[Serious] Moral Obligations toward Possible Worlds

[vulcanlogician]

Plenty of utilitarian goods allow or are explicitly produced by some harm.  If it were true that slavery benefited a majority, or that slavery benefitted a majority of the enslaved, it would satisfy the criteria of utilitarianism by definition.  

Not necessarily. A utilitarian aims for a world that is maximally good. If hedonism is your principle... that means "the happiness of the majority" is not the central focus. The depth of suffering and the amount of suffering an individual experiences counts for something.

For instance, if there were two identical worlds, except in one world, two people paid full price for movie tickets. But in the nearly identical world, these two saved a dollar off their movie tickets-- but somebody lost an arm. The first world is better.

I think "benefitting the majority" is a side effect of utilitarianism and not its primary goal.

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And I also want to say that, even if it could be demonstrated that hedonistic utilitarianism requires abolition of slavery, I would still find the theory dissatisfying and incomplete. I'm not trying to "save utilitarianism" or anything. I just think that (in principle) abolition may be necessary for a maximally good world.

[The Grand Nudger]

Maximally good, as defined in utilitarian philosophy, is the most good for the most people. Inasmuch as the involuntary labor of some small number supported the greater number, it's a utilitarian good. It's one strategy for securing necessary labor.

[vulcanlogician]

Yeah. I think you're right.

I guess the thought that struck me was that, when you allow one person to own, control, and exploit another... the potential for possible suffering is boundless. The potential pleasure that the master derives from such a relationship would (as a rule) be trivial compared to the amount of suffering that could be experienced by the slave.

[Anomalocaris]

Maximally good, as defined in utilitarian philosophy, is the most good for the most people.  Inasmuch as the involuntary labor of some small number supported the greater number, it's a utilitarian good.  It's one strategy for securing necessary labor.

Is a extremely large amount of good for fewer people less maximally good than a tiny amount of good for more people?

What is good?  What if to some people, good IS the harm to others?

It seems the key to workable, not just agreeable, utilitarianism must be reliance to some degree on some higher good beyond the individual good according to how each sees it.