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Taking Stock of Utilitarianism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 June 2014

ROGER CRISP
ROGER CRISP*
Affiliation:
St Anne's College, Oxford, [email protected]
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Abstract

This article is an attempt to take an overview of the current position of utilitarian theory. It begins by providing a definition of utilitarianism as it is found in the works of Bentham, Mill and Sidgwick. These authors are all interpreted as intuitionists. It is claimed that the main rivals to utilitarianism are egoism on the one hand, and reflective non-egoistic pluralism, as found in the work of Ross, on the other. The significance of disagreement between proponents of these views is explained, and modern attempts to ground utilitarianism are found lacking. The article ends with a plea for history.

Type
Research Article
Information
Utilitas , Volume 26 , Issue 3 , September 2014 , pp. 231 - 249
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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References

1 Williams, B., ‘A Critique of Utilitarianism’, in Smart, J. and Williams, B., Utilitarianism: For and Against (Cambridge, 1973), pp. 75–150, at 150Google Scholar.

2 It is true, of course, that the term has taken on a non-philosophical meaning, according to which to be a utilitarian is to rank usefulness over other values, such as moral goodness or beauty. This has led to widespread public misunderstanding of the basic tenets of the philosophical doctrine, which is especially unfortunate, since Mill almost certainly chose the term partly to avoid just such misconceptions.

3 Mill, J. S., Utilitarianism, ed. Crisp, R. (Oxford, 1998), 2.1 n.Google Scholar The passage to which Mill refers is: ‘I told my people that I thought they had more sense than to secede from Christianity to become Utilitarians; for that it would be a confession of ignorance of the faith they deserved, seeing that it was the main duty inculcated by our religion to do all in morals and manners to which the newfangled doctrine of utility pretended’ (Galt, J., Annals of the Parish (Edinburgh)Google Scholar, ch. 35). The OED cites earlier uses, the first being an 1802 letter of Bentham.

4 Mill, Utilitarianism, 2.2.2–4.

5 Bentham, J., An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, ed. Burns, J. H. and Hart, H. L. A., intr. Rosen, F. (Oxford, 1996), 1.1–2Google Scholar.

6 Introduction, 1.5.

7 Introduction, 1.9.

8 Introduction, 5.10; see also 17.4 n. b.

9 Utilitarianism, 2.10.

10 Sidgwick, H., The Methods of Ethics, 7th edn. (London, 1907), 4.1.1.2/411Google Scholar.

11 And of course it has senses other than those I mention here, the most common perhaps being ‘correct’ (‘Yes, you’re holding the saw in the right way’).

12 Mill, J. S., A System of Logic, 6.12.6, Collected Works, ed. Robson, J. (Toronto, 1961–91), 8.949–50Google Scholar.

13 Utilitarianism, 4.9.

14 System, 6.12.7; CW, 8.951.

15 Introduction, 1.1n. a.

16 Methods, 1.1.2.1/2–3; 1.1.3.5/5–6.

17 Williams, B., Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (London, 1985), p. 19Google Scholar. Williams suggests that the Socratic question is ‘not immediate; it is not about what I should do now or next. It is about a manner of life’ (p. 4). We might, on Sidgwick's behalf, seek to bridge the apparent gap here. We are indeed concerned about how our lives as a whole should go. But how they go depends on what we do here and now; and what we should do here and now may well depend on how our lives should go. And, here and now, what I should do here and now is the central ethical question (cf. Williams's earlier claim: ‘Philosophers, not only utilitarian ones, repeatedly urge one to view the world sub specie aeternitatis, but for most human purposes that is not a good species to view it under’, ‘Critique’, p. 118). Further, because of the direct link it establishes between utility-maximization and individual acts, act-utilitarianism seems paradigmatic in comparison with forms of utilitarianism that focus on (e.g.) rules or motives.

18 The ultimate/non-ultimate distinction enables us to see also that there could be an Aristotelian version of utilitarianism, as well as a Kantian version, according to which, respectively:

A1: Any agent has ultimate reason to act in such a way that her human good is maximally promoted, and no ultimate reason to act in any other way.

A2: The human good consists in maximizing the amount of well-being in the universe.

K1: Any agent has ultimate reason to act in accordance with the Categorical Imperative, and no ultimate reason to act in any other way.

K2: The Categorical Imperative requires agents to maximize the amount of well-being in the universe.

19 Introduction, 1.2; 1.11; see 1.13.

20 Utilitarianism, 1.5, ch. 4.

21 Methods, 3.13.3.1/379.

22 3.13.5.1/387.

