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Conservative Utilitarianism1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 January 2009

Dudley Knowles
Dudley Knowles
Affiliation:
University of Glasgow, [email protected]
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Abstract

The resilience of utilitarian ethics in the face of unremitting criticism can be explained in part by its use of various strategies of indirect utilitarianism. The success of these strategies throws up a distinctive problem: how can one measure the utility of moral rules, large-scale social institutions or character traits distinctive of virtues? Reading Hume as a utilitarian of sorts in his treatment of justice (and rejecting contractarian readings), I explain his conservative endorsement of entrenched social practices as a consequence of his broadly functionalist approach. I claim that this account has enough merit to ground conservativism in ethics as a satisfactory default position. Projects for reform rather than established institutions are the proper object of utilitarian assessment, thus finessing the problem of measurement I opened up initially.

Type
Articles
Information
Utilitas , Volume 12 , Issue 2 , July 2000 , pp. 155 - 175
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2000

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References

2 Rawls, John, ‘Two Concepts of Rules’, Philosophical Review, lxiv (1955)Google Scholar; repr. in Theories of Ethics, ed. Philippa Foot, Oxford, 1967.

3 As against other measurement problems, e.g., that of interpersonal comparisons. Since I first drafted these remarks, it has been pointed out to me that James Griffin has recognized the same problem: ‘my doubt about indirect utilitarianism is whether we could often perform the tremendously large-scale cost-benefit calculations that it requires, or even often arrive at probabilities reliable enough for action. We can do these calculations in fairly extreme or fairly smale-scale cases, but ususally not otherwise’ (Value Judgement, Oxford, 1996, p. 105)Google Scholar. I register Griffin's doubt, and, in what follows, elaborate a strategem which both respects the seriousness of the problem to which he alludes and finesses the need for even the rough calculations he thinks the utilitarian must supply.

4 Not necessarily the point of the practice — as though there could be only one such point and that point is uncontroversial or uncontested.

5 Hume, David, An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. Selby-Bigge, L. A., Oxford, 1902, sect. 3, pt. 1, pp. 183, 186, 188Google Scholar.

6 Ibid., p. 192.

7 In the Treatise (Hume, D., A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. Selby-Bigge, L. A., Oxford, 1888)Google Scholar. Notoriously, in the Second Enquiry, ‘artificial virtues’ were transmuted into ‘social virtues’, a term which he hoped would not attract the gratuitous odium which critics had directed at his discussion of justice in the Treatise.

8 Annette C. Baier counters ‘the recurrent attempts of others to pin some contemporary label on Hume's account [of justice]’, insisting that it is ‘neither utilitarian nor contractarian’. A Progress of Sentiments, Cambridge, Mass., 1991, pp. 250 fGoogle Scholar.

9 Though Jonathan Harrison has done a good deal of the spade work in Hume's Theory of Justice, Oxford, 1981, index, s.v.Google Scholar.

10 Ibid., p. 10.

11 Gauthier, David, ‘David Hume, Contractarian’, Philosophical Review, lxxxviii (1979)Google Scholar, cited at 10.

12 See, for example, A. Baier, pp. 250–4.

13 On judges, see Treatise, bk. 3, pt. 2, p. 231; Second Enquiry, app. 3, pp. 308 f. On the rules of property, see Treatise, bk. 3, pt. 2, sect. 3; Second Enquiry, pp. 309 f. n. On the rules of the road, see Second Enquiry, sect. 4, p. 210n.

14 All quotations from Treatise, bk. 3, pt. 2, sect. 12, ‘Of Chastity and Modesty’, pp. 570–3. The same point, using the same example, that ‘General rules are often extended beyond the principle whence they first arise’, is made in the Second Enquiry, pp. 207 f.

15 I discuss a further objection to Gauthier's contractarian interpretation later.

16 See Treatise, bk. 3, sect. 12, ‘Of chastity and modesty’; Second Enquiry, sect. 4, pp. 166–8, sect. 6, p. 195.

17 Ibid., pp. 203 f.

18 Gould, S. J. and Lewontin, R., ‘The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique of the Adaptionist Programme’, Proceedings of the Royal Society, vol. Bccv (1979)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, repr. in Conceptual Issues in Evolutionary Biology, ed. Elliott Sober, Cambridge, Mass, and London, 1984.

19 See Dennett, Daniel C., Darwin's Dangerous Idea, Harmondsworth, 1995, ch. 10, § 2Google Scholar, ‘The Spandrel's Thumb’[!], citing Cronin, Helen, The Ant and the Peacock, Cambridge, 1991, p. 86Google Scholar.

20 Robert Nozick attributes this thought to one of Hume's more prominent twentieth century epigonoi, citing Hayek, F. A., in Law, Legislation and Liberty, vol. 1: Rules and Order, Chicago, 1973, pp. 11 fGoogle Scholar. See Nozick, Robert, The Nature of Rationality, Princeton, 1993, pp. 128 f., n37Google Scholar. It is fair to say that Nozick himself is sceptical of the conservative thought that ‘existing institutions, traditions, and biases have strong presumptions in their favor’. Nozick, pp. 129 f.

21 G. A. Cohen usefully summarizes the functionalist trend in social anthropology as the assertion of the following three theses: ‘(1) All elements of social life are interconnected. They strongly influence one another and in aggregate “form one inseparable whole” (Interconnection Thesis). (2) All elements of social life support or reinforce one another, and hence too the whole society which in aggregate they constitute (Functional Interconnection Thesis). (3) Each element is as it is because of of its contribution to the whole, as described in (2)(Explanatory Functional Interconnection Thesis).’ (Cohen, G. A., Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence, Oxford, 1978, pp. 283 f.Google Scholar, citingMalinowski, B., Argonauts of the Western Pacific, London, 1922, p. 515)Google Scholar.

