Justice with Michael Sandel

Episode Two

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The spirited classroom debate doesn’t have to end when class is over. Share your thoughts with other viewers from around the world. Join the ongoing discussion or start your own. Ask a question or respond to ours:

1. Consider the example, presented in lecture, of the Romans throwing Christians to lions in the Coliseum. If enough cheering spectators derive great pleasure from this violent practice, are there any grounds on which a utilitarian could condemn it?

Public Discussion Circle

Comments (191)

(Unregistered) said:

Tuesday 22, September 2009, 10:11 am

Sure. The Coliseum example creates an artificial limit of happiness. This limit is that the Christians are, without reconciliation, extricated from the potentiality of experiencing pleasure. Here, the greatest pleasure can never be realized if only because pain is essential. Maximum pleasure can never be realized in a situation that makes necessary the pain of others. All assuming that no Christian wants to be eaten, and that the Romans and Christians might well experience equal or more pleasure from some other activity, both of which are quite plausible.
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(Unregistered) said:

Thursday 1, October 2009, 4:21 pm

By throwing Christians to lions, the Romans sacrifice one of the greatest pleasures known man for the short-term pleasure of spectacle. The pleasure to which I am referring is security. Knowing that my life will be valued by my fellow man is of such pleasure and value to me that I gladly give up the freedom to watch Christians be killed by lions for my entertainment.

(onlineradical1) said:

Sunday 3, January 2010, 6:40 pm

I think in United States we value our life, freedom and civil rights very high. What if we lived in a society that did not value them as high? Then you would not be so concerned about your own individual rights and opinions as you are now. There will be less people who would speak up for the fear of being rejected by the society. The only ones that would speak up would appeal to a higher moral core of the small part of society that is actually thinking. This higher moral core would be Shakespeare and not Simpsons (they would not exist in 200 years, whoever mentioned that dumb idea. it's just a situational comedy, a parody on the current American way of life.) or Fear Factor - that does not question the values, on the other hand it makes mockery of them by offering people money to "sell out" and overstep their personal boundaries (not conquering fears - whoever mentioned that).

I think the context of justice to do what's right should be: What is Just and Right thing to Do in a Western society heavily influenced by Judeo-Christian principals.
Then putting a price on (any) life would make sense. I highly doubt that a group of Hindu monks would eat a boy. They would rather die themselves.

Cheers!

(Russ_H) said:

Wednesday 6, January 2010, 7:15 am

"Here, the greatest pleasure can never be realized if only because pain is essential. "

What if the Christians were drugged and were not capable of feeling pain or fear?. I consider this to be morally wrong but I guess from a utilitarian point of view it is not.

(Unregistered) said:

Saturday 25, September 2010, 1:27 am

Very, Very, close. The Christians are extricated from the potentiality of experiencing pleasure. Yes that's it. But compare the utilitarian apples to apples. Total pleasure is the increase in Non-Christen minus the decrease in Christen. Due to technology constraints, Coliseum size has practical limits. Say 50,000 [after that, the seats are so bad people just stay home]. Each Christen has his/her 15 minutes of fame [some may be talked about the next day, few are remembered for years, but many get put in 20 at a time for the big show]. That's 12,500 hrs of pleasure/Christen. The Christen however looses 30 years of pleasure [Life expectancy was lower but largely due to infant mortality]. So 10,950 days multiplied by 19 hrs [take some for sleep add some for dreams] is 208,050 hours of average pleasure. So the question is: "Is the Coliseum 16.6 times more pleasurable then normal life?" The first time, sure maybe... if you had good seats, and liked that kind of stuff. But after a few hundred, half way up a 50,000 seat Coliseum, with no jumbotron. I don't think so.

(Unregistered) said:

Tuesday 22, September 2009, 1:37 pm

Part 1: Not "All" Values. Money for human services, but not human costs. Human lives are invaluable because there is no limit to the capabilities and the potential abilities of a human being.
Part 2: Individual rights must be sacrificed for the greater good of the whole. That is the main core of our existence.
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(Unregistered) said:

Friday 23, October 2009, 9:55 am

With regard to both the Pinto and the cigarettes, it occurs to me that concern over personal responsibility was not a factor in the corporate decision making that took place. The paper trails that led back to memos regarding the flaws of the Pinto contained names of decision-making individuals. A community needs to have laws holding individuals personally liable, not just financially, but under criminal law, for deaths and injuries that occur due to their actions, inactions, or malpractice. If no individuals were charged with crimes, they should have been. Communities need to make it very clear to their members that consequences of actions include not only financial benefits and costs, but non-financial ones as well.

(Unregistered) said:

Friday 20, November 2009, 9:25 pm

Part 1: We are always statistically trading off lives for either money or time. For example, we can drastically decrease automobile fatalities by reducing the speed limit to 10 MPH or we can outlaw swimming pools in regards to drownings. Granted, we don't know who is going to die but we can predict at least x number of people with incredible accuracy. Not acknowledging this information, no matter how disturbing does not make it so.

Part 2: If you really mean what you say, than you might want to quit school, or spend your money from your job on mosquito nets to stop people from dying of malaria. I question if your actions are truly integrated with your beliefs.

(Blue Sun) said:

Monday 7, December 2009, 8:09 pm

The argument about the speed limit is a good one, but not good enough. I can always make an informed decision not to drive or ride in cars. I weigh the risks to my own life and assign the value to my own life, and I make the cost/benefit decision. In the case of Ford, some faceless bureaucrats assigned a value to my life and made the decision to let me face a hazard I had no knowledge of. Had Ford announced the problem and then asked me whether I wanted to continue driving my Pinto (or even pay myself for the .00 filler pipe collar), then I would have been informed and in control of the decision about my own worth. I would have made the decision.

The problem with vapor in an empty center tank of a Boeing 747 (and all Boeings with center tanks) exploding was known by the company for almost 40 years before TWA Flight 800 blew up off of Long Island. In fact, one Boeing plane had blown up when the fuel vapors in the center tank were ignited while backing away from a terminal at least a half decade before TWA 800. There was an easy fix for this that is used to protect empty fuel tanks in fighter jets, called an inerting system (which introduces nitrogen or another inert gas into the tank as it empties, so there is no explosive vapor/air mixture. This prevents a single bullet into an empty fuel tank from blowing up a fighter jet. Boeing had calculated how many people would die if one of these tanks blew up in flight and assigned a monetary value to each 'tombstone' (I believe it was something over million). The cost of losing a flight with, in this case 230 souls on board) was deemed an acceptable risk compared to refitting virtually all Boeing aircraft with inerting systems, and so, for decades, they let the problem remain unfixed. This is known in the industry as "tombstone regulation," - you don't fix a known problem unless and until enough people die.

Throughout the corporate and business world, our lives are put at UNNECESSARY risk because of dangers we don't know about and calculations on our personal value we don't know about. It is not I, myself, who makes this calculation with full and complete information. I never even know the calculation has been made, or there is a correctable danger looming over my head, so I was robbed of my right. As far as I'm concerned, this type of cost/benefit analysis is a polite term for "murder for profit."

(Unregistered) said:

Tuesday 22, September 2009, 1:43 pm

(Unregistered) said:

Wednesday 23, September 2009, 8:33 am

What ford does is not in the best interest of the society, but in best interest of Ford.
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(Alekzander) said:

Thursday 8, October 2009, 11:49 am

That is the result of our capitalistic society. Move past the need to make money and you move past the want to assign dollar values to people's lives.

(Unregistered) said:

Friday 16, October 2009, 8:52 pm

What the US Government does is also usually in the best interest of Ford (and other corporations and special interest groups) rather than the best interest of (American or any other) society. Why? Money corrupts even more than power.

(Unregistered) said:

Friday 20, November 2009, 9:31 pm

Do you act in the best interest of society or in the best interest of you?

(Unregistered) said:

Saturday 2, January 2010, 2:15 pm

Utilitarian cost benefit in this example misses that the cost is to the stockholders, who in general, won't benefit because they don't drive Pintos. Justice would be served if people with unequal power had equal rights.

(Unregistered) said:

Thursday 24, September 2009, 4:12 pm

Why not just increase the price of the Pinto to cover the cost of making the car safe, ie installing the extra part. That way, the public is protected, and Ford can continue to do business without increasing their costs.
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(Unregistered) said:

Saturday 26, September 2009, 7:58 am

I believe many of them were already in the field by the time the problem was discovered.

(Unregistered) said:

Sunday 27, September 2009, 10:48 am

I assume that the Ford Company lost its argument in court. If they did not calculate the cost of litigation plus the potential cost of losing, then their calculations were incomplete.

(Brine) said:

Monday 5, October 2009, 11:53 pm

to Unregistered "Sunday 27, September 2009, 10:48 am":
Slam Dunk! The potential cost of the social revulsion to the appearances of these calculations must also be included in the ledger.

(NinjaJon) said:

Friday 25, September 2009, 1:31 pm

(Off topic sorry)
Is the quiz link not working or is that just me?
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(Unregistered) said:

Sunday 27, September 2009, 10:48 am

Isn't working for me either.

(paperball) said:

Sunday 27, September 2009, 2:26 pm

Not just you!

(Unregistered) said:

Friday 16, October 2009, 8:54 pm

The link works fine - IF you give the "right" answers. Stop complaining or we'll throw you to the lions.

(Aristole) said:

Thursday 3, December 2009, 3:49 pm

Works for me

(NinjaJon) said:

Friday 25, September 2009, 1:44 pm

The position of Bentham and Mill from the utilitarian viewpoint is flawed at its core. It is a masked attempt at creating a publicly acceptable version of hedonism based strictly on values assigned to human pleasure vs. pain. Throughout human history, there are mass examples of individuals, groups, religions, etc, in which pleasure or pain are strictly disregarded in favor of the benefits of moral behavior.

For example, self-flagellation, while not something that I would find particularly curing of guilt, did find a home with certain monks. Large groups of them in fact. Or in the example given in the lecture of Shakespeare vs. Simpsons vs. Fear Factor, one could say that as grueling as it is to sit through the collective works of Shakespeare, that the reason for doing it would be a conscious effort to learn from the experience as opposed to solely basing it on which would be more pleasurable or painful for me.

In conclusion, the assumption that a method of checking all decisions based on a quantitative report of pleasures and pains associated with them is finite and complete is flawed. While concerns for those qualities should be included, they are far from all encompassing for what we as humans need in order to deem something worthwhile for the whole.
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(Unregistered) said:

Saturday 26, September 2009, 7:57 am

No, I think if you follow Bentham's premise through time has to be factored in. When we look at the value of various activities with the weight of time and their ultimate consequences factored in it holds up well. The problem is there is no practical way to do this objectively all the time.

(Unregistered) said:

Monday 28, September 2009, 6:54 pm

Perhaps if the Ford and Tobacco company employees had to give one of their offspring to replace the deceased they could understand better the cost of the deaths that their products caused. It isn't about numbers.

(Unregistered) said:

Wednesday 30, September 2009, 7:30 am

You're misinterpreting pleasure. For those monks, though self-flagellation may be temporarily physically painful, the easing of guilt or whatever spiritually elevated plane they feel it brings them to renders it an essentially pleasurable experience. Ditto with the temporary difficulties appreciating Shakespeare... It is pleasure even if it isn't pleasure immediately, hence the whole discussion about high pleasure versus low pleasure.

(Unregistered) said:

Saturday 26, September 2009, 5:24 am

If we are to follow Mill's approach to its logical conclusion,there can be no moral judgements because every choice is based on sensory experience,i.e.,the psychological state of "happiness".No room for free will here,thus no basis for moral judgement.
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(Unregistered) said:

Friday 16, October 2009, 9:16 pm

No free will? Gotta pay to play? Okay. How much for the sensory experience of watching lions devour Christians? The lions might not like it, but the paying crowd surely will.

(Unregistered) said:

Monday 11, January 2010, 3:47 pm

It is in my view important to distinction between moral values and desire for pleasures, whether higher or lower. However, to claim there is no room for free will doesn't hold for me, at least depending on the way you define free will. It seems to me that duality of meanings is required to express the phenomena of free will, so that it can manifest in a physiopsychological state as well. Free will could be defined as the freedom to choose, which would ironically be based on deterministic mechanisms. Nevertheless, free will seems to me to be more rooted in conscience versus lesser egotistical tendencies, which may also include higher pleasures. Free will arises in the tension between conscience, i.e. a sense of moral values, and the smaller ego concerned with optimising comfort and pleasure.

(Unregistered) said:

Saturday 26, September 2009, 5:30 am

“Humor is tragedy plus time” - Mark Twain

“The secret source of humor is not joy but sorrow; there is no humor in Heaven.” - Mark Twain

"Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die." - Mel Brooks

"Farce is tragedy played at a thousand revolutions per minute." - John Mortimer

"History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce."
- Karl Marx
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(Unregistered) said:

Saturday 26, September 2009, 6:33 am

It's rather presumptuous to declare the Simpson's base humor and puns of being lesser than Shakespeare's base humor and puns simply because it's old. Most classic paintings and art are celebrations of simple pleasures such as beer guzzling and fucking. This is simple evidence of intellectual prejudice.

What is 'higher' pleasure is that which gives us new delights at each experience, where we see deeper into the art some new thing or surprise.

But some things are only designed for the moment, and for that moment they are not lesser.

And did anyone consider if Christians are a proper diet for large cats?
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(Unregistered) said:

Saturday 26, September 2009, 5:03 pm

But he didn't compare the base humor of the two and that's the problem. He should have compared the Simpsons to Falstaff or Bottom and his blundering group of players instead of Hamlet.

(Unregistered) said:

Tuesday 29, September 2009, 7:54 am

Not funny.

(Unregistered) said:

Tuesday 29, September 2009, 11:45 am

Agreed regarding shakespeare/simpsons this was basically my thought as well. Shakespeare was not considered high art in his day it the plays contain many base elements, like violence and lowbrow humor designed to appeal to the same masses as the simpsons.

(Unregistered) said:

Friday 16, October 2009, 9:18 pm

Christians are not the ideal cat food. We now know to throw them to wolves instead.

(Unregistered) said:

Friday 12, February 2010, 7:04 pm

Certainly not if they are hard shell Baptists. Bound to scrape the intestines on the way down and cause constipation in the end.

(Unregistered) said:

Saturday 26, September 2009, 2:27 pm

Episode 2: I think there is a higher moral and ethical responsibility that needs to be addressed in the cost/benefit analysis and that would be
"do not harm". By adding this overarching umbrella, we more comprehensively address the issues.
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(Unregistered) said:

Monday 28, September 2009, 3:35 am

I like that very much

(Unregistered) said:

Monday 28, September 2009, 4:33 pm

Does this mean that all Ford employees have to take the Hippocratic oath?

How about the bank and insurance employees, especially the executives?

(Unregistered) said:

Saturday 26, September 2009, 3:01 pm

The example of the cost analysis of the Ford Pinto is very very flawed. Ford did not tell consumers that the Pinto was defective. In fact, Ford repeatedly denied that there was a safety problem with the Pinto. Buyers of the Pinto were unknowingly entered into a dead pool lottery that not only put the Driver in jeopardy but passengers and other drivers as well as bystanders who could/would be killed or injured by the autos explosion.

I believe it is safe to say that Ford executives and their loved ones did not drive Pintos which protected them from entering the dead pool (unless they were unlucky and rear-ended a Pinto).

The level of hypocrisy that allowed Ford to rely on the cost analysis is unbelievable. The failure of the Utilitarian viewpoint is remarkable. Ford was able to put profit before the lives of the public. This may explain the many abuses of people that defined the Industrial Revolution.
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(Unregistered) said:

Tuesday 29, September 2009, 11:48 am

Right, Milton Friedman argued that they should have simply attached a notice to every car sold stating the car was made cheaper by way of omitting a safety feature. This may increase the drivers chance of death by X%. If the driver was OK with this then it was a fair transaction. It was not the cost/benefit that was flawed but the buyer had asymmetric information.

(Unregistered) said:

Friday 16, October 2009, 9:25 pm

Short-term corporate and/or personal profit is often a higher priority than people - even if it results in less customers in the future. Most business is about money, not relationships, reputation, responsibility, accountability, or sustainability.

(Unregistered) said:

Monday 2, November 2009, 5:38 am

I don't think you can blame abuses of people on some individuals' use of explicit cost-benefit analyses. People have abused people regardless of written cost-benefit analyses or any moral philosophies they profess to follow.

