#446 — How to Do the Most Good

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I am here with Michael Plant. Michael, thanks for joining me. Thanks for having me on. So w we were in introduced by Peter Singer, and I think you was he your dissertation advisor? He was. All right. So we go maybe you can give your background before we jump into the topics of mutual interest. Well, so I'm a philosopher and global happiness researcher, and I I kind of got started on this interest age about 16. I first came across.

Philosophy, my first lesson on philosophy, I came across the idea of utilitarianism, uh, that we should maximize happiness. And I thought, oh wow, that I don't know if that's the whole story of ethics, but that's a massive story of ethics.

you might say it was a uh a waking up moment. And uh then over the next twenty years I've kind of pursued two topics. There's this philosophical question of should we maximize happiness? I mean, I thought that was quite plausible, but lots of people thought it was nuts. So what's going on there? And then this empirical question of, well, how do we do that? You know, what in fact, you know, how can we apply happiness research to finding out what really we ought to do?

And I've been kind of pursuing those tracks and those have taken me to to what I'm doing now. So maybe we should define a few terms before we uh proceed. I mean w a couple will be very easy and then I think happiness will be very hard. But um

You just mentioned utilitarianism. H how do you define that and and do you differentiate it from consequentialism and what is the rival meta ethical position or positions that if they exist, I'm I'm uncertain as to w whether they actually exist, but we can talk about that.

Well, so utilitarianism is or classical utilitarianism is the view that what one ought to do is to maximise the sum total of happiness. And then then uh that differs from consequentialism, where consequentialism was is one ought to to do the most good. So you don't necessarily have to define good in terms of happiness. You can think of that as desires or or other sorts of things.

And then these kind of consequentialist theories contrast with what are called sort of downlogical or kind of common sense ethical theories, where those theories will say sometimes you should maximize the good, but also there are constraints. There are things you shouldn't do. Uh, you know, you shouldn't kill people to, you know, save lives, perhaps. And there are prerogatives, so there are things you you you maybe would be good for you to do, but you don't have to do. So maybe

The utilitarian might say, Look, you should give lots and lots of money to charity and the deontologist would say, Well, you know, I recognise it would be better in some way for the you know, for the world, for people if I did that, but I don't have to do that. I have these kind of uh these kind of prerogatives. That's there, it's kind of layer of the land.

Now do you do you feel that one of these positions wins? I mean how how would you define your meta ethics and in the uh I mean I I go I I think I've said this before in the podcast, but perhaps you're unaware of it. I ba I do think any sane deontology collapses to some form of I mean if you say it's not all about maximizing the good, there's some very important principles that we must have.

uh hold to like um you know, you know, Kant's categorical imperative or uh some other deontological principle. To my eye, what is smuggled in there covertly is the claim that that principle is on balance good, right? I mean th like if if if someone knew that the categorical imperative was guaranteed to produce the worst outcomes across the board. I don't think most deontologists would bite the bullet there and say, Yeah, that's that's what we want, the worst out outcomes across the board.

They're holding to it because it's it it is on its face intuitively a great way to to implement some something like rural utilitarianism or you know rural consequentialism. What's your thoughts on that? So lots of the objections which you might make are are kind of against utilitarianism that it's taking maximising too seriously are also problems you're likely to find to a lesser degree in non consequentialist theories.

So an example is uh you know, a sort of a kind of a classic differentiating point would be you shouldn't kill one person to to save lives. Right.

So you might say well you shouldn't kill one person to save five people and the consequences might say, Well, look, you you probably should do that, you know, assuming that's just sort of a there'sn't there's no kind of extra complexity to it. But then if you kind of up the ante and you say, Well, what about if you kill one person to save a million lives or a billion lives?

then the moderate consequentialist might think, well, this is outweighed, these kind of normative badness of killing is outweighed by the the kind of the goodness of the of the life save. So you might think that there's kind of you know, still what's going on on under the hood of these uh downtological theories is there's there's still kind of some implicit maths going on, like trading off bits and pieces. Uh-huh. But uh

