* suffering of others decreases our happiness: you say this leads to increasing the happiness of others, but avoiding having to perceive that suffering also works.

* happiness of others increases our happiness: perhaps, but perception of superiority also increases our happiness, at least for some people. Also, there's diminishing returns: the happiness of our family might matter a lot, that of the 100 people we interact a fair with might add up as well, but that of the next 10,000 people isn't going to be directly perceived by us. 100 oligarchs exploiting the other 9900 people while insulating themselves from the suffering might well maximize the happiness of the oligarchs, even taking into account what they have to do to maintain their position, and the risk of rebellion.

Just because you're inclined to care about the happiness of others -- which isn't even true for sociopaths -- doesn't mean you have to care equally about everyone's happiness.

"It costs you nothing for other people to be happy"

As Christopher probably noted, it costs whatever material and social goods others might want for their happiness.

Easy example: it plausibly would make me happy to have lots of children. Even happier if I don't have to do the more unpleasant work of raising them -- feeding the infants at 3am, changing their diapers, etc. My happiness could clearly be increased by getting someone else to do unhappiness-causing tasks for me. This applies to janitorial or sanitation or butchering duties as well. Or even farming. The unhappiness of the workers might make me somewhat unhappy, but not necessarily as much as actually doing their work myself would. Given that upper classes don't rush to help out their servants, I think evidence supports my reasoning.

I don't think you have given anything objective at all. Underlying all of your writing is the unspoken sentence "I believe that maximizing happiness is good." You decided that. You. Hence it is relative.

In the entire universe of human experience, it is the only thing that is good intrinsically, and not merely instrumentally.

This "intrinsic good" you talk about, that's just what you believe is good, isn't it?

1. Are you really sure that relativism and objectivism are the only options available? What about error theory, constructivism and non-cognitivism? Objectivism is the only other option available when one is a rather restricted moral realist.

2. Your claim that happiness is the ultimate good seems to be relative to two things: a) The context in which you find your self, for it is not at all clear to me that all cultures do or should view happiness as the ultimate good. b) A clear definition of happiness which does not allow for a vast variety of difference in both quality and intsensity of "happiness."

3. Most obviously, however, your equation of happiness with good simply seems to be an assertion and nothing more. Simply proving that good simply cannot be anything other than happiness, such as pleasure, desirability or valuablility, does not make good equal to happiness to any degree at all. This is G. E. Moore's naturalistic fallacy.

4. Why should be care about the happiness of others independent of what personal happiness may or may not be added or sacrificed? Your response in the post seems to be "why not?" but surely you need to do better than this.

5. Similarly, just because an action is not egocentric, does not entail that it is not egoist. Your claims regarding the social nature of humans seems to skip this by saying that we should make others happy because it makes us happy. But what if it doesn't make us happy? Your argument against egocentrism seems to relie upon a certain amount of egoism.

(1) There is no more reason to postulate a single 'value' than there is to postulate a single belief. Just as we can believe many things, we can also desire many things.

We desire many things instrumentally, yes. But as I have explained, happiness is the only thing we desire intrinsically. There is nothing which anyone desires whose ultimate purpose is not to produce happiness for someone.

(2) People who act so as to fulfill their desires may give up happiness. You answer that this is because of an interest in the happiness of others. Yet, an agent who benefits others will also choose for others what those others would choose for themselves — which is sometimes to give up happiness.

I don't think I'm grasping this argument. I suggest you give an example of the kind of thing you're talking about.

(4) The experience machine can give a person happiness but not fulfill his desires. You say that the machine cannot give 'genuine happiness' because it does not generate real events. Yet, I would answer that this would require a bizarre concept of 'happiness' — whereby a cheerful person inside the machine is less happy than the frustrated and angry person in the real world — or the mother who has not yet been told about her daughter's death is less happy than the mother who knows about her daughter's death.

Again, it is not bizarre to postulate that happiness built on a lie is not truly happiness at all. (I didn't go into depth about this on this site, but if you read my corresponding essay on Ebon Musings, you'll see that what I actually advocate is maximizing the happiness that would result from relevant parties being aware of all the important facts - so strictly speaking, the "experience machine" argument is not relevant to UU at all. Whatever happiness it produces, if that happiness is based on falsehoods, should not be factored into the equation at all.

But more importantly, the source of the distinction is the same reason I advocate holding human rights universally inviolable even when their violation might conceivably increase happiness in certain rare cases, because overall, a society that abides by them is better than one that does not. Similarly, a person who lives in the real world and builds their happiness on what they find there will, overall, be happier than a person who retreats into delusion, of whatever type. Even if that principle does not hold true in certain specific and contrived cases, when averaged over all relevant situations it does hold. I am not suggesting that fantasy has no role to play in a balanced life, but like anything else, it should only be a part and not the whole.