Utilitarianism was not designed to excuse abuses but to justify reforming institutions in order to prevent abuses ("abuse" meaning the use of resources in ways that decrease total utility). Ford could've been more utilitarian. For example, in their cost-benefit analysis, Ford calculated the costs of possible deaths but failed to account for the possible cost of being sued, having to pay a settlement, and losing some future sales. Furthermore, Ford could've taken measures to reduce to the costs relative to the benefits. Hopefully, Ford, as an institution, has been reformed to prevent such failures. Do not think, however, that the reform should involve a valuation of life regardless of utility, unless you think our moral duty is to maximize the number of lives regardless of quality of life.

(Unregistered) said:

Friday 20, November 2009, 10:00 pm

Please remember that we all do the exact same thing, including our government. We may not profit financially, buy we benefit through convenience. Our clean air standards don't meet a zero death thresh hold. If it did, you wouldn't be driving a car, using a computer, or using generating capacity from you local power plant to read your books. All environmental standards calculate a cost for human life. Would your position be the same if there was only one death from using the Pinto, i.e., the cost per death was ,000,000,000? If so, you might want to turn off your computer, your lights, stop cooking, and stop driving. Based on your actions, the question isn't in regards to the immorality of valuing human life, you've already done that by your actions. Your real concern appears to be the valuation of human life at too low a figure.

(Unregistered) said:

Monday 15, February 2010, 1:24 am

A cost/benefit analysis is monetary so can never take into account ALL the factors involved when it comes to the greater good. What is the value of trust in society? If manufacturers violate the trust that their products are safe, in the long run they risk losing customers. Where is the benefit in that? Ford isn't making Pintos anymore are they? Toyota chose to ignore the faulty brake problem for several years deciding it was cheaper to do so. I'm sure Toyota in their cost/benefit analysis the brake problem never anticipated the HUGE media storm they are caught in right now, massive recalls, and a congressional investigation in addition on top of law suits. A number of financial experts thing it will take 10 years for Toyota to recover from this mess. Where does that fit into their cost/benefit analysis at Toyota?

There are also things that just are unknowable. What if one of the victims that died in a Pinto that was rear ended would have found a cure for cancer or been the FBI agent that halted the attack on 9/11 had he/she lived? How do you factor that into a cost/benefit analysis?

I'm sure Hitler could have come up with a cost/benefit analysis justifying concentration camps as well. The financial collapse last year is a good example of how if you interpret data in just the right way, you can justify almost anything including the extremely risky financial behavior that has brought the world to the edge of financial collapse.

(Unregistered) said:

Saturday 26, September 2009, 4:15 pm

The notion of 'higher' and 'lower' pleasures should be replaced by 'long-term' and 'short-term' happiness. Oftentimes, indulging in short-term pleasures leads to long-term unhappiness. Or avoiding short-term pain leads to long-term unhappiness. The long-term consequences of actions are what really count. In the Romans/Christians example, encouraging hate and violence within individuals and the culture in general would likely not lead to long-term happiness.
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(Unregistered) said:

Monday 28, September 2009, 3:38 am

But then the question is that how would you consider possible consequences of every action?

(Unregistered) said:

Wednesday 30, September 2009, 7:34 am

But is long-term pleasure or pain always preferable? Why is it necessarily automatically better?

(Unregistered) said:

Monday 2, November 2009, 6:06 am

^There is no physical state that can be called "long-term pleasure" (except perhaps a sustained state of pleasure for a long period of time.) "Higher/long-term pleasure" is short-hand for 'actions that lead to more utility in the long-run are better than actions that lead to some utility in the short-run but less utility in the long-run.' Presumably, it is better to be Socrates temporarily dissatisfied than to be a pig temporarily satisfied b/c in the long-run, being Socrates generates more utility than being a pig (given that there are sentient beings who'd benefit from there being a guy who acts like Socrates.)

(Unregistered) said:

Saturday 26, September 2009, 6:28 pm

I look forward for this oportunity. I am 81 yrs old and would like to
see how my views compare to the younger students.
Thanks Harvard.....
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(Unregistered) said:

Saturday 26, September 2009, 8:29 pm

In the case of the 5 versus 1, if the six were of roughly equal value, the answer woukd be: save the five,
but if the one were an Eisntein the case would be much more complicated, but the solulion would probably be the same. Sept. 26,09
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(Unregistered) said:

Monday 5, October 2009, 11:19 am

If the six were equally important, should that make the given predicament less likely to deprive another individual life. Like you said, if the value of one was equivalent to einstein than the case could have been differ.

(Unregistered) said:

Saturday 26, September 2009, 10:03 pm

A Mill-style utilitarian could still condemn the practice by arguing that if the Romans had experienced a higher pleasure than watching a violent death, that they would prefer it. Also, the presence of a large mob could constitute implicit coercion.

This doesn't change my gut-level feeling that there is something inherently wrong with a crowd of people deriving so much pleasure from witnessing someone's murder. Couldn't you make these same arguments to justify a gang rape, saying that the pleasure of the rapists outweighs the trauma of the victim? I suppose it is possible that the fleeting pleasure (if it is pleasure) felt by the Coliseum-goers would result in long-term pain and therefore be less just - but really, if we try to put a value on life and a value on entertainment, they just don't seem to belong on the same scale. I'm afraid I'm not much of a philosopher!
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(Unregistered) said:

Monday 28, September 2009, 3:42 am

I think you are making a very important point here. How to scale and measure the collective pleasure and pain? it is a big question.

(Unregistered) said:

Friday 2, October 2009, 12:05 pm

This is analogous to the entertainment of bull fighting which I do not condone either.

(Unregistered) said:

Saturday 26, September 2009, 10:51 pm

The basic problem with Utilitarianism is that it can be used to justify our baser instints and allow us to mistreat the minority. For example, the early Christians in the Roman Empire, the non-Christian in medieval Europe, the slave in the antebellum South, the Jews in Nazi Germany, etc.
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(Unregistered) said:

Friday 23, October 2009, 9:31 am

I agree. So do we need to add another criterion for happiness, it cannot “harm” others. Notice I said “harm”, not deprive of pleasure or displease. When we evaluate the goodness of something, we will need to look at the degree of “harm” that it does, and to the extent that it does “harm”, it is not good, it is wrong. Therefore, by failing to build a hospital, or a school, we “harm” the millions of people in the future who will be directly or indirectly impacted by them. (Greater than the number of fans using the stadium, or kids eating the ice cream.)

Does this force us to accept minority views? Let’s see. What if we add a limit to happiness? “No person’s actions in obtaining happiness may harm others.”
Does that work?

(Unregistered) said:

Sunday 27, September 2009, 7:25 am

In both the Ford Pinto and Czechoslovakia cases, the "higher good" being supported was a profit motive for a corporation. Apart from the problems with putting a dollar value on life, any net pleasure in Pinto case was concentrated in the few who profited, since the cost of the part could easily have been passed on to the consumer. There are also profound differences between the train/lifeboat examples and the Pinto case because 1) Ford had prior knowledge that it would be killing innocent people (isn't that murder?) and went ahead anyway; and 2) there is a qualitative difference between avoiding one's own death and pleasure-seeking. I also noticed that Dr. Sandel didn't mention the Dust Bowl or clarify whether fear of death might have been a factor in the "I would rather strangle a cat than live in Kansas" example. The trouble with dollars as a measurement instrument, too, is that it assumes money gives equal pleasure to everyone, when it really doesn't. The dollars needed for basic survival needs give more happiness than those used to buy a movie ticket, which is maybe a way of assimilating the social justice objections to utilitarianism.

Unregistered Sat. 10:51, I agree with you that utilitarianism can be used to justify baser instincts - but all your examples also involve categorical moral reasoning in that the majority perpretrators of these atrocities believed in the rightness of their actions and even, in the case of the Holocaust and the Crusades, that they were protecting themselves.

My biggest question right now is whether these moral frameworks are supposed to be DEscriptive - i.e., do they explain actual behavior? - or PREscriptive - i.e., do they give guidance on how to make moral decisions? In both senses they seem to have problems.
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(Unregistered) said:

Sunday 27, September 2009, 9:09 am

The pinto obstacle-
the cost benefit analysis tool is flawed in that it is finite. The ford folks did not contemplate the lawsuit in their model, oh and the marketing image as well-they most likely lost future sales.
Additionally, the ford cost benefit team was flawed- they were biased. Their bias limited their faculty to consider all other factors(also in the Phillip morris study). Perhaps a nonbiased third party panel could assist in the analysis.

2. How much would it cost to make the pinto with a zero human disaster component, including a sadness factor(ie not enough cup holders)? Understandably, At the end of the day, a business decision had to be made.

Ford hopefully learned a lesson
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(scamper_22) said:

Sunday 27, December 2009, 3:53 am

on the contrary.

The only lesson from the Ford case that we can all take is not to make your cost benefit calculation public or keep records of them.

We all do the cost benefit that Ford did every single day of our lives.

I speed on the highway even though there should I crash, there is a higher probability of death the faster you go.

We all do this *math* in our head. We factor in weather, how rushed we are, the traffic, the kind of car we drive...

I'm sure if I were forced to spill my guts and actually examined the cost benefits, I'd come out with some sick sounding figure like:

We could all speed an extra 20% above the speed limit and only kill an extra 2500 people per year and it would only cost an extra 50 dollars in car insurance premiums...

But like I said, we don't publish our thoughts or make numbers out of them... so no one is the wiser. I'd love to have seen an alternate reality had Ford's documents not been made public. Would the courts have awarded the victims a small enough value such that Ford would have actually ended up making the *right* business decisions and saved money.

As I said lesson: Don't you dare make your cost benefit calculations public or store them in reports.... or better yet... don't do them... and just do the math in your head :P

(Unregistered) said:

Sunday 27, September 2009, 2:15 pm

I think Dr Sandel was unfair to cost-benefit analysis. He and the audience didn't really explore its current uses and the paucity of alternatives to it in certain circumstances. I would argue that it is perfectly reasonable to use CBA for industrial applications. For example in designing a chemical plant how else can you determine the required levels of protection that should be installed to prevent accidental release without balancing on the one hand the costs of installing them compared to the levels of reduced risk of the release on the other. Without utilitarian concepts, and a holier-than-thou approach to the value of human life, one would never build a chemical plant, and never get the benefits to society they undoubtedly bring..
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(paperball) said:

Sunday 27, September 2009, 2:45 pm

Interesting point. There is a difference between insisting on a risk-free world, though (unrealistic) and rich executives having prior knowledge that their vehicles would explode and deciding not to do anything about it. For me, the other important piece of these cases is that information was withheld from the consumer. If someone says, "Okay, this car is really cheap and convenient, but you should know that if you get rear-ended it will explode," then the consumer can decide whether it's an acceptable tradeoff, and, in effect, do his/her own cost-benefit analysis. The willful deception to enhance profit is different than what you are describing and I think makes the Pinto case especially appalling.

Similarly, the key issue in tobacco reform was how the companies covered up the health risks once they became aware of them, not that they inadvertently created a lethal product. For those same companies to set out to prove that smokers in a less powerful country than the US will make more of a contribution dead than alive is vile on multiple levels. I knew someone once who came right out and said, "Yes, the lives of people in other countries are not worth as much as ours," and that sense for me underlies a lot of the problems with utilitarianism.

I don't know if you would describe my attitude as a holier-than-thou approach to life, but in your chemical plant example, the risks would be acceptable if 1) workers and people surrounding the plant are fully informed of the risks; and 2) the risk is spread equally between the decisionmakers and those directly affected by the decision. (There are probably other conditions, but I've reached the limit of my philosophizing for now.)

The cases would be more complex, I think, if risks had been unknown, unproven, or able to be mitigated as in your chemical plant example: would you have made the same choices? But in the cases Dr. Sandel presented, there were crucial power differentials between the decisionmakers and the victims, as well as prior knowledge that was knowingly concealed - something I would consider itself to be an evil act.

(Unregistered) said:

Tuesday 29, September 2009, 11:53 am

Agreed I had the same thoughts by the logic of the class all buildings should be 1 story high and surrounded by pillows on the off chance a construction worker might fall off.

The fact is human life has a value and its is very cheap look at liberia or nazi germany.

The girl who brings up the value of human life is undoubtedly thinking of her own life or family or even another american most people in the developing world dont have the same "holier than thou" look at human life. They can absolutely tell you what a life is worth.

(Unregistered) said:

Friday 12, February 2010, 7:31 pm

Disclosure is no panacea for responding appropriately to risk. I can remeber when the first Surgeon General's Report came out in 1964 many people realized then that it was necessary to stop smoking to protect ones health. Most did not--myself included. Decision making functions in a complex ecology where neither reason nor moral compunction are rarely the most important considerations.

(Unregistered) said:

Thursday 10, June 2010, 11:00 am

Yes--CBA is a powerful and useful tool, but it has limited application. It's not a swiss army knife, and Utilitarian moral reasoning is considerably weakened by relying too heavily on it.

(Amy O in Yokohama)

(Unregistered) said:

Sunday 27, September 2009, 2:45 pm

It does not impinge upon the ethical dilemma but accurately speaking there exists no historical evidence that the Romans fed Christians to lions.
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(Unregistered) said:

Sunday 27, September 2009, 7:22 pm

According to Wikipedia, the Ford Pinto scandal is kind of not quite true as it is normally told.
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(Unregistered) said:

Friday 5, November 2010, 9:14 pm

You may have carefully read about it and the wiki may be right. but it's just an example, there are actually some company do the same things. What really matter in his lecture is the kind of thought behind the example. Considering the ford scandal itself, the truth is very important. You have done a good job.

(Unregistered) said:

Sunday 27, September 2009, 7:26 pm

Given that the lions, the Christians and the Romans were all being manipulated by a tiny yet powerful ruling class for their own selfish ends, would one need to have any knowledge of utilitarianism to find this practice objectionable?
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(Misha) said:

Sunday 27, September 2009, 7:57 pm

How is getting pleasure from watching death matches useful? If it is useful does that make it moral regardless of what it is? Death matches are not seen as moral by most people so that seems to indicate that Utilitarianism is not, as used in this way, getting at moral outcomes.

Simply because something has no use does not mean that it is immoral. Humans have no use for some distant galaxy, but that does not mean that that galaxy is immoral.
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(Unregistered) said:

Sunday 27, September 2009, 9:40 pm

Funny, when the utilitarian premise is carried to its logical conclusion - Bentham's head upon a plate, his body converted to dummy á la Mme. Tussaud, his "non-voting" presence at faculty meeting - Bentham actually appears close cousin to Homer Simpson: it is therefore hard to take strict utilitarianism seriously
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(Unregistered) said:

Sunday 27, September 2009, 10:08 pm

I'm uneasy with the idea of using money to measure cost/benefit. Money is unused values or un-repaid debt. Its future value is unknown. It is an abstract thing being used to ballance a current concrete action. And it has too many confusing conotations. Nor does it fairly represent pleasure. Better to create an entirely new measure of pleasure that can satisfy everyone by definition. "Majubers" was one such thing that I remember from a long time ago. It was a kind of bean that acted as a seed for all things good. Good things that everyone would agree upon like love, mutual respect and human potentials for positive, life affirming acts.

Money is difinately too murky a thing to be used as a measure of pleasure or goodness.
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(Unregistered) said:

Monday 28, September 2009, 2:56 am

Is it right to use 'dollars' as a currency in a cost-benefit analysis? Should the currency not be 'human lives'?
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(Unregistered) said:

Monday 28, September 2009, 8:44 am

Maybe not 'human life' but a standardized 'life quality index' that factors all things cultural, economic, and political. Some small value could be assigned to sadistic pleasures, and monetary security, but some far greater value to pleasures of love and human kindness which will insure that such ideas continue to be cherished and taught in our schools and homes, and aspired to by our young. After all, we are talking about "civil"-ization, no? This would be useful.

