As I understand it, and in my just-made-up-now terminology, there are two different kinds of utilitarianism, Normative, and Descriptive. In Normative, you try to figure out the best possible action and you must do that action. In Descriptive, you don’t have to always do the best possible action if you don’t want to, but you’re still trying to make the most good out of what you’re doing. For example, consider the following hypothetical actions:
Get a high-paying job and donate all of my earnings except the bare minimum necessary to survive to effective charities. (oversimplified utility: 50,000)
Get a job I enjoy and donate 10% of my earnings to effective charities. (oversimplified utility: 5,000)
Volunteer at a homeless shelter. (oversimplified utility: 500)
Buy one game for $10 and donate $10 to effective charities. (oversimplified utility: 50)
Buy two games. (oversimplified utility: 5)
Bang my head against a wall. (oversimplified utility: −5)
Normative would say that I must always pick the first action. Descriptive would say that these are some options with different utilities, and I should probably try and get one with a higher utility, but I don’t have to pick the optimal one if I don’t want to. So with Descriptive, if I didn’t feel like making my self a slave to the greater good as in the first example, but I thought I would be okay with effective tithing or volunteering, then I could do that instead and still help a lot of people. If I were in a bad place and all I could motivate myself to do was to donate $10 to an effective charity, I would still know that’s a higher utility action than buying a second game. Even a completely selfish action such as buying two games is still better than an action that is harmful, such as the oversimplified example of banging my head against a wall.
I feel that Descriptive is more practical, though theoretically Normative would take into account an agent’s motivation in determining the best possible action that the agent could take.
(This was somewhat inspired by a similar discussion on the rational side of Tumblr from maybe a few months ago, though I don’t remember exactly where. If anyone knows, please share a link.)
ETA: It seems that there are already terms for what I was trying to describe. Namely, maximising utilitarian instead of Normative, and scalar utilitarian instead of Descriptive.
As I understand it, and in my just-made-up-now terminology, there are two different kinds of utilitarianism, Normative, and Descriptive. In Normative, you try to figure out the best possible action and you must do that action. In Descriptive, you don’t have to always do the best possible action if you don’t want to, but you’re still trying to make the most good out of what you’re doing. For example, consider the following hypothetical actions:
Get a high-paying job and donate all of my earnings except the bare minimum necessary to survive to effective charities. (oversimplified utility: 50,000)
Get a job I enjoy and donate 10% of my earnings to effective charities. (oversimplified utility: 5,000)
Volunteer at a homeless shelter. (oversimplified utility: 500)
Buy one game for $10 and donate $10 to effective charities. (oversimplified utility: 50)
Buy two games. (oversimplified utility: 5)
Bang my head against a wall. (oversimplified utility: −5)
Normative would say that I must always pick the first action. Descriptive would say that these are some options with different utilities, and I should probably try and get one with a higher utility, but I don’t have to pick the optimal one if I don’t want to. So with Descriptive, if I didn’t feel like making my self a slave to the greater good as in the first example, but I thought I would be okay with effective tithing or volunteering, then I could do that instead and still help a lot of people. If I were in a bad place and all I could motivate myself to do was to donate $10 to an effective charity, I would still know that’s a higher utility action than buying a second game. Even a completely selfish action such as buying two games is still better than an action that is harmful, such as the oversimplified example of banging my head against a wall.
I feel that Descriptive is more practical, though theoretically Normative would take into account an agent’s motivation in determining the best possible action that the agent could take.
(This was somewhat inspired by a similar discussion on the rational side of Tumblr from maybe a few months ago, though I don’t remember exactly where. If anyone knows, please share a link.)
ETA: It seems that there are already terms for what I was trying to describe. Namely, maximising utilitarian instead of Normative, and scalar utilitarian instead of Descriptive.