The Ends of Utility

Utilitarianism seeks to maximize utility, generally thought of as some combination of happiness and suffering. But happiness and suffering are, like all of human cognition, the product of evolution. We feel happy when we experience things that tended to perpetuate our genetic lineage: warmth, good food (especially with high caloric content), time with friends and family, sex and love, etc. We suffer when we experience things that will tend to reduce our evolutionary fitness: starvation, physical damage, or social isolation. The things that make us happy and those that make us suffer do so for a reason.

And these evolutionary motives predate subjective experience. It’s tempting to say that we find evolutionary fitness good because it tends to align with happiness, but to justify the moral goodness of evolutionary fitness in this way is circular: we are made happy by increasing our evolutionary fitness [i]because that feeling increased our ancestor’s evolutionary fitness[i].

How, then, can these things be the moral monads that utilitarianism holds them out to be? It is often true, for example, that we are wrong to be happy. We are wrong to get so much joy from sugary foods, because we evolved in a calorie-scarce world, and our continued addiction to getting calories when we can is harmful. We can be about suffering as well, such as when we receive medical care that inflicts pain to preserve our functioning in the long run. Explaining why these things are good is straightforward by reference to their evolutionary benefits, but when we try to turn it into utilitarian language, we have to twist what we mean by ‘happy’ and ‘sad’, or read in some time-value function of happiness to reduce the value of the present happiness that an individual experiences on the first hit of a 64oz slurpee.

The moral foundation of utilitarianism in subjective experience is wrong, because we know why we have the subjective experiences that we do, and we can trump those experiences by pointing out that we are mislead by our evolutionary history. Our utility is worth maximizing only to the degree that that also maximizes our fitness. Fitness, then, is the true foundation of the good.

Nice post.

Yes, utilitarianism is so over-simplistic as to be borderline retarded. Improper for any serious philosopher to think that way. Which isn’t to say that utility concerns are irrelevant; of course they’re relevant. A lot of things are relevant for one reason or another, yet have no significant philosophical (truth) quality.

Also, fitness only matters secondarily, as “utility”. Fitness is the bitch of truth. But anyway.

I think my argument is almost going in the opposite direction, Void: utilitarianism is a good moral system, but because the utility it prizes can be demonstrated to be instrumental, i.e. selected for because of its practical consequences, it’s reasonable to conclude that it’s those consequences, rather than the utility itself, which are the actual locus of moral value.

But Carleas, don’t you think your OP renders utilitarianism absurd? Happiness, well-being, pleasure etc. are things we can all relate to as being in some sense good. Mere genetic continuance, however, is not. Thus there must at least be a foundation for the goodness of fitness. This could then be the true foundation of the good.

Battery cage chickens have tremendous fitness.

As in most domains, I think there are degrees of wrongness in moral philosophy. Utilitarianism might be wrong, but it’s wrong in the way that Newtonian physics is wrong, i.e. it’s effectively right for all common experiences.

And utilitarianism has the benefit of being intuitive. Without having recourse to any absolute source of moral authority (i.e. without a god who decrees morality), utilitarianism still works because I know what pain feels like, and I can imagine what your pain feels like and give it moral weight. I think that’s a valuable foundation, even if ultimately I think the system can’t stop at happiness and suffering, and has to look to why those subjective feelings exist to see what morality is really about.

I actually not sure we can stop at fitness either. But my present purpose is just to argue that utilitarianism can’t be the whole story, because fitness is the clear ends of utility.

The problem is that the exact purpose is always left up in the air and thus in the real world, narrow minded selfishness takes the lead.

And vsvrsa. Evolution is in part caused by happiness and suffering.

The evolution process is a partially self-supporting (“circular”) process. Joy in a particular kind of life perpetuates that kind of life. And that kind of life perpetuates joyfulness. Of course the ambient physical environment has a large impact as well.

But the fitness of what and who?

Current globalism promotes that “the good” is the fitness of world order, regardless of how many people must suffer and die or simply be exterminated.

Socialist and communist systems require that individual fitness is merely subservient to the fitness of the higher social order (the wealthy and/or powerful). If the fitness of individuals gets in the way of the fitness of the higher order, individuals are to suffer. That is what the world is experiencing right now.

So as of today, “The Ends of Utility” is already in practice global dominion.

This is hard to square with evolutionary history. We have pretty good reason to believe that evolution was taking place on earth for millions of years before the advent of organisms complex enough to experience happiness and suffering.

But I think you’re right about the circularity of evolution; happiness and suffering are products of evolution, and they in turn drive human evolution. Perhaps the best examples are where the circular pattern leads to non-adaptive adaptations, e.g. sheep with horns so big they can’t lift their heads.

