Hopefully a few people in this forum are familiar with utilitarianism and will have some ideas for a paper im writing. The question I am looking to answer is. Whether an adequate theory of utilitarianism should account for precedence among people close to us in our lives. Like family members and whatnot. An example would be, should we be more inclined to help our mother, than someone we don't know in south Africa even given the fact that our efforts might improve the person we don't knows life more than our mothers. I hope this is making sense to someone and some interesting takes on this and some arguments for either side would be greatly appreciated. I have started writing but am stuck.

I will say that im inclined to think that we should be giving precedence to some people in our lives. But its difficult to adequately explain why this should be the case

you will need to give it more effort before u get any intelligent responses imo. were not here to do your homework especially when all u have is two unintelligible paragraphs.

Im done with the paper and the idea was not for anyone on here to do my hw although I was positive there would be atleast someone to make a comment like that. The whole point was to get different perspectives and here a couple interesting arguments for either side. But thanks man for the input.

The ethics of care, which says that we should give more weight to the interests of those who are likely to be more affected by our moral choices, is a common criticism against both utilitarian and deontological views.

To be honest, I'm not sure how one could incorporate such a perspective into a utilitarian framework, since impartiality is a hallmark of utilitarianism.

What are your ideas on this?

We need to think nonlinearly and in terms of what cooperative feedback mechanisms can create (strong positive sum games). If you help someone far away immersed in a kind of world that is full of cultural hell and political/economic misery and you never again interact with them the influence will exist but will not interact back with you directly to create a serious bond that helps both. In fact the help may be wasted if you think about it, if not done properly with a radical change of that distant culture as well.

But if you help your family who has already helped you grow up and become who you are in so many ways you influence the life of good people which further enables them to be good to others and you. People in your community interact with you a lot. So helping your community improve comes back to you eventually sustaining relationships and eventually building something powerful that on occasion can change the world enough to help the far away people too. Larger picture utility theory in place.

Now if your family is sobs (sadly some are like that) then you need to look elsewhere in your community to help, friends, other relatives, your own directly created forward family, people you appreciate their choices and thinking etc.

The point is that if you are good you need other good people around you to create the ideal society eventually that has then the power to create a difference to the rest of the world too.

So in terms of absolute utility theory you create a better result by helping your own assuming they are ethical advanced thinking people. They create a world that helps you better and that way your effort is enhanced to do more with less misery.

Let me try it a bit differently. Say i help create a group of 5 other people that we work together to solve problems. We now have a team of 6 that is better than if i had given that help to 5 random people in parts of the world. Each of the 6 gets help in a variety of previously unavailable areas from 5 others now. The results are geometric in progress because the effort is coordinated and not lost in random noise.

Obviously if i had a choice to help people that have western ideals and respect science vs people that are say fanatical Muslims and have lots of kids they dont properly care for (educate etc) and keep fighting each other, guess who i will help! In doing so i impact my world that i view as better to become stronger and eventually powerful enough to be able to help the other far away people in a more proper/organized/methodical manner by real quality assistance plus an example of success.

If a rich person or 100 rich people can kick start scientific society paradigm in a small location of the world and the results are successful the rest of the world will be impacted. This is far better than the billionaires using their money randomly here and there. Alternatively imagine if the billionaires joined forces to finally make fusion technology possible. What is the impact then after that for hunger and climate change worldwide? What can you do with limitless cheap energy? Can you say progress explosion? Easy to create a 1 $ tril project if 1000 billionaires from all over the world gave 1 bil each (as of 2013 1426 exist of 5.4 tril total http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_billionaires so each gave 20% of their assets). That would be 30 times stronger project than current worldwide efforts. Can you imagine the difference? Now imagine they instead gave that money to all the planet. $140 per person, yeah right big deal. 2 days party in the west and 1 good year in a poor African country. And then nothing. Or shall i say more overpopulation spike in that year you know where...lol.

Now take that 1 tril and use 200 for fusion, 200 for solar energy and batteries research alternative sources etc and 200 for medical research regarding organ regeneration, cancer, vaccines, etc, 100 bil to study the human brain and develop computers accordingly (to better solve the other problems), and another 300 bil to search educate well and employ at a rate of 60k per year (to be increased eventually as needed in various forms of free benefits to them) 500000 top brains worldwide (1 in 5000 of young adults or students) from all the schools and universities of the planet for a decade and then from the gains you make manage to keep them indefinitely and find even new ones and invest in all the others as well with the positive products of their research. Imagine the difference all this would make . Then imagine that random $140 per human. Does it click yet?

