Preferences and their Utility (What makes it wrong?)

[Boyish-Tigerlilly]

From a Utilitarian position, ethical classical or preference, why do you think it's wrong to kill somene? This was a question I ran into on another forum. It wasn't really an argument, but some people were making a critique of utility by saying: killing someone doesn't cause him pain or suffering, so it shouldn't be wrong.

The Classical Utilitarians noticed this and bit the bullet, but recently, that's why Preference Utilitarianism, especially melded with Negative Utilitarianism, has evolved. However, some people criticize that because even though killing someone violates his preferences for continued life, every instance of it doesn't cause him pain, suffering, and he won't know once he's dead.

How do you respond to that, because I always thought it was self-evident that it causes objective harm, but I guess I took it for granted that violating someone's welfare preferences were bad, but when you hit the "killing" option, doing so no longer causes him suffering or pain or disappointment. It doesn't see like any answer to them will be sufficient in that framework, and I have seen few if any utilitarian philosophers tackle the isssue of why it's wrong.

I always understood violating welfare preferences as ultimately bad because it causes suffering, psychological harm, and disappointment where it's unnecessary, but it seems to lead to an absurdity with death, since it doesn't seem to cause that. (Assuming nothing about externalities).


Essentially, most philosphers seem to imply it's wrong to do X against someone's welfare interests because it causes them suffering or pain. But what about death? I can say: it prevents anyone from canceling preferences marked on the moral ledger and violates the interest, but someone just says "so what?"


What do you think? I would appreciate an understanding on this issue, because I never really grasped it. I'd hate to say "well, it's just wrong because violating preferences is wrong in and of itself, aside from the suffering it causes.

[Wyrm]

If you pretend that the person you kill is a complete hermit who only exists, then I can see why the argument you state has difficulty. However, a person you kill is rarely this: he usually has a family who loves him, and would not want to see his life ended. Thus killing someone arguably (though see below) doesn't harm him, but it would definitely cause emotional pain and suffering to his family, atop any financial harm to that family, ect.

As for the "to the Utilitarian, killing someone doesn't cause the victim pain or suffering" argument, my counterargument is that Utilitarian is based upon the maximization of good consequences, and not on the minimization of pain or suffering per se. Utilitarians seek to minimize pain and suffering because they are bad consequences, which deminish good consequences, and not that their ideal is to minimize pain and suffering. When you kill someone, you end any further good consequences they may contribute in the future. (Also, the victim himself would consider being killed a bad consequence in its own right.) Thus, killing is generally considered wrong to the utilitarian.

However, the particular situation can allow the usual order to flip. For instance, it would be considered a good consequence to end the life of a terminally ill patient in chronic pain, as to spare both him and his family suffering that would outweigh the good that would come from his continued life. Euthenasia is therefore called for.

[Nieztchean Uber-Amoeba]

Killing someone would be the ultimate form of harming him excepting cases where great harm would come to a person consistently but for a quick death, as it is the cessation of his existence entirely; from my perspective, the ultimate harm to him and his future. Besides, as previously stated, it would harm his relatives, friends, etc.