So that's sort of an accusation that consequentialists might make against deontologists. But I mean deontologists will will kind of fight back and say, well actually look, you don't I mean, there is there are kind of conceptions of deontological theories where you you kind of can't do it exactly like that. And so it's kind of a th there's an open debate, uh, which, you know, perhaps we is kind of too much in the weeds, but as to whether you can just reduce

um dynamological theories to kind of looking at value plus some kind of other normative principles. And you know, some people think you can and other people think that think that you can't. Yeah. The attacks on consequentialism always

boil down i i in my experience to not actually paying attention to the the full set of consequences that follow from any action. So w when someone says, well, if you're a consequentialist, you should be happy to have Your doctor come you know, if you you show up the to the doctor's office for a checkup, your doctor knowing that he's got five other patients who could use your organs

uh he should c just come out and, you know, anesthetise you and kill you and and transplant your organs in his other patients and that's a net benefit for the world. Uh, you know, five people get organs and and one person dies. And that's often put forward or examples like that are often put forward as kind of a knockdown argument against consequentialism. But what people are not adding on the balance there is all of the consequences that follow from such a callous

and horrific practice, right? I mean, if all of if if everyone knew that at any moment they might be swept off the street and and butchered for the benefit of others. But what kind of society w would we be living in and what you know, what would it be d what would it mean to be a doctor?

And how would you feel about your doctor? And how would the doctor be able, you know, uh asleep at night, et cetera? I mean so the consequences just propagate endlessly from a practice like that and it's just obviously awful and no one wants to live in that society for good reason. But again, this is all just a story of consequences. It's not the story of some abstract principle. But anyway, we don't have to get wrapped around that axle. I I just wanted to touch that.

So if you're a consequentialist of of whatever description what should you care about in the end? Well, there are kind of a a few options as to which kind of consequences you're going to say matter. So one which um I think any consequential is going to buy into is is well being.

So well being kind of term of art in philosophy for what ultimately makes someone's life go well for them. Kind of three canonical theories of well being. You've got hedonism, so happiness is what matters, you've got desire theories where getting what you want is what matters. And then you've got this thing called the objective list where it's usually a few things, maybe it

you know, uh happiness and desires are on there, but it might also be things like truth, beauty, love, achievement. And I think there's, you know, so any any that's gonna be kind of one of the key consequences. You might also think maybe there's you want to account for kind of equality or justice. It's kind of a

you might think it's a bit of an open question as to whether those are are kind of derontological principles or sort of uh value based principles. But when I think about this and what kind of kind of motivates my thinking is that it just seems that

I find I just find it very compelling that when we're thinking about what makes someone's go life for uh let their life go well for them, it's their their happiness and their suffering. It's the kind of the quality of life for them, it's how they how they feel overall. Yeah. And this is I guess it's uh, you know, there are some bits of philosophy that think that this is is kind of a a mad theory and kind of no no zik in the experience. You know, would you be you know, if you

If you really believe in happiness, would you plug yourself into a matrix style scenario? But I think in kind of weighing up the three theories of of well being, I just think uh the hedonism, the idea that what what makes your life go well for you is how you feel overall. I think that's got the uh that's kind of got the strongest arguments behind it. And that that motivates lots of the other things that I do. Yeah, I mean I think so to take Nozick's experience machine refutation of

Consequentialism here, utilitarianism. I it's again is what what he's pressing on there is the intuition, which I think is widely shared by people uh is that that we should have something like a reality bias, right? That you don't want to be you don't want your state of subjective well being to be totally uncoupled from the reality of your life in the world. You don't want to be in relationship with um

Seeming others who are not in fact others. So you don't want to be hallucinating about everything, right? So th this is why you wouldn't want to be in the matrix if you in fact you wouldn't want to be in the matrix. Now, I I would grant that under there's certain conditions under which the matrix becomes more and more tempting and reality becomes less and less so, right? I mean, we can imagine just some

forced choice between a very awful universe that is real and a simulated one which is perfect, in which case we might begin to wonder well what's the point of reality in that case. But I think it's again that this is

It's a story of of m yet more consequences at the level of people's experience. I mean to know that you're um you know, I mean just imagine, you know, having the best day of your life and i you or or years of your life and you're in a relationship with people who are incredibly important to you who you love and to find out at some point that all of this was a hallucination, right? And uh there was no uh which is to say not merely that it's impermanent, which any experience Empirical reality is.

we'll all discover that at death, but or the e even is the end of any hour. But there would be this additional knowledge that It was fake in some sense, right? Like the person you thought you were in the presence of sharing meaning and love with was not a person, right? They had they had no point of view on you. It was all just a a hall of mirrors.