In fact, that circularity is a good way to re-frame my thesis here: by treating instrumental adaptations as ends, utilitarianism is non-adaptively circular, seeking to increase the instrumental adaptation with out regard for its actual adaptive purpose.

For present purposes, I’m OK leaving this as an open question. I’ve been mulling an answer, but it’s not really ready for prime time.

I will say that it can’t be a specific set of individuals. The elites can’t survive without the poor. I’d argue that humans should be thought of, at least in part, as a collective species, similar to ants or bees. The human social order is complex, individuals are dependent on each other for most needs, and there is so much order in the network that e.g. the economy starts to look a lot like the networks at work within individuals. If cells are to humans as humans are to society, then a proper moral system should put some value in society in and of itself, and not just because it provides for individuals.

Yes. It is certainly not PC to speak of the immutable fact that the utility of humanity is to serve and feed the elite (Time Machine: Morlock vs Eloi).

Yes but the analogy is not a perfect one. Ants and bees work collectively for the greater good of the colony. There is no deviation from that. Now humans
are rather too individualistic for true collectivism to actually work. It is not that we cannot cooperate with others when required to do so as we obviously
can rather that we cannot do it exclusively so. But if human society was run like ant or bee colonies then it would be more effective even if individualism
would have to be sacrificed in the process as a consequence of this

Exactly.

The end resulting purpose of ant or bee-like behavior (requiring ant or bee like mentality) is merely and only to serve the Queen’s society. That is exactly why such socialist behavior has been promoted throughout England and the USA.

Dumb down all humans to be no more than large ants and you have what certain elitists believe to be their ideal Utopian eternal society.

I don’t follow this annotation. Do evolving clays and slime mold ‘experience’ happiness and suffering, and merely fail to ‘comprehend’ it? On what basis can you make that claim?

It seems like the difference is mostly in the way reproduction occurs. Most ants don’t reproduce, but are clones of the ants that do, so their individual interest is identical with the interest of the colony. But ants involved in reproduction do appear to ‘cheat’, at least on the genetic level.

And it’s important not to be anthropocentric in our description of the differences. It’s possible to describe the behavior of soldiers in war in terms of individual motives, but if we were ants we might only see the human hive sending drones to sacrifice themselves in defense of the collective. Similarly, we could say that following pheromone trails is what makes an individual ant ‘happy’, and so it is only in pursuit of its individual self-interest that it performs its role within ant society.

Moreover, if we compare humans in relation to their memes with ants in relation to their genes, we avoid the obvious differences in genetic reproduction that lead to the differences you point out.

I would say it’s better to look at how the collective behaves, and by that metric we see: collective action, emergent behaviors, dependence on cooperation, etc., all indicative of a collective organism. The systems resemble each other, and more importantly resemble systems like brains that we see in individuals.

I presume you mean evolutionary fitness - ability to attract a fertile, healthy mate, and then to breed and raise fertile, healthy offspring (or at least breed them such as to ensure they’ll be raised well)?

I’m not sure how this translates to any universal conception of good, as it’s familiar to most people. A general guide (which strains a little in unusual situations) is the golden rule, to do as you would be done by. On the contrary; since reproduction is competitive, there’s no particular evolutionary motive for universality. Polygyny is good for every male, but for each one it’s bad for every other male. Am I understanding you correctly?

I’m moreso saying that we can’t accept that happiness and suffering are the bases of any universal conception of the good, without at the same time admitting that fitness is the real basis. Happiness and suffering are evolved and instrumental, they encourage actions that increase individual fitness: avoiding injury, seeking sex and nutrients and allies. If we take as a given that other people’s happiness and suffering matter (as utilitarianism and the golden rule do), we must conclude that their fitness matters, since their happiness and suffering are merely instrumental in furthering their fitness.

I do think there’s a strong case that, on purely selfish grounds, supporting others’ fitness is beneficial to ones own fitness (polygyny destabilizes the social order as well, and an unstable society is bad for me and my offspring), but I don’t think we even need to get there. I’m not trying to justify utilitarianism, but to start there: if utility-for-all is good, then fitness-for-all must be a more fundamental good.

Carleas,

What does your definition of fitness look like?

I mean fitness in the evolutionary sense: survival and reproduction.

Why survive and reproduce, to what end, to what good benefit? Will the planet suffer if we are not fit? Will this or other galaxies suffer without us?

[Note: the first part of this post, before the double colon, was written in a heightened state.]

“While it [English utilitarianism] recognizes the fundamental character of egoism, it does not realize the fact that egoism is will to power and hence includes cruelty which, as cruelty directed toward oneself, is effective in intellectual probity, in ‘the intellectual conscience’.” (Strauss 1973 pp. 188-89.)

