Is "pursuit of happiness" an endorsement of utilitarianism?
Were the Founding Fathers consequentialists?
- Life
- Liberty
- Pursuit of Happiness
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
"That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. "
Open question
The purpose of government existing is to protect unalienable rights of which these three outlined. Pursuit of Happiness may require utilitarianism because utilitarianism at least as it was understood back then was about raising happiness for all.
References
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_process_theory_(moral_psychology)
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life,_Liberty_and_the_pursuit_of_Happiness
Muhahahah, says the statist, finally having found a way to trick people into always having a government, even just as they overthrow their last oppressive masters. Just create more, right?
Do we have an unalienable right to be consequentialists?
There cannot be happines, nor freedom… nor life inside the hierarchical matrix.
https://steemit.com/philosophy/@lighteye/the-last-revolution-part-11
“Whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it” … And whenever people again form a hierarchical structure of Government, everything will become destructive again… oand always more destructive than the last time.
What you have here is a hypothesis. And you can't really say people in society aren't happy because you haven't produced any data showing you measured mean happiness or anything like a happiness score.
Utilitarianism seems rather creepy to me, especially since those guy make themselves the ultimate judges to know what is the greater good for the greater number.
And the Declaration of Independence seems to say it's an unalienable right to be a utilitarian. Happiness does matter but pursuit of happiness is to be a protected right.
First I will say I'm not a constitutional scholar. At the same time if you look at the right to Life, and Liberty, these come before the right of Pursuit of Happiness. So you cannot violate Life and Liberty just to make people happy. If Life and Liberty are not violated but let's say it makes people safer and more free? Then it's perfectly fine for you to be utilitarian.
Make the world happy but it has to be safe and free first.
Do you mean that utilitarianism and consequentialism are the same? The latter I associate with the pragmatism (the means can be contrary to the ends) the former tends towards individualism. I couldn't discern what your meaning was exactly.
If the desired consequence of having a government is to produce citizens who are safe, free, and happy, then it's a consequentialist government that creates laws to protect the rights which are expected to produce this effect on the citizen. So when deciding on a law, or as a programmer a rule, does it make the users safer, freer, happier? Then it fits into the same logic I see in the Declaration of Independence.
A smart contract or DAO which takes away the safety of the users (or non users), which takes away the freedom of the user or non users (if it uses force and coercion), if it takes away the happiness of the users (or non users), then you could say it's harmful if the goal is to try to live up to the Declaration of Independence as a guide to governing.
There may be times where you sacrifice some of happiness to get more liberty, or some liberty to get more security, so that for example lives are saved, or liberty isn't lost, but it should never be the case that you sacrifice all three for nothing. Think of it like you're trying to increase the total number of "points" in all three categories and you prioritize the order because without life liberty is pointless and without liberty happiness cannot be pursued.
The point about how utilitarian and consequential both are founded upon immutable law, but how the former is agnostic and the latter is political, that clarified my understanding. Political action is about consolidation of power. The former is simply curiosity, 'what do you do to get this to happen?'
I simply cannot believe in a universe that does not make sense, because I can't be sure about it. I also know that I cannot predict how events will cascade so I have to always suspend judgement especially when unusual things happen, that the existing model does not predict. There is just too many variables to be sure what leads to what, and the core funtion of intelligence is making accurate predictions, so we always have to concede a margin of error, and that our models may be wrong.
Towards the very last comment, yes, this is the core principle of economics, in fact it is more accurate to call it the theory of human action - every action precludes others. Time is limited. You have to decide whether one thing is a better use of your time than another, always, you can't live out all the options.
I can only speak for how I think about it so my explanation is how I think about things as a smart contract developer. I try to adhere to the Declaration of Independence as a guiding document for how to protect rights and I think people interacting with smart contracts do have rights or expectations of rights. I would not create a smart contract which attacks people, or which enslaves people, etc, because the whole point of building smart contracts is to try to create BETTER GOVERNANCE than what already exists.
So I think the Declaration of Independence is a good standard, a starting point to measure a smart contract by how much it respects the rights of users. Maybe smart contracts in some ways can do a better job of protecting these unalienable rights than the current national systems we have.
Secure-> Free -> Fun.
Utilitarianism depends on consequentialism for proper expression. Since you are a programmer you should think of it as a dependency. A utilitarian is necessarily a consequentialist but a consequentialist may not necessarily be utilitarian.
What is happiness?
the reduction of discomfort.