Notice however that all this is correct only if you and your friends or relatives are ethical people with a plan in place. If you help others that damage the world then you are doing far worse than helping random people (random=people that can be bad or good or ignorant, whatever who randomly happen to be in need)

If you can find for me who said this however, people that are culturally muslims or poor Africans who share my values regarding ethical behavior, responsible family upbringing, respect for education and science and peace and love for community and other human values and eager to leave behind their backwards marching cultural ideas and keep from their cultural background only the best details that can enhance my own culture as well then sure i will gladly help them instead of random people of my country or place of living. But keeping in contact with them is the important thing for that help to flourish. Because the interaction through cooperation can not take place when its done randomly as efficiently as when its done with local coherent consistent character that promotes indefinite interactions of nonlinear character. Essentially help that comes back to you in areas you are lacking leads to positive sum games. Think of it like 6 people that know well each physics, math, computing, engineering, the law, the markets and financial world all at the same time cooperating to create a small start up company. Suddenly the skills of each find significant foundation and potential for growth and application due to the interaction. Now imagine someone alone helping random people that have a tiny chance to get back to you...See what i mean?

The power of stimulated permanent cooperation is that it generates strong positive growing with time sum games. Those then have the capacity for greater collective impact. This is why organized education works, this is why science works and this is how you eliminate crime and poverty eventually everywhere. Cooperation and conditions for growth for all involved.

Masque, get out of Palo Alto for a bit. Go live in Oakland for the next six months. Then report back to me/us about your ideas regarding the future of humanity.

Not to worry next to Palo Alto or Mountain View we have East Palo Alto.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Palo_Alto


"As of the 2010 census, the population of East Palo Alto was 28,155. It is situated on the San Francisco Peninsula, roughly halfway between the cities of San Francisco and San Jose. To the north and east is the San Francisco Bay, to the west is the city of Menlo Park, and to the south the city of Palo Alto. Despite being called "East" Palo Alto, this is a misnomer, as the city is precisely due north of Palo Alto. While widely assumed to be part of the city of Palo Alto,[2][3] East Palo Alto has always been a separate entity, being located in a different county since its founding as an unincorporated community (Palo Alto is in Santa Clara County) and until recently having an entirely different demographic makeup. The two cities are separated only by San Francisquito Creek and, largely, the Bayshore Freeway (the vast majority of East Palo Alto is northeast of the freeway, while all of the residential part of Palo Alto is southwest of the freeway). The revitalization projects in 2000, and the surge of high income high-tech professionals moving into the new developments (including employees from Google and Facebook), have begun to eliminate the cultural and economic differences between the two cities.[4] East Palo Alto and Palo Alto share both telephone area codes and postal ZIP codes.

About half of East Palo Alto's residents were African Americans in 1990, which was the result of redlining practices and racial deed restrictions in Palo Alto.[5] Latinos now constitute about 65% of the total population, while the proportion of African Americans has decreased to about 15%. A small minority of Pacific Islanders also reside in East Palo Alto. Most of Tongan, Samoan and Indo-Fijian origin.[citation needed]. East Palo Alto has the largest concentration of Pacific Islanders of any American city or town outside of Hawaii[citation needed].

In the past, East Palo Alto experienced profound crime and poverty, especially during the 1980s and early 1990s. In 1992, it had the highest homicide rate in the country with 24,322 people, and 42 murders, equaling a rate of 172.7 homicides per 100,000 residents.[6] Since then the city's crime problems have subsided, and the murder rate in particular has declined to a typical urban level. In 2006, East Palo Alto experienced a comparatively low 6 murders. There were 7 murders in 2007, and only 5 in 2008. According to a 2008 report provided by Chief of Police Ron Davis, violence is on the decline. Davis reports an overall 42% reduction in homicides and a 20% reduction in overall crime between 2006–2008, compared to the previous three years.

The prosperity that benefited the Silicon Valley during the dot-com boom of the late 1990s largely bypassed East Palo Alto. The Ravenswood City School District, which serves East Palo Alto and part of adjoining Menlo Park, has struggled with low academic performance.[citation needed] Eventually, however, the Peninsula's shortage of land and soaring property prices meant that even East Palo Alto became an option for urban regeneration. Until recently, gentrification has been rare in East Palo Alto.

