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I'm not at all sure that Hare's
argument works.
I agree that there is a
sense in which moral judgments must be
universalizable. (What is right for A to do in
circumstances C must be right for B to do
under the same circumstances.) And I agree
that morality requires impartiality in some
important respects. (I would be morally wrong
to say that I value only the good of white
people and not black people.) Those principles
might allow us to conclude that we must
consider the good of all persons equally when
we make moral judgments.
But classic utilitarians
want to take an additional step. They want to
say that we should maximize the aggregate
good that we produce. That's the sticky
wicket.
I claim that this last step
cannot be justified even by a combination of
universalizability and impartiality. I will go
even further. I claim that by taking that last
step utilitarians undermine one of their own
premises; namely, that everyone's welfare is
to be valued equally. That's because once we
start maximizing the aggregate good of some
sort (satisfied rational preferences, for
example) we end up trading off the good of
some people for the greater good of others.
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