So it recognizes that egoism (the individual’s concern with its own suffering and pleasure) is fundamental to human affairs, yet it does not realize the fundamental fact or phenomenon of that egoism; it does not actualize the cutting tone with which that mouth continues to mould the mask. The creator, the poet among men is acutely aware at the same time of his conflict with his precursors–his both feeding off them and

What we have to determine upon, Carleas, is what makes the propagation of our species good. And indeed, we can come up with no better answer than our pleasure in our picture of those who have inscribed their names and the question marks behind those names most intriguingly into the annals of history.

The body of knowledge a philosopher or “mind” leaves behind is the blueprint or mugshot (side and cross sections, as in architecture) of the memorabilities, the mindworthies, of his actualization or breasted idea of possibility, the hope of the potential entrusted in him. This is the drying poll of grass from which he hangs, the precipice on which he stands, the flowers he finds on his plateau, where he has retired well on the outskirts. The other side, the land he sees on the depths is none other than the high standard he forces his eyes open to behold–to be able to hold those giants, if only on the horizon.

What is the survival of the race worth if it evolves into something more akin to, say, chickens (the ugly example from my previous post) than to gods? If our ideal of man no longer contrasts with his reality, if we no longer conceive that reality as at least divided between monkey and angel? A monkey cannot fall in our estimation, we always know we can expect monkey business from him; it would be unfair to him to demand any different from him, unless it be like a dog we discipline with simple conditioning. And even toward dogs we like to act mock-offended by their falling short of the image we hold dear of them.

Here is the paradox. If we could be sufficiently cruel to ourselves to see man’s actual reality, that could steel us for forcing our ideal on him, like a bed of Procustes. We would be hardened by the horror, the ugliness and boredom of that reality. Only this cycle, of forcing ourselves to be sufficiently strong, can justify that reality to us. In fact, we are not free to choose a life of comfort–not without at least having this “voluntary” discomfort, these thought experiments so uncomfortable to others.

Our task today, we philosophers, as I understand it, is to will our own power precisely by embracing the creation of weak men:

We must will that creation in order to “see man’s actual reality”. But

::

I think I was intending to say something like, “But of the essence of man’s actual reality is his idealism.” But if man’s idealism, his wishfulness, is understood as will to power, we can still divine something great even in weak men, even if they blind themselves to themselves.

However that may be, Strauss immediately continues:

“To recognize the crucial importance of cruelty is indispensable if ‘the terrible basic text homo natura’, ‘that eternal basic text’ is again to be seen, if man is to be ‘re-translated into nature’.”

Can we find the will to power even in weak men, in soft men, in wishy-washy men? This alone would suffice for us to affirm them.

Then we will want them to recur in the next cycle, even if they seek, blindly or not, to break out of the cycle.

What’s intrinsically valuable is strong men, not good times. Indeed, all strength, even that of weak men!

Hard times are simply times that are stronger than weak men. Same for hard men.

Good times are simply times adapted by strong men.

Human kind are the custodians of the Earth and the care givers for one another. Whatever times we are in (good, hard, etc.), we are failing in both those noblest aforementioned endeavors. Will to power does not exist without the will to self-control. Mankind will not master squat until he learns to master himself, man will remain the petulant monkey up to its monkey business that harms all in the long run by chasing this will to power outside of himself.

You said that utility only matters to the degree that it maximises fitness. So, happiness from being kept in a semi-comatose drug-induced high doesn’t count, I think most people would agree there.

What about happiness from excelling at chess? If you know a similar chess scene to the one I know, there are a lot of people especially at the top end who are not overly prone to reproducing, and whose time might be better spent exercising, eating well and socialising than studying openings and endgames, if that is your criteria. What about pick-up artist types whose aim is to have as much sex with attractive women as possible? Is it then better for them to stealthily remove their condom (if they wear one at all) mid-coitus? Lifestyle “bad habits” that generally only kill one after reproduction and parenting age are morally neutral?

The difficulty in extrapolating historical evolutionary success to moral value is that the end justifies the means. Evolutionary success is an amoral fact, rather than a guide to behaviour that requires any empathy - various populations with various mating strategies will have a given percentage of infidelity, dishonesty, violence and coercion woven into its history.

Stability often comes at the expense of freedom. Is there room for freedom as a good, if reproductive fitness is what counts? Wouldn’t we be better off assigned to a partner with an optimum genetic match and fertility?

In a physical, a real, an objective, a mechanistic way, do you understand of what happiness is made?
I am pretty certain that you do not.

Without answering that question, you cannot say which came first, the chicken or the joy of birth.