[Note: I’m not super familiar with the literature on the Harm-Benefit Asymmetry so some of this stuff might have been covered a lot by academic philosophers, sorry!]
Yeah, I think utilitarians are totally incorrect about the neutrality between omission and commission. They are clearly morally distinct and you cannot just offset your murders to remain morally neutral. I'm not a consequentialist, but I don't think people are paralyzed in their actions. You can go outside. Why not? Just because someone is non-consequentialist, wouldn't necessarily mean they are deontological and absolutist about causing harm. I haven't read the article, so I don't know the specifics.
On the other hand, the consequence of utilitarian thinking is that you have extremely strong obligations to donate your money. These obligations are equivalent to the moral obligation to not kill people. Scott, who earns a ton of money, is still worse than a one time impoverished murderer because he doesn't give all his money. He's morally equivalent to a mass murderer under his own paradigm. I think that there is a defense that is like a 10% schelling fence sort of argument which doesn't make sense to me. I think the true believers can't live up to their principles and they have to psychologically cope with their guilt.
I responded to Scott's offsetting argument also. [1] He tries to get around this, but in the land of utility, there aren't discrete categories such that you couldn't "offset" a murder or a terrible action like rape. There is a defense made by Scott in a previous post by him which I address there.
I should say, I don't think they're bad people but I think it's hard to deal with the idea that murder and letting die are the same and then willingly let people die. It's hard to deal with that.
Good article.
Yeah, I think utilitarians are totally incorrect about the neutrality between omission and commission. They are clearly morally distinct and you cannot just offset your murders to remain morally neutral. I'm not a consequentialist, but I don't think people are paralyzed in their actions. You can go outside. Why not? Just because someone is non-consequentialist, wouldn't necessarily mean they are deontological and absolutist about causing harm. I haven't read the article, so I don't know the specifics.
On the other hand, the consequence of utilitarian thinking is that you have extremely strong obligations to donate your money. These obligations are equivalent to the moral obligation to not kill people. Scott, who earns a ton of money, is still worse than a one time impoverished murderer because he doesn't give all his money. He's morally equivalent to a mass murderer under his own paradigm. I think that there is a defense that is like a 10% schelling fence sort of argument which doesn't make sense to me. I think the true believers can't live up to their principles and they have to psychologically cope with their guilt.
I responded to Scott's offsetting argument also. [1] He tries to get around this, but in the land of utility, there aren't discrete categories such that you couldn't "offset" a murder or a terrible action like rape. There is a defense made by Scott in a previous post by him which I address there.
[1] https://parrhesia.substack.com/p/contra-alexander-on-moral-offsetting
Good points, hadn't seen your moral offsetting piece but I liked it.
I should say, I don't think they're bad people but I think it's hard to deal with the idea that murder and letting die are the same and then willingly let people die. It's hard to deal with that.