I think that we get an icky feeling from that and it's understandable and that icky feeling translates into a degradation of the well being we would find in that circumstance. But e again, I you I I don't think we can press that too far. I think having a a loose reality bias makes sense, but I I I think it you could easily argue for uh ways in which you would want your view of yourself or the world to not be The most brutal high contrast.

you know, r r right at all times view, if in fact that would prove dysfunctional and and corrosive in in other ways, which I think it You know, the it's it's pretty easy to see that it it it might. Yeah, so I mean in in addition to that, I think a a reason not to get into the into the experience machine is I think we have moral responsibilities. If you're just stuck in the experience machine, you you can't make a difference to to anyone else. I also um uh a couple more thoughts.

sort of I'm using that the experience machine has taken as a sort of a slam dunk objection to to hedonism. when, you know, if we look at how technology is changing, we are increasingly living in something like the experience machine. I mean, there are some days where like I don't leave my house, like I interact with people the whole day.

you know, through through the the magic of uh of the internet and so on. Am I am I in fact in the experience machine? Right. But anyway, le leaving those uh those bits to the side, I think a point that's really substantially overlooked is

When there's a discussion about what well being is, it's often, okay, the sort of the argument is is happiness the only thing that matters? And then there's this sort of there's this sort of cognitive mistake from thinking, well, if happiness isn't the only thing that matters, then it doesn't actually matter very much.

And so I I often find I have to remind people, even if they are not hedonists, and few people are, and that's, you know, that's fine, that look, even if you don't think it's anything that matter, you do still think that it matters.

If you didn't think that it mattered, you would think that people's suffering and misery didn't matter in and of itself. And that's a very peculiar thought. So it's at least gotta be one of the things that matter, or it's gonna be very important to whatever it is else that matters intrinsically. So if you're engaging in morality and you're not taking happiness seriously and taking suffering seriously, then you're missing a you know a major a major part of um of what really matters.

So what do you do with the fact that happiness and well being are these elastic concepts that are really impossible to define in any kind of closed way because they're there's they're frontiers of happiness and well being that we are gradually exploring and you know you're presumably

There are experiences that uh we would all recognize that are, you know, better than any we've yet had and they're sort sort of out there on the horizon and we c we can't really close our accounts with reality at this point and say, hey, you know, well being, ultimate human well being is this. Because a thousand years from now it may consist i of something, you know, that that we can't even form a a concept around presently.

And what do you do with the fact that and this is explicit in m many of the objections to the concept of happiness, because it somehow seems thin and doesn't somehow capture everything that's worth wanting. What do you do with the fact that there's certain forms of suffering and stress that seem integral to uh the deeper reaches of of well being, you know, so that it's not it can't purely be about avoiding pain or avoiding stress.

or maximizing short term pleasure, right? I mean, we all know what it's like to or many of us know what it's like to go to the gym and work out hard and if you could experience sample that hour, it would be true to say that much of it was excruciating.

Uh, and if you were having that experience for some other reason, like if you woke up in the middle of the night and felt the way you felt, you know, doing a deadlift or whatever, you would run straight to the hospital, you know, convinced you're g you're about to die.

But because of the context and because of the consequences of spending that hour that way, most people learn to love that experience, even if it's um negatively balanced as a matter of, you know, sensation and physiology while having it. How do you define well-being or flourishing or happiness to encompass those wrinkles? Yeah, so I think the definitional problems are maybe not so sharp. I mean in

in f kind of philosophy we just sort of na nail them down one way or another. So f well being what makes your life go well for you overall. And then happiness I just understand as feeling good overall.

So it has this in intrinsic quality of pleasure. If you don't know what pleasure is, sorry, I I don't think I can tell you what that feels like. But that's sort of the you know, the kind of end of the line, we just sort of recognise there is an intuitive kind of pleasantness, kind of positive or negative valence in our experiences.

So then there's this question about the causes of happiness and you know, what does happiness consist in? So what I think happiness consists in is positive valence experience. And then what are the causes of happiness? Well, you know, that's a that's an empirical question. You're you're absolutely right that you know are what we we're we can possibly discover lots about.

what are the causes of happiness and how do they compare to each other over time and what in fact are the best ways to promote happiness, which hopefully we will we will come to in due course. On the bit about suffering, yeah, this comes up quite a bit. It's like well

You know, but if you only lived a happy life, wouldn't you this is a bit like the point you're making about kind of consequentialists and people say, well, if you if you only experience happiness, that would in fact not maximise your sum total of happiness over time, because you need the misery to have some happiness.

But I mean, I think that's, you know, sort of fine as a a fact of the matter. If you're looking at your experiences over time, then you you do want some kind of good stuff and and and and some bad stuff if you're gonna um you know have the the greatest area under the line. I mean we you know, we know this. We uh we do things like we take ourselves camping.

Uh. Because we know it's gonna be a miserable experience so that then we can go back to civilization and enjoy the fruits of civilization. I've stopped camping. Yeah. But you've you've had the camping experience, so maybe that, you know, you can remember, oh, thank God I'm um I'm I'm not doing that. Yeah. Well so but uh do you actually think that m my intuition kinda runs the other way. I I I don't think we need awful things to compare our happiness to to recognize that we're happy.

