system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
I don't understand how someone else's happiness compensates for my pain in utilitarianism

There should be nothing wrong with utilitarianism here if 10 people rape a woman and there is great pleasure, and then the woman is killed and no one knows about it. But I don't see how their pleasure can compensate for my pain. We are different people. How can their happiness affect my pain?
gpt
This is essentially Rawls' objection to utilitarianism. He objects that utilitarianism fails to respect the separateness of persons. Just as we usually think that pain suffered by me now can be compensated by the experience of pleasure by me in the future, the utilitarian assumes that the pain suffered by one individual can be compensated by the pleasure experienced by other individuals. But, according to Rawls, this neglects the fact that in the latter sort of case, the pleasure and pain are experienced by different people. Parfit famously tries to respond by challenging the moral significance of the fact that two individuals are separate people.