(Unregistered) said:

Monday 28, September 2009, 6:30 am

I sure wish I got paid 300,000 to live in Kansas. I don't get anywhere near that amount
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(Unregistered) said:

Monday 28, September 2009, 6:36 am

In a way 'human life' is the greatest of pleasures and the final common denominator. But not every outcome of every cost-benefit has 'human life' as it's last result, does it? Except, of course, when there is no habitable space left at all on earth and all transactions will have to factor it... How gloomy.
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(Unregistered) said:

Monday 28, September 2009, 4:36 pm

Why do we limit ourselves to speaking of the value only of human life? Right now, with environmental calamity looming, can anyone say that a human's life, wants and needs, are always more intrinsically important than those of every other living organism? Does morality apply only to people?
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(Unregistered) said:

Monday 28, September 2009, 4:59 pm

There seem to be two clear issues in the analysis of utilitarianism in the lecture. The first is in the incompleteness of the definitions of costs and benefits used in the examples. As was obvious from the outcome of the Ford Pinto case, not only did Ford not adequately value a human life, but they failed to include even the most straightforward additional costs (pain and suffering of the family). One other cost they neglected was the societal cost of allowing callous behavior by corporations - the basis of most negligence claims and a cost that society gave a high value in this case. Given a little consideration, I'm sure that we can come up with many other costs that would resulted in a very different outcomes of the Ford cost/benefit analysis. This analysis seems like more of a justification of a predetermined decision.

This leads to the second issue - the difference in perspective
rooted in the anachronism of the "Christian to the Lions" example. The value of intangibles like life, the definition of freedom, pleasure, pain, etc. are both personally subjective and to a significantly degree culturally derived. It is nearly impossible for us to understand how life was valued during the time of the late Roman Empire, with high rates of infant mortality, a much shorter lifespan, and an entirely different value system than we have today.
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(paperball) said:

Tuesday 29, September 2009, 5:23 pm

I think you're making a great point that Ford wasn't doing a true cost-benefit analysis, at least not one using happiness as a measure. You also make an important point that the value of intangibles is culturally variable. Still, allowing that, if we measure the Pinto decision according to happiness rather than dollars, we would come up with a very different course of action. It also suggests, though, a huge problem with utilitarianism in general: apart from the variability in how individuals measure happiness, there are cultural differences that make calculation of "net happiness" too theoretical a proposition to be of much practical use.

Any thoughts on how social responsibility might play into utilitarianism, one way or another?

(McDuff) said:

Thursday 3, December 2009, 2:05 am

Is a true cost-benefit analysis the same as a true Scotsman?

(Unregistered) said:

Monday 28, September 2009, 5:50 pm

Consider the video of Fear Factor, The contestants are being to tortured (less lethal than the Christians) for the pleasure for the TV audience. Have we really advanced in two thousand years.
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(Unregistered) said:

Friday 16, October 2009, 4:34 pm

Today we all have our own private coliseums in our living room, TV. The more blood and violence on the news, the higher the ratings. Watching others suffer on reality shows, is the biggest hit this days.
I might be wrong, but I believe that if they ever would allow to broadcast a live execution, I think it would bring the highest rating ever. How far did we really come from the Roman days?!

(Unregistered) said:

Monday 28, September 2009, 8:48 pm

While I don't agree with it, as an allowable practice, I think a cost benefit analysis may have (and still) justified Hockey players fighting with delayed intervention and minimal individual consequences rather than prohibiting the practice at all or by imposing the kind of penalties on the individuals involved that is done in other sports. I'd be interested in the students' views on this subject.
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(Unregistered) said:

Monday 28, September 2009, 11:19 pm

It seems that a fundamental flaw in interpreting cost-benefit analysis is that the costs and benefits are developed relative to the person/entity that performs the analysis, and that achieving a "universal measure" is inherently impossible. In the Roman-Christian example, if the Christian were performing the analysis, would it provide the same outcome?
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(Unregistered) said:

Monday 28, September 2009, 11:52 pm

Maybe these analyses needed to include the personal/interpersonal cost of taking actions that are repugnant. The utilitarian approach is useful, but I think you need to stack up all the approaches and compare them. SOmetimes it may be possible to adjudicate among them and find a middle ground that is more acceptable. (Given that alll facts are never known and perfection not possible.)
Kate
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(Unregistered) said:

Tuesday 29, September 2009, 3:27 am

On Bentham: I think the moral is that if you stick to the wrong argument for too long you get your head handed to you on a plate.

On Ford and Cost Benefit: I'd want to see arguments on the formulas first... for example - as an part could save a life, does that not mean therefore that life= or alternatively, the cost of NOT having the part equals 0,000 [ inflation] thern.... etc
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(keddaw) said:

Tuesday 29, September 2009, 8:21 am

Ford's CBA (Cost Benefit Analysis) had no part of the dead people's utility to society in it. The formula was simply:

if [ Cost of recalling and refitting all Pintos ] > [ cost of lawsuits*]
then take the lawsuits.

* cost of lawsuits = Number of Pintos sold (and likely to be sold) * average cost of a wrongful death lawsuit caused by the fuel tank problem.

Ford's problem was that once the jury found out about the fact they knew about the problem and then decided to not recall as iot cost more than the lawsuits they decided to punish Ford with a huge lawsuit. Had no jury ever found out about the formula then Ford would have been in the black.

This has changed the face of lawsuits (and CBAs) for corporate America. The threat of a jury handing out punitive damages in the hundreds of millions tends to mean companies will always find it cost effective to recall their products rather than risk a class action lawsuit.
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(Unregistered) said:

Tuesday 29, September 2009, 9:36 am

I'm glad you mentioned cost of wrongful death lawsuits here. It seems when the students (or viewers) saw this there was some amount of disgust at the idea that Ford, PM, or other incorporated entities were putting dollar values on people's lives. However, turn this notion of wrongful death litigation around for a minute. On the plaintiff side of such a lawsuit, presumably there is a normal person such as you or I or those students/viewers with no apparent problem with putting a price tag on someone's life. Perhaps the standard moral high ground would be to say, "Well, I would never engage in a wrongful death lawsuit." I find that statement to be as suspect as any claim of one's future or hypothetical behavior when faced with a moral dilemma such as being marooned at sea or seated at the Colliseum. I'm not arguing against anything you said, just pointing out something that was on my mind the whole time I was watching this - namely that we can't afford to believe that putting a price tag on life is something that only cold-hearted institutions and corporations engage in.

Also, to the point of using dollars (or money, more generally) as the unit for cost-benefit analysis: The reason is that dollars are assumed to be perfectly fungible (exchangeable for other things). You may question that assumption in the case of human life, however, I don't believe that using human life as that unit accomplishes the goal you have in mind. In such a case what is being said is that we are measuring trade offs of various activities using human life, because human life is the most exchangeable unit (easiest to work with) imaginable. Quite the contrary, right? It is hard (or maybe you think impossible/morally wrong) to calculate the exchange rate for human life.

(Unregistered) said:

Tuesday 29, September 2009, 12:18 pm

Interesting comment. But If dollars (and not human lives) are the currency of utility, then it might be 'cheaper' in certain contexts to crash your trolley into the five workers (all illegal immigrants from Mexico) in stead of the single one - who appeared from a distance to be a banker from Manhattan.

(Unregistered) said:

Wednesday 30, September 2009, 1:07 pm

Nah, I'd rather run the banker down. He has health insurance and can better deal with the expense than the other five.

Besides he deserves it more for running our economy into the ground.

(Unregistered) said:

Tuesday 29, September 2009, 11:09 am

Utalitarianism can't work for one simple reason. If I'm wrong with what I say next, then it's probably down to the fact that I'm not completely familiar with the word utalitarianism but here it goes.

Utalitarianism's assumption is that if everyone acts in a way that increases the overall utility of society, then everything will be swell. This sounds very reasonable, but we run into the problem of what is this behvariour that will lead to utility maximisation? What is good? What is evil? One can not happen without the other as you require one as a contrast to understand what the other one is. If the conservation of mass theory is correct, then no matter what you do to an object, no energy is lost right? The same principle can be applied here as no matter how much good you do, you will create an equal amount of negative effects in some shape or form elsewhere. What humans fail to comprehend is their inherent psychological flaw whereby they are always striving to find the magic bullet to everything. All throughout history, you have very intelligent people, making mistakes based purely on psychological limitations that each one of us has. Having this ideal of utalitarianism is the same as the fad of religion during the crusades, or the recent IT bubble. If you do the simple mathematical equations by putting values on human life, or developing a big brother society, you are forgetting the simple truth that by doing so you are creating such problems as the psychological prisons that result from such systems and other things that we may not even be able to imagine. Once again referring back to the conservation of mass, all systems have draw backs and this one is no exception. Therefore I believe utalitarianism is the same irrational, emotionally reactive ideal as all the other aspects to human life which is quite possibly built up of a bunch of such emotional reactions rather than rational decision making in which case all the things that people strive for including fame, wealth, love and everything is else is essentially meaningless.
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(spew) said:

Wednesday 14, October 2009, 8:55 am

While the conversation of mass theory is a zero sum game. Human actions are not. A simple example is if I am walking along a river and spend a few seconds to pull out a drowning baby. I do not lose as much as the baby gains.

(Unregistered) said:

Tuesday 29, September 2009, 12:56 pm

Yes, utilitarianism is just one huge rationalization for human behavior. Without a moral code, it all just comes down to dollars and cents in a capitalist society.

Take, in contrast the Amish way of decision-making or the "seven generations" way of the native American. These exact a moral code FIRST and then decision-making is made as a result. For example, given that murder is murder, wars would be antithetical to the moral code. However, with utilitarianism, war-profiteers' values outrank the lives of millions of people.
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(Unregistered) said:

Tuesday 29, September 2009, 5:26 pm

Think Lord of the Flies. The philosophy of Utilitarianism enables the rationalization of the moral code and allows situations to determine right and wrong. Is it not also troubling to see entertainment and pleasure as one and the same? by the very nature of the term, it seems to take the humanity out of choosing what is the "greater good". it lowers people's choices to the most lowbrow common denominator.
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(paperball) said:

Tuesday 29, September 2009, 5:39 pm

I was talking about this course with someone I know who has a degree in religious studies. She drew attention to the fact that these ulitlitarian philosophers were working and writing around the time of industrialization, the rise of factories and railroads, and the reign of robber barons - in other words, at a time there was a lot of exploitative behavior to rationalize.

In the interest of being intellectually generous, though, I'm trying to think of a way utilitarianism and categorical morality could both end up drawing the same conclusions about what is actually moral. Are the utilitarians suggesting that what "feels" moral to an average person (i.e., not committing murder) is not actually moral, i.e., that 19th-century sweatshops were moral because the goods produced happiness for the consumers? or is utilitarianism, used properly, meant to produce the same answers as our gut feelings do?

(Unregistered) said:

Friday 2, October 2009, 12:40 pm

Agreed. In the end we will all be dead. Utilitarianism is based on pragmatism based further on greed and self gratification with little regard for moral consciousness or intrinsic ethical standards of all humanity. Such is the state of constant conflict and unhappiness at the expense of someone or something else. Can less be more, at least in the end?

Can you live with yourself with no psychological torment or guilt after eating someone so that you may survive?

(Unregistered) said:

Wednesday 30, September 2009, 4:22 am

Utilitarianism and CBA are useful. They help us see paths to decisions when without them we would be lost for lack of criteria to make complex decisions. Any time we can place a decision in an analytic framework based on data we do shed light on the choices we face. Do we build this bridge? Do we pass that environmental legislation? Do we legislate workplace protection? At the same time we have certain absolute values embedded in the constitution. The right to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness, free speech, assembly and others. Those values give us additional guidance in making decisions. We have cobbled these guidance mechanisms and principles together in the course of history and they are not perfect and definitely can be further improved, but while we explore improving them better they serve us well in making better, yet flawed decisions.

For teaching purposes we can show the flaws of CBA. That is useful because it helps us understand the weakness of CBA as a decision making system, it does not invalidate it as an aid in making decisions. The Pinto case, The Christians and Lions example are examples of flawed and unchecked applications.

As the Director of Economic Analysis at EPA during the Carter administration, I introduced CBA to be applied to environmental regulations. At that time the environmental community was adamantly opposed to CBA for the same reasons mentioned in the course, you cannot put a value on human life, it is never complete, it is immoral and in EPA's case: the legislation does not require it. Over time CBA has been widely embraced by the environmental community as a way of improving decisions, making them more acceptable to the body politic and and generally more defensible to the public.
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(ew2200) said:

Friday 16, October 2009, 8:47 pm

I agree with the characterization of Utilitarianism as a tool, like a pipe wrench. It has it's uses, better and worse, and applications completely unsuited (like boiling noodles, for instance, or braining someone). You do not have to accept Utilitarianism, nor any other guideline or law as immutable; they all have to be assessed, chosen, applied with conscientiousness, and weighed with discernment and soul-searching in a difficult case. It is important to understand also that these decisions must be dynamic; they do not hold true from place to place or from time to time. The Golden Rule imposes a heavy burden of constant self-examination.
Utilitarianism seems best suited to hypothetical analysis involving unnamed average people; it is too easily 'gamed' in a specific instance. For example, the Christians might have argued that it was a higher pleasure for them to have the official who ordered them tortured painlessly assassinated, etc. ad nauseum.

(keddaw) said:

Wednesday 30, September 2009, 6:06 am

Anyone refusing to put a dollar (or any other) value on human life would not function well in the public health sphere.

When we provide a vaccination for a disease (MMR say) then there will inevitably be a few people who will have a reaction to it and die. What we have to do is ask if the deaths of those people outweigh the pain and suffering of those who would otherwise get the disease if the vaccine was not given. There has to be some way to decide between these two outcomes. The fact we use dollars to measure may seem distateful (we could use happiness units if you prefer) but it also allows us to add in some real costs assosciated with the issue, such as the roll-out cost of the vaccination; development costs of a vaccine; scoietal costs of large number of people with the disease. Once added up we can come to a simple is the number greater than zero decision to see if it is worthwhile.

And to anyone who thinks life is priceless I ask you why don't want speed limiters in your car that uses GPS to know the local speed limit and won't let you go over it? Why don't you want CCTV cameras everywhere to deter crime? Why not have all flights install parachutes for each seat in case of a problem (this is actually feasible but phenomenally expensive)? The reason you don't is because you have already valued the number of lives that would be saved and decided that your liberty, or money, is more valuable.
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(Unregistered) said:

Wednesday 30, September 2009, 10:03 am

A good point. On the other hand: What is the present day dollar value of a human life? Is it the same all over the world?

(eswope) said:

Sunday 4, October 2009, 11:34 pm

I came back here today in large part to see if i could find out how comfortable people are with this.
specifically, I would like to ask about the perceived similarities of public health decisions, and the Ford pinto or Phillip morris.

Our government has chosen to disperse the H1N1 vaccine in a way which will preditably risk tens of thousands of lives and likely cause thousands by distributing the live vaccine ahead of the inactivated.

I do not know what went into this decision. Was it cost, expediancy?

In any event, the group once listed as among priority recipients: the highest risk population, immune compromised individuals, has now not only been removed from the priority lists but is being knowingly endangered.

immune compromised individuals can not only not receive a live vaccine, they can (and a number will) catch the virus from others who receive the vaccine (who shed virus for 6-8 weeks after receiving it).

It seems from a perusal of the cdc web site that the only provision made for people with cancer, auto-immune disease, HIV and other immune compromised individuals is instruction to go to an ER and ask for anti-virals within 48 hours of exposure.

What is the morality of causing a life-threatening situation for the most vulnerable to prevent what has been described as a mild flu?

I am asking because I would like it out in the open.
A decision has beenb made by our government to endanger the lives of thousands of people. It is preventable, but there seems to be no interest in attemptimg to prevent it.
(note, it could be prevented by making the inactivated vaccine avalable to vulnerable populations prior to mass administration of the live vaccine.

I have considered that the cost benefit analysis could be shifted with one or more class action suits.

(Unregistered) said:

Friday 16, October 2009, 10:01 pm

Vaccines are a scam - that creates lots of profits for drug companies, and numerous negative side effects and little real protection from disease. The only "immunity" given is by the government to vaccine manufactures against liability for any and all harm their products may cause. "MMR" is not a disease; it is a vaccine (providing prophylactic exposure to 3 unrelated diseases: measles, mumps and rubella). Money is much more of a motivator than health for drug companies. "Swine flu" is also a scam - and more people will die from the new untested vaccine than the disease. All the talk of a global pandemic and the need for vaccination is just a way to extort money and impose more control over people.

Cameras do not "deter" anything. They merely record what occurs. Identities are easily concealed. Apprehension and prosecution of those committing crimes is not assisted by cameras as much as you apparently believe.

