My basic philosophical framework

It seems fitting for my first post, my introduction, to explain the way I tend to think about things. This is hard for me to describe.

When I think about whether I support a policy, what am I maximizing for? What kinds of arguments appeal to me, and which ones do I consider bullshit or immoral?

I don’t want to bore you by listing normative frameworks and trying to give pros and cons of each. I’ll cut to the chase: I am a long-run utilitarian.

I don’t love calling myself a utilitarian. It feels lame. I also feel like it has a bad name. There is a very good chance I’ll disagree with a utilitarian more often, more vehemently, and with more disdain than I would for, say, a deontologist. That’s because I feel that utilitarians are often full of bullshit and claim utilitarianism supports their arguments when really it is a convenient defense of selfish goals. Worse yet, it is unfortunately often used to defend libertarian or authoritarian arguments, the former of which I find stupid and the latter I find highly problematic.

This is why I specifically called my view “long-run” utilitarianism. That is, I care about the long-term benefits (i.e. (I feel like an asshole for saying this) “utility”) of things like institutions, societal and cultural norms, networks, and reputation.

What does this mean? It means that when there are systems I think provide a lot of value, I value upholding that system a lot. I am willing to sacrifice a lot to uphold that system. That doesn’t mean I support it at all costs, but if you think of an old fashioned balance scale, I have found myself tending to put more weight into those long-term considerations than most.

The implications of that are that I often arrive at a similar conclusion to people who aren’t utilitarians. I sometimes even seem to myself to be squishily adopting arguments of other philosophical camps.

Now I acknowledge that this never means there is a right answer. A lot of time I later get convinced that the current situation is different than I initially thought. I change my mind relatively often. That is a good think, in my opinion.

I’ll give an example: A variation of the trolley problem is one in which you are a surgeon. In your hospital waiting room are six people. Five of them are dying: one has heart disease, another kidney failure, another has lungs that are failing, etc. The sixth is a family member of one of those patients, who brought that patient to the hospital. Now, you could let those five ill patients all die, or you can kill the healthy person and harvest their organs to heal the remaining five. Normally, the utilitarian thought is to kill the person, because saving five of the six is better than saving one of the six.

Personally, I want people to be willing to go to the doctor, and if you kill the person to harvest their organs, people are going to lose faith in that institution. Of course I sort of expanded the scope of possible responses beyond what is usually considered. But I’ve found that often, debates end up being either too short term (which I’ll call length) or too narrowly focused on the impacts to just one area(which I’ll call width), or both.

That’s my disclaimer about how I think about things. I hope it was adequately vague and unhelpful.