22 Wright, Larry, ‘Functions,’ Philosophical Review, lxxxii (1973)Google Scholar, repr. in E. Sober (ed.), Conceptual Issues in Evolutionary Biology; G. A. Cohen, pp. 249–89.

23 In this discussion, I shall be less concerned than hitherto to attribute specific arguments to Hume. The detail of his discussions are often flimsy. The famous rowing boat example, used in both the Treatise (bk. 3, pt. 2, p. 490) and the Enquiry (app. 3, p. 306) takes up one, shortish, sentence in the first and a clause in the latter, and, as J. L. Mackie has shown, bears two very different readings (Mackie, J. L., Hume's Moral Theory, London, 1980, pp. 88–93)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 Gauthier describes this position as ‘original contractarianism’. Gauthier, , pp. 9 fGoogle Scholar.

25 Hume, David, ‘Of the Original Contract’, in Essays Moral, Political and Literary, Oxford, 1963, pp. 452–73Google Scholar.

26 Hume, D., Treatise, bk. 3, pt. 2, p. 490Google Scholar.

27 Hume, D., Treatise, bk. 3, pt. 2, p. 398Google Scholar. (A bad example, Rousseau later insists. See A Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, pt. 2, first sentence.)

28 Russell Hardin denies that Hume's account incorporates any historical or genea-logical element, despite his use of the term ‘origins’. As Hardin reads Hume, ‘origins’ signals an atemporal diagnosis of the rationality of the solution to the problems he discusses. See Hardin, R., Morality Within the Limits of Reason, Chicago, 1988Google Scholar.

29 The brief discussion in what follows of co-ordination and conflict problems exploits a large literature. Prominent sources include Gauthier, David, ‘Morality and Advantage’, Philosophical Review, lxxvi (1967)Google Scholar; Ullmann-Margalit, Edna, The Emergence of Norms, Oxford, 1977Google Scholar; and, for a distinctively utilitarian treatment, see Hardin.

30 Second Enquiry, sect. 4, p. 171.

31 Mackie, J. L. cleverly reconstructs Hume's two-men-in-a-boat example along these lines. Mackie, pp. 88–90Google Scholar.

32 Griffin, James, Well-Being, Oxford, 1986, pp. 205 fGoogle Scholar.

33 The example is mentioned by Wolff, Jonathan in ‘The Problem of Ideology’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, suppl. vol. lxx (1996), 235Google Scholar.

34 Grant, R. A. D. has drawn my attention to his review of Torbjörn Tännsjö, Conservatism for Our Time, London, 1990Google Scholar. Tännsjö uses many of the argumentative strategies which I have described to vindicate the unreformed institutions of the pre-Gorbachev Soviet Union. See Grant, R. A. D., ‘The Politics of Equilibrium’, Inquiry, xxxv (1992)Google Scholar.

35 Edmund Burke believed that ‘old violence … is consecrated by time and becomes lawful’. Burke, Edmund, Works and Correspondence, London, 1852, vol. i, p. 557Google Scholar, cited in Freeman, Michael, Edmund Burke and the Critique of Radicalism, Oxford, 1980, p. 101Google Scholar.

36 Quinton, A., The Politics of Imperfection, London, 1978, p. 13Google Scholar.

37 Burke, Edmund, Reflections on the Revolution in France, London, 1910, pp. 91Google Scholar f., cited in Quinton, pp. 57 f.

38 This example has been noted, and a range of morals drawn, by a number of philosophers. I follow the details and conclusion of Russell Hardin's discussion; Hardin, p. 51. Other discussions include those of Daniel Dennett, Darwin's Dangerous Idea (index, s.v.) and Nozick, Robert, The Nature of Rationality, pp. 130Google Scholar f., p. 206, n41. Leveen, Steven, ‘Tangled Typing’, Science, lxxxi (05 1981)Google Scholar, and David, Paul A., ‘Clio and the Economics of QWERTY’, American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings, lxxv (05 1985)Google Scholar are cited as documentary sources.

39 ‘A society will choose sweeping institutional change, though, only if it is driven to make some change or other. So a society's decision-making will tend to be conservative.’ A surprising quotation from Robert Nozick – but it is hoisted out of a fascinating and complex discussion, relevant in many ways to the subject of this paper. See Nozick, , ch. 4, ‘Evolutionary Reasons’, cited at p. 130Google Scholar.

40 I cannot document thoroughly this whole range of responses. For an example of (1) read Marx or see G.A. Cohen. Karl Marx's Theory of History. For remarks suggestive of (2), see the concluding ironies of Richard Lewontin, ‘Adaptation’, from The Encyclopaedia Einaudi, Milan, 1980Google Scholar, repr. in Elliott Sober. For arguments which amplify (3), see Sen, Amartya, Inequality Re-examined, Cambridge, Mass. & London, 1995CrossRefGoogle Scholar and, on the phenomenon of adaptive preference formation, Elster, John, Sour Grapes, Cambridge, 1983CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In respect of (4) read any critic of Honderich, Burke. Ted, Conservatism, Harmondsworth, 1990Google Scholar, ch. 1, is amongst the most energetic and disrespectful. Burke's opposition to revolutionary change did not preclude the advocacy of reform.

41 Thanks are due to friends, colleagues and students at the University of Glasgow who commented on earlier drafts of this paper. I received helpful comments at the ‘Utilitarianism Reconsidered’ conference in New Orleans, 1997, sponsored by the Inter-national Society for Utilitarian Studies. Referees from Utilitas helped me improve several drafts and deserve special thanks. Most of all, thanks to Pat Shaw and John Skorupski, who encouraged me to persevere with this paper, and helped me with their advice.