Parachutes are prohibited on commercial airlines - as a result of their use as a method of escape in skyjacking.

(McDuff) said:

Thursday 3, December 2009, 2:08 am

Ah, an antivaxxer. What is it about the internet that attracts cranks and kooks from all corners?

Two words, my dear friend: polio, smallpox.

Have a nice day!

(keddaw) said:

Wednesday 30, September 2009, 11:31 am

The dollar value of a human life varies wildly around the globe. While this may be (understandably) uncomfortable it does recognise the difference in the standard of living in different countries. It isn't all bad...

For example: while it may be perfectly acceptable to spend 0,000 on a guard rail to save 4 lives per year on a US road it is not feasible to do this in Afghanistan where the average income is about /month. That money would be better spent on various health programs saving thousands of lives.

And if you think all lives are equally valuable then ask yourself why you are happy to spend 25% of the US budget keeping 300 million Americans safe when that money could easily save (and improve) the lives of a billion people in the third world. Or ask yourself why you bought a new car rather than second hand and give the extra cash to a well drilling charity in Africa.
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(Jelle NL) said:

Wednesday 30, September 2009, 1:15 pm

The dollar value of a human life varies around the world. And how is the situation within the US; have all US-citizens the same dollar value? Judging by the US health care system, the answer is, I think as an outsider, no. The idea that human lives have different dollar values seems contrary to the Declaration of Independence.

(Unregistered) said:

Wednesday 30, September 2009, 7:19 pm

Jell: We do seem to be a bit uncivilized even to us "insiders". The debate about health care is more complicated than the value of human life. The debate is more about individual liberties and responsibilities and the role of government. Frankly, it is more about politics than anything else but deep in our psyche is the belief we should control our own destiny. Unfortunately, the debate hasn't been about whether health care is a human right.

I am truly enjoying these lectures!

(JEQP) said:

Saturday 10, October 2009, 10:58 pm

This popped up in my head as well. Another way of looking at the calculation is that it would cost 7 million to prevent 180 deaths = 1,111 per life, not counting injuries. Whether you use that figure or the 0,000 one, the question does arise as to how much good this money would do in a developing nation.

(Plaudertasche) said:

Friday 16, October 2009, 4:53 pm

I agree, the value of a human life depends where you live, what color your skin is, what spiritual believes you hold and most of all: how much money you have. We like to believe that all humans are equal, but we sure do not treat them equal. That is a fact.

(paperball) said:

Wednesday 30, September 2009, 4:18 pm

I was thinking about all these issues last night and came up with another hypothetical scenario. Suppose, in the first-week runaway train situation, we had to choose between steering the train into the five strangers or turning it towards a single person who was a family member or close friend. Who would seriously kill the one instead of the five? I guess what I'm trying to say is that our lives are always worth more to ourselves and those close to us. I imagine this is probably true elsewhere in the world.

Keddaw, you make great points. I have a question, though: do our financial and economic decisions reflect what we think is right, or do they sometimes reflect what we know to be not quite right but which we do anyway? I know in my case it is probably the latter.
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(Unregistered) said:

Wednesday 30, September 2009, 7:48 pm

There are certain things in life where you cant put a price tag. Example... Health and responsibility. In the case of the ford, the company should have spent the money in making sure all cars are safe. ALL LIFE IS SACRED. If the company would have had lost money making the cars safer, then the designer of the car should answer to the executives for making the costly mistake that cost the company so much money.
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(Unregistered) said:

Friday 16, October 2009, 10:08 pm

Safety is seldom as important as profit. It's also usually FAR cheaper for companies to pay those few people who sue them for problems the company often already KNOWS about than to to just fix the problem (at all, let alone in advance).

(Unregistered) said:

Thursday 1, October 2009, 2:29 am

J.S. Mill argues that though one group of people may enjoy a base pleasure (such as in the gladiator example) the higher pleasure (and therefore the more valuable and weighty pleasure) is that which stimulates the highest human faculties, i.e. "high art". Therefore, killing the minority for the base pleasure of the majority does not further or better humanity in the long-run and so is not of greater value than the lives lost. To quote Mills "It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied". It is better in the long-run for Romans to be without the base pleasure of watching Christians die a brutal death than for the Romans to be satisfied pigs.
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(keddaw) said:

Thursday 1, October 2009, 3:57 am

@Jelle NL
Different states within the US place different values on life. Some states have the death penalty - no moral judgement, just a statement of fact. As for the Declaration of Independence, I'd just liek to point out that the formative documents of the US have placed the value of a black person at 3/5s that of a white person... Still, at least they recognised them as more than property.
@Paperball
We do tend to value things closest to us most, for example when the Boxing Day tsunami hit the newspapers usually had how many local people had died in it with the total (100,000!!!) as a footnote.
Our decisions tend to reflect what we think is best for us (Adam Smith's invisible hand) rather than some higher ideal.
@ALL LIFE IS SACRED
Nonsense! All car companies could make their cars almost impenetrable in an accident, but it ruins styling, performance and fuel economy. We, as consumers, do not want that, we want style, speed and good gas mileage. Plus, you also have to take into account the trade off between safety (less people dying in car accidents) and gas mileage (less people dying from global warming).
@J.S. Mill
Currently I think we'd agree that the utilitarian argument has shifted from the greatest total pleasure to the least total harm. Thus the pleasure gained by spectators at the Colluseum would be outweighed by the harm caused to the participants. This is why boxing has gloves and rules and even cage fighting has referees.
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(Unregistered) said:

Friday 16, October 2009, 10:17 pm

Not only has utilitarianism shifted from most pleasure to least harm, but whose harm. It is important to ensure that no lions were harmed killing Christians. That would be cruel and unfair treatment of animals. Better for gladiators to fight each other - and the "winner" be forced to eat the loser (for the entertainment value it might provide paying viewers).

(ahammond) said:

Thursday 1, October 2009, 5:27 pm

Ford also failed to include the cost of abuse of trust. There is an implicit understanding that engineers will make a best effort towards safety where human lives are at stake. It's explicit for professional engineers. Damaging this trust attacks the fundamental underpinnings of our society. It goes so far as to even damage the rule of law. This cost is enormous and generally ignored.
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(tboyce) said:

Friday 2, October 2009, 8:43 am

Well said. As a professional engineer, I was apalled at Ford's callouse behavior. When an engineering mistake costs lives, huge discussions take place in our community on what was the cause and how it could be avoided in the future. In my own branch of the industry, legionella and carbon monoxide poisoning were caused by sub-standard industry practices that were rectified decades ago and yet the reasons for the new standards are still fresh on all of our minds and we take care to instruct new engineers lest the mistakes of the past be repeated.

(tboyce) said:

Friday 2, October 2009, 6:46 am

I've watched through episode 2 and am enjoing the series immensely. I've actually been through the cost benefit analysis question before when, in my first meeting to decide the cost benefit of a building to be built it was revealed in the insurance discussion that, despite our best efforts in safety, actuarially, three people would die in accidents while building the building. I immediately wondered why, knowing that three people would die, we were even considering the proposition. Certainly there were vacant buildings that could be made to accomodate the use with far less danger to human life. The building in question was a county courthouse wherein justice was supposed to be dispensed and so it made the question far more difficult than it would be if the building were a casino or strip club. While, on the surface, this might be analogous to the Pinto cost benefit analysis. I think that there are vast differences. First, every possible safety precaution is used when building a building. Second, construction workers know and accept the risk of working on a building. Third, the inherent risk of this building was no greater than for any other building of its size. What made the Pinto case so shockingly abhorrent is that Ford's product was inherently more dangerous than similar products and people buying the product had a reasonable right to assume that Ford had gone to all possible lengths to make it so. Ford had a moral obligation to either fix the product, even if it meant passing on that eleven extra dollars to the consumer or to make the consumer aware of the risks that they were taking by not spending that extra eleven dollars,
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(Unregistered) said:

Monday 12, October 2009, 9:28 am

What happened? Did the three people actually die?

(Unregistered) said:

Friday 16, October 2009, 10:21 pm

Obviously, 3 people dying was considered an "acceptable" cost.
Either Ford didn't think enough customers would be willing to pay more for a Pinto or they just didn't want to bring up the issue of safety (and possible problems) at all.

(lazar) said:

Friday 2, October 2009, 9:17 am

ok, so 100,000 people having an ecstasy for 2 hours is 200,000 hours.
20 gladiators not having a pleasure of breakfast, lunch, dinner, sex, enjoying the panoramic view, laughing, running in the field, for 30 years that they would live if they were not killed by lions -- 20*24*365*30 = 5256000 hours.

do i need say more?

for a more soft example of gladiator story, consider this: if smoking gives you so much pleasure, is it justified to cause me lung cancer with second hand smoke? even if there are 10 of you and 1 of me?

repeat above calculation with having in mind my shorter life, time in hospital, sadness and misery caused by cancer, etc...
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(Unregistered) said:

Friday 16, October 2009, 8:57 pm

What's about the lions' pleasure?

(Unregistered) said:

Friday 2, October 2009, 11:55 am

Just for argument's sake, I think Joe's argument using the example of the rat is flawed. In order to make the comparison between two types of pleasure one must experience both. He is not a rat, and has probably not had that part of his own brain stimulated in the way the rat's brain was. So he is not qualified to make the judgement.

Furthermore, I think that Mill's philosophy, as presented here, is simply a derivative of Bentham's philosophy, because in distinguishing between high/lower pleasures we are already performing a cost/benefit analysis. For example, the cost and benefits of doing drugs vs. not doing drugs. Or the cost and benefits of reading Shakespeare. I think what Joe is saying is that the sum of the long term negative effects of doing drugs with the short term positive effects of doing drugs is less than the sum of the long term positive effects of reading Shakespeare with the short term negative effects of reading Shakespeare. Thus it appears that Mill's philosophy is not fundamental, but derived from the more fundamental Utilitarianism. So my question is how can a derived philosophy answer questions that attack the more fundamental principles upon which it is founded?
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(Unregistered) said:

Friday 2, October 2009, 2:54 pm

Two other utilitarian condemnations might take the form of these:
(1) For the modern world, the argument could be "Insufficient Data." Fearful, ignorant, and compliant spectators have not been teased apart from the pupulation who are truly cheering the spectacle. After subtracting these, the "enough" population may be significantly reduced to "not enough" pleasure to warrant the expense of staging the violent spectacle.
(2) For the ancient world's violent spectacle, the argument could be "Self-Preservation." Christianity is known for its life-preserving philosophies. EX: Right-to-Life, Resurrection, and Everlasting Life (immortality). Statistically speaking, if ever a cure for death were discovered, the probability is that it will come from this passionate pro-life population. As the Utilitarians possess a minimalist view of available resources, thereby sharing an un-empathic view towards individual life in the pursuit of such, their admirable contribution to the population's pleasure is "better cost-cutting strategies." It is safe to assume that attaining immortality is worth far more than a balanced check book. A good argument to put forth to Caesar could look like this: "Killing Christians could negatively affect the probabilities of finding a cure for [your] death."
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(Unregistered) said:

Saturday 10, October 2009, 10:43 pm

Uh, actually most Christians are comfortable with the idea of death. It's the atheists who are desperately seeking to extend their lives, such as Ray Kurzweil and the guys at http://singularityu.org/

(Unregistered) said:

Friday 16, October 2009, 9:33 pm

Christians are obsessed with death! You'd think more would be eager to die for other people's sins. Bring back the lions.

(Unregistered) said:

Wednesday 28, October 2009, 8:20 pm

I agree - the symbol of the Christian faith is a symbol of death. Those of you that disagree probably say that it is a symbol of life. If so, you see Jesus' resurrection as a victory over death, without which you would fear death probably more than the atheists. What else would justify the lifestyle? Either way, it's pure obsession with death. Atheists don't worry, because when its over, for them, its over.

(Unregistered) said:

Saturday 3, October 2009, 1:24 am

In answer to the specific question, "are there any grounds on which a utilitarian could condemn it?", the answer is "no." No utilitarian would condemn it.

This answer was given by the spouse of the previous answer. We both thank Michael Spandel, Harvard, and everyone who made it possible to put this class on the Internet, in this format, for all to enjoy, participate, and learn. After 30 years of marriage, we are finding out more about each other, and appreciating our likes and respecting differrences. This is a wonderful opportunity for us, as well as the rest of the world, and we hope that Harvard will do more courses in this format. Again, thank you very much from the old married couple in Texas!
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(Unregistered) said:

Thursday 8, October 2009, 8:46 am

The answer to this question from a utilitarian perspective is clearly "no". However, the quantification of any qualitative variable will result in a loss of information. Any realistic description of human existence is highly qualitative, and so any attempt to quantify it would result is a great deal of lost information. The other problem I have with the notion of utilitarian ethics, is the lack of space for notions of responsibility. If you always must do the right thing for the greatest number of people, then who bears the responsibility for the decision.
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(TheGreatWhiteBuffalo) said:

Saturday 10, October 2009, 5:25 pm

In answer to the question I have my own question to ask. "Does the Utilitarian person cease to have the ability to critically think or reason?" Just because we are talking of the greater good of the mass of people watching does that make it right to cause harm to an innocent person for their chosen beliefs? Why can't we teach the insolent fools the folly of following the liars that sway public opinion with fabricated information?
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(JEQP) said:

Saturday 10, October 2009, 10:49 pm

As to the question...

First off, that wasn't the cost-benefit analysis used -- it was whether the sacrifice of a few people would keep the many so preoccupied they didn't notice what the government was doing and what a parlous state the empire was in. If I was a utilitarian I would argue (as others have) that if you count all the pleasures involved -- such as that of living in a secure state, being the kind of decent person who doesn't enjoy watching others being torn to shreds, that sort of thing -- then the equation would show less pleasure in the practice, and therefore deem it immoral.

The response to that is to make the implied question more explicit -- if all of the pleasure derived by the spectators outweighed all of the pain and loss of pleasure of the spectators and victims, can a utilitarian condemn it? The answer to that has to be "no", although a smart utilitarian would point out that by decoupling it from reality the situation becomes hypothetical and moot, since the point of utilitarianism is to weight up what actually is the case. To which the response would be that philosophy looks at extreme situations to find out what is really moral and right, and the argument would descend into semantics.

To conclude, I would have to say I am not a utilitarian. I do not believe the point of life is to seek pleasure, but to grow in wisdom, compassion and understanding of the world. Mills would argue that achieving that is the greatest pleasure and therefore utilitarian, but I would respond that that argument removes all the strength from the philosophy -- saying that anything that is good, right and desirable is pleasurable and any pleasurable thing that is bad is, in total, unpleasurable is a circular argument.
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(ew2200) said:

Friday 16, October 2009, 8:58 pm

I think Mills was saying that it was not necessarily 'pleasure' that was the highest or most valuable thing, but rather that which is 'chosen.' That might be love, or wisdom, respect, or glory.

(JEQP) said:

Saturday 10, October 2009, 10:59 pm

I think the philosophical problem with Ford's calculation is that it's not really cost-benefit, it's "my cost"-"your benefit", and vice versa. With Ford's decision not to install the shield it calculates it saved 7 million, and society saved .5 million, but it received the benefits while other people paid the cost. It's quite obvious that's what is happening in this case, but this happens in a ubiquitous manner around the world -- from enjoying cheap goods while the places they are manufactured deal with slave-wages and pollution to using all the resources and destroying ecosystems, which future generations will have to pay for.
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(Unregistered) said:

Sunday 11, October 2009, 10:58 am

There is no value in life. If you die, then you die. Nothing matters to anyone except yourself, and if you do die, then you do not suffer pain from dying anyways, so it won't matter anyways. It is always a cycle of life and death, and it just happens so that you are to be a part of the cycle.
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(Unregistered) said:

Monday 12, October 2009, 9:33 am

This makes me wonder how Cost/Benefit plans are discussed in India? Are they more accepting of using money in determining?

(Unregistered) said:

Sunday 11, October 2009, 2:47 pm

I find it interesting that everyone states that Shakespeare is a higher pleasure thtn watching the Simpsons. What an unoriginal and limited view of the world. Some might argue that the Simpsons is as much a social commentary and reflection of the human condition as any work of art. There are numerous levels of analysis which can be applied to the Simpsons and, indeed, some universities do offer courses on the Simpsons. People analyze Shakespeare because of what it tells about the human condition, cultre in Victorian England, and so forth. Similiar analyses can be applied to the Simpsons as well.
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(Unregistered) said:

Monday 12, October 2009, 10:17 am

Our use of the utilitarian approach is flawed when we mix all things political, economic and cultural into a big stew. Values in the political (legal) realm have to do with human equality; in the cultural realm values have to do with human freedom; and in the economic realm they have to do with human brotherhood.

