Interesting, our differences are deeper than I expected!
Do you feel you have a good grip on my foundations, or is there something I should expand on?
Let me check my understanding of your foundations: You make decisions to satisfy your own preferences. Some of these might be 'social preferences', which might include e.g. a preference for fewer malaria deaths in the developing world, which might lead you to want to donate some of your income to charity. You do not admit any sense in which it would be 'better' to donate more of your income than you want to, except perhaps by admitting meta-preferences like "I would prefer if I had a stronger preference for fewer malaria deaths".
When you say someone is obligated to do X, you mean that you would prefer that they be coerced to do X. (I hesitate to summarize it this way, though, because it means that if you say they're obligated and I say they aren't, we haven't actually contradicted each other).
Is the above a correct description of your approach?
You make decisions...
It's not just me. This is my model of human moral activity. We're social animals with some built in social preferences, along with other built in preferences.
You do not admit any sense in which it would be 'better'
I could come up with a zillion different "betters" where that was the case, but that doesn't mean that I find it better overall according to my values.
When you say someone is obligated to do X, you mean that you would prefer that they be coerced to do X.
That's too strong for some cases, but it was my m...
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.