#utilitarianism
The Nature and Ethics of Enjoyment in Modern Society
Recently there has been a lot of controversy in the UK over The Jeremy Kyle Show, after the sad news of a reported suicide of the of a guest who took part in its recording. Discussions of this show should function as a metonym from which we can extrapolate discourse to all shows of this nature. As Amol Rajan rightly asks
“…is it right to allow private trauma to become public spectacle? And is the…
Been reading a lot lately – feeling like I should find a better balance between learning and creating.
The Tyranny of Structurelessness by Jo Freeman
Contrary to what we would like to believe, there is no such thing as a ‘structureless’ group.
This means that to strive for a ‘structureless’ group is as useful and as deceptive, as to aim at an ‘objective’ news story, ‘value-free’ social science or a ‘free’ economy. A ‘laissez-faire’ group is about as realistic as a ‘laissez-faire’ society; the idea becomes a smokescreen for the strong or the lucky to establish unquestioned hegemony over others. This hegemony can easily be established because the idea of ‘structurelessness’ does not prevent the formation of informal structures, but only formal ones. Similarly, ‘laissez-faire’ philosophy did not prevent the economically powerful from establishing control over wages, prices and distribution of goods; it only prevented the government from doing so. Thus ‘structurelessness’ becomes a way of masking power, and within the women’s movement it is usually most strongly advocated by those who are the most powerful (whether they are conscious of their power or not). The rules of how decisions are made are known only to a few and awareness of power is curtailed by those who know the rules, as long as the structure of the group is informal. Those who do not know the rules and are not chosen for initiation must remain in confusion, or suffer from paranoid delusions that something is happening of which they are not quite aware.
‘Structurelessness’ is organisationally impossible. We cannot decide whether to have a structured or structureless group; only whether or not to have a formally structured one. Therefore, the word will not be used any longer except to refer to the idea which it represents. Unstructured will refer to those groups which have not been deliberately structured in a particular manner. Structured will refer to those which have. A structured group always has a formal structure, and may also have an informal one. An unstructured group always has an informal, or covert, structure. It is this informal structure, particularly in unstructured groups, which forms the basis for elites.
This was really cool to read. I like Jo’s insight that the elite are informal and unconspiratorial at the heart – “a group of friends who also happen to participate in the same political activities” – and aren’t inevitably bad. However, they pose a problem in unstructured groups where their power is unlimited. The seven principles she outlines that are politically effective and essential to democratic structuring are particularly important.
This critique of structurelessness reminds me of the supposed lack of management structure at Valve. In the article Former Valve Employee: ‘It Felt a Lot Like High School’, Jeri Ellsworth said, “It is a pseudo-flat structure where, at least in small groups, you’re all peers and make decisions together. But the one thing I found out the hard way is that there is actually a hidden layer of powerful management structure in the company and it felt a lot like high school. There are popular kids that have acquired power in the company, then there’s the trouble makers, and everyone in between.” Maybe this is why Half-Life 3 is never coming out? Heh.
Does Veganism Make a Difference? by Brian Tomasik and
Expected Utility, Contributory Causation, and Vegetarianism by Gaverick Matheny
One common charge against veganism is that abjuring the consumption of factory-farmed animal products will not actually have a real-world impact. Indeed, this is the argument of last resort for those who come to accept the utilitarian position on factory farming yet refuse to change their diets accordingly.
Buying meat is one case of contributory causation where the probability of any single individual’s affecting meat production is slight, but the expected disutility of affecting that production is substantial. Thus, in its expected utility form, act-utilitarianism defeats the ‘causal inefficacy’ defence of buying meat.
When we make a decision about how to act, we never know for certain the actual utilities that will result from all our possible actions. We may, after making a decision to act in a particular way, come to know the actual utilities that resulted from the one action we decided upon. However, this knowledge is not helpful in making the original decision, since it is not only reached after the fact, but also limited to only one of the many possible actions we may have had to choose from. Consequently, act-utilitarians have typically argued that we should make decisions, not on the basis of actual utility, but on the basis of expected utility – the product of the utility resulting from an action and the probability of that utility resulting – that one might reasonably predict given the available evidence. Since expected utility, nota actual utility, can be known when making a decision, only expected utility can help an act-utilitarian to decide what course of action to take.
Jonathan Glover provides on example of contributory causation called The 100 Bandits. 100 bandits descend on a village and find 100 villagers, each villager with one bowl, each bowl containing 100 baked beans. Each bandit takes one bean from each bowl, so that each bandit ends up with a bowl of 100 beans. Now, no villager can perceive the difference made by one bean being stolen from his bowl (either at the moment or later, due to malnutrition). Thus none of the bandits would seem to have individually harmed any of the villagers and so none of the villagers should have been harmed. Yet 100 villagers are without lunch and hungry. So something went wrong here.
Gaverick’s paper goes into the details of disproving the “causal inefficacy” defense of buying dead animals using Glover’s “divisibility principle” (which relies on moral responsibility) as well as using expected utility through “threshold units” (which relies on maths!). Brian’s article goes on to explain why it may be harmful to eat animal flesh even in situations where you did not buy the bodies yourself. You can read more invalidations of common arguments against veganism at Your Vegan Fallacy Is.
Note: I’m deliberately avoiding using the word “meat” in order to restore the absent referent. “Behind every meal of meat is an absence: the death of the animal whose place the meat takes.”
There is no utilitarianism under capitalism.
