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How Utilitarian are You? quiz

Started by Sandra Craft, January 15, 2018, 03:12:04 AM

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Dave

#15
Quote from: Icarus on January 15, 2018, 11:31:31 PM
39....  Those are tricky questions that do not make allowance for circumstances that alter cases.  The questions are quite probing and might lead us to examining  more extended thought.

I rarely find the questions in these surveys satisfactory, as you say, I carus, moet things requiring these sort of decisions are full of influences. It is only when in a situation that one can make a real decision.

Not quite utilitarianism but the forces officer selection boards had some difficult questions, but they were binary, not nuanced. (Designed to probe fast decision making ability and test powers of determination at holding to the decision.)

In the sort of cases here my taking a serious risk with my life, 90% non-survivable ssy, would be different for a fellow old fart than it would be for a kid. Different for just anyone than for an acknowledged leader in cardiac surgery.

I always thought that "the benefit to the most" was part of utilitariansm. This implies a value on people, you save the surgeon over the tramp, the potential of the child over the fully spent life - no matter how famous. If, in your opinion, you yourself have more potential to benefit this world than the potential victim . . .

I do not feel that "good deeds for their own sake" are necessarily part of utilitarianism. Perhaps I practice a kind of "pragmatic utilitarianism"?

Hermes is doing work that might well benefit mankind if one of his customers makes an important discovery. (My voluntary work is a "sacrifice" but hardly in the same potential benefit category.) That he can continue to do so with a dodgy, even painful, hip disqualifies him morally, IMHO, from expecting another to suffer greater disability for his benefit. Should, however, his very life depend on a sacrifice on the part of another the matter is different. If, say, a kidney if involved - the loss of which would place both at a near equal risk (Hermes being also at risk from the factors involved in possible tissue rejection) - then the decision is, relatively, simpler.

In that latter case the sacrifice of another might have potential for both to provide over-all benefit by enabling Hermes' work to carry on and the potential of the other to continue to exist.

But, alttruism? When Hermes' trainee discovers the elixir of life and acknowledges Hermes' part in that discovery does the person who made the kidney sacrifice also have a right to expect a little kudos to come their way, for enabling Hermes to give the discoverer the knowledge he needed? Where does reward, concrete or abstract, figure in this?

[Corrective editing - I notice that there is a short period for such where the "Last edit..." indicator does not appesr]
Tomorrow is precious, don't ruin it by fouling up today.
Passed Monday 10th Dec 2018 age 74

xSilverPhinx

I am what survives if it's slain - Zack Hemsey


Dragonia

I got a 26, and didn't like the questions at all. But now I have a better understanding of Utilitarianism, thanks to that link from Hermes. 
These questions bring to mind old childhood fears about the "end of the world" when the Antichrist's minions would get a hold of me and force me to make terrible choices.
Thanks Mom! Thanks Church!
Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. ~ Plato (?)

Sandra Craft

Quote from: Dragonia on January 16, 2018, 02:08:01 PM
I got a 26, and didn't like the questions at all. But now I have a better understanding of Utilitarianism, thanks to that link from Hermes. 
These questions bring to mind old childhood fears about the "end of the world" when the Antichrist's minions would get a hold of me and force me to make terrible choices.
Thanks Mom! Thanks Church!

Yeah, the questions leave a lot out that could change the answers significantly.  For instance, many of the questions centered on sacrificing one, or a few people, for the good of the many and it seems to me that the utilitarian-ness of the answer was based on the assumption that you'd consider yourself one of the many being benefited. 

But what if you looked at it from the opposite point of view -- as one of the few who might be sacrificed for the presumed good of the many?  That was my point of view, which I think would make my answers in favor of sparing the few a good deal more utilitarian than my result suggests.
Sandy

  

"Life is short, and it is up to you to make it sweet."  Sarah Louise Delany

Ecurb Noselrub

19.  I'm apparently non-utilitarian.