Little-known objections to utilitarianism

Author: Doctor Terence Rajivan Edward

Act utilitarianism. This summary focuses on act utilitarianism, which says that, out of all the actions available to a person at a given time, the morally right one is the one that produces the most happiness. Any action that produces less is morally wrong. The amount of happiness is the amount of pleasure minus the amount of pain. The objections to this philosophy below are barely known. I have presented them in chronological order. (A summary presenting well-known objections is available at https://website2.net/utilitarianism_wobjections.txt.)


1. Peter Geach's ordinary language objection. The utilitarian thinks that pleasure is good and pain is bad. But on the basis of analysing how the word "good" is used, Geach asserts, "There is no such thing as just being good or bad, there is only being a good or bad so-and-so." (1956: 34) For example, a person can be a good swimmer, a hammer can be a good hammer, and so on. Judith Jarvis Thomson has investigated Geach's objection more fully (1994).


2. The desert island problem. Here is an example that was originally proposed by Roderick Firth and modified slightly by Jan Narveson (1963: 3). You and Jones are marooned on a desert island. Jones takes to cultivating flowers. Jones falls ill and asks you to take care of his flowers for him after he dies. You promise to do so, though you have no interest in flowers. Let us assume that caring for the flowers will not bring any happiness. The utilitarian then has to say that there is no moral value in taking care of the flowers after Jones dies, but an ordinary intuition is that there is value (see also Cargile 1964).


3. Hector-Neri Castaneda's obligation objection. If a person is obligated to do both action A and action B, then they are obligated to do A and they are obligated to do B – for example, a circus clown agreed to juggle tomatoes while balancing several plates on their head. According to a utilitarian, they are only obligated to perform an action if this action produces more happiness than any alternative available to them. So if they are obligated to do A, then this action produces more happiness that any alternative available to them, including B. And if they are obligated to do B, then this action produces more happiness that any alternative available to them, including A. So it seems the utilitarian can never coherently say that a person is obligated to do both A and B (1968, 1972; Bergstrom 1968; Westphal 1972 - note accents removed from names, because of display problems).


4. Michael Stocker's objection. Imagine you are faced with a choice and it has no effect on others. For example, you can gaze at the stars for five minutes or not. Stargazing would give you some pleasure. Alternative actions would not give any. If you do not stargaze, it seems you have done nothing wrong, but according to the act utilitarian you have done wrong because the total amount of happiness in the world is less. (Stocker 1976: 207; Sider 1993; Splawn 2001).


5. Frederick Kroon's paradox. Jones is gratuitously inflicting pain on someone. If you judge Jones's act to be wrong, this will cause much happiness, which will outweigh the pain caused by Jones's act. If you do not judge it to be wrong, this will cause much unhappiness. Since Jones's action is reducing the amount of happiness in the world, it may seem that you should judge Jones's act to be wrong. But if you judge Jones's act to be wrong, then the consequent happiness will be one good consequence of Jones's act, outweighing the pain Jones's act has caused so far. So according to act utilitarianism, to judge that Jones's act is wrong is incorrect because the happiness brought about by the judgment means Jones's act is not wrong. But nor should you not judge Jones's act to be wrong, owing to the unhappiness brought about by not making this judgment (Kroon 1980; Conee 1982: 55).


6. Mark T. Nelson's eschatological objection. According to utilitarianism, I am supposed to do the act that produces the greatest amount of happiness, but over what period? Is it 1 year or 10 years or some other amount of time? The utilitarian thinks that one should do the act that produces the most amount of happiness until The End. But when is The End? "The End" here refers to when there are no beings who can experience pleasure or pain any more. But what if there is no end, in this sense? Then there is no answer to which act produces the greatest amount of happiness. And so, if one thinks that the same moral theory should apply whether or not there is such an end, then one must reject utilitarianism (Nelson 1991: 342; Garcia and Nelson 1994).


