Moral philosophy

Goodness has nothing to do with it

Utilitarians are not nice people

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Putting this sort of question at a national level obviously makes it easier. A government is obligated to protect the rights of its citizens including the right to life. It has no such obligation to the citizens of other nations. It might wish to minimize non-citizen casualties for humanitarian purposes, but it has no obligation to do so.

He dropped the A-bombs to save American lives. It might have saved Japanese lives as well, but that was not his primary goal in doing so.

Fortunately the greedy selfish egotist businessman (as another poster put it) have and are still creating a world in which war is becoming obsolete:

Ah Beng

This article focuses on act-utilitarianism while the foundation of law is based inherently on rule-utilitarianism. Why do people who want a straw man to refute keep focusing on the lesser, philosophically indefensible system? I'd expect much more from The Economist.


This is interesting.. but it seems a little iffy to me...

They asked undergrads (mostly 18-24 year olds) if they would push one person off a bridge to save 5 people. If you said yes, you're a utilitarian.

What percentage of that 10% were thinking: yes, one person dying is better than 5 people -- so I'll say 'yes, I would push the man off the bridge'. But in reality, would they actually make that decision? I would guess most of them wouldn't.

So I guess my problem is: the utilitarian answer kind of sounds good on paper. And I'm guessing some of these kids would of chosen it for that reason alone.


Throwing the fat man doesn't mean they're utilitarian, it just means they're bad at being utilitarian.

Look at it this way:

The workers could have set up a better way of monitoring the coming trolley. If they die, that is in accordance with killing people who are unable to survive (Darwin awards?).

The fat man dying from the train would not be in line with natural selection. Thus, these sort of policies over time would result in an incapable group of people.

Incapable people can't be happy, so those policy makers were bad utilitarians.


If 90% of the people asked would not push the fat man then the utilitarian thing to do is not push him. The thought of choosing who lives and dies upsets people. It makes them unhappy. The most happiness for the most people is living in a world that does not have people choosing who lives or dies. Ninty percent of the people asked confirmed not to push the fat man.

Connect The Dots

In the past six months 30,000 Libyans perished in untimely and violent deaths. One timely assassination of a single man......a Psychopathic, Sociopathic, Horrible Dictator could have prevented the ravages of war. One predator drone with a gold bullet would have prevented this slaughter and tens of billions of dollars in damage.

We only wish we had the courage to be Utilitarians. Mostly we cower in the corners and passively react.

To be Utilatarian is to support regime change by assassination. A handful of evil men cause 90% of the world's problems. And I am a staunch proponent.


I guess am a utilitarian of sorts. I guess I used to be an angry idealist, but the experiences of recent years have made me kinder (I hope) to other people (and to myself), but also quite cynical about the mankind in general and the ways a society functions. Most libertarians if you think about it are ultimate egotists, perhaps more harmful than greedy business types, power-obsessed politicians - both kinds have done a lot to destroy the natural environment and the cultural heritage.

What moderates most rational and reasonable utilitarians is their doubt about their own good judgment. A good utilitarian always asks himself "am I sufficiently informed to make this decision?" "what are the overall long-term implications?" etc etc. A good utilitarian is not a control freak either, there times to let things flow naturally. If there's another reasonable person better suited for the task, a real utilitarian will gladly step down, to concentrate on where he can be of better use.

We don't always come across as very nice people, although sometimes we try to, we're not good at it. How would most people living currently regard those who constantly remind them of being considerate of others, not waste resources, recycle everything they can, donate their organs when they die etc etc? Bores! But isn't this where we're going in the longer run if we're to survive as a civilization?

That's the meaning of meaninglessness: utilitarians are not entirely sure the world isn't crooked beyond any repair, but because there's a slim chance that it still worth fixing, they are still trying to do something for general good.


Let's rephrase the question: if YOU were one of five people on the train tracks, would you want the fat guy pushed off the bridge to save your lives? If you could pull him down to save yourself, would you?

That's a rhetorical question, you muppets. Of course you would. The people who actually have to deal with these issues in the real world - like military officers and politicians during wartime, make these choices every day. Some die, that others should live. They are not psychopaths, although wet panty-waist college professors may think they are. Harry Truman said he never lost a night's sleep after he ordered the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with good reason. He was looking at casualties into a million during an invasion of Japan, and put an end to it.