23 For helpful discussion, see Schneewind, J., Sidgwick's Ethics and Victorian Moral Philosophy (Oxford, 1977), pp. 306–9Google Scholar.

24 Methods, 3.13.5.4–5/388; 421 n. 1.

25 Introduction, 1.13.

26 Introduction, 1.10; 1.14 (10).

27 See Introduction, 1.14 (3).

28 Utilitarianism, 1.5. Note also Mill's claim that the ultimate ethical principle should be self-evident (U 1.3).

29 See J. S. Mill, Principles of Political Economy, 8.5.2, Collected Works (hereafter CW], 2.124; The Subjection of Women, 3.8; CW, 21.305. Mill sometimes understands an appeal to intuition as an appeal to the feelings: see e.g. ‘Dr Whewell's Moral Philosophy’, CW 10.193–4. But clearly he cannot mean that in this passage, where intuition is an activity of the rational faculty. The contrast is between intuitionistic ‘blind impulse, or arbitrary choice’ and the presentation of considerations to determine the intellect.

30 Utilitarianism, 4.3.

31 Methods, 3.13.5.4/388.

32 Methods, 3.11.2.2–7/338–42.

33 Methods, CC 1.1/498.

34 It may also be claimed, of course, that fairness, equality or justice speak in favour of outcome 2.

35 Ross, W. D., The Right and the Good (Oxford, 1930), pp. 18–19.Google Scholar

36 I shall not discuss virtue ethics, since it is most plausibly seen as a version of reflective (deontological or non-consequentialist) pluralism; see R. Crisp, ‘A Third Method of Ethics?’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (forthcoming).

37 System, 6.12.7, CW, 8.951.

38 Rawls, J., A Theory of Justice, rev. edn. (Oxford, 1999), pp. 34–5Google Scholar.

39 Introduction, 2.1.

40 Utilitarianism, 2.23.

41 Methods, 4.3.1.3/425; see 3.13.1.2/373.

42 Moore, G. E., Principia Ethica (Cambridge, 1903), sect. 89Google Scholar.

43 See esp. Freedom and Reason (Oxford, 1963); Levels of Moral Thinking (Oxford, 1981).

44 J. Smart, ‘An Outline of a System of Utilitarian Ethics’, Utilitarianism: For and Against, pp. 7–8.

45 Methods, 1.1.4.6/8.

46 See e.g. Harsanyi, J., ‘Morality and the Theory of Rational Behaviour’, Utilitarianism and Beyond, ed. Sen, A. and Williams, B. (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 39–62Google Scholar.

47 Singer, P., ‘Ethics and Intuitions’, Journal of Ethics 9 (2005), pp. 331–52, at 348CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

48 As Berker, Selim points out (‘The Normative Insignificance of Neuroscience’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 37 (2009), pp. 293–329, at 319)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, consequentialist (or utilitarian) intuitions are also a product of evolution. But the Greene–Singer argument is that the evolutionary history of our emotional responses to close up and personal harm debunks any principle based on those responses. Berker continues: ‘Sensing this sort of worry, Singer calls for us to engage in “the ambitious task of separating those moral judgments that we owe to our evolutionary basis and cultural history, from those that have a rational basis.” However, this is clearly a false dichotomy’ (p. 320). This is a somewhat uncharitable reading of Singer's claim: he means us to understand ‘only’ after ‘owe’.

49 Greene claims that deontologist theorizers are rationalizing their unreflective intuitions (‘The Secret Joke of Kant's Soul’, Moral Psychology 3: The Neuroscience of Morality, ed. W. Sinnott-Armstrong (Cambridge, MA, 2008), pp. 35–79, at 68; see Berker, ‘Normative Insignificance’, p. 315). Since there is clear selection value in benevolence, and benevolence itself will be emotionally detectable in particular cases in the same sorts of ways as disapproval of harming others, a tu quoque response is available to advocates of RNP.

50 Urmson, J., ‘Saints and Heroes’, Essays in Moral Philosophy, ed. Melden, A. I. (Seattle and London, 1958), pp. 198–216, at 206–7Google Scholar. For further discussion, see Crisp, R., ‘Supererogation and Virtue’, Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics 3 (2013), pp. 13–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

51 Atiyah, P., Promises, Morals, and Law (Oxford, 1981), p. 9Google Scholar.

52 Atiyah, Promises, Morals, and Law, p. 11.

53 Gibbon, E., An Essay on the Study of Literature (London, 1764), p. 107Google Scholar.