Now, I have a counterargument to offer. You think the experience machine is a thought experiment that is damaging to my moral system; allow me to offer one that I feel points up the problems in yours.

Let's assume that a young person, who is physically healthy, well-educated and has every other sign of a bright future, has a mental disorder that causes them to desire to commit suicide. Your moral theory holds that fulfillment of desires is an unqualified good. Would you therefore support assisting this person in killing themself? If not, why not? If the desires of others that the person remain living are the reason, do you hold the same position in the case of an elderly person with an incurable, debilitating and lethal illness? Would you support allowing them to end their suffering, or do you believe that they must be held hostage to the desires of others and forced to prolong a painful existence against their will? If you reach different conclusions in these two cases, how do you justify that distinction, since ex hypothesi in both scenarios the desires of all relevant parties are identical?

The difference between happiness and the fulfillment of desires has to do with the reasons I gave on my postings on my blog.

(1) There is no more reason to postulate a single 'value' than there is to postulate a single belief. Just as we can believe many things, we can also desire many things.

(2) People who act so as to fulfill their desires may give up happiness. You answer that this is because of an interest in the happiness of others. Yet, an agent who benefits others will also choose for others what those others would choose for themselves -- which is sometimes to give up happiness. Besides, you lack an explanatory mechanism as to how an agent can be motivated by the happiness of others under some of the conditions I described.

(3) Happiness theory cannot explain how two people with identical beliefs can perform different actions without introducing additional variables that complicate the equation, whereas '(beliefs + desires) -> intention -> intentional acts' can explain different actions for people with identical beliefs without the need for extra variables. (This is an Occam's Razor argument.)

(4) The experience machine can give a person happiness but not fulfill his desires. You say that the machine cannot give 'genuine happiness' because it does not generate real events. Yet, I would answer that this would require a bizarre concept of 'happiness' -- whereby a cheerful person inside the machine is less happy than the frustrated and angry person in the real world -- or the mother who has not yet been told about her daughter's death is less happy than the mother who knows about her daughter's death.

(5) Happiness cannot explain incommensurate values -- the fact that there is 'loss' when some desires are thwarted -- which cannot happen if everything can be reduced to a single value (e.g., happiness).

When it comes to fulfilling some desires but not others, there are only two reasons why we do this.

(1) The fulfillment of some desires is not causally possible.

(2) The fulfillment of some desires is incompatible with the fulfillment of more and stronger desires.

Why do some things float and others sink? It is not because the object 'chooses' to ignore some of the forces acting on it. It is merely because some forces are stronger than others, and the stronger forces override the weaker forces.

Beliefs and desires are simply a part of the programming for the brain/mind.

Intentional action follows the formula:

(belief + desire) -> intention -> intentional action.

This is how we explain all intentional action.

Why am I writing this post? Because I believe that these propositions are true, I believe that others would benefit from this information, and I desire that others benefit.

To ask for an additional reason to fulfill a desire is like saying,"Now that we know that the force of gravity acting on an object is 9.8 meters per second squared, what entity actually causes the entity to accelerate in the direction that gravity points to at this rate?"

The answer is 'nothing'. Gravity itself accelerates the object. Desire themselves motivate agents to act.

"No, that is wrong. Individual liberty is genuinely maximized in a state that provides security and stability to all its residents while simultaneously giving them the maximum possible liberty to pursue their own conception of happiness."

Any govt. presence (no matter how small) is a restriction on individual liberties. Therefore, to completely liberate the individual, one must be rid of anything that inhibits the individual. The problem, of course, is that when all individuals are completely liberated they tend to go for each other's throats...

I acknowledge that some restrictions imposed are a must for a society to function, but I see no reason to assume that they objective (rather, they seem to change to serve society's whims) or for the individual to adhear to them at all times. If breaking one of society's arbitrary rules has benefits that outweigh the risks, I happily break it.

"It's true, when we live in such a state we give up the freedom to do certain things (such as to shoot your neighbor and burn down his house because you want his stuff). But in exchange we actually gain a far greater degree of opportunity and freedom, because living in such a society and collaborating with others allows people to achieve things they never could on their own. Think of how many things I can do, and how many choices I can make, in our society that would be impossible if I lived in a lawless, chaotic anarchy."

