|
 Ann, I know your heart
is in the right place. You're a utilitarian
because you believe it will benefit the whole
human race, not just an elite. But I have a lot
of problems with the principle of utility. I'm
not sure we should rely on it. Just consider a
few of the many criticisms made of
utilitarianism over the years:
- My religion teaches that each
individual has an infinite value
because the salvation of each soul has
infinite value. As a result, the
well-being of each individual cannot
be ignored. But utilitarianism cannot
ascribe great dignity and value to
each and every individual because it
concerns itself with an aggregate --
aggregate happiness or aggregate
welfare or aggregate preference
satisfaction. Rawls put it a bit
differently when he said that
utilitarianism doesn't take seriously
the distinction between individuals.
He was right. For utilitarians, the
individual is only a container for
happiness. The distribution of
happiness doesn't matter and the
well-being of a specific container
doesn't matter either. How do we know
that the set of rules that would
maximize happiness or welfare doesn't
include rules that allow the extreme
exploitation of a small minority of
the population? I don't think we do.
- We can construct any number of
thought experiments in which the
sacrifice or torture of one individual
saves many others from sacrifice or
torture. (Read Ursula Le Guin's short
story "The Ones Who Walk Away from
Omelas.") Utilitarianism seems to
allow this. Can we accept that
conclusion as morally correct? The
same sort of thing could be said about
sacrificing one group for another,
larger group. Stalin saw himself as
sacrificing a generation of Soviet
citizens in order to hasten the
economic development of the Soviet
Union. Was he morally right to do such
a thing?
- Classical utilitarianism, the
utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham, was
based on the idea that pleasure was
the only thing that is good in itself.
When assessing the morality of an act,
all of the pleasures and pains that it
produced had to be considered. That
meant that the "pleasures of
malevolence" counted as much as other
pleasures. Isn't that morally crazy?
Let us suppose that someone takes
pleasure in seeing children tortured
or black people lynched, or Jews put
in camps. Does it make any sense to
count that pleasure when we assess the
morality of the act? And the same
thing can be said for more modern
forms of utilitarianism that seek to
maximize informed preferences.
- In some cases, utilitarians can
argue that harming an individual is
wrong because of the broader effects
of such a policy. For example, they
might say that infanticide is wrong
because it reduces our respect for
human life. But doesn't that miss the
whole point? If infanticide is wrong
it is wrong mainly because of what it
does to the particular infant being
killed.
- Utilitarianism doesn't allow for
special obligations to individuals.
Instead, it tells us to be impartial
between all individuals. We are to
assign the same weight to the welfare
of people we don't even know and to
the welfare of those we love. There is
no place for any partiality to our
children, our parents, our friends, or
our neighbors. Nor is there a place
for special relationships created by
promises. For a strict utilitarian, I
should only keep a promise or abide by
a contract if doing so maximizes total
happiness or welfare. Not only does
that seem unrealistic, but it seems to
conflict with some of our strongest
moral intuitions.
- Utilitarianism seems to eliminate
the distinction between what we are
obliged to do and that which is above
and beyond the call of duty. There is
nothing that is above the call of duty
for utilitarians because we must
always follow rules that maximize the
happiness of the whole world. For
example, I could never buy a new car
because it would always add more to
the world's happiness if I gave the
money to charity. I could never have
coffee with a friend if it would do
more good for me to work at a soup
kitchen.
- Utilitarianism in practice assumes
that we can predict the future fairly
well. It assumes that we can discover
that some act or some set of rules
(including a set of rights) will in
fact maximize human welfare. Do we
have that sort of ability? I doubt it.
Do we really know that free speech
maximizes welfare? Not really. Maybe
we would be better off is some speech
were prohibited. Who knows?
- Utilitarianism in practice assumes a
kind of arithmetic of happiness or
welfare. Bentham thought that the
least perceivable difference in
pleasure or pain was a unit or atom
that could in theory be added up to
calculate the total happiness
resulting from a given act or rule. Do
we really have such a unit and such an
arithmetic? It seems to me that there
are different kinds of pleasure and
different forms of happiness. I doubt
that there is a common unit of
measurement that we could use to add
up everyone's pleasure or happiness.
And this problem exists even if all we
want to say is that this quantity of
pleasure or happiness is greater than
that quantity.
With all the problems that utilitarianism has,
I think it would be a mistake to try to use it a
the basis of a set of moral rights. We need
something else, something less controversial.
|
