Utilitarianism

**Marie Monday** · 05-10-2021, 04:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by elphenor

there's a term for this, although I don't remember it

but I lean towards some concepts inherently having value

Freedom, Truth, Justice etc

they are not justified by their outcomes, they're justified by some notion of righteousness whether it's learned or biological

that's just what I was talking about I think. Those notions of righteousness are ultimately based on the idea that they lead to a good outcome, and that idea gets generalised by assigning those values to concepts like freedom. Then you don't even realise where it originally came from, but you have a concept like freedom that you can apply easier than 'gee let's weigh all possible outcomes of this decision'

**Frownland** · 05-10-2021, 05:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by elphenor

I want a society that humans live in, to be a Human Society...responsive to ethics, not outcomes

that is to say that we should start with what is ethical...then work out what results we want from there

we create too many robotic systems based on Utilitarian principle imo

You can't really separate ethics from outcome on a social level. By the time something requires a social response, it's often past the abstract state of pure ethics and well into the realm of action and outcome. I get where you're coming from though, many dishonestly define the ethics of a potential action by a hypothetical outcome that can easily be addressed case by case (the slippery slope fallacy, I guess) and on some level, public opinion molds itself around that framing and solidifies in the systems they support.