Responses to two common types of objections to utilitarianism

[blimix]

The "untenable situation" or "no good result" objection.

This is a class of objections that can be universally applied to any moral or ethical system. I have seen a fair share of them used against utilitarianism. The objection involves setting up a hypothetical (and almost always exceedingly improbable) situation whose results, no matter what choices are made, will be highly unsatisfactory to those with common moral sensibilities. The situation is then posed to a proponent of a particular moral theory. The course of action recommended by their theory (or any other) will inescapably lead to dramatically poor results. The challenger then triumphantly observes that the application of the theory leads to consequences so unacceptable as to disqualify it from any claim to moral value. (In effect, this is precisely analogous to a foundering company hiring a new president, and then immediately challenging his or her leadership, on the basis of the company's pre-existing financial woes.)

I expect that my reader is sufficiently astute that she or he would feel insulted by my pressing the subject of the obvious flaw in this objection. Yet, in specific cases, one might easily overlook its failure to deliver unto a moral system any substantive criticism.

Common examples refer to castaways who need to kill one or more of their own in order to survive; a society whose happiness necessarily depends upon the suffering of the few; or a just punishment whose execution will cause widespread misery.

This leads to...

The "conflict with an ideal" objection.

Certain ideals, justice for example, are commonly so esteemed as to be held inviolable by any "good" moral system. This is demonstrable nonsense, to anyone who has more than one ideal. For when those ideals come into conflict, one of them must necessarily be sacrificed. This fact is no blow to a moral system. (A person who has only one ideal, which is not goodness itself, should be referred to my previous essay.) The objection rests upon the fact that gross violations of the ideal are always perceived as travesties against goodness. There may indeed be a strong correlation - perhaps strong enough to justify a strict rule regarding preservation of the ideal. But no such correlation is perfect. A rule created for the good must be broken when it can be shown, with sufficient clarity and certainty, to work against the good in a particular case.* The fact that such a conflict might occur speaks only against the rule -- not against the ideal nor the morality.

* There can of course be complications to the evaluation of whether a rule works against the good, including consideration of the value of the rule itself and of the probability that the evaluation is incorrect (given past evidence in favor of the rule's applicability). Therefore, assume that I speak only of cases in which the "clarity and certainty" are sufficient even in light of these considerations.

Comments

[guldan.livejournal.com]

*applauds*

[eirias.livejournal.com]

I disagree with your contention that the "no good result" situations are always posed by people who would be morally unsatisfied with any result. Many people who believe in rights as absolute, inviolable values would prefer the castaways to die and the masses to suffer rather than allowing that murder or torture might in some cases be justifiable by appeal to some moral principle. "Yes," they might say, "your answer lets the majority live longer and happier lives, but at the cost of their souls." (Though I should note that while this kind of reasoning is widespread within Christianity, and I would argue, encouraged by most sects, it is by no means limited thereto. My "soul" language here is sort of a shorthand for talking about evil.)

I think that most people in our society, in fact, would be horrified by the idea of sacrificing the few for the sake of the many, and much more comfortable with letting everyone die. We're groomed to be; rights are supposed to be inalienable. I think to move beyond that requires a willingness to ask questions about what morality is for, and not be wedded to a particular answer in advance; and that, in turn, unless I am very much mistaken, very nearly requires atheism. And a dash of cynicism doesn't hurt.

FWIW, while the moral quandaries you pose here are pretty hyperbolic, I don't think they're without analogue in the real world. Perhaps unsurprisingly, when an opponent of utilitarianism can frame a problem in a way that doesn't involve inviolable rights, the solutions wind up looking like paler versions of the torture scenario. The example that comes to mind (though I admit that my political outlook may bias me here) is gay marriage. The majority still seems to believe that opening marriage to include gay people would weaken marriage itself, and so they are perfectly willing to deny gays the happiness of marriage in order to preserve the greater good and/or happiness.¹ The argument for a right to marry is weaker than the argument for a right not to be tortured, but it is still a reasonable argument; an obvious (but perhaps still important) corollary of the majority opinion is that, AFAICT, the only people who are willing to talk about marriage as a right are the ones who want to legalize it -- no one is willing to say, "Yes, they do have the right to marry, but the stability of marriage is a far more important end."

¹ Of course, I don't particularly agree with this premise in the first place, but if a philosophy is going to be used by real people, it is only sensible to explore the way they'd really use it... and all of us undoubtedly have imperfect ideas of what constitutes the greater good.

[blimix.livejournal.com]

I disagree with your contention that the "no good result" situations are always posed by people who would be morally unsatisfied with any result. Many people who believe in rights as absolute, inviolable values would prefer the castaways to die and the masses to suffer rather than allowing that murder or torture might in some cases be justifiable by appeal to some moral principle.

Sure, they would prefer one result over the other. That's not in question. However, "everybody" dies" is not something that is generally considered a satisfactory result. The "better" or even "best" result of such a quandary will, as I said, "be highly unsatisfactory to those with common moral sensibilities". That does not keep people from selecting a preferred course of action.

The confusion shown here, between whether the *result* is unsatisfactory or the *method* used to make the choice is unsatisfactory, is a confusion upon which the challenger's argument relies: They incorrectly infer the latter from the former. They fail to acknowledge that the poor result is not caused by poor decision making, but by having started with an untenable situation that can have no good result *regardless* of the quality of the decision making.

The idea that rights are inalienable is a very useful idea for a government and populace to hold. But that says nothing of its truth value.

