As I understand it, and in my just-made-up-now terminology, there are two different kinds of utilitarianism, Normative, and Descriptive. In Normative, you try to figure out the best possible action and you must do that action. In Descriptive, you don't have to always do the best possible action if you don't want to, but you're still trying to make the most good out of what you're doing. For example, consider the following hypothetical actions:
Get a high-paying job and donate all of my earnings except the bare minimum necessary to survive to effective charities. (oversimplified utility: 50,000)
Get a job I enjoy and donate 10% of my earnings to effective charities. (oversimplified utility: 5,000)
Volunteer at a homeless shelter. (oversimplified utility: 500)
Buy one game for $10 and donate $10 to effective charities. (oversimplified utility: 50)
Buy two games. (oversimplified utility: 5)
Bang my head against a wall. (oversimplified utility: -5)
Normative would say that I must always pick the first action. Descriptive would say that these are some options with different utilities, and I should probably try and get one with a higher utility, but I don't have to pick the optimal one if I don't want to. So with Descriptive, if I didn't feel like making my self a slave to the greater good as in the first example, but I thought I would be okay with effective tithing or volunteering, then I could do that instead and still help a lot of people. If I were in a bad place and all I could motivate myself to do was to donate $10 to an effective charity, I would still know that's a higher utility action than buying a second game. Even a completely selfish action such as buying two games is still better than an action that is harmful, such as the oversimplified example of banging my head against a wall.
I feel that Descriptive is more practical, though theoretically Normative would take into account an agent's motivation in determining the best possible action that the agent could take.
(This was somewhat inspired by a similar discussion on the rational side of Tumblr from maybe a few months ago, though I don't remember exactly where. If anyone knows, please share a link.)
ETA: It seems that there are already terms for what I was trying to describe. Namely, maximising utilitarian instead of Normative, and scalar utilitarian instead of Descriptive.
Chist Hallquist wrote the following in an article (if you know the article please, please don't bring it up, I don't want to discuss the article in general):
"For example, utilitarianism apparently endorses killing a single innocent person and harvesting their organs if it will save five other people. It also appears to imply that donating all your money to charity beyond what you need to survive isn’t just admirable but morally obligatory. "
The non-bold part is not what is confusing me. But where does the "obligatory" part come in. I don't really how its obvious what, if any, ethical obligations utilitarianism implies. given a set of basic assumptions utilitarianism lets you argue whether one action is more moral than another. But I don’t see how its obvious which, if any, moral benchmarks utilitarianism sets for “obligatory.” I can see how certain frameworks on top of utilitarianism imply certain moral requirements. But I do not see how the bolded quote is a criticism of the basic theory of utilitarianism.
However this criticism comes up all the time. Honestly the best explanation I could come up with was that people were being unfair to utilitarianism and not thinking through their statements. But the above quote is by HallQ who is intelligent and thoughtful. So now I am genuinely very curious.
Do you think utilitarianism really require such extreme self sacrifice and if so why? And if it does not require this why do so many people say it does? I am very confused and would appreciate help working this out.
edit:
I am having trouble asking this question clearly. Since utilitarianism is probably best thought of as a cluster of beliefs. So its not clear what asking "does utilitarianism imply X" actually means. Still I made this post since I am confused. Many thoughtful people identity as utilitarian (for example Ozy and theunitofcaring) yet do not think people have extreme obligations. However I can think of examples where people do not seem to understand the implications of their ethical frameowrks. For example many Jewish people endorse the message of the following story:
Rabbi Hilel was asked to explain the Torah while standing on one foot and responded "What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation of this--go and study it!"
The story is presumably apocryphal but it is repeated all the time by Jewish people. However its hard to see how the story makes even a semblance of sense. The torah includes huge amounts of material that violates the "golden Rule" very badly. So people who think this story gives even a moderately accurate picture of the Torah's message are mistaken imo.