My buddy and I were arguing over moral philosophy and he asked me this question. I honestly didn’t have an answer, so I came here to ask you. If you were to have sex with a baby who was already dead upon birth, why would it be immoral? I have a very strong feeling that it is but can’t explain why

According to utilitarianism, acts can't be inherently morally wrong, the only thing that matters is "utility".
If they believe that doing immoral acts such as genocide, rape, murder increase the utility, they will absolutely do it.

I honestly don't know how such a "philosophy" is mainstream and even taken seriously.

Let's suppose a society where everyone is forced to give 10% of their salary to charity institutions.

In a utilitarian society, would that kind of behavior be approved?

If a group of people loves bullying 1 person isn't that bullying good from a utilitarian perspective? Why?

I don't see any moral issue with this tbh.

Suppose I offer a homeless person $20 to drink a glass of my piss. They have 2 options:

A. They refuse my offer. The homeless person is in the exact same situation that they were before.

B. They accept my offer. The homeless person has judged that drinking my piss and making $20 is preferable to refusing my offer. Therefore, the homeless person's wellbeing has increased.

Regardless of what the homeless person chooses, their life is not made worse by me offering them money to drink my piss. Therefore, there is no harm being done.

Thoughts?

The sad truth is some people offer the world more then others. In my view the reflexive sense of repulsion is something we as a society should learn to get over. I would only oppose my preferred politician advocating for this on the grounds that it's clearly politically suicidal. What do you all think?

I recently watched this video: https://www.reddit.com/r/DocumentedFights/comments/rsyuce/shouldnt_drop_nbombs_in_the_cherry_hill_mall/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share

And the comments were split, but with more people leaning towards not beating up the racists because it 'wouldn't make them less racist'.

I've given it a lot of thought (though I doubt you want to see me rambling here) but I haven't been able to come to a conclusion.

What utility is gained from beating up racists? Conversely, is there any utility gained from saying slurs?

Thanks.

For those who wish to be a vegan or vegetarian, I wish you well: but I find that eating meat can actually provide more utility in the right circumstances.

Let's say that there is an empty plot of land: the soil is rich, but not many animals live there. Overall, not much happiness is being generated from the land. There is a demand for beef, and being the entrepreneur that you are, you decide to turn the plot of land into a ranch for cattle. There are now many cattle which reside on the land, and they all live long and happy lives. A large amount of happiness is now being generated. Although you kill the cattle for their meat eventually, you wait for them to be fairly old (so that they may enjoy their lives) before you butcher them (your beef is consequently not very tender, but at least humans can make the meat-based food they enjoy so much). Keep in mind that, had there not been a demand for beef, the cows would not even exist. They live, and thus enjoy their lives for as long as they live, out of the desire to eventually eat them. Obviously, I'm sort of oversimplifying things: cows produce methane, that plot of land could be used for building an animal sanctuary or something else, etc. I just wanted to provide some food for thought (pun kinda intended)

TLDR: It is good to eat meat because the animals raised would not have existed had there been no demand for their flesh.

I wonder: if animals in the meat industry only get to live because of their meat, why isn't it good to "produce" more animals for meat? The happiness created by them living (which they otherwise wouldn't) seems to weigh out the suffering from killing them.

Yes the short term consequences of job loss is unfortunate but the long term benefits of AI being in video games will be worth it. I'm talking in a century from now we could see games like GTA 5 and Fortnite made as fast as a TikTok. AI game streaming services. Possibilities are limitless. So in 300 years we will say the short term job loss is unfortunate but the long term benefits outweigh it

Now, I know this is... INCREDIBLY OBVIOUS to some of you, probably even most of you, but I didn't realize this until I was challenged on it, so I feel like it's worth posting here; Incest (more specifically, Consanguinamory, consensual romantic and sexual relationships between closely related adults and teens) is perfectly okay so long as inbreeding (the production of children from incestuous relationships) does not occur. Again, sorry for posting the obvious, but if even one utilitarian changes their position it will have been worth it.

THIS IS TOTALLY GENUINE

It is not satire.

I've seen a lot of confusion in the comments and wanted to clarify.

I've been wondering this ever since learning about Mill and Bentham in the year I spent getting my philosophy minor. By very formal, strict-constructionist utilitarianism (Bentham's original ideas, as opposed to Mill's reformed version) it's only about the numbers. I asked this exact question in class and got "yes" as a response. And there seem to be alot of extremely strict-constructionist utilitarians here, so was my prof right? Assume that the 10% who go to Hell are selected at random, and that we're operating under Biblical definitions with Heaven as an absolute, perfect paradise and Hell as the unending torment that is the total absence of God's love.

I'm so sick and tired of leftwing/rightwing echo chambers, people basically taking advantage of ideologies that are not fully fledged and have no logical basis.

I want to create a Practical Utilitarian party. Maybe Utilitarian Pragmatic Party - UPP.

I'm tired of leftwingers calling you evil when you point out that you disagree with them because their point of view won't help the people that they are supposed to protect (i.e. rent control is gaining popularity once again, FFS, one of the most disastrous policies for actually helping people that it's supposed to help). And, I'm tired of right wingers attitude of "fuck off and die with your problems, they're not my problems."

The overall point would be to focus on specific solutions that maximize utility, but take human nature into account. I.e. you know that left wingers and right wingers are unlikely to change their mind, so you develop policies that maximize benefit from each. The worry now is that both sides are so entrenched that they're going to continue to dig their heels in further.

IDK. I'm worried about our current times, and I suspect that things are going to get a lot worse with continued regressive policies, and the two-party system continuing to further dig a hole in the ground with malformed ideology.

For millions of years animals have lived and died and suffered immensely, powerless against the force of evolution and their natural state of being. Until humanity came to be. Humans are capable of resisting nature; we are capable of putting an end to this. And I think every minute that goes by that we do not eliminate animals is a minute of immorally sitting by. You may say Live and Let Live but I think for humanity to allow the continuance of other animals is to Live and Let Suffer

I think it would make sense that utilitarianism would have some overlap with politics. After all, decisions made by the government affect everyone. We can focus on individual actions but for the most part, they won't have a very large effect on humanity overall. Obviously, voting itself doesn't have much of an impact either but it does demonstrate your political alignment. It also demonstrates what you care about like better healthcare, environmentalism, economic growth, rule of law, healing racial tensions, or alleviating poverty.

If your utilitarianism has shaped your political worldview, please feel free to describe in the comments below.

If you are truly a utilitarian than you must agree that sacrifices need to be made in order to ensure the happiness and success of the greater good. If you were in charge of ensuring the overall happiness of the Earth's populace, approximately how many lives would need to be extinguished?

When you participate in a game on a fair where you can win prizes but lose the game so you decide to steal one of the small prizes. It is likely to not really bother the owner of that game, but you ll be more happy. Should we then steal in this scenario?

So you would pull the lever in the trolley problem and save 4 people? Perfect. Now let me ask another question - would you kill a guy and harvest his organs to save 5 people? They all need a vital organ, are in critical condition and there aren't any available. Do you kill him?

Button A : Save a person about to be tortured in a dungeon for a year

Button B: Give ANY amount of utility to ANY amount of people with the only condition being that all of those people are NOT suffering before you push the button.

If you arent a psychopath and want to push button A, congratulations you aren't a utilitarian. Move over to r/Prioritarianism or r/negativeutilitarians

If people eat meat, why is it thought that killing the severely mentally disabled is wrong? They possess the same level of intelligence as some animals we eat.

Edit:

I do NOT support killing the disabled! It is just conceptual thinking...