The majority still seems to believe that opening marriage to include gay people would weaken marriage itself, and so they are perfectly willing to deny gays the happiness of marriage in order to preserve the greater good and/or happiness.

I entirely disagree. (And, like you, I'm not going to bother touching their absurd premise.) Those are not utilitarians; they have neither the need nor the ability to defend their bigotry on utilitarian grounds. They do not see "denying gays the happiness of marriage" as *any* sort of wrong that need be outweighed by concerns such as "preservation of the sanctity of marriage". I would, in fact, be unsurprised if they take a perverse pleasure from precisely that denial of happiness.

I have not yet seen a "real world" scenario that attacks utilitarianism. (Most attempts to create these scenarios involve assuming incompetent utilitarians (or in this case, no utilitarians at all).)

[eirias.livejournal.com]

The idea that rights are inalienable is a very useful idea for a government and populace to hold. But that says nothing of its truth value.

Hahaha! Yes, I agree with this. Nevertheless, if it's an idea you want everyone to hold on to, you can't really afford to get miffed when they defend it.

Your last argument confuses me, to say the least. My understanding of utilitarianism is simply this: "figure out what brings the greatest good to the greatest number, and do that." All you have said is that opponents of gay marriage don't seem to believe that there is any good on that side of the equation; but what do valence assignments have to do with how they are later used? If you believe a behavior is evil, you will also believe that discouraging it will bring the greatest good to the greatest number. I see that this trivializes utilitarianism, but ... "do good" is a damn vague moral system, as you've admitted ;) so I think it's kinda earned trivialization.

I would actually be quite shocked if there were no opponents of gay marriage whose stance could not be viewed as utilitarian even in your narrower sense. I think your caricature of that group of people is kind of despicable, actually, and strongly suggests that you don't know any. Unfortunately, it's rather difficult to find evidence for my suspicion that such people exist, because searching Google for "non-foamy gay marriage opponents" isn't likely to turn up many hits ;). It's a pity that careful writing doesn't come labelled as such. (Or at least not searchably so. An exhaustive perusal of book jackets might help, but I'm not really in the mood...)

Not that I'm denying the existence of homophobes! I've actually not met many of those, either, to tell the truth, but I know the type you're describing. I just don't think it's as universal as you do.

[blimix.livejournal.com]

(Hmmm. Let me try the comment again, this time while logged in.)

Even if opponents of gay marriage really operated from a utilitarian perspective (which I find highly improbable, but will grant for purposes of your point), they fail to provide a real-world challenge to utilitarianism. All they demonstrate is that incompetent utilitarians (such as they) can reach poor decisions (by basing poor reasoning on unsupported evidence (such as that being gay is "evil")). This says nothing at all against utilitarianism itself.

And you're right: I do not associate with them. Back in school, I had more exposure than I would have liked to the blind, unthinking reasoning of those whose morality is handed to them in a fundamentalist church. They can be okay people sometimes; nearly anyone can be. But their presumed value as human beings imparts no validity to their faith-based bigotry. Now that I am mostly free from such artificial (forced) social constructs as school, I am happily out of touch with that culture.

[On inalienable rights:]

Nevertheless, if it's an idea you want everyone to hold on to, you can't really afford to get miffed when they defend it.

True. I'm not miffed at all about people defending it. In fact, "rule utilitarianism" would defend certain ideals. (I am, in contrast, an "act utilitarian".) The "rule" (regarding an inviolable ideal, or a necessary behavior) is a great tool for most people. Permit me to quote John Rawls, "Two Concepts of Rules":

If one estimates that by and large the rule will give the correct decision, or if one estimates that the likelihood of making a mistake by applying the utilitarian principle directly on one's own is greater than the likelihood of making a mistake by following the rule, and if these considerations held of persons generally, then one would be justified in urging its adoption as a general rule.

However, there are times when anybody, even a rule utilitarian*, will have to violate a rule or even an ideal. In rare cases (often rarer than a challenger may suppose) utilitarian concerns will call for the violation of a cherished ideal. This fact may cause an emotional backlash against the philosophy, but fails to impugn it.

* A clever rule utilitarian will, of course, have escape clauses built into the rules for just such cases.

(BTW, I used the word "presumed" just to get your goat. Grain of salt, and all that.)

[eirias.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure that I'm raising points in order to object to utilitarianism, actually. The Machiavellian part of me kind of likes the philosophy. (That sounds like a contradiction, but I'm not sure that it is. The Prince is just about what's practical; what I got from the bits I read was something like, "actions have consequences that vary in value; these are often predictable; do what works to get the consequences you want." It's in this sense that I compare the two -- because act utilitarianism is similar in its rejection of ideals in favor of practical consequences, if arguably nobler in the ends toward which it aims.) I raised the gay marriage point more because I just don't buy your argument that sacrificing the few for the sake of the many is an uncommon problem. It's certainly uncommon in the "we're hungry; let's eat Billy" sense, but on a smaller scale it strikes me as totally mundane. In a way, isn't any non-unanimous democratic vote just this sort of solution? -- in theory, governance ought to be subject to the consent of the governed, but in practice this is not possible, so you just put in power the dude who wins a slim majority.
I have to go now but wanted to write before I forgot.

[blimix.livejournal.com]

I agree that the situation commonly exists. It just doesn't exist in the form which I was describing: A valid objection to utilitarianism.

And I kind of liked The Prince. :-)