I am a utilitarian. If presented with that scenario as a test question, I would dispassionately push the man under the trolley. But I think there are four facts that prevent utilitarians from being monsters:
1. In practice, I accept the fact that the only life that I can objectively value as having greater or lesser worth than others is my own, and so I would usually try to find a way to jump in front of the trolley myself. Indeed, to carry this argument to its logical conclusion, if I knew the trolley scenario was coming a year in advance, I would do nothing but eat Big Macs every day, in order to be sure to be successful. So, given the complexity of actual life, people need not worry that I would interfere with their lives.
2. Any moral courage that I gain from my utilitarian views is counterbalanced by the fact that I do not know if, when push comes to shove so to speak, I would actually have the guts to jump in front of the trolley. Plus, despite my logical understanding of the need to consume prodigious quantities of hamburgers, I am not sure I would have the discipline and stamina to do so every day of the week. It's a good thing, too, or else utilitarians would all be walking around with chips on their shoulders and engaged in bizarre behavior. In practice, I think my reason away my cowardice by thinking that I have only one life, and there's always another track with more people on it.
3. The moral relativism of our world allows the utilitarian to select a set of expectations about the relative quality of human life that is in concordance with social norms. Thus, if it is a fundamental human right to choose one's fate and not be pushed to death, then I would refrain from throwing the fat man under the trolley, lest I damage the social contract that gives a high quality of life to everyone else living in a democracy. For similar reasons, utilitarians in positions of power in a democracy are generally less vulnerable to bribery, blackmail, or other scandals. I worry most about utilitarians who lack empathy, such that they assign zero or negative value to the lives of those with different moral beliefs -- e.g. jihadists or the Oslo terrorist.
4. Speaking from personal experience, I can say that one benefit of utilitarians' constant drives to "save" everyone else is that in practice they are as thin as reeds. If nothing else, the people around me benefit from additional mobility in airplanes, subways, and elevators.


Wow, 90% of people are that fucked up? Obviously if you had to chose between one person dying and 5 people dying, you should chose the one.
And it doesn't matter whether it's an active choice or not, it's still a conscious decision. Refusing to choose between two evils is the same as flipping a coin. Thereby I haven't said that I would be psychologically strong enough to actually push someone in front of a moving train myself, but if I were I would be a hero, because I would have saved four lives and I would have had to face 90% of the population who are all hypocrites afterwards.
So I guess I am a utilitarian, but as for the questions I wouldn't answer yes to any of them, although I do think that life is ultimately pointless (what the third question tries to ask). I mean we are all just products of a big explosion and our perception of things are all shaped by neurons, electrical impulse and braincells. Having a purpose implies that there is a god or something conscious that made us in order to achieve something.

That doesn't mean that there isn't any reason to get out of bed in the morning though, there are plenty of things to enjoy. I don't see any reason to stay in bed.

I think the reason why utilitarianism is so dangerous when proclaimed as policy and enacted rigorously is because you can't measure misery and therefore shouldn't try to. You can only measure lives lost and it should only be done in an extremely thorough manner. When done in a very thoughtful way, weighing in all the ups and downs, I don't see any reason to not accept the bigger picture. Although I understand that the counter argument is that reason is is overshadowed by feelings.
Still don't fool yourselves this kind of utilitarianism is everyday politics, how do you justify governments not paying ransoms to free people who have been kidnapped or going to war in Afghanistan, if not by measuring the perceived long term outcome?
And as to why so many of the utilitarians answered yes to those three questions, I think for some reason utilitarianism is natural for both psychopaths and some thinking people.

If you are one of the hypocrites, let me ask you this question, if you were in Roosevelt's shoes during world war two, would you have denied your generals d-day?


Dear andream2,

Because you understand it to "morally superior" to willingly sacrifice another person's life for the greater good, if you were the fat man, I can then safely assume that you would, without hesitation, jump in front of the train to save the other people's lives.


