I think many of the debates on this forum come down to an unwillingness to acknowledge the title of this OP. People seem to feel that if they opt to make a decision that goes against a strict cost benefit analysis, because of a matter of principle, than that is the end of it. The principle has infinite utils.

But that need not be the case. Principles can often have a finite value that has weight in the cost benefit analysis, but not infinite weight. And if you acknowledge that it means that you will sometimes wind up choosing the decision indicated by the cost benefit analysis because that argument is so strong in some particular case that it overrides the principle that you have to disavow when its all weighed up.

People don't like to be put into this situation because it seems that they would then be ignoring their principles. But that is not true. They are just putting a finite weight on that particular principle. In some cases that weight might not overcome the weight of practical considerations. But there is no reason to feel guilty when you encounter that situation and behave accordingly. It doesn't mean you have abandoned the principle.

It means you are following a higher principle and this requires diligence and education to execute properly. We can call this a principle of greater good. It may be inhibited by arrogance if one doesnt study things and their impact longer term properly. A principle may interact with other principles and attain higher effective utility than originally thought, so this requires a good understanding of a system that is evolving and proves complex often.

People have rules and absolute principles because its safe and they are lazy and not prepared (or unable constrained by luck and life stresses) to do the hard work to know if something is better, moreover the deviations it invites.

Its like the non religious scientific thinker that derives ethics with a greater analytical effort and can improve on religious ethics provided they do not get arrogant and lazy. It is harder to be an ethical non religious higher conscience and consciousness person than a rules abiding religious person. It is also more rewarding if successful. For people that are lazy or not confident thinkers, following absolute principles proves easier.

With more refined ethics comes greater responsibility to avoid hubris.

There is some of this. Maybe it's more the idea that Tom alluded to in the torture thread that there's something wrong with people who are not too disgusted to think about it, which has some some limited truth although it's mostly misguided. It's not put quite as strongly as that but some do seem to believe they are better people for resisting thinking about it dispassionately.

There's also a real concern about slippery slopes - that if the principle is conceded in argument then that may help with it being conceded in practice, and in practice there is a vicious slippery slope. That's part of the reason for suggesting a bee sting type approach to where there is a cost to people who break the principle in practice.

Not everyone is a utilitarian. Not everyone stands behind a Rawlsian wall.

You can probably substitute "no one" for "not everyone" there.

Rawlsian veil.

Considering justice from the perspective of the veil of ignorance is a very good idea and should be encouraged. No-one expect most people to behave exactly that way when they are involved, maybe that's why one good veiled idea that is implemented a fair bit is not to give ourselves that choice - most people agree with this unless they are already involved.

i.e generally people agree that everyone being equal under the law is a good idea. They may not like it very much when it's them on the wrong side of the law but they will generally agree that no-one should be able to manipulate it to their advantage except for some who expect to enjoy a big advantage.

Yep.

Consider immigration laws.

"Non-utilitarian principles can have finite utilities (If we convert them into terms in a utilitarian expression)"

Kind of defeats the point of calling them non-utilitarian right?

I would rather have any other monopoly than the utilities.

I do, alot recently it's a hot topic

The point seems to apply here quite well. It happens to be hard as well - what do we think the best immigration policy is under the veil of ignorance?

It could tackle some conceptual confusions and unify different types of utilitarian.

Naive utilitarians (as I call them) consider torture in terms of harm done to those tortured weighed against the value of the information gained in reducing harm. Some will take extra factors into account such as negative propaganda.

But some will still object because of less tractable consequences such as the corrupting effect on humanity of allowing torture (or the corresponding +ve effect of banning it) which has other seemingly non-related consequences.

This is still utilitarianism, it's all about which choice has the best consequences. Weights could convert the two but unfortunately I don't think a single weight for a principle is going to cut it, more like a weight per situation though much will be similar.

Given the veil, it would probably be really difficult to justify anything other than extremely loose immigration policy based on economic grounds. A case might be possible on security concerns for immigrants and/or current residents.

I don't think of it as justifying something. What rules would you want if you didn't know your place? (so to speak).

I would want nearly no rules.

but not no rules. The interesting bit is which rules and it seems to me they are mostly required because of other bad things so ideally we aim to get to a situation where we minimize the rules - not sure we need any at all if we get some other things right. I rest my ignorant head and deal with a few practicalities while having a pretty good idea what the aim is.

There's a real thing going on here. We would generally agree it would be good to get to a state* where immigration wasn't an issue but if we were in such a state we wouldn't generally agree it would be good to move to a state where immigration is an issue.

* you could nitpick here about good and bad scenarios but hopefully you wont feel the need.

I'd call them meta-utilitarian (unless there is already some name for this idea). But even totally non utilitarian ideas are meta utilitarian if you consider the absolute principle they are espousing to mean one with infinite utils.

Maybe you're thinking of rule utilitarianism, in which utility is calculated based on the consequences of following specific rules (or principles) rather than evaluating utility based on the consequences of a specific act.

I don't think this is the same thing as my idea. Because I am willing to allow that a principle can transcend even future value or overall value. Yet even then still have finite utils. Do you follow what I mean? Your posts made me think of this in the first place.

but... that has the same semantic problem. i mean, it's not a big deal if you just wanna talk about some features of utilitarianism (your main idea itt is not wrong). but if you're interested in engaging with other moral philosophies, you can't just reinterpret deontological or virtue claims in utilitarian terms. others may not agree that a computational lens is the correct one through which to view normative issues. so it's kind of silly to say they're implicitly assuming infinite utils.

This is like saying Bayesians are wrong just because some people don't think their priors are subject to debate.