embryos, therefore I am not inconsistent to deem abortion amoral and infanticide immoral.
The point is the reasons you proffered - no one to mourn, painless death - is applicable to people other than just babies and that's what should cause you "feeling unsafe and insecure in society".
That's a mouthful but look at what you're saying:
1. If it were illegal for anyone over the the age of 1 to die then it wouldn't cause me to feel insecure.
Contraposition of 1:
2. It would cause me to feel insecure only if it were legal for anyone over the age of 1 to die.
Contraposition of 2:
3. If it were legal for anyone over the age of 1 to die then it would cause me to feel secure
Compare statement 3 with what you said below:
Quoting JacobPhilosophy
Is this "someone" over the age of 1?
I may have made some mistakes. If I have, please show me where?
Select the text you want to quote and you'll see a "quote" button. Click it.
Quoting TheMadFool
Are you saying it would make you feel secure if it were permissible to kill people older than 1 year of age?
If you are then you're contradicting what you said here:Quoting JacobPhilosophy
My point was that if it were legal to kill those who dont comprehend their own death (babies), but illegal to kill those that do, (young children and older), it wouldn't cause overt suffering to anyone, as it wouldn't lead to me fearing the possibility that my parents may one day decide to kill me.
I see. Here's a question that seems relevant to your point: What is the nature of and I quote "comprehend[iing] their [our] own death"? Doesn't the comprehension of our death revolve around one single thing - nonexistence. It all boils down to nonexistence. Yes, those who comprehend it have the additional burden of fear but the fact of the matter is nonexistence is what the entire issue rests on. That being the case, killing anything, whether an infant who doesn't comprehend death or someone who does, amounts to making that infant/person nonexistent and that's pecisely the heart of the issue, isn't it?
Consider the following thought experiment. Imagine an idyllic place nestled somewhere in the Himalayan mountains, surrounded by green mountains with rivers of sparkling water winding in the valleys. Let's call this place Shambhala. In this heaven on earth - Shambhala - there's a law that protects its denizens from murder. Among the many inhabitants of this mountain paradise there are two people, X and Y. X is a very learned man, a walking encyclopedia if you will and among the many things he can claim to know is the law that protects the people of Shambhala from murder. On the other hand, Y is a simpleton, an ignorant buffoon as it were and most importantly, he isn't aware that there's a law in Shambhala that protects people from being murdered. Is it permissible to ensure the safety of X but not that of Y based solely on the fact that X has knowledge of the law but Y doesn't? Is it ok to kill an infant because it doesn't comprehend death? :chin:
Also, I believe that just because an agent doesn't have moral AGENCY (the ability to comprehend morals), that doesn't mean they don't have moral WORTH. I don't deny that babies have moral worth, but to me moral worth only ensures that suffering is not caused. (Again, rationally, not practically).
So does the infant who you think it's permissible to kill.
I think comprehending death is different from understanding that there is law that protects you.Even if X does not know about that law he will still have a fear of death because he is old enough to process that information in his mind and he will still fear nonexistence.But an infant does not care about it in the sense that it cannot recognize itself as living because it does not know that there is also nonliving(nonexistence).
What is suffering to you? The way I see it, the fundamental stuff of suffering is pain. Give some consideration to the idea of pain. Pain occurs in circumstances where a person's physical or mental integrity is threatened. Set aside mental pain for the moment and focus on physical pain. As biology and medicine informs us physical pain is all about maintaing health/preventing or avoiding injury. In other words pain is the body's way of avoiding death. In effect then you can't treat death and suffering as two different things - pain is about death.
See what this leads to?
There can't be such a thing as painless death for death is the biggest pain there is.
Read my reply to @JacobPhilosophy
But death is not a physical sensation it is the loss of all capability to sense things around you anymore.
I haven't driven a lot in my life but I do recall a trip where I saw a road sign that read "falling boulders". The sign didn't scare me as much as the prospect of a giant rock flattening my car.
Dying is a physical sensation, it leads to death. Both are [s]undesirable[/s] fearsome/fearful states to be in.
When you say somebody is dying is that person experiencing death in itself. They are experiencing the feeling that they are close to death but still not engulfed by it. I can accept that we will never know whether there is a feeling that is peculiar to death or if there is none unless we experience it.
What do you mean? To be honest, a distinction can be made between dying and death. Both are painful and I've met people who wish for a painless, usually sudden and quick death. However, this doesn't imply that pain isn't what it actually is - a warning of imminent death.
That said, consider the worst case scenario, as imagined and described in exquisite detail by our dear forefathers, viz. hell. Hell is, in essence, a world of pain - you don't go to hell to die but to suffer and that too eternally. It appears that whoever it was that first conceived of hell didn't realize what pain is in actuality. Nevertheless, as suicide will attest to, some forms of pain/suffering can be [I]worse[/i] than death. Thus hell I suppose.
How does all this relate to the issue at hand? Well, a painless death, if offered as a choice, is to be grasped, with both hands and your pearly white teeth, and held onto for dear "life". Nevertheless, to my reckoning, it can't be employed to justify killing infants because in that case the choice isn't between a painful death and a painlese death but between life and death albeit painless. :chin:
But does losing life matter to the infant?It just does not fully fathom that it is in a state known as living and there will be a state known as death.Does the infant lose anything by dying?:brow:
It's highly likely that I don't fall within the 99th percentile of young adults but as one I too didn't "fully fathom that [me]it [was]is in a state known as living and there will be a state known as death". Does that mean it would've been okay for someone to have killed me? By the way, as a young child did you ever remember an occasion where you did "fully fathom that [you]it is in a state known as living and [that] there will be a state known as death"?
Too this brings us back to the point I was making, to wit, we don't judge a person's worth, here right to life, by what s/he can or can't "fathom". Does anyone know the meaning of life? No. Should we then leave no stone unturned to bump people off?
Good point:chin: But even when we are young we know that there is something known as death and life . The first case about young adult you raised is interesting but I think I do not have an answer for that.
Quoting TheMadFool
By fathom I didn't mean that you have to know the meaning of life but just acknowledging that you are in a state known as 'living'.