The obvious problem with the thought experiment and result either way is that it's contextualized in a real situation but the outcome, because it's 100% guaranteed, is unrealistic and therefore any subsequent judgements can't be analyzed properly I don't think.
In actual life there would be 100's of variables that would need to be considered in a split second as well as amazing accuracy on the pushers part to get the desired result and even that might or might not end up saving lives - hence murder's a crime and you'll end up paying for it.
In a purely theoretical world where you could be totally sure of 1 outcome or the other then I think you could stand up in court afterwards and probably make a strong case for pushing the fat guy off the bridge but while we still live in the world we do, I reckon you'd have to be pretty crazy,selfish and immoral to take that instant risk with somebody's life other than your own - that much is clear.

I'm definitely convinced though, that inserting an imagined scenario into the vagueness of an everyday life situation (even if this is what thought-experiments are about) is sometimes just too disingenious especially if the researchers aren't endlessly thorough about talking through every response with the test subjects as extensively and as deeply as possible to get their genuine take which is something I really can't be sure happens that much of the time.

For the record, there's nothing wrong with actual utilitarianism because it gets used everyday in SWAT situations and so on. Basically, if a hostage-taker poses too much of a risk to too many people then they can get taken out even if the unfortunate cost is that the deaths of a few hostages are perhaps forced early as a result of acting - this is just a sad fact of the world as it is but in these situations it helps to have someone with a great utilitarian view and abilities because they will no doubt make the best decision based on the variables out there on when, where and how to strike in order to minimize the losses and maximize those left alive at the end.

Kurt Lessing

A more practical example are the planes of 9/11. Shall the government be allowed to shoot down innocent people on the assumption, that they would be dead anyway and many more with them?
The German constitutional court declared a law giving such powers unconstitutional.


People who would push the fat person on the track are morally superior. Anyone who would refrain from doing so is vain, selfish and puts his own interest and comfort ahead of society's.
Given that the action will result in saving 4 lives, the antisocial goodie-goodie reasons that his own comfort of mind is worth 4 human lifes. If we had more pushers, the world would be a better place.


I believe a person should follow utilitarianism in formulating laws and policies and deontology in their personal interactions. Being able to balance the two effectively also requires one to cultivate virtue ethics.


The point is, in the 'trolleyology' thought experiment, it is stated that there is a 100% chance of you saving five lives at the expense of one, essentially.
The hypocrisy is well illustrated in the first 'justice' video of Harvard's Michael Sandal. In both scenarios, your action will directly cause the death of a person while saving the lives of five others. The chances of events playing out are absolute. However, a sizable majority choose to pull the lever but refused to push the fat man off the bridge.
While attaching a value to live is hardly praiseworthy, even less so is the almost cowardly inaction of any passerby.


There is a distinction between people who espouse the philosophical docrine of utilitarianism and those that have utilitarian intuitions. I am a utilitarian in the philosophical sense; I think the right thing to do is to maximise the satisfaction of interests of all beings affected by an action. However, my intuition in the trolley problem is that it would be wrong to push the fat man off the bridge. My reason tells me it would be right, and therefore I think it really would be right, but my intuitions tell me otherwise.

I suspect the majority of people who said it would be right to push the fat man off the bridge were intuitively utilitarian. After all, most people haven't thought about moral philosophy enough to espouse any moral theory. If I'm right, it's not very surprising that these individuals would have such negative character traits. There's something somewhat abnormal about someone who doesn't even feel that it's wrong to push an innocent man in front of a trolley, even if it would save five lives. This doesn't mean the intuition is correct, of course.

I think the research should be repeated, except the researchers should only test moral philosophers. They could determine who is utilitarian and who is not simply by consulting their academic publications. I have a feeling the researchers might get different results.


Utilitarianism requires strong central authority and is therefore in direct opposition to libertarianism. Once strong central authority is obtained, it is indeed a default choice for a politician. Trolley example is not that far off from from real world political choices that people had to make.

Take Stalin for example. He didn't starve all those peasants just for the fun of it. He had a choice - confiscate grain from the well off, and use it to feed his industrial workers, or let it be, and give up on his industrialization plans. Indusfrialization was judged to be a greater good, and a few million peasants were thrown under the trolley.

Utilitarianism, and even the psychopaths who follow it, are not a danger as such. It is the implicit assumption of total central control that is truly harmful.


The trolleyology is a false dilemma. In the real world a good person will try every other possible ways to stop the train, say, pushing a rock instead of a human being, or shouting loudly to warn the workers. Good people never give up.



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