A moral question: happiness or maximized utility?

Here is a threaded email discussion I had with my friend Robert, who sometimes appears on this blog under various names.

so: (in fact, I /will/ put it anywhere)

> Why is it
> such a bad thing that the man is beholden to a group, so long as the group
> is justified?
- who justifies the group?

>But put him in front of the they self, have him be both a grass clipper
>and have him feel good and you've won the best thought experiment.
- cf. Eminem

>So long as he did not have any sadness-regret at not curing AIDs. So
>you've got your man who can justify himself to a bunch of AIDs victims;
>but what kind of happiness is that; and what kind of woman is that?
- the Ubermensch kind

> The truth is, and lamentably so, that humans go for immediate hedonism
> regardless; often times even perceived happiness.  The majority of human
> actions continue not because they are the right thing but because there
> was a degree of happiness in them.
- the other lamentable truth is that, once this problem of hedonism is
recognized, actions continue by some other equally arbitrary
justification in place of pleasure/happiness (e.g. that action being
"the logical/reasonable/altruistic/self-determined/factical/etc thing).
I don't mean arbitrary as being arbitrarily chosen, though...more like I
don't see what larger standard could determine which of these smaller
standards is correct (and what determines that larger standard's
standard for correctness? - so can we even talk about a larger
standard??)

I just lost the game.  But I lost the game after I typed 'Best, Robert'
below; so when I inserted this here this wasn't really the point where I
lost the game; I could have put this anywhere.  So that makes for a good
discussion: did you lose the game at the beginning of this email, since I
told you so then?

Best,
Robert




>
>
> Good, it seems blurry between what society commands him and what he
> justifies to society.
>
> That is, however, the essence of the moral imperative, not a distraction
> from it.  There has to be a society to help in order to cure the society
> of AIDs.
>
> Posing a person who asks me what he *should* do, cure AIDs for a career or
> become a grass clipper; the question is a moral imperative.
>
> What should the man do, cure AIDs or cut grass?  The should says it is a
> moral imperative, he should cure AIDs and work toward that.  Why is it
> such a bad thing that the man is beholden to a group, so long as the group
> is justified?  Put him in front of tyrants, and the case seems weighted
> for your point;  Put him in front of AIDs victims, and the case seems
> weighted for mine.
>
> I think the they self is an excellent test of a happy life in this way.
>
> Stick that man in front of a crowd, have him tell the crowd that cutting
> grass was justifiable so great the happiness gained was.  (Is it always an
> either/or?  And you and I would agree certainly grass clipping as a career
> and AIDs solving is not mutually exclusive, a person can be many careers
> over her long life).
>
> But put him in front of the they self, have him be both a grass clipper
> and have him feel good and you've won the best thought experiment.  We
> could even have the option be for him to either cut grass or cure AIDs,
> and I think people would back that;
>
> So long as he did not have any sadness-regret at not curing AIDs. So
> you've got your man who can justify himself to a bunch of AIDs victims;
> but what kind of happiness is that; and what kind of woman is that?
>
> The truth is, and lamentably so, that humans go for immediate hedonism
> regardless; often times even perceived happiness.  The majority of human
> actions continue not because they are the right thing but because there
> was a degree of happiness in them.
>
>
>
>
>
>> glad you had a good time!
>>
>> and quality stuff here.  I especially liked:
>>> So you say, "Well at least he's doing what he wants to do."  But isn't
>>> it
>>> a crude assumption to say that the person who could be happy being a
>>> grass
>>> clipper is our standard of human happiness here?  Living on a lawn,
>>> clipping glass?  Self-fulfillment?
>>
>> and
>>
>>> That is, I think the greater assumption is for the happy grass clipper
>>> than the unhappy AIDs-curer.
>>
>> But what kind of assumption are we talking about here?  My
>> understanding,
>> since you said "disanalagous" a few times, is that the grass-clipper has
>> to make more of an assumption that the potential-AIDS-curer since his
>> place in our culture has to be justified by something when happiness is
>> not a sufficient justification (and that doesn't even have to be because
>> he doesn't know for sure that he's happy, but perhaps just because we're
>> just not satisfied with his justification that he's happy).  If I
>> understand that correctly: to whom is he making this justification, and
>> why to them?  Perhaps, because his culture/nation/age/etc, maybe even
>> the
>> "fact of the world," is dissatisfied with such a decision (or, at least,
>> he feels that way).
>>
>> Mind that distinction I mentioned in class: when we say "one is free to
>> do
>> what he chooses," do we really mean, as "outsiders" looking at that
>> person, "you are free to do what you choose"?  And if so, welcome to
>> Heidegger's they-self, in this case, where freedom is determined by the
>> third person.  It was a nice move, when folks realized that one ought
>> not
>> to lord over another; but that third-person is still quite powerful,
>> here
>> even to the point where it is that third person that establishes what
>> one
>> can and cannot freely do when /it/ proclaims that "one/you can do what
>> one/you want[s]".
>>
>> Best,
>>   Robert
>>
>>
>>> Robert,
>>>
>>>
>>> That was my favorite birthday ever.  Thank you for a great time.
>>>
>>> I kind of feel like if I have to say that it was a great time, I'm
>>> taking
>>> away from the experience.
>>>
>>> Happy Thanksgiving!
>>>
>>>
>>> What I'm more interested in is this one moral issue we got down to in
>>> that
>>> last 15 minutes.
>>>
>>>
>>> Here's the sketch:
>>>
>>> You said that if there is a moral imperative for someone to do
>>> something
>>> as a Calling, a career,  they should not do that if it does not make
>>> them
>>> happy.
>>>
>>> This is almost entirely conceptual, so I think the thought experiment
>>> of
>>> the person who has the cure for AIDs (or the realizable-potential over
>>> the
>>> course of a career) should do that instead of the doing something like
>>> the
>>> grass clipper like in Hinton's class.
>>>
>>> The objection:
>>>
>>> So in this case you said the person should become the grass clipper if
>>> it
>>> makes them happy.  I'll remind you here that happiness is nebulous and
>>> a
>>> conflicted issue.  Happiness in comparison to other potential
>>> happinesses
>>> is not the least of the problems here: this is because it is very
>>> difficult for a person to say "Okay, if I had become a grass clipper
>>> when
>>> I was 20 years old, then all of my life's worries about becoming a
>>> scientist would be over."
>>>
>>> But my greater argument is against the assumption of the philosophy of
>>> happiness; which derives somewhere from the faulty assumptions of the
>>> previous inklings.
>>>
>>> That is, I think the greater assumption is for the happy grass clipper
>>> than the unhappy AIDs-curer.  There's something dis-analogous about the
>>> unhappy AIDs-Curer;  almost especially in light of the comparison with
>>> being a grass clipper.
>>>
>>> So you say, "Well at least he's doing what he wants to do."  But isn't
>>> it
>>> a crude assumption to say that the person who could be happy being a
>>> grass
>>> clipper is our standard of human happiness here?  Living on a lawn,
>>> clipping glass?  Self-fulfillment?  At the very least it's disanalogous
>>> to
>>> the majority of the human race.
>>>
>>> It's a Mill-ian greater hedonism and lesser hedonism problem.
>>>
>>> Which is why, if he asked me what he morally *should* do, I would tell
>>> him
>>> to cure AIDs, maybe for 10 years of his life, see how he feels, and
>>> then
>>> hit my lawn.
>>>
>>>
>>> -jrg
>>>
>>
>>
>
>