The ills of utilitarianism and a defense of deontology

This article is in direct response to “ethics” by bookrat

After generating much commentary I feel I want to write a full article on the subject on the eternal debate of utilitarianism and deontology.

As bookrat said, deontology is generally associated with religion and morals that are grounded in religious texts. Religions are the biggest promoter of world peace, though religion we can lay foundation of morals in the hearts and mind of the young, by teaching the ideals that took 1000’s of years to develop. You see many young people have difficulty seeing the ramifications of their actions, if accepted on a grand scale. Teenagers steal, teenagers cheat, teenagers lie, and most importantly of all teenagers can often be violent. It’s not unreasonable for them to do this either, they don’t have the thousands of years of text, thought, and trials behind them. Utilitarianism appeals to these people as a moral because they naturally have difficulty supporting the deontologist ideals. But it is easy to see that robbing someone for their money is not acceptable behavior, but utilitarianism allows them to justify such an action, at least to them. I understand that blindly following something is wrong, but sometimes it isn’t reasonable to explain the elaborate support of why you are following them. That is why religion in young people is good.

                In a utilitarian world, there is no place for the arts. The robotic mathematic decision making engines cannot quantify the value you of pleasure, joy, and other such subtle emotions. This is the biggest flaw in that ideology. The arts are important for two reasons. When a person is happy he or she is more productive. We are not statistics that work to max our profit, we are emotional people. The emotional side of the brain is just as important as the rational parts. Emotions such as fear, and pleasure allow people to make better decisions faster that trying to calculate “This bear has 67% chance of attacking me, I have 23% chance to escape if I run now, however if I stand here and run more equations I can devise a way to kill it, giving me a 100% chance of survival assuming 23% chance earlier, so it is better for me to stand here” The emotional side of the brain just know, “It’s a bear, run!”. This thinking has kept us alive for thousands of years. We cannot shut out our emotions when we make decisions, if we do we will become unhappy.

                Emotions and art are crucial to solving global problems. When we promote arts, we also promote creativity, allowing for more creative development. We can solve today’s problems with yesterday’s solutions, we need new creative ones. The advancement of sciences and research would drop drastically if we needed to prove that research was profitable. Most research is done on very emotional desires to explore and be curious. Research, advancement, and creativity have to be encouraged in order to solve the world’s problems.

               

                Lets look at perfect case of rationality. These people make all their decisions with no emotions, instead they logically think through everything, carefully look that the util value of their decisions. If it maximizes gain overall, than it is justified. These people literally can’t make decisions based on emotions; their brain is damaged in that regard. These people are called psychopaths. These people don’t kill because they enjoy it, no it just the opposite, their brains are extremely rational. If it makes sense to kill some, they do it. They feel no regret from killing. If this person thought their family needed money to survive, they would rob someone, it seems like a better decision.

                It is obvious that deontology is a better ethic system, feel free to refute my arguments however.