7. Olaf L. Mueller's language objection. Let us accept Donald Davidson's view that the meaning of a sentence is the meaning that would be attributed to it by a radical interpreter: a rational inquirer who starts by knowing nothing of the language in question and must learn it from observable evidence. Thus my assertion, "I see a rabbit," means I see a rabbit if a radical interpreter would interpret it in this way. To make any progress in learning the language, the radical interpreter must interpret speakers as, for the most part, following linguistic rules correctly. In which case, certain things are impossible. It is impossible for a community of speakers to implement the rule to say the opposite of what they believe – a radical interpreter would then interpret the sentence "It is not the case that I see a rabbit" as meaning I see a rabbit, and so that is what it means according to our initial supposition. It is also impossible for a community of speakers to implement a rule to do the opposite of what they promised – a radical interpreter would interpret the promising language so it was more consistent with behaviour. Now imagine a community of act utilitarians. They only say something if doing so increases happiness. It is this rule that governs all speech. The radical interpreter who detects this rule would not interpret this community as ever making genuine promises or genuine assertions (2003: 250-251). Genuine promises are governed by other rules, as are genuine assertions. So if we all behave in accordance with utilitarianism, we would lose important features of our language. Mueller goes on to argue that utilitarianism cannot even be believed if it cannot be asserted by a utilitarian (2003: 254).


8. Eduardo Rivera‐López's moral murderer. Tom murders someone and makes no effort to escape the police. He is executed. This deters some other potential murderers. According to act utilitarianism, the murder was therefore morally right (2012: 311). This is similar to an old point about murdering one if it makes many happy, but depends on the deterrence effect.


9. M. Oreste Fiocco's time objection. A utilitarian takes the value of an act to be determined by its consequences, specifically the amount of happiness that the act produces. But if the consequences do not exist at the moment of the act, the act has no value at that point. When a good consequence comes into existence, the value of the act improves. So while we usually think that the past cannot change, the act done in the past now changes in one of its qualities – it now has a positive value that it did not have. And if a bad consequence comes into existence which outweighs this good consequence, the value of the act changes again – it now has a negative value. But the utilitarian seems to think of the act as having a certain value at the moment it is done, determined by all the consequences, as if these consequences exist along with the act. (How can the value of the act be determined by X if there is no X?) Utilitarianism therefore requires a conception of time according to which everything in time exists, including future occurrences, though not everything exists in the present. Orestes Fiocco objects that this requirement means that utilitarianism is not a necessary truth or even a truth which is dependent only on the existence of individuals to whom morality applies. For if this conception of time is true, it is only contingently true. But it seems that an adequate approach to morality should not be contingent in this way; it should apply in a possible world where individuals perform the same actions but a different conception of time is true.


10. Johan E. Gustafsson's possible worlds objection. Imagine that you are choosing between becoming an investment banker and a voluntary worker. You are selfish, leading you to become an investment banker and accumulate wealth, which brings about less overall happiness than if you had become a voluntary worker. So act utilitarianism says that your decision is wrong. In the closest possible world in which you become a voluntary worker (world 2), you are less selfish; but the closest possible world to it in which you become an investment banker is not the actual world, rather a world in which you are also less selfish and thereby cause more happiness by giving away your money (world 3). So if you were less selfish and became a voluntary worker, utilitarianism says that this decision is wrong. But utilitarianism is not meant to say that both decisions are wrong (Gustafsson 2019).


Some others: Objections by F.H. Bradley (a list on this website later); the common subject objection (discussed by Mark Schroeder); Gilbert Ryle's analysis of pleasure; Amartya Sen's "welfarism" objection; the arrogance objection (discussed by John Skorupski); and Julia Markovits' coincident reasons objection. I have omitted these from the references.


References
Bergstrom, L. 1968. Utilitarianism and Deontic Logic. Analysis 29: 43-44.
Cargile, J. 1964. Utilitarianism and the Desert Island Problem. Analysis 25: 23-24.
Castaneda, H.-N. 1968. A Problem for Utilitarianism. Analysis 28: 141-142.
Castaneda, H.-N. 1972. On the Problem of Formulating a Coherent Act-Utilitarianism. Analysis 32