Thoughts on love and utilitarianism

Mo Tzu was a Chinese philosopher born the same year of Socrates 470 B.C.E.   According to our textbook, Tzu was a utilitarian and believed that "Love" is what is beneficial.  Love is a virtue espoused by many philosophers but the question is what do we mean by the term love? It appears for Tzu it partially demotes what is beneficial or what is beneficial for the most involved or impacted by a decision.

On page 251 of the textbook the author ask,"Is universal love realistic?".  We have discussed worldviews and how our fundamental preconception of reality impacts the choices we make in life. Since there is no universally accepted world view it seems unlikely at this time that universal love is a possibility.  This does not imply that we should not strive to properly understand what love is, and practice what we understand, but we have to address the realities of differing views and priorities in conceiving of and living in love.

In my opinion our nature should proceed our definition of love.  In other words, human love would be qualitatively different from a dog who loves his master. There are expectations of love within human inter-relationships that do not exist between dogs, pigs, or goats and their offspring and fellow species. Also, We do not expect non-sentient objects, such as, rocks, sand, or stars to love each other or humans.  Our understanding and mutual expectations of love flow from our nature.  The difficulties I have with utilitarians such as Bentham, Mill, and Tzu and their ideas of love and pleasure are the following:

1. The only object with intrinsic value is happiness or pleasure.
2. The value of pleasure precedes human value
3. The right of pleasure for all species can only be recognized by human reason.
4. Mutual love cannot be mandated or expected of other species since we have little to no objective knowledge of if or what non-human sentient beings may understand, experience, or expect in relation to loving or being loved.

First, how can happiness or pleasure be a first principle unless those to to whom pleasure is required are owed this right?  There must be the first principle of the intrinsic value and rights of the being.  Does the being have a value or right worthy of being loved? Although human dignity is important to these philosophers, dignity is only valued in that the ideal may bring the maximum pleasure to most.  Bentham was a naturalist.  The world is a closed system with no transcendental, creational purpose or goal.  So how does Bentham logically enforce that humans are owed pleasure?  Throughout most of human history, nature seems to have ensured the misery of the weak and powerless, and the licentiousness of the powerful.  How does nature or history tell us we have an inherent value that affords humans a right to pleasure?  Personally I think we do, but the utilitarianism of Bentham, Mill, and Tzu give us no logical foundation as to why.  This is a profound weakness within their worldviews.

For Bentham only pleasure had intrinsic value, but how can pleasure have its own value outside of sentient experiences.  Is pleasure a being, a god, or entity with its own intrinsic worth outside human beings, knowledge and experience?  This makes no sense.  Pleasure only has objective moral value to the extent that the beings who experience pleasure have intrinsic value or worth.  Our existence is before our experience.

If all sentient beings have a right and obligation to pleasure, and humans are obligated to recognize this right, how is this ideal to be reciprocated by other sentient beings that may or may not have any knowledge or capacity for knowledge to recognize the utilitarian position? Is not moral duty reciprocal?  How can other sentient beings be held morally accountable to ensure maximum pleasure for all other beings?

Since love among different sentient beings is qualitatively distinct and only humans have the capacity and moral obligation to love, how is this equality?  Equality involves reciprocation of the same or similar conduct and equal moral obligation.  This does not conclude that humans are not morally obligated to love other beings, but only in proportion to their nature.  For instance: A woman is struck and killed by a car and is lying in the street dead, is this an equal tragedy to the dead armadillo laying dead in the street two blocks down the road?  Do we have the same moral obligation to the armadillo as we do to the woman? Now lets say an armadillo comes across the dead woman laying in the street, what is the armadillo's moral obligation? We have no moral expectations of the armadillo, quite frankly because it is an armadillo and not a human being.  So how can there be true moral equality?  There cannot!