Aswad
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Joined: 4/4/2007
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ORIGINAL: xssve
Not at all - unless you make an assumption that the needs of one individual are greater than another's via some other species of assessment, you can safely assume that the needs of all individuals involved are equivalent, ceteris paribus.
So long as you recognize the difference between an assumption and objective fact, I don't have a problem with the approach.
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I don't know quite what the rest of this means - there is always a question of the "the greater good", but typically, this requires some degree of convincing, i.e., argument, that it is the greater good - it's never entirely axiomatic, even though it might be treated as such.
Actually, I would rather argue that I'm both unqualified to determine the greater good, and somewhat ambivalent about its importance in the first place. There is no requirement for ethics to take the good of others into account, either, though one might argue that ethics that don't at least address the matter of how to relate to others is fairly pointless. Any ethic that does take the good of others into account might be more successful in the long run, though, and most seem to favor an ethic that does. Arguably, enlightened self interest and various other strategies can also yield comparable success, but strategies aren't ethics as such (but one can be built on enlightened self interest, certainly).
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I think you may be talking about Les Miserables, and this is exactly the sort of situation that benefits from a cost:benefit analysis - if one assumes that eating enough to stay alive is a requirement necessary for all people equally in order to maintain some level of utility.
It was the furthest thing from my mind, actually.
Utility isn't something I generally consider too much in my ethics.
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In short, in any group of theoretically autonomous humans, the requirement to maximize their individual utility must be assumed to be equal.
Assumed by whom?
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It's pretty straightforward unless you're attempting to fit it into some other meta system - it is the meta system, and you'll find it underlies almost every ethical system in praxis - if for no other reason than any other point of reference is necessarily arbitrary.
Any point of reference, including that one, is arbitrary, yes. You're making it less than straightforward, though, and are omitting idiosyncratic ethos, as well as the ethos of cultures that have overriding values that are not based on utility or equality of import. For instance, there are several cultures where a group (gender, ethnic, religious, whatever) doesn't constitute a significant concern in terms of ethics (heck, even the species barrier itself is an ever-present example that any ethic that condones existing is an ethic that is at least partially agent-centric, etc.).
If you want to discuss the strategic aspects of human behavior, that's fine. Ethics and morals are implemented in ways that are not exclusively strategic, however, whether individually or as groups, and the theoretic aspect isn't strategic in my view, though those with certain forms will be selected for in a certain setting, of course (hardly a phenomenon that merits covering seperately from the general evolution of ideas).
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I'm not at all sure how you mean it invalidates itself, something can be ethically neutral, i.e., neither bad nor good, here nor there - taking a shit is ethically neutral unless it happens to be in somebody else's bed.
I was misreading your post, I think.
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I never said it couldn't get complicated, questions of group vs. individual utility invariably are - compromising the utility a certain number of individuals might be rationalized if a significant threat to group utility is at stake, war for example - considerably less so if it's merely a question of convenience for certain other individuals claiming to represent the group, group values, etc. - follow it to the fundamental fulcrum of any given issue though, and it's invariably about how costs and benefits are being distributed.
That's more a matter of politics than ethics. And, as I said, utility need not be foundational for any ethic.
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And, on the contrary, unethical behavior is typically self-limiting while ethical behavior tends to maximize group utility - as in business ethics for examples, where enforcable contracts are the foundation of economic activity, or the NAZI's you mention, who paid a heavy price in the long run for devoting critical infrastructure to erdicating the bulk of their trained labor pool.
The Nazis paid a heavy price, yes. As did others. What I said was that there were beneficial, unintended consequences to their actions, as well. Arguably a function of their failure, and of our opposition to them, but also thought well of. The notion of limiting an ethic to one country wasn't mentioned on my part, I think? (If it was, I apologize.) Business ethics... your theory contradicts an observation I've made that much unethical business is between people at an individual level, and these are quite able to get away with activities whose backlash and selflimiting effects tend to land on the business entity they are enabled to act as. Heck, more than one person has pointed out that, clinically, a business entity is essentially a sociopath.
Sorry, I'm getting too sluggish to edit this into a semblence of cohesion, and I apparently keep missing your point.
I may give it another try when I have had some sleep.
Health,
al-Aswad.
_____________________________
"If God saw what any of us did that night, he didn't seem to mind.
From then on I knew: God doesn't make the world this way.
We do." -- Rorschack, Watchmen.
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RE: Misogyny and BDSM - 
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