I think happiness or y human well being could become increasingly refined such that the thing you're comparing the best experience to is like is still a very good experience. It's just ne not nearly as good as the best. So there's some version of camping that is better than what ninety nine percent of people experience uh on a day to day basis, but which could become the the reference point if one were needed of comparison to some yet future state.

That's even more blissful and expansive and creative and beautiful and and encompassing of depth and intuitions that we, you know, very few people ever experience.

Yeah, so I don't think it I agree with you, it's not sort of logically necessary, but if you look at how kind of happiness seems to work for people, it's uh it's highly comparative and there's some kind of oddnesses about the things we choose to compare ourselves to and uh and not others. So I'm kind of a a a case in point that's kind of relevant for the moment is in the kind of the West of world, you know, your side of the pond, my side of the pond, we're talking about a cost of living crisis.

Okay, people are sort of feeling like they're they're feeling the pinch, you know, incomes are going down, things are more expensive. But look, here's sort of another perspective on this. If you earn the median salary in the US, which is something like forty thousand dollars. You're in the top two percent of the global distribution. And if you think about how many people I think it's more than that. I thought the um or you said median, but I think the mean per capita GDP in the US is like

sixty five thousand, something like that. It's I think it's it is higher than that. But it's higher than the UK. Yeah, I'm I'm thinking I'm thinking of the median. I don't I don't know the mean the mean uh D D V Yeah, yeah I guess I guess the median way is considerably lower because there's some very rich people.

Yeah. And then um if you're looking uh not just at the moment, but across time, I mean, you know, how long of when did Homo sapiens become Homo sapiens? But if so by by one estimate, there's like a hundred and twenty billion people who have ever lived.

So if you put those together, if you're alive today and earning a median salary in the US, you're in the top 0.1 to richest people or 0.1% of rich people who have ever lived. Yes. And yet what are people talking about? They say, ah, it's the cost of living crisis. Things are so expensive. And and when I when I make this point to people, they'll look at me like I'm strange. Like, well, you know, of course that's not relevant. Like that's not how I think about my life.

But, you know, that's the that's the kind of curiosity there is that um how that there are certain things we compare our lives to and sort of naturally, intuitively, but we could make different comparisons. And so relating to your point, you know, we could uh, you know, bring ourselves to think of the misery in the world that we are otherwise avoiding. And that would give us uh

uh greater happiness. But in fact, you know, we w w we're in quite narrow tracks in the kind of yeah, we just compare ourselves to the things which are salient, the people uh near around us. Yeah. And so in practice maybe you do need that reminding now and then of of some misfortune that can make you grateful for the rest of your uh for the other parts of your life.

Well well this issue of comparison I think runs pretty deep because given that so much of our judgment of our own well being and and in fact our experience of whether or not we are flourishing is based on comparison, is based on context. It's based on the on the cognitive framing. laid over the just the kind of the raw sensory e experience of being w oneself moment to moment.

One could ask, I mean, what what is the now we're kinda getting gonna get into kinda effective altruism and what is, you know, what what problems on earth are worth solving and how we prioritize those things. But if it's a matter of alleviating suffering and alleviating the most excruciating suffering first, presumably. and maximizing human well being. Maybe it's in fact true to say that the homeless on the streets of San Francisco are suffering more than the poorest of the poor.

In sub Saharan Africa or in an Indian village or somewhere where objectively they are more deprived, right? Because there's no one starving to death in San Francisco. whatever their condition. I mean, they could b they might be dying of fentanyl abuse or something else, but there's no one starving to death in America. That's just not a thing.

Because there's just so much food and you can go to a shelter, you can go you can go to a pantry or you can go to a dumpster or I mean you can get food. But there are places on earth where people still starve to death. Happily that's less and less the case. And yet, if you imagine the experience of being homeless, you know, right outside of uh Salesforce Tower or wherever you are in San Francisco.

the prospect of comparing the unraveling of your life with the lives that seem to be going on so smoothly all around you. Suggest to me that it's at least conceivable that that suffering, that mental suffering, the experience of being in that bad condition is worse. than much or maybe everything that's going on.

in objectively poorer parts of the world. How how do you think about that? Yeah, I I find that extremely plausible and and very probably true. Having having w walked through the streets of San Francisco and also Yeah I would imagine. If you'd like to continue listening to this conversation, you'll need to subscribe at samharris.org. Once you do, you'll get access to all full-length episodes of the Making Sense Podcast. The Making Sense Podcast is ad-free and relies entirely on listener support.

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