Some philosophical quagmires

I have noticed that many philosophical problems and odd conclusions of some theories hold a common basis. They are actually illusions, born of not taking the principles in question far enough, but rather using other, more familiar principles together with them. I'll draw my examples from utilitarianism and nihilism, two schools of thought that please my mental aesthetics.

Nobody can avoid hearing or thinking sometimes that "nothing really matters". If all values are inside our heads, mere subjective preferences, doesn't it indeed logically follow that there are no objective values and therefore everything is ultimately pointless? Well, if nothing matters, then the fact that nothing matters doesn't matter either... But there's a logical error in play as well, which can be revealed through simple rephrasing: If there are no objective values, then objective value of everything = 0. In fact, the lack of anything valuable outside human heads means that there is no point in speaking of "ultimately" anythings. Only subjective preferences exist, and those can vary wildly. If something matters to you, then it matters to you. That's all there is to it.

Rather similar mistake is made by cultural relativists who claim that all cultures are equally good and worthy, because there is no objective method for arranging them into any hierarchy. All well and good, but without such method it is just as impossible to state they all are as good as each other. For any subjective observer cultures are self-evidently unequal, since they express different facets of humanity in very variable ways. This holds true for the cultural relativists just as much for others -- just witness how a typical specimen reacts to homophobic or misogynist attitudes barely a fraction of those held by many Middle Easterners, for example. Honest cultural relativist might think that his values are not universal, and others may have perfectly legitimate reasons for preferring something he detests, but it doesn't follow that he has to like or even tolerate such things.

In both cases, thinking is being built around the subjectivity of values, but the ghost of objective values is still flitting around. Instead of being banished, as it logically should be, every subjective set of preferences is simply given the same objective value. It is a easy mistake to make. When young, we intuitively conflate together both value types, and understanding of subjectivity develops step by step, not all at once. It is easy to forget the last one.

Utilitarianism encounters similar problems, most clearly expressed in some popular criticisms against it. One is the scenario where a person causes something good by doing something very nasty, for example a drunk driver speeding into some pedestrians and ending up killing an uncaught serial killer. Was this act good or evil? Utilitarianism would say it was good, since the consequences were good, yet drawing this conclusion feels uncomfortable. This, I think, is due to the intuition that good acts ought to be rewarded, and only bad to be punished. Yet this is deontological approach. Utilitarianism, if taken to its logical conclusion and not switched to another view in the middle of example, requires acts to be met with that which gives greatest benefit. So it was great that the killer died and cannot murder any more. Nonetheless it is seen as beneficial to society to punish people severely for drunk driving and manslaughter. Therefore, that's what should be done.

Another critique of utilitarianism states that it is often impossible to precisely calculate the consequences of actions. Even when possible, it might be long, hard work, pointlessly so in most cases. These are valid criticisms, but they aren't arguments against the principle of consequentalism itself, merely the idea that our deeds should be chosen by applying some form of ethical calculus. In fact utilitarianism applies to the ways of determining the preferred actions just as much as everything else. Since determining their consequences exactly is so hard, and time used to determining proper actions is a resource as well, utilitarianism actually invalidates itself in its naive form. More useful is to apply heuristics, or rules of thumb associated with preferred outcomes. In practice this is very close to old-fashioned ethical systems with their do's and don't's, which is hardly a coincidence. We have had such systems because they are fairly simple, fast and work adequately. The difference is not seeing those as inflexible mandates, and recognizing that while they do usually work, they are by no means perfect means of attaining the best consequences. If the case is important enough that one can spend quite a while thinking about it, and following ethical rules would seem to lead to some rather unpreferable outcome, then careful weighing of pros and cons has its place.

Just like nihilism, utilitarianism is an unintuitive way of thinking that develops gradually. It is easy for residues of rule-based morality to stay in the brain. Another problem is seeing these two approaches as somehow mutually exclusive, when in fact rules are so fundamentally important part of any realistically applicable utilitarianism. When consequential thinking is taken to its logical conclusion, this does indeed become apparent, but once again, such is usually easier said than done.