Dollars provide an elegant system for fulfilling each others' needs, but have little to do with equality. Laws are meant to insure equality, but don't work without cultural change (education, etc) to provide freedom and human development. Cultural pursuits cannot advance civilization without freedom, but equality (under the law) is not necessary to create new ideas, arts, religious forms, etc.

Granted, it would be difficult to separate our political, economic and cultural interests and institutions, but as long as they remain intertwined, with the economic realm in such high and over-weighted ascendancy, we will continue being confused, I think. Perhaps a utilitarian model could be applied to this problem? Perhaps the cost/benefit analysis should weigh implications in these three realms: economic, cultural and political (legal), before final decisions are made? BTW money is in the economic realm; human life, as the fellow stated above, is not really a factor, these are social questions and as such apply to groups, and groups of human lives depend on freedom, equality and brotherhood for their well-being (pleasure, if you must.)
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(Unregistered) said:

Monday 12, October 2009, 1:47 pm

Sorry, I made a mistake in the comment above; 2nd paragraph should go more like this: "Dollars assist us in providing for each others' economic needs. But money is a secondary factor in the realm of law and culture, behind equality... although, granted it doesn't look that way. In the political realm, which has to do with making and enforcing laws, these laws are meant to apply to all equally, or else they don't mean much. Laws can't create freedom or brotherhood, though they can certainly have an influence. Where the culture is lacking, the issue of freedom is not raised to begin with. And culture does not require equality or brotherhood, but it does require freedom if civilization is to advance, freedom for arts, education, religion, medicine, etc."
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(Unregistered) said:

Tuesday 13, October 2009, 12:22 pm

Of course a value can be placed on human life, however sqeamish it makes us. This is made clear by the existance of dangerous jobs. If no value can be placed on human life, then how can one justify car racing, crab fishing, undersea exploration, lunar exploration, window washing...

But to just place a dollar amount on life is like asking how many blades of grass you want for every hour of labor. It's an absurd question. Sure there's an answer, and it could be averaged out to a fair measurement, but it's insulting and silly nonsense. How much is human life worth in dollars? I say it has a value, but that value is too high to deserve discussion.
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(spew) said:

Wednesday 14, October 2009, 7:14 am

I think professor Sandel is incorrect on claiming taxes or conscription as a distinction between natural and conventional law. Rather these are distinctions between private and communal property. Taxes represent a form of communal property and while it is convention that will determine the amounts and fair methods, it falls within the natural law that enough property (monies in this case) be allotted to the community. In the case of concription, it is part of natural law to risk your own property (life in this case) to defend your natural rights and by consent you have agreed to this defense communally.
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(Plaudertasche) said:

Friday 16, October 2009, 4:40 pm

I meant to register before posting this, so now it's posted appears twice..sorry. Today we all have our own private coliseums in our living room, TV. The more blood and violence on the news, the higher the ratings. Watching others suffer on reality shows, is the biggest hit this days.
I might be wrong, but I believe that if they ever would allow to broadcast a live execution, I think it would bring the highest rating ever. How far did we really come from the Roman days?!
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(Unregistered) said:

Friday 16, October 2009, 9:06 pm

People do often seem to derive great pleasure from others suffering. Even most humor is at someone else's expense.

How far have we come from Rome? I don't know.

People are willing to pay more to watch, are willing to pay to be watched, and wiling to prostitute themselves for free.

(Unregistered) said:

Wednesday 21, October 2009, 4:27 am

Why justify any action in the first place?
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(Unregistered) said:

Friday 23, October 2009, 9:03 am

1. Not all pleasures are equal, because the impact of each pleasure varies, and the long-term consequences of each benefit need to be taken into account. Mills wants us to consider the long term, higher will, of the majority. If we have to choose between building either a new sports stadium, or, a new hospital, we must ask ourselves which would have the long term result of yielding the greatest amount of benefit to the largest number of members of the community? The probability is that eventually, more people, sports fans, or not, would benefit from a hospital than from a stadium. Therefore, no matter which group is larger, the hospital should be built. For the same reason, although I am not a Utilitarian, this fit my morality as well.

2. As I said before, not all pleasures are equal, because the impact of each pleasure varies, and the long-term consequences of each benefit need to be taken into account. If we have million of government money to be used either for a new school for one thousand children, or to buy one million ice cream cones for one million children, again, Mills would have us evaluate the greatest, highest, long term good for the greatest population. It seems quite obvious that the benefits of ice cream are ephemeral, while the impact of a school goes on for decades and beyond, and eventually (theoretically) can benefit the entire community.

3. I believe that there are some absolute moral imperatives, common to almost all communities. These are absent in only a very few communities in which living conditions are so viciously harsh that even within nuclear families, it is “kill or be killed”. For the rest of us, these absolute moral imperatives hold true. Once a community has been educated to the point where its members are aware that the tenets of racism are scientifically false, it is morally unacceptable for them to be racist. It is the responsibility of such a community, and of each of its individual members to educate every single youngster, and adult member, within the nuclear family, schools, religious education systems, and via public media that all people are human, and all humans are equal, and that racist behavior will not be tolerated, even in the mildest form. Mills would hold that to do otherwise permits mistreatment of individuals and groups, bringing them pain, and creating situations in which racism toward many different groups can develop and spread, increasing the long-term possibility of future unhappiness. If one kind of person can be discriminated against or hated for racial reasons, so can any other. Each of us is only safe, when we are all safe. So according to Mills, in order to have the greatest long term good for the greatest population, we must eliminate racism.

4. Because all pleasures are not commensurable, the choice of which move to make, to Boston, or to Las Vegas must be made only after a period of introspection. Obviously one needs to know oneself to know which, falling in love and getting married (Boston) or getting rich and staying single (Vegas), will afford the most pleasure. The answer will differ for each person, and might be different at different times in each person’s life.

5. John Stuart Mill, a Utilitarian, says that we should protect individual rights because, in the long run, that is the best way to increase the sum of happiness. Is that true? Is that really the reason why you shouldn’t imprison and torture innocent people? Mill does say that. He feels that the greater the size of the population of happy people (compared to unhappy people) in a community, the happier the overall community will be. I mildly agree with him, not only because of the calculus of it, but also because of the psychological /sociological impact of happy people interacting on others pleasantly, and probably creating a pleasant emotional climate. However, Mill’s arguments for individual rights are not my personal arguments against imprisoning and torturing innocent people. (Note: imprisoning innocent people is one thing, torturing innocent people are a second, torturing guilty people is yet a third.) Imprisoning people, (pending action to determine guilt or innocence) is always moral, provided it is done with due process, although in cases of community emergency, previously defined and codified, alterations to the kind of due process required could be made, but some kind of due process must always be followed. If we do not remove evil doers from the community, they will harm us, making us unhappy, in the long term, so an individual must be isolated, once we become aware that she might be a danger, and be released only when we are sure it is safe for the community tat we do so, but only under previously codified due process. I agree. Once arrested the treatment of all people must always be equal and humane, with no assumption of guilt or innocence, although it is certainly permissible to protect society from any actions a prisoner might take while in custody, by isolating/ searching/ monitoring her, or limiting visitors to lawyers. I will concede that physical contact, even with lawyers might be forbidden. However, all physical needs must be fully met.
The guilt or innocence of a person who has not confessed is an assumption on our part, and in this country, we assume that the accused is innocent, until a verdict has been given. Our legal system is built on this premise, and theoretically works with the view that it is better to release (or execute) a guilty man than to jail an innocent one – although judges have ruled otherwise. Therefore, I assume we are always jailing innocent people, who may or may not be guilty. It is only acceptable to jail both the innocent and the guilty, when there is a reasonable possibility of guilt (according to previously codified law), and when, due process is followed. To arbitrarily jail someone who does not meet the criteria of possible guilt under that law is wrong, unless other criteria are met. These other criteria for jailing people who bear no guilt (possibly witnesses who need protection from criminals) should be codified in order to be correct community action, at which time they certainly become good things to do. However, the key in all cases is the pre existence of codified due process, and that it be mandatory to follow due process for all people equally. Once the people are arrested, if we believe they hold knowledge that endangers others, do we have the right to torture them? As others have mentioned, physical torture is ineffective and inefficient – so why use it at all? Drugs and bribery work faster and better. Since we know that “truth drugs” cause neither permanent harm, nor pain, they seem to be the fastest, most humane, intelligent way to retrieve data from a suspect.

However, it does occur to me that drugs are a huge invasion of privacy. This gives me pause. In thinking about this, I realize for the first time that, although they are a way of retrieving info about terrorist plots, they are also a frightening way to give big brother access into my mind, on any premise he cares to invent. It would be foolish to believe that once government had the legal right to peer into our thoughts, some future leader would not abuse that right. This is a Pandora’s box too dangerous to open.
I think it is safer to simply prohibit interrogation under drugs to protect the mental privacy of all. The only non-abhorrent approaches I can think of are psychological - I have no objection to lying to or ticking someone, questioning her, or to de-programming a terrorist. This desperate need to protect the community vs. the need to behave humanely is one that troubles me a great deal, and which I have not fully resolved to my own satisfaction.

Once a person is arrested, their innocence or guilt needs to be established “with due deliberate speed”. Postponement of trial cannot be, as it has been, used as an alternative to a jail sentence. Prisoners need to be assigned a lawyer, questioned without torture, held humanely while awaiting trial, tried quickly and fairly and with full due process, and then either jailed or released. Denial of any of civil rights can and probably will lead to erosion of the happiness of the general community, since government tends to be reluctant to give up any power it has assumed. Government in fact, tends to expand upon any power it has been given. The civil rights so dearly won are too precious to be lightly given away without deep thought, because it may be harder to regain them, than we know.
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(Unregistered) said:

Friday 23, October 2009, 3:35 pm

More on the above - by the writer ( Granny)

All of my previous answers regarding the moral correctness of the Pinto and Phillip Morris decisions were from the point of view of the company as a “corporate entity”. After much thought and family debate, I have come to the conclusion that the existence of a moral or immoral “corporate entity” is sophistry. It is not enough for a community to protect its members from harm by clearly establishing, publishing and enforcing, stringent consequences for individuals or corporate entities if they cause “harm” to others. Human beings can have morality, legal fictions, such as corporate entities, cannot. Morality can only lie within each one of the individuals who, together, comprise a corporate entity. Each choice that each person makes is either moral or immoral. Some of those choices may be made when the person is working for the company, and may be made on behalf of, and in the interest of, the company, but they are always the moral responsibility of the choice maker. A company member may make a Utilitarian choice, which seems to benefit her company, even in the long run. Pure Utilitarianism would call this morally good. I would not. No decision is individually moral if, as I said in previous postings, it causes harm to others. This means that individual (minority) rights need to be respected, because limiting the rights of others would be causing harm to them, as long as they are not harming us by exercising their rights.
Granny

(eswope) said:

Sunday 25, October 2009, 12:46 am

I do not know if posting links is allowed, so I will not do it, but will point to an article in today;'s New York Times regards plans which have already been made about treatment rationing and priorities in the current (H1N1) "epidemic: it is entitled "Worst Case: Choosing Who Survives in a Flu Epidemic" and may be of interest as it bears on the moral and ethical issues being discussed
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(Unregistered) said:

Monday 9, November 2009, 12:14 am

This was the most entertaining one so far. Especially the macabre pleasure of seeing the dead, stuffed Bentham still sitting in his chair. I'm not sure I agree that people will automatically choose the more redeeming pleasure. If the ability to make that choice of the higher pleasure is dependent cultivation then its status is a precarious one.
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(StarTRavel) said:

Monday 9, November 2009, 10:07 pm

Pain and pleasure is more complex than a binary balance sheet. Something similar to quantum theory should be explored.

One can crudely use a monetary value on a human life for compensation after damages. However, to assign a price for a human in a cost benefit equation to justify an action or policy is problematic.
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(Unregistered) said:

Tuesday 10, November 2009, 9:39 pm

Choices are possible only when costs can be objectively measured. When elements of subjectivity intrude the calculus become impossible.
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(Unregistered) said:

Monday 16, November 2009, 12:12 am

I actually calculated the social dollar cost/benefit of smoking two years ago and came up with a larger savings number. This may be because I am in the US and the social security payments are probably larger thus the savings are greater. I personally will save the tax payers 9,000. (my number is closer to similar to a demographic figure I found on pub-med)
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(Unregistered) said:

Thursday 19, November 2009, 6:41 am

This seems over-simplified and misleading. If we are to make an honest attempt at rectifying the inherent problems of utilitarianism, it is not enough to make simply qualitative distinctions between different pleasures, but categorical ones as well. In the US we speak of the right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" but these categorical distinctions of rights are not considered equal. My right to happiness does not outweigh another's right to life or liberty.

The examples of smoking, the Pinto, Christians to the lions and so forth, all violate these categorical differences. Utilitarianism can be useful within a given category of desire, but once the categorical differences are violated, it no longer holds sway.

On a different point, the reason why Shakespeare holds a higher place has to do with the universality of its themes. There is definitely a case to be made in favor of the Simpsons in this regard, and certainly in its day, Shakespearean plays were considered as low-brow (at times) and populist as anything the Simpsons contains. Who knows? In 200 years, the Simpsons may be taught as classics of comedy as any of the better Shakespearean comedies are today.

One final quibble: with all the renditions of Hamlet out there you used Mel Gibson? Really?
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(Kimig) said:

Saturday 21, November 2009, 1:42 pm

You cannot put a price on something that can't be bought or sold because they can never be replaced. You should never dehumanize people. I think that all started happening because of the slavery that was brought into this nation. Life is priceless therefore should never have a dollar amount put on it. But I understand with life insurance and other insurances that it is necessary to have a value number on it. I am not sure that there could be another way to value life than with a number amount until you look at Mother Theresa. She took a vow of poverty yet she could never be replaced. She was extremely valuable and sought after throughout the world which would make her value even greater. And the fact that her life was not a life lived unto herself but for the good of others also added value to her life. But could a number be appropriately applied to one's life? No! Not in my opinion! And as far as Utilitarianism, I think that we should strive to find the most happiness we can in this life but that is found only by being born again. Then regardless of what this life brings we are able to stand strong without wavering with the joy of the Lord as our strength. Success comes from obeying God's word as we are admonished in Joshua 1:7
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(McDuff) said:

Thursday 3, December 2009, 4:38 am

I do not actually believe that slavery was "brought into" the United States, so much as codified in the original constitution. Of course, you may mean something different by "nation" than I do.

Mother Theresa, of course, is an interesting case. She devoted her life to helping the poor individually, but in many cases abused her position to prevent social policies being put in place to reduce the number of poor she would have to help. She appeared to take Jesus' words "the poor you shall always have with you" as an instruction.

As for success coming from obeying God's word, the only appropriate response is, of course, "which God?"

(Blue Sun) said:

Monday 7, December 2009, 8:45 pm

Mother Teresa is an interesting example. She had admitted that her goal was not to cure the causes of poverty, only to minister to those in distress and try to win their souls for her god. She believed that the suffering of the poor was noble and that they would be rewarded in the next life if she could convince them to accept Jesus as their savior. Millions in contributions to her order stayed within the order, enlarging and enriching it, while other humanitarians labored in obscurity actually trying to correct the problems of poverty in Calcutta at their source. As for a vow of poverty, whenever Mother Teresa was ill, she didn't go to her own clinics, which only had the most rudimentary medical supplies; she took a private jet to an expensive clinic in Switzerland, all paid for by her order.

I think of Mother Teresa's ministrations to the poor more in terms of the medicine show (pun intended) whose only purpose was to pull in the suffering rubes so she could sell them the snake oil of a better life in the hereafter.

(Unregistered) said:

Saturday 21, November 2009, 9:55 pm

Why is the definition of morality that which brings the greatest utility?
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(Unregistered) said:

Tuesday 24, November 2009, 2:25 pm

What about the economy suffering because of overpopulation. Can it be justified for the government instigating a war or releasing a virus or disease to kill off a number of the population to stabilize the economy?
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(Elchin) said:

Sunday 29, November 2009, 8:53 am

I believe you cannot define higher pleasure with the way J. S. Mill said, because everybody has a different point of view on things. For example I personally noticed in Fear Factor the higher morals - people overcoming their fears and and going over themselves, something which is a higher thing I believe.
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(APRJustice) said:

Thursday 31, December 2009, 2:09 pm

True, the case for Fear Factor or the Simpsons as a way of getting 'higher' pleasure was never explored. It was just tossed aside as meaningless without consideration.