You just admitted the point that I was trying to make: the individual does lose freedom. Of course, there is a gain (as you mentioned) but the individual acquires excess baggage from this arangment as well. One is forced to rely on other individuals to see that your interests are met (with no guarantees) and is limited in ow he might pursue his own interests (it just might be in one's interest, for example, to see that his neighbors are taught a lesson in pain for certain transgressions).

My point still stands: life is zero-sum, therefore everything (even society itself) comes at a cost. The question is what is the cost and is it worth the price.

Desire fulfillment, in my mind, helps frame the question and provides the tension necessary to then postulate solutions. Without desires there can exist no reason to act and without action there is no need for morality. The idea of increasing happiness is a start, but I feel that the word still lacks some essential point. Happiness is a state of being that is felt and recognized differently by all. This puts the application of happiness theory on very subjective ground from the beginning. Who monitors the happiness of all to ensure maximum happiness? I like the way it was put earlier in the comments, we don't have an "objective happiness-meter". I don't know yet where this is all going, but I like the vision of happiness theory even though it seems there is something missing in the extension of personal happiness to happiness for all.

Desire fulfillment works well as a framework to understand moral behavior and predict future action, but to understand why we would choose to fulfill some desires and not others we should look to some universal objective reason or reasons. I am not sure happiness is the correct root. It may be the closest approximation we have now; my specific problem is that happiness in a maximized form seems to lead to contentment. Given a high level of contentment, whence comes desire? It may be said that perfect happiness is unattainable and therefore desires will always exist. Can this be proven? Can happiness be maximized for all or will it merely create dichotomy of less happy versus more happy people? Is this in fact a desirable "best scenario"?

Desire fulfillment theory avoids this problem because the goal is not happiness but to 'make true the propositions that are the objects of one's desires' which, in this case, to make true the proposition, 'my child is healthy and happy.'

I don't see how this idea differs from mine. What is the distinction between seeking happiness and seeking to fulfill one's desires?

Actually, I view the terms between "moral relativism" and "moral objectivism" to be too poorly defined to be of much use. I have had people the theory I defend emotivist, subjectivist, realist, anti-realist, objectivist, and relativist. After arguing about labels, I have decided it is a waste of time. I defend my theory, and let others decide what label they want to put on it.

However, I view any "subjective" claim as you seem to describe it as a false objectively claim. You mention the question about how much skin to show. To say that one ought not to show X amount of skin is to say that there exists reasons not to show X amount of skin. If there are reasons -- then the statement is true. If there are no reasons, then the statement is false. The type of subjectivism you describe is the type where one makes an assertion, but can offer no (objective) reason to back it up. In this case, the claim is false.

You also mention the word "acceptable," but you confuse it with the word "accept." A society may accept genocide -- they may have no problems with it. But whether it is "acceptable" (that is to say -- whether it is good or bad that they accept genocide) is a separate question. People do, in fact, draw a strong connection between what they do accept and what they think should be accepted. However, these are still two different concepts, and there is no valid inference from 'I accept X' to 'X is something that should be accepted.'

Now, you also mention that there are gray areas. Gray areas does not imply subjectivity. Gray areas are also perfectly compatible with objective uncertainty. So, for example, two people have each have $10,000 to invest, and they both want to cash out in exactly 10 years with as much money as possible. It is difficult (impossible) to predict which set of investments will do the best, so we allow each person to invest their money as they see fit. There is still an objective right answer as to which set of investments will produce the greatest income. This is not an instance of "subjectivism" (such as 'this option will produce the greatest income if I simply believe that it produces the greatest income'). There is, instead, a problem of uncertainty.

On the question of structuring a society, it is a fact that we deal with a great amount of objective uncertainty. This objective uncertainty suggests that we allow each society to live by its own rules. This decision is not grounded on 'subjectivism.' That is to say, every answer is equally right. Some answers will be better (more accurate) than others. However, we face a problem of 'objective uncertainty' in knowing what those answers are.

Also, even in science, there is a problem of definitions. How many planets are there in the solar system? While astronomers were having this dispute, the number of planets could have been either 12 or 8. Some are still saying 9. The right answer depends on how the term 'planet' is defined. This, in turn, is a purely 'subjective' question. There is no objective right answer to the definition of 'planet' -- there is only the arbitrary and subjective agreement reached by a bunch of astronomers. Yet, this dispute has absolutely no effect on the objective nature of astronomy as a science.

I suggest that the reason the question of the objectivity and subjectivity in ethics is difficult to resolve is because the definitions being used are too simplistic, and do not adequately capture the complexity of the question. Oversimplified questions generate oversimplified answers where none of those answers really work. So, people on both sides find reason to object.