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Notes -
If you have a secular ethical framework that is not utilitarianism or something utilitarian-adjacent (eg consequentialism), what is it? I’m having a difficult time imagining a system that can’t be understood through some broadly-conceived utilitarian underpinning.
The first thing I can think of is that utilitarianism doesn’t have much to say about what happiness actually is beyond subjectively defined well-being. It would seem hard for a utilitarian to say that a state where everyone deems themselves happy should not be pursued, no matter what this happy life actually consists of, but Western philosophy tackles this question very early on (I’ll try and find the quote from Socrates where he flat out denies that the interlocutor claiming to be happy is really happy). If someone thinks that true happiness requires certain prerequisites (say freedom from ignorance or a well moderated character), then schemes for promoting happiness which have the force of moral obligation under utilitarianism can be dismissed as misguided, shallow or evil.
As a thought experiment you could imagine a world where technology has granted the ability to shape the wants of humanity such that everyone can attain maximum subjective well-being. The catch is that this is achieved by a numbing of the feelings that make man dissatisfied with who he is and his lot in life. The current mix of virtues and vices will become all that a man could ever expect from himself and he will be satisfied.
It’s hard to see how a utilitarian would object to this, but it brings to prominence the question of “what are the proper things to want?”. Ironically it was Mill who put this best when he said “better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a pig satisfied”. It seems like there is ethical import to wanting the proper things and a person who is well ordered in this way is on an ethically superior path even if he is subjectively suffering from the difficulty of it.
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