(McDuff) said:

Thursday 3, December 2009, 2:13 am

I'm disappointed that Sandel offered the "ticking time bomb" scenario as a hypothetical, because it has been so thoroughly debunked in the security industry and now only has credibility in either the most abstract of philosophical minds, or the most bloodthirsty of foreign policy chickenhawks.

As is so often the case, the complexity of real life provides a simple answer to the hypothetical case. Torture fails to provide reasonable answers in a reasonable timescale. Other methods of interrogation are much more effective. A utilitarian with access to the evidence would therefore vote against torture.

There are never only two options.
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(APRJustice) said:

Thursday 31, December 2009, 2:16 pm

Really? It does happen. Time bombs could be used just as well as any other kind. Security is supposed to stop it, but they are not always successful. And then there is the possibility of an inside job.

True, other methods would be more effective in that case, and any where torture is an option.

I like your "There are never only two options." It's true. You never have to do anything. There is always a choice. You are only limited by your creativity within the situation.

(Unregistered) said:

Friday 4, December 2009, 2:55 pm

On cost benefit analysis, and the value of a human life: how much is your life worth to you? Yes, it may be necessary for human lives to be given some kind of value, but it is very easy for us to hypocritically devalue the lives of others when we never have to put a price on our own lives.

It's very hard to think of yourself dying, and obviously people aren't generally going to let others put them to death for a fee, but what if you stood a 10% chance of dying due to some act, would you be willing to let others pay you a very large sum of money to take that chance? That gives a starting point on the discussion of what a human life is actually worth.

Note that in the case of the Pinto Ford also seems to believe that out of 12.5 million cars they plan on selling only 180 deaths and 180 injuries will result due to the gas tank exploding. Maybe they estimated 180 accidents with 1 injury and 1 death, or maybe they estimated 360 accidents, or maybe fewer then 180. Certainly this analysis shows they believed (or claimed they believed) that no more then 360 gas tank explosions would occur from the 12.5 million cars they would sell. That's about one in every 33,000 cars, which, frankly, makes this seem like much less of an issue, if true. My belief is that the actual number of accidents as a result is probably much higher.

Moreover, I find it far more likely that Ford chose not to make the extra part that would have made the car safe because they made the calculation based on LEGAL costs, rather then human costs. They calculated based on how much they would be likely to be forced to pay out in lawsuits, and not how much it would c ost to individuals and society. This is a normal, but highly unethical, way for cor[orations to act, just as it is a highly unethical way for individuals to act. For some reason most individuals in society seem to usually at least consider the greater good, but corporations usually don't. As a result, we need the courts and a strong system of laws to keep corporations in line, and treating corporations as individuals, the way our current law works, is the height of folly, but I digress.
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(Blue Sun) said:

Monday 7, December 2009, 8:34 pm

If I have a tree that overhangs a public sidewalk, and I know that the tree is dying and in danger of falling, I have two choices. I can pay to have a tree service cut down the tree, or I can take a chance that the tree won't fall, or, if it does, won't hurt anybody. If I fail to remedy the danger, the tree falls, and kills some young mother and her infant in a baby carriage, I am guilty of what, in some places is called 'negligent homicide' and in others, 'manslaughter' or 'murder in the third degree.' Negligent homicide is defined as allowing another to die through an act of 'gross criminal negligence,' in this case, failing to remove a deadly threat that I was aware of and that was my responsibility and mine alone.

The Ford executives and anybody who had his or her name on any of the cost/benefit memos should have faced criminal charges. That wasn't CBA, it was manslaughter, pure and simple.
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(Unregistered) said:

Friday 11, December 2009, 1:51 pm

When calculating the value of the cabin boy's life the assumption is that his life would provide less pleasure or his death the least pain. Same goes for the Ford pinto example. But no one seems to recognize that the value of a life cannot be measured unless that life is lived. Therefore the pleasure\pain value is a complete variable which cannot be measured until it is realized at (natural) death, if even then.
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(Unregistered) said:

Friday 11, December 2009, 2:13 pm

bentham himself proves this point by having his body preserved and stating that it will serve as inspiration for others after his death... that is, the value of pleasure\or good of his life is yet to be realized... imagine he was the cabin boy!?

(lordbyron) said:

Monday 14, December 2009, 11:52 pm

Of course a utilitarian could condemn it! What about changing norms of human behavior? What about the notion of human civility? What about changing social mores? Over time, humanity came to realize that slavery was immoral. That throwing Christians to the lions was immoral. And that a greater degree of pleasure for the masses could be derived if throwing Christians to the lions were stopped and slavery banished. Utility must evolve along with notions of morality and civility. What is considered moral and just at a point a time can easily change over a period of years. If anything, strict utilitarianism is not compatible with human civility. Relative utilitarianism makes the case that what makes the majority happy one day might make them miserable the next. Pain and pleasure coexist together but also evolve together. So too must utilitarianism.
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(scamper_22) said:

Sunday 27, December 2009, 3:42 am

The problem with Mills is that if you place the arbitrary value high enough, you can get something to look like moral absolutism.

For example, let us say we value individual rights as a 'higher value'.

Alright, what *number* do we assign to this? Okay, I assign it 1 trillion trillion trillion dollars. Basically, there is no practical number that would trump individual rights.

By being purely utilitarian, you could at least attempt to place a value of things. Want to know where to spend money on arts? Take a poll of people and then divide the money.
10% of people like Shakespeare, they get 10% of the money
80% like the simpsons, they get 80% of the money.
10% like fear factor, they get 10% of the money.

It's not easy, but at least it is something you can at least imagine doing.

Now try throwing in 'higher values'. The number you assign to 'higher values' is completely arbitrary. Assign it a high value and you approach absolute morality.

If I think individual rights are worth a trillion trillion trillion dollars, then it pretty much makes any other calculation redundant.

If I want to circumvent a higher value, I just assign it a lower value. Who gets to assign these values? Some government bureaucrat? Do you think might fudge the numbers to simply get what they want?

X Y 20 = 100.
Yeah, you can pretty much choose any values for X and Y to make it work.

It becomes a pointless math question where you can choose any value to get any result.
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(Unregistered) said:

Sunday 27, December 2009, 10:25 pm

I'm Jewish, why should I care fi they throw Christians in with the Lions?
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(APRJustice) said:

Thursday 31, December 2009, 2:01 pm

You wouldn't necesarrily care then unless you are a good Jew and care about the welfare of all humankind. Ex: your neighbors.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the 10 Commandments are in the Old Testament and the Torah.

(sdedwards67) said:

Monday 28, December 2009, 8:12 pm

Regarding the Pinto and cost analysis: The analysis was flawed. It did not include all the cost regarding the question .... like the lawsuit for instance. The company also did not consider loss of reputation and marketing services required to restore it. It also did not consider the possible futures of those lives lost and the families who also had to recover. What about their contribution to society? In the end the company is made up of human beings. And human beings tend to seek answers that validate their own questions.
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(APRJustice) said:

Thursday 31, December 2009, 1:58 pm

True, the analysis was flawed. That doesn't make it a bad example though. Ford only realized it made a mistake after the lawsuit. There is a secondary lesson in there about being accurate with your analysis.

(APRJustice) said:

Thursday 31, December 2009, 1:54 pm

I disagree entirely with the student who brought up the choice between intense pleasure for a breif period of time followed by death and mild amusement for an extended period of time. I would pick the awesome time followed by death. The decision he made was based on the fear of death. I do not think death is something to be feared, so it is a very easy choice. Mild amusement for eternity would be worse than any hell that could be after death. Frankly it would be boring.

People do just take what their told when they say Shakespeare is "higher." I'm surprised no one brought up the high value of the satire that is the Simpsons. It's on par with Oscar Wilde in my opinion.

I would count myself among the "cultivated" as a senior at a private university who is double majoring and still maintains a GPA over 3.75. Still after experiencing both, I would rather watch cartoons than go to an art museum. Modern art especially is mostly garbage. Real art is very nice, but it is the reare piece of work that is better than a good photograph. Cartoons have gotten much worse since I was a kid though, so I'm not sure if that still stands.
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(APRJustice) said:

Thursday 31, December 2009, 2:05 pm

The point that people have different opinions is not adressed here. It is the individual that decides what is 'higher' and what is 'lower,' not the group. Therefore it could bring in a nice Hindu principle: We have different ideas, I am right, but you are right too. There isn't a paradox. It is just the way it is.
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(onlineradical1) said:

Sunday 3, January 2010, 6:46 pm

I think in a summary, the theory above is a theory of "The wolves are full and the sheep are safe" It is NOT about the greatest good for all. It is NOT about the universal truth. It's about the best we can do with what we got.
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(Roocus) said:

Tuesday 5, January 2010, 4:21 pm

My views on ford putting a cost on peoples lives..

If they were smart they would have told the public about the problem, made the part available at the cost to the person who owned the car. Then the cost is of ones own self is judged by ones self. :)
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(Unregistered) said:

Saturday 9, January 2010, 12:28 pm

as far as putting a price tag on a life..
to appoint a monetary value to a human life is to say that it can be replaced with x amount of dollars which is obviously not so.
why do we have to put money and profit above life, the greater good of all should exceed the greater good of a few bank accounts
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(Rothbard) said:

Sunday 10, January 2010, 5:20 am

The cost of every meal you eat could be donated to third world charities and would certainly be enough to save a life.

Unless you sell everything you own and dedicate all your effort to raising money for these people how can you say you value human life more than the things you chose to spend your own money on ?

In all probability your actions would show that you value a human life in Africa less than a cup of coffee ! (Every time you buy a cup of coffee you chose not to save a life through charitable giving)

It is easy to say that human life is priceless and easy to say that other people's money (taxes) should be spent without limit to save a single life.

However, when it comes to giving away their own hard earned property, it is amazing how little people actually value human life, other than their own and those of their nearest and dearest.
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(Unregistered) said:

Wednesday 30, June 2010, 9:41 pm

Why do you think that is?

(Aerjen) said:

Sunday 10, January 2010, 5:55 pm

Is there anyone who can point me to the original survey which was conducted by Thorndike? Just the title of it would also be helpful. I've been trying to find it through Google, PubMed and PiCarta. But no luck so far.
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(Unregistered) said:

Monday 18, January 2010, 10:19 pm

I think the problem with putting a value on human life is not that it is priceless, but that it is impossible to know. In the example of the ford pento case, what was disgusting was not that they put a price on each life, but that they only took into account what it would cost them in court. The value courts put on life are, from my understanding, fairly arbitrary precisely because it is difficult to estimate how much damage is done by prematurely removing the influence of an individual, and because they can only work with concretely known values (loss of income or tax revenue, cost of therapy for loved ones). No one can know what was lost by the death of a person because no one can see the future with and without them - whether their influence would have greatly improved and enriched their children's lives, lead to the invention of a new drug, stopped a bank robbery, or conversely, lead to greater suffering if they became the next Hitler or Charles Manson. There is also the problem that money cannot be applied to repair the damage caused by loss of life - the state can't buy a child a new Mommy - so how can money be used to estimate the value of the person? I think people's lives have finite value, but it cannot be known and cannot be measured by money.
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(adl.architetto) said:

Tuesday 19, January 2010, 2:52 pm

The paradox of estimating human life is arises from the fact that we can only apply our current model of mathematics.
If there are two things this talk has showed is that 1st: applying mathematics to estimate cost benefit for various situations altering the human condition in any way results in a problem of such complexity that it lies beyond our current computing capability (any single value needs to be considered against the totality of life, i.e. every thing else entering the human universe), and 2nd, that deterministic mathematics (estimating in terms of numbers) doesn't pertain to the same logic as human ethics (or for that matter, happiness); perhaps the exact reason why we cannot find an equation for happiness.

Perhaps then Utilitarianism as defined by Bentham simply cannot tackle the question of moral value, since the latter is a direct consequence of a human nature, which we either don't know, or we disagree upon its very existence.
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(Unregistered) said:

Friday 5, March 2010, 10:30 am

The economic textbook just shows the price of life as if it is fair and reasonable, in high-sounding tone.
Anyhow,love is priceless.
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(Unregistered) said:

Monday 8, March 2010, 9:29 pm

The quetion should not be what is the dollar amount for life but one of accountablity when companies know that life will be taken. The answer should be that when they do know then there should be a corporate officer die from each person that dies from the corporate wrong starting from the top of the corporate chain. A dollar amount should only be placed on compensation and pain and suffering.
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(Unregistered) said:

Friday 2, April 2010, 11:02 am

The Professor should update the Ford Pinto example. One suggestion is using the the dollar value of a life as paid to 9/11 victim families. Ken Feinberg even wrote a book on the process of determining that value.
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(hillhopper) said:

Saturday 8, May 2010, 7:27 pm

Romans 3:20 Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin.
28 Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law.
James 2:24 Ye see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only.

"Here then is the paradox.

If the ability to produce goods to meet human wants has multiplied so

that each man accomplishes almost thirty or forty times what he did

before, then the world at large ought to be about thirty or fifty times

better off. But it is not. Or else, as the other possible alternative,

the working hours of the world should have been cut down to about one in

thirty of what they were before. But they are not. How, then, are we to

explain this extraordinary discrepancy between human power and resulting

human happiness?"-The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice, Stephen Leacock,
John Lane Company, New York, 1920.

By the increase in sum of the population as a whole, and not the extrinsic monetary value of a human being.
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(DmitriPisartchik) said:

Friday 23, July 2010, 3:42 pm

A clever utilitarian could easily outmaneuver the Christians to the lions objection. It would require the addition of a simple and relatively uncontroversial set of premises.
There are distinct categories of harms and benefits such that it is impossible to aggregate entities from different categories in a single calculation. (This is, I think, a version of Mill's higher and lower pleasures distinction)Some harms, such as pain, is of the same category, call it experiential, as some benefits, such as pleasure. Being of the same category pain and pleasure can be aggregated and a favorable balance within the experiential category (net benefit, ie pleasure, over harm, ie pain) would be one positive consideration for the moral goodness of the act: If, upon final calculus, you will receive more pleasure than pain, then, all things being equal, that action is morally permissible, ie good.
However, it seems reasonable to note that there is a plausible separate and higher (more abstract) category of benefits and harms, call it the opportunity category. A benefit of this higher category would be something like an increase in the range of opportunities that you enjoy, more and varied avenues to pursue your particular preferences and desires. An opportunity category harm, on the other hand, would be something like a depravation or a restriction of your opportunity range such that there are fewer and less varied avenues for you to pursue your particular preferences and desires.
On reflection, I think most will agree that we feel benefits, ie better off, when we are granted a greater level of freedom to pursue our interests and we feel genuinely harmed when our liberties and opportunities are (arbitrarily) limited. Hence, the "good" of getting an education and the "bad" of going to prison.
Given this, we can easily condemn the Roman practice on utilitarian (or is it consequentiality more generally?) grounds: The pleasure of the Roman masses, while on aggregate (plausibly) greater than the suffering of the Christians, is nonetheless incommensurable with the harm done to the Christians through their death, the ultimate depravation of their interests and opportunities. Therefore, only one of the necessary utilitarian calculations has been satisfied and the overall moral status of the act (Christians to the lions) is "bad" on utilitarian grounds. This is because the total utility requires that both the experiential and the opportunity utility calculations return a net benefit and this is not satisfied in this case.
Therefore, the practice is immoral.
Feel free to respond: dmitri.pisartchik@utoronto.ca
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(maxllevy) said:

Wednesday 28, July 2010, 6:26 am

I would like to specifically address JS Mill's test for the higher pleasure in more or less a utilitarian manner, but I also want to touch on the question of justice.