East Palo Alto also includes a small piece of land across the Bayshore Freeway (US 101) from the shopping center, a roughly triangular area between US 101 and San Francisquito Creek, which includes a former two-block-long retail business district known as Whiskey Gulch (the name dates back to the time that Stanford University, in Palo Alto to the west, was dry and prohibited alcohol sales within a radius of one mile (1.6 km) from the campus: Whiskey Gulch was just outside the limits, and was home to a number of liquor stores and bars). The city has torn down Whiskey Gulch and replaced it with the University Circle office complex.[7] A 200-room Four Seasons hotel opened in University Circle in 2006.

Over 25% of East Palo Alto (400+ acres) has been bulldozed and replaced with brand new housing and brand-name retail establishments over the last 10–15 years,[8] including IKEA, Sports Authority, Home Depot, Nordstrom, Togo's, Starbucks, Office Depot, Mi Pueblo Grocery, and Best Buy, 6 to 9 Dental, Jamba Juice, and Firehouse Grill attracting an entirely new demographic.[9] University Square community has become particularly appealing to young high-tech professionals and high-income couples, including many employees from Google, Facebook, Sun Microsystems, and various other software and startup companies.[10][11]"

Now by the way why do you refer to me (or imagine me) as the Palo Alto guy in your thought process in general. Try to do the stronger attitude thing and imagine Geneva Switzerland or an area near CERN if you want to think i live in some far from reality elite place or something. Try to imagine Intelanken http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlaken.

And finally try to imagine a guy that has lived also in villages in southern Europe close to real people working the land in islands or in mountains far from tourist destinations of choice. Up in mountains that you can see milky way at night and enjoy peace under trees in a breezy summer afternoon and have a much simpler life. Or imagine a harder life in the same spot in the middle of winter with snow and wind.

Imagine also a guy that has walked the dirty streets of many cities in Europe and US, seen the prostitutes and drug addicts at night and the the poor homeless people. And then come back to Palo Alto and spot all those there too if you know where to look. And go inside Stanford and find ugliness even there, even among Nobel laureates on occasion, but of course also find great interesting people too. And then run to find refuge in a Pacific sunset far from all people. You think Oakland is hard? Maybe something else can be harder moreover its brighter exterior. Maybe only that sunset can save you from it.

What makes you think i do not know the world and i therefore have an unfounded in reality type of optimism? Could it be that i am who i am because i have seen a wide range of places and conditions more or less and it only made me more confident. Could it be that i am entirely rational about it?

Hey at the end of the ugly movie seven (spoiler alert if anyone havent seen it not to worry it wont reveal anything) the character played by Morgan Freeman says;

"Ernest Hemingway once wrote, 'The world is a fine place and worth fighting for.' I agree with the second part".


Take at least that last sentence. I think it describes well what true optimism is all about.

Ernest Hemingway once also killed himself.

Internet limitations, my friend. I don't know what you've actually experienced. I mention the possibility that you haven't seen the likes of Oakland only because I wish to keep you from prognosticating utopia.

I have a lot of respect for what you write (content-wise), but I think that some of it may be naïve(ly informed). But I don't know your non-Stanford experience, so I can't opine much there.

Yes but the real quote was that of Freeman's Character, not Hemingway's. That was the point. Having seen the movie helps too. And by the way, "The old man and the sea" is great novel too. And you know what happens there too. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_old_man_and_the_sea

Se7en had little to redeem it. Old Man and the sea likewise. Hemingway's at his stylistic worst in that novel. The Sun Also Rises was the only Hemingway novel I liked for the record.

Again its only the quote i used. The movie has minor importance in it. As for the novel, the message i get from it is metaphorically that "man dies but is not defeated". A profound understanding of the tragic character of the human condition is the father of true optimism. With it you do not build naive utopian projects. Instead you change the world. Because even if the world may not be always fine, it is certainly worth fighting for.

But not twice. I always thought that was very telling.

That is one of his best. Very Crisp.

No love for A Movable Feast?

You have to look at Utilitarianism as a point system, where + and - points are awarded for certain actions, and you strive to maximize the total amount of points.

So in your example, it would be more utilitarian to improve the life of your mother. If you help a child survive in an impoverished nation, then you are actually creating more negative points since this child will stay alive long enough to reproduce and add to the number of starving humans (+5 points for helping the child, but -5 points for each kid that he eventually has, for example).

The world hunger issue from a utilitarian standpoint takes more than the action of a single individual for the points to be profitable. Read Peter Singer's paper on the issue: http://www.utilitarianism.net/singer/by/19990905.htm

Utilitarian scenarios can be argued from all angles though, since the number of points rewarded is arbitrary and you can add hypothetical situations to bolster your claim.

If the determination of the values of the consequences of actions was arbitrary utilitarianism would not be considered at all plausible by philosophers.