In the first respect I am interpreting utilitarianism less in what Bentham may have intended and more in an inductive behavioral system manner. Mill's test fails because it presumes that human beings are always able to live up to their highest intentions. It does not take into account exhaustion, stress -- the normal and unremarkable wear and tear of daily existence. Of the examples given, the Hamlet soliloquy is the most difficult and the most intense pleasure of the three. Not only does it require significant preparation and capacity on the part of any individual wishing to participate in the event, it is ultimately the most thrilling and emotionally intense of the three experiences. If one "was sitting on a farm in Kansas" (I hope I have not misquoted), one would have to do some things requiring effort on a daily basis to obtain the necessities the young man referred to when using his analogy to the altered rat (his analogy is flawed because the rat is not actually choosing, once it has been altered it has no choice, no capacity to choose) -- eat, sleep, drink, what-all. If, after a week of mundane efforts one prepares for the excitement of the higher pleasure, maintains that excitement through the experience and achieves that intense higher pleasure in the wake of the experience -- an enormous amount of energy has been expended. Certainly, as a result of the experience of the higher pleasure, there is a renewal at some level, but not at the charge in the battery level. Thus, if I can afford it, I will buy theatre tickets for Friday or Saturday night, dress up (because that is part of the pleasure) and drive into the city. The other two "pleasures" are toss-ups. On Tuesday night, after a hard day in the fields (or a long day in the stacks), I might find enough energy to refresh myself by watching the "Simpsons" while eating my T.V. dinner. Pointed contemporary satire is good for laughs and laughs are good for the repair of the self. After a particularly bad Thursday (two many drinks at a late lunch with a chatty and unwilling client), I might collapse into my easy chair with a beer and a bag of chips, flip on the T.V. (because I'm too broke and too tired to go out and buy a burger) and numbly sit through the "Fear Factor" because I don't have the energy or interest to play channel racing and because the "show" demands absolutely nothing from me. I'm broke in part because of the theatre tickets I bought last week. I want to experience the more intense, higher please again as soon as is possible. I might hold off on the phone bill until later in the month so I can buy tickets to the theatre the weekend after next -- nobody calls me but bill collectors anyway -- or, for God Sake, tickets to a division playoff game between the Yankees and the Red Sox.

In the second matter, although "Fear Factor" does certainly have some relationship to the Roman "Games," the assumption that the "pleasures" used as examples bear any relationship to the question of justice forestalled by the lack of Utilitarianism's failure to make distinctions between the acts (pleasures) of individuals or groups is fallacious. The Roman games (tho having historical importance in the original martial ardor of the Roman Republic), were symptoms, ultimately, of the lack of Utilitarian Practicality in the Roman Emperium. Any philosophy pushed to it's systematic limits results in absurdities simply because of linguistic anomalies and non-intuitive events. Utilitarianism does, actually, provide pretty well for the establishment and administration of justice since it would seem that the ultimate purpose of justice is the success of a social system. The universe, as far as we can tell, is actually just -- it is only that it does not appear to be kind.

lindenlevymax@gmail.com
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(Unregistered) said:

Monday 6, September 2010, 4:52 am

I think that the big question here is:

To choose: a billion happy Romans and a sad Christian, or a billion and one neutral people?

Pleasure is a desire, something that we can live our lives without, or else, something easily derived from other trivial things in everyday life. Whereas, having a life is a right, a basic necessity. No one should die unnecessarily.

Mische
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(GraceRg) said:

Thursday 16, September 2010, 5:28 pm

Consequential morality has an obvious flaw at its very root. In defining the ‘greatest good’, or the constituents of Pleasure, or the constituents of Pain, one must establish a scale – even if one end of the scale be considered infinity. In science, such scales are objective: mass, velocity, force, etc. Scientific scales have two essential characteristics: a unit of measure; and an agreed relationship between two distinct values.

While scientific scales may rely on different measurement units, two points on the scale can always be evaluated in such a manner that Point 1 is either of greater or lesser value than Point 2, and – should Point 1 be determined of greater value than Point 2, Point 1 will always be of greater value than Point 2 on that scale. Using mass as an example, mass scales may be measured in ounces, pounds, kilograms, standard or metric tons, or any number of other units, but an object with a mass of two kilograms will always be determined to have greater mass than an object with a mass of one kilogram.
Morality, as expressed in social mores that change both demographically and temporally, has no scale that meets the second criterion. The simplest example lies in the relationship between individuals and the community of which they are an integral part. Communities and civilizations exist and progress to the extent that each member of the community understands and adheres to specific responsibilities and the community protects specific rights.

In these communities, one would tend to define a moral scale as one which represents the sum of individual rights and responsibilities. In order to identify increasing morality, and discarding the concept of a unit of measure, a point closer to infinity would be one that more closely adheres to the agreed upon statement of rights and responsibilities.

Using scientific terms, Action A is considered of greater Morality than Action B if, and only if, Action A more closely agrees with established rights and responsibilities than does B. Further, if subjected to scientific analysis, if A is greater than B (that is, if A is of greater moral standing than B), the underlying action should always be considered more moral than B.

Now consider a fundamental difference between Western and Eastern cultural mores – specifically the relationship between the individual and the community. In Western cultures, individual rights are paramount and may not be usurped without due process. Eastern mores are quite different – an individual’s first responsibility is to the community and individual rights are considered secondary to the community’s needs.

Given such disparity it is easily demonstrated that Action A, when evaluated according to Western mores might be considered of greater morality than Action B; while the same Action might be considered of lesser morality in an Eastern culture.

Take, for example, the issue of segregation. There is sufficient empirical evidence to suggest that integrated communities offer individuals greater opportunities to exchange ideas – a necessary precursor to education and social development. Integration is also proven to create social unrest. Western cultures tend to emphasize individual development as the basis for community advancement. Eastern cultures generally emphasize social harmony, minimizing discord as an obstacle to community advancement, a condition not advanced through integration. As such, Western communities might determine that integration is the moral superior of segregation, Eastern communities might not.

Nothing in these conclusions can be used to infer greater or lesser morality upon Eastern and Western cultures - only that the quality of an action can only be determined within the context of the social environment within which the action took place.
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(harmonious1) said:

Tuesday 28, September 2010, 7:09 am

As Mill suggested, there are higher and lower pleasures.
But whether it is just a higher or lower pleasure to wipe out Iraqi citizens on the grounds of a cost-benefit utility calculation on the conduct of a war is perhaps unthinkable. Or, only thinkable after the event of a victory...

Perhaps, a higher pleasure than pleasure itself. Joy, for example.
The notion of cruelty as pleasurable already begs the question of whether the pursuit of pleasure leads to comfort or utility...

If pleasure only leads to the pleasure of some at the expense of the suffering of others, then perhaps pleasure ought to be distinguished from joy where no such injustices result.

Pleasure, I would define as the feeling of success at attaining a goal. Thus, if the goal is to humiliate Christians or Iraqis, pleasure is sure to follow..

By contrast, joy comes unannounced and unsought, although we might provide conditions for its appearance more likely. Not being cruel, for example. Or, cultivating ahimsa, which calms the mind, enabling the likelihood of peace and bliss to abide.
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(yang349392570) said:

Saturday 23, October 2010, 6:17 am

很好的视频，看了颇有感触，美国的教育就是好！！！
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How to create a sane society. Discussion Circle

Comments (4)

(Unregistered) said:

Tuesday 15, December 2009, 12:04 pm

Utilitarianism ASSUMES that all can be valued on a single scale - and that a valuation at a point of time is universal and unmutable by time or experience.

Thus, in the cost-benefit analyses (a good starting point, but not the sole scale or argument): if one assumes free will, one cannot know the eventual overall contributions of, say the eaten Parker, and thus valuation is by definition imprecise.

Further, in history - and still occasionally seen in societies - is the differentiation of us versus them - that the Hatfields and McCoys are differentially valued. (Think back to the US Consitution - where slaves were valued at 3/5 of a Caucasian Male, and women of either pigmentation were not valued at all.) Our sense of valuation of life has changed over time. (And, for Buddhists, the smallest ant or worm is of equal value as the human.)
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(Unregistered) said:

Wednesday 31, March 2010, 9:28 pm

What I have learned from all this is (1) A Harvard degree is a useless document because nothing taught is grounded in economic reality. (2) To check experience of every candidate running for office in 2010 and after to see where they went to college. Obama is a perfect example of what Harvard produces: a lot of hot air, a lot of verbage, with not one hour of math, economics, bookkeeping, statistics, or even internship experience that would equip him to lead a nation. America is going off a cliff, and we have no one to blame but ourselves in sitting around letting it happen. His aim is to create a totally dependent, manageable society, and he is succeeding brilliantly.
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(Unregistered) said:

Wednesday 23, June 2010, 9:58 pm

How did you learn all this from a video of an introductory philosophy class?

Obama was a lawyer, so he studied law... As far as I know, no economist has ever been elected president; though it may not be a bad idea. And how do you know what Obama's "aim" is? Are you a good friend of his?

America is going off a cliff because of a multitude of reasons. Mainly, the lessened need for labor because of increased productivity, and because physical labor is becoming obsolete and inexpensive. What's going to happen is that money is going to be transferred from first-world countries to third-world countries until both are equally poor. Can't really do anything about that; it's just the nature of "economics" and globalization. We could stop importing, but then we'd have energy problems (1/3 the oil), and we wouldn't have all this cheap plastic crap we seem to love.

(Unregistered) said:

Friday 17, September 2010, 7:55 am

How can we make a sane society? I think we all should act morally and think morally. Also people should get out of their egoism and think more about the pleasure of others. However, I don't think people cannot think or act in this way because of all the post-modernism way of life.
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U.S. Courts Library Discussion Circle

Comments (7)

(Unregistered) said:

Monday 28, December 2009, 3:58 pm

That was a really bad example the professor gave (no offense, he’s a smart chap), with the Christians being fed to the lions. When that Asian student (Yungdau- I’m sorry if I have that wrong) said ppl have to stick to what the majority wants for the sake of arriving at a decision, he meant for it to be a PRACTICAL one, not one made only for pleasure. You can’t really apply “cost-benefit analysis” theory to Christians being thrown to the lions and the Romans getting humorous ecstasy out of it because the majority made a decision based on fleeting pleasure; now if the Romans wanted to get rid of the Christians due to practical political and economic reasons (not just to see Christians suffer for the pleasure of pagan Romans) then yes, the Romans were “right” in their use of utilitarianism (and in this case, the Christians would have been merely killed swiftly by the sword--throwing them to the lions for torture implies a more dramatic and time-consuming act that isn’t practical but only pleasurable. But the practicality in itself indirectly carries pleasure when doing something bc there is a difference between fleeting, senseless pleasure or pleasure that has genuine gains to it (for example, the political aspect of Romans ousting Christians is pleasurable bc now the Romans are “comfortable” without worrying about the Christains carrying “chaos” when spreading their beliefs [due comfort and security can be seen as a form of pleasure depending on definition]). When cost-benefit analyses are made, practicality should be the concern; without that, there are no strict cost-benefit analyses involved. Listening to the majority is only fair if common sense (thus reaching towards a biased general good even though some harm is done) is in mind; in this case, the Romans didn’t have a right to those acts if their majority decision had any pleasure involved. So, in order for cost-benefit analysis to even be used, it can only be based on practical, strict utility; if cost-benefit analysis can involve anything, then I guess we can do whatever the heck we want in the name of cost-benefit analysis even for the sake of fleeting pleasure. This relates back to the whole idea of justice-something can be just for practical reasons if it is not intended to harm and it brings the greater good; but that in itself is relative and “what is good” is relative- there is no exact definition justice so you might as well attribute practicality as just, so as to get a solid (but vague) definition (in other words, u gotta leave emotions out of it).
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(Unregistered) said:

Tuesday 29, December 2009, 1:23 am

Between 20 and 24 minutes in the video, the professor says that according to a survey, pulling a tooth worth 4500$. Personnally I would not accept any amount of money in exchange of my tooth. So if I would have been part of the survey, the average value of a tooth would have been of infinity of $. Therefore, (following this idea) we shoold never remove a tooth (or at least my tooth), never, in any situations. That does not sound good for me.

Mathieu Roy
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(Unregistered) said:

Monday 4, January 2010, 3:08 am

Your argument is toothless
.
Stay thirsty my friend (-:
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(Unregistered) said:

Wednesday 6, January 2010, 12:03 pm

check that in regarding to worth of life in western countries:

http://www.gapminder.org/videos/swine-flu-alert-news-death-ratio-tuberculosis/

regards from berlin, germany
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(Unregistered) said:

Thursday 7, January 2010, 5:29 am

I love this
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(Unregistered) said:

Wednesday 10, February 2010, 9:42 am

I think the utilitarian trying to calculate the effect of a decision by comparing the pleasure or the benefit people can get to the pain. I think that is just inappropriate. The pain of death, pain of loosing families, that could caused by this decision, is irreversible, is much much more crucial than the little joy that could be gain. And the joy, if can not get from this activity, could be gained from somewhere else. The pleasure is not comparable to the pain, even it is a sum up of thousands, millions of people's pleasure.
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(Unregistered) said:

Monday 8, March 2010, 9:27 pm

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(tmacka) said:

Monday 15, February 2010, 4:28 pm

(Csmget) said:

Wednesday 17, February 2010, 11:58 am

In regards to Jeremy Bentham's thought, no there are no objections for it is plain and simple, the deaths of a handful of people clearly amounted to the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Without the Coliseum to essentially distract and please the Roman people the Roman Empire clearly would not have lasted as long as it did.
According to J.S. Mills he would object because the rights of the minority are being violated, that being life. Even
today there are examples of this, perhaps torturing a terrorist to save thousands of lives, somethings we overlook such as the exploitation of celebrities lives and deaths. In that case their privacy is violated but since its the greatest good for the greatest number of people its all good right?

(mrmanley) said:

Friday 19, February 2010, 2:58 pm

I think that a utilitarian could condemn this on the grounds that you cannot derive the greatest amount of pleasure from others suffering. Ultimately more is being sacrificed in this scenario than what first meets the eye. Of course, there are some that are getting temporary happiness, but this by no means is maximum happiness or anything close to it. They are, in actuality, sacrificing their security and degrading the value of a human life. This creates more suffering and pain than what is provided by the coliseum. Security and the value of a human life may not be as commensurable as the visible and measurable happiness of the cheering spectators, but ultimately it creates a balance of pleasure that is in favor of condemning an activity such as throwing the Christians to the lions.

(tmacka) said:

Monday 15, February 2010, 4:31 pm

Discussion Guide, Beginner

Episode 2

Let’s continue the discussion of utilitarianism. According to Jeremy Bentham’s principle of utility, we should always do whatever will produce the greatest amount of happiness. Is that right? Consider the following questions, and ask yourself whether they point to a defect in the doctrine of utilitarianism.

1.

Suppose we have to choose between building a new sports stadium and building a new hospital. Should we build the stadium if there are many more sports fans than sick people? What about the sick people? Aren’t we sacrificing their interests?
2.

Suppose we have million of government money. We can use it either to build a new school for one thousand children, or to buy one million ice cream cones for one million children. Should we buy the ice cream cones, if that would produce the greatest balance of pleasure? Are all pleasures created equal?
3.

What if the majority of the members of a community derive pleasure from being racist? Should we let them be racist, if that would produce the greatest balance of pleasure? Are some pleasures objectionable?
4.

Suppose you have to move to Boston or to Las Vegas. If you move to Boston, you’ll fall in love and get married. If you move to Vegas, you’ll get rich but stay single. Should you move to Vegas, if being rich gives you more pleasure? Are all pleasures commensurable?
5.

John Stuart Mill, a utilitarian, says that we should protect individual rights because, in the long run, that is the best way to increase the sum of happiness. Is that true? Is that really the reason why you shouldn’t imprison and torture innocent people?
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(Csmget) said:

Wednesday 17, February 2010, 12:29 pm

1. The hospital would be a wiser choice in the long run. It is logical to think that there are always going to be people that are ill. To take away their fundamental right to life is wrong in exchange for a bunch of loud, obnoxious drunks that waste their lives away rooting for their favorite team. Sure a nice new stadium has its economic benefits but is it really worth someones life over tailgating, booze and cheering?
2. A million dollar school please! In the long run the benefits of the school would outweigh the satisfied taste buds of a million children or less. (lactose intolerance anyone?)Education is the basis of society and is proven to have overwhelming benefits. Plus the people out of the million dollar school can make more ice cream for everyone, among other useful things.
3. Well under the Constitution yes let them be racist as long as they are not inciting an immediate lawless action its legal. But is it right? No judging someone upon their race is fundamentally wrong (but ironically natural), in this case I agree with Mills, the minority's rights should be protected despite the fact its the greatest number of good. A life is a life whatever race, color or creed.
4. I would most defiantly take the money. With money you could do so much more for your self and the world. Look at Bill Gates, Brad Pitt and other wealthy people, they use their money to donate to charities, build communities etc etc. How is being married to one person and being in love help the world. Pump out some babies maybe. Also, marriage is only for economic stability for the couple. Its not some invention to express the epitome of love sorry romantics its all about the money, and will never change. If you want a lot less stress in your life don't get married its a hassle. No not all pleasures are equal some have more benefits than others its a simple fact. Lets say you have a choice of saving someones life or getting a dollar, both benefits right? But they are surely not equal.
5. History will tell that protecting the rights of the minority has brought overwhelming benefits to society. New ideas, "new" sources of money/revenue, and overall the freedom of these granted rights are spread. As mentioned before the majority's decision is not always the morally right decision and cannot always be followed. For example is it right for you to join in a KKK mob to lynch a minority, nope! Wrongful imprisonment and torture are wrong because the government could easily abuse that power to imprison whom ever they wish to, resulting in a happy go lucky
totalitarian government.

(tmacka) said:

Friday 19, February 2010, 9:17 am

Your answers indicate that you may not totally agree with utilitarianism. What precisely do you see as the flaw?
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(Unregistered) said:

Friday 19, February 2010, 2:39 pm

1. We should build the hospital because the sports stadium only pleases a target audience, whereas the hospital will provide happiness for more people over time than the stadium because everyone gets sick. If the decision is made to build the stadium then the measure of utility is out of balance. Utility strives to get the maximum amount of happiness and the least amount of pain, the stadium would result in some happiness, that of the fans, but would come also with a large amount of pain, that of the sick people. Whereas, the hospital would produce happiness, and much less pain. It is a better balance.
2. Although the ice cream cones would provide more initial happiness, the school would provide more happiness over time because it will continue to provide education year after year whereas the ice cream will be gone in a matter of minutes.
3. I don’t think that they should be allowed to be racist. Pleasures that are derived from inflicting pain on others are definitely objectionable and even though the majority is racist, I believe that the suffering of the minority outweighs that pleasure. Also, it is important to protect individual rights because as J.S. Mill said, that will increase the sum of happiness.
4. In this situation it is a personal decision as to what would make you more happy. If being rich is more desirable then move to Vegas, if happiness that comes in other forms, such as love, is then Boston would be the obvious choice. It is important in a decision like this to recognize that not all pleasures are commensurable. Love and family can’t be measured using a general standard that would allow it to be easily compared to the money made in Las Vegas. So, what it really comes down to is what the individual personally feels would make them ultimately more happy.
5. I think that J.S. Mill is right in saying that protecting individual rights increases the sum of happiness. I think that everyone benefits from the protection of human rights, and that is the greatest good for the greatest number of people. It may seem like by imprisoning and torturing innocent people you are sacrificing the one to provide happiness for the many. But, in actuality sacrificing the rights of one is jeopardizing the rights of many and that is much worse the good provided by sacrificing those rights. Therefore in order to balance pleasure, you need to ensure the rights of everyone because having individual rights is what gives us the opportunity to pursue our own happiness.
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(tmacka) said:

Friday 19, February 2010, 5:36 pm

It appears, at least in your answer to number 4, that you reject utilitarianism. Because getting married may lead to happiness of the immediate family, although even that is very uncertain given the high rate of divorce. Clearly winning the money would lead to more overall happiness. Correct?

(mrmanley) said:

Saturday 20, February 2010, 1:22 pm

I don't think that money necessarily equates to happiness. Either choice could make someone happy or unhappy. I mean, utililty is getting the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people, and reducing pain in the greatest number of people. Well, here you have just one person deciding what makes them happy. That's a personal choice, so I would think that whatever their decision is is utilitarian because they are making the decision that maximizes their happiness. And, if in both cases they would be happy than I would think that technically speaking a family would be more utilitarian because there are more happy people involved than the single happy person in Las Vegas.

(mrmanley) said:

Saturday 20, February 2010, 1:29 pm

Also, I wouldn't say that I reject utilitarianism. I just think that it is a concept that is open to interpretation. I don't believe that it is easy to judge what will in actuality create the greatest amount of happiness, and I think that when considering a lot of these scenarios time needs to be taken into consideration. I know that Bentham said that all pleasures are created equal, but I have to disagree. Yes, you may be able to make more people happy immediately with a certain decision, but the alternative decision might make more people happy over time. I just think that utility and pleasure is worth more when you continuously make people happy, rather than provide them with a brief moment of pleasure.

(mrmanley) said:

Friday 19, February 2010, 2:41 pm

sorry that unregistered one is me (mikia) i forgot to log in
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(elhulverson) said:

Sunday 21, February 2010, 12:50 pm

1. According to Bentham we would have to choose to build the sports stadium, but I think that most people would agree that the right thing to do would be to build a hospital. Long term, I think the hospital would end up servicing a huge amount of people, and even if this number ends up being less than the number of people who use the sports stadium, building the hospital would be the morally right thing. I would say this definitely points to a defect in the doctrine of utilitarianism, but still, according to Bentham, we would have to build the sports stadium. If you take morality out of the picture, I think he is completely right, but how many people are going to die without a sports stadium versus how many will die without the hospital.
2. I think that in this case, even though the ice cream cones would provide happiness for the greatest number of people, the school would obviously last longer and therefore benefit a greater number of people, jsut over a longer period of time.
3. Sure, let them be racist. Constitutionally, they have the right to be. Obviously we all think that being racist is morally wrong, but I guess if a majority of the people gain pleasure from being racist then let them be racist. Realistically, if this were the case the people who they were racist against would move out of, or just never move into, the community, so it probably would never cause very big issues. I'm not condoning being racist or encouraging racism, and I'm fairly positive we will all agree that this specific example is morally objectionable, but in this case, I would say you do have to allow them to be racists and make the majority happy.
4. Obviously you should do whatever makes you as an individual happier. If you get greater happiness from money and marriage you should move to Vegas, and visa versa. Not all pleasures are commensurable. In this instance, I think it is a completely personal opinion based decision.
5. I agree that protection of individual rights will definitely increase the overall sum of happiness. I would also say, that contradictory to Mikia, by acrificing the individual rights of one person you are protecting the majority, thus creating the greatest good for the greatest number of people. I kind of have a problem with this question though, because I don't believe it is very often that we actually imprison and torture completely innocent people. Sometimes they may not be completely guilty of the crime that we are punishing them for, but we had reason to suspect them, so they must have been doing something a little sketchy. I think we all know from class discussions that I do believe in imprisonment and torture of one individual if it can lead to benefit of a larger group of people, and the opinion/stance remains true in this case.
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(tmacka) said:

Monday 22, February 2010, 10:46 am

Yes, but weren't the Christian in the above example doing something "sketchy" for the time? i.e practicing Christianity? So clearly the greater good is being served much like sacrificing the individual rights of the people that you described? Are the two situations analogous?

(Unregistered) said:

Monday 8, March 2010, 9:24 pm

(Unregistered) said:

Wednesday 2, June 2010, 8:21 am

Yes absolutely, the acts of the Romans in this situation were anything but good. Killing mankind for pleasure is an evil act. The utilitarian believes that they can capture the essence of benevolent behavior. Killing Christians for fun is not benevolent behavior in anyway shape or form. It is simply an uncompassionate evil act. The Romans cannot subscribe to the utilitarian view because their hearts are corrupt; they are not capable of ethical fair judgment.
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(Unregistered) said:

Monday 5, July 2010, 9:50 am

Let's consider the BP oil spill or other environmental consequences that can result from decisions made purely by cost/benefit analysis.

The survey examples applying a value to enduring various painful events were conducted when the world was a much simpler place for most people. The questions were asked before nuclear bombs were dropped on Japan, before corporations created massive toxic waste sites all over the country, before hydraulic fracturing for natural gas extraction had the potential to pollute watersheds used by millions.

These survey questions were asked in a time before the actions of a few could cause vastly more suffering than they could ever possibly pay for by selling off their corporation's assets and cashing in all its stock.

What happens when your cost/benefit analysis not only affects someone's current livelihood. What happens when it affects the unborn members of a future generation?

We do not live in the 1930s anymore. We don't live in ancient Rome. We can certainly use the past to guide us, but using the past as proof for the future is a dangerous idea. On Thanksgiving, ask the turkey who had previously lived his entire life being fed daily by a farmer if his past experiences could prove his future.

Cost/benefit analysis is fine for simple situations. Utilitarianism might have been an acceptable philosophy for the 17-1800s. But, as the world becomes more complex and the risks of people's actions are more interconnected and powerful, we must re-examine our philosophy.
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(Unregistered) said:

Friday 23, July 2010, 4:30 am

EXCUSE ME.Who can tell me why can't I see the radio above? i'm a student from Asia
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Hull CONLAW group Discussion Circle

Comments (17)

(tmacka) said:

Monday 15, February 2010, 4:28 pm

(Csmget) said:

Wednesday 17, February 2010, 11:58 am

(mrmanley) said:

Friday 19, February 2010, 2:58 pm

(tmacka) said:

Monday 15, February 2010, 4:31 pm

(Csmget) said:

Wednesday 17, February 2010, 12:29 pm

(tmacka) said:

Friday 19, February 2010, 9:17 am

Your answers indicate that you may not totally agree with utilitarianism. What precisely do you see as the flaw?
reply

(Unregistered) said:

Friday 19, February 2010, 2:39 pm

(tmacka) said:

Friday 19, February 2010, 5:36 pm

(mrmanley) said:

Saturday 20, February 2010, 1:22 pm

(mrmanley) said:

Saturday 20, February 2010, 1:29 pm

(mrmanley) said:

Friday 19, February 2010, 2:41 pm

sorry that unregistered one is me (mikia) i forgot to log in
reply

(elhulverson) said:

Sunday 21, February 2010, 12:50 pm

(tmacka) said:

Monday 22, February 2010, 10:46 am

(Unregistered) said:

Monday 8, March 2010, 9:24 pm

(Unregistered) said:

Wednesday 2, June 2010, 8:21 am

(Unregistered) said:

Monday 5, July 2010, 9:50 am

(Unregistered) said:

Friday 23, July 2010, 4:30 am

EXCUSE ME.Who can tell me why can't I see the radio above? i'm a student from Asia
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Yuanchao Chi Discussion Circle

Comments (13)

(Unregistered) said:

Monday 8, March 2010, 9:15 pm

(Unregistered) said:

Saturday 8, May 2010, 10:07 am

In defense of Ford and the Pinto case, assume that there are 8,761 ways that a collision can cause death in a Pinto. Some of those risks occur with greater frequency. In all of those cases, some amount of $$ can reduce the risk of death. Assuming a finite budget for spending on safety (going over this limit will result in no Pinto sales), how does Ford decide which risks to address by engineering $$. Is not the ethically correct method of making decisions to minimize the number of deaths based on the frequency of the risks.
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(Unregistered) said:

Friday 4, June 2010, 12:51 am

"What if the Christians were drugged and were not capable of feeling pain or fear? I consider this to be morally wrong but I guess from a utilitarian point of view it is not."

That's a good question -- is an 'equation' changed if whoever's feeling pain is drugged? If you were to take an orphan, drug him, and kill him (excuse the bluntness), he wouldn't be able to feel emotional pain in an unconscious state; he wouldn't be able to feel physical pain. So morality changes with a little anaesthetic?
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(Unregistered) said:

Monday 19, July 2010, 10:51 pm

How many romans would need to enter a lottery for one to be sacrificed for the others entertainment?
Wouldnt that ignore the preferences of the christian? Every action or inaction has risks, Why not include the risks and preferences the Christian during his life?
Extrapolation/Interpolation may not apply but it can be bounded. Perhaps if he took 1/10^10 risk while working, he could be selected from 10^10 copies of himself and each copy paid the usual wage.
However, none of this reflects the time spent earning a living. Let him spend the usual amount of time doing whatever he prefers.
Finally a solution I can accept. Oh wait I might have forgotten suffering, prestige, ...

Ask the christian for consent and bargain for the price! If the christian says no, clearly the net gain by the romans is less than the net loss of the christian.
One problem, people are notoriously bad at knowing what they want. Often cases would still seem unethical even if the victim agreed.

Conclusion: Groups of people face the same necessity to decide as the individual. The goal should not be a perfect system that reflects all values but one that reflects the aggregate of the peoples values.

PS: Dont people choose to smoke? The tobacco company is saying, we can give people what they want and save you money. How many smokers were outraged at this analysis?
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(Unregistered) said:

Monday 26, July 2010, 4:17 am

I think part of the questions can be answered adding the freedom, freedom of information and responsibility. If the car industry Ford informed the people about the dangers of the fuel tank, the people would have bought less cars which in that calculation it would have result in less profit and then in favour of adding some security device into the car.
So the free information would have pushed Ford to make the "right" choice.
This is to say that there is a moral duty of free information which solve some problems. This can be added to Utilitarianism as a factor x on value so no profit can overcome its benefit.
In a free democratic system it's not the majorty who choose but a well informed majority.
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(Unregistered) said:

Sunday 15, August 2010, 1:10 pm

Of course we put money figures on lives. We could ban to drive cars. No car accidents would happen, but it would cost more than it would save!
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(Unregistered) said:

Wednesday 25, August 2010, 8:01 am

A quick Google of the Kansas question, which seems very questionable as presented, reveals the following reference
http://academics.rmu.edu/~paul/research/2003/worm.pdf
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(Unregistered) said:

Tuesday 31, August 2010, 3:17 am

how can I watch the video?
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(Unregistered) said:

Tuesday 31, August 2010, 2:22 pm

How can you not watch the video? It should autoplay. What problem are you having? Have you watched Episode 1?

(Unregistered) said:

Monday 13, September 2010, 3:34 pm

Some comments:
I find it fascinating that in our culture we use money as our measure and that we have to “measure” to find an "answer" - even that we have to find an answer. Money is so central in our culture that we have to reduce everything to a dollar value, and that's the only way we can measure it, at least according to the utilitarian view. The utilitarian view ignores our humanity which is the thing that makes us different, the thing that gives us the ability to make difficult, painful choices because those choices are right. It completely removes any moral compass and replaces it with a calculus based on the almighty dollar. This or course makes sense when you consider how we have made money our new religion.
What if we stepped outside the box of our culture and looked at these issues then. I think then we might either laugh at the silliness of it or be appalled.
So much of the outcome of the utilitarian approach is based on the arbitrary values placed on people and things. Change the values and the whole outcome changes. It's a wonderful way for the intellectual who is not self aware to put a favorable calculation on their bias, and because it's been calculated mathematically it must be right.
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(Unregistered) said:

Friday 15, October 2010, 2:46 am

my god, im not even an enlglish language native and i still speak it a lot better then these "students". American university student value is very low, this debate is a 10th grade high-school level where i come from.
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(Unregistered) said:

Sunday 24, October 2010, 10:10 am

I think we're missing the big picture from all of these examples. From throwing someone to the lions to not fixing a gas tank, we shouldn't think about the gain as a singular event, whether its laughs, cheers, or phone conversations with family or friends or even business deals, but rather, the consequence of the action in a global sense. Immanuel Kant, described it as "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law." How long would those cheers last if people from the crowd were thrown to the lions, and would you keep talking on your cell phone if you caused an accident by which the people in the other that died, happen to be your family members.

I don't see why categorical imperative can’t compliment utiliterialism; we should be able to use both to answer some of these complex situations. For example, would it make sense for humans to witness human suffering; (seeing a man get eaten by lions), perhaps at that moment it will bring cheers but the ultimate result, the big picture, deterioration of human emotion and care for another human's wellbeing and therefore as Jeremy Bentham would say, it is a negative impact on the greater good, at least in the long run. The same can be said about Ford's decision to put a price on life, is that “greater good” for the “global” long term or for the individual short term? It is necessary to "globally" account for the long term implications of our actions, which could very well mean having to place a value figure on life, so long as all implications have been considered.
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(Unregistered) said:

Saturday 6, November 2010, 6:00 am

I think higher and lower pleasures are relative to culture, time and society.
-A piece of art can be rubbish and not valued.
-Shakespeare has the same jokes and humor of our modern Simpsons (if you read romeo and juliet, you can be disgusted by his low language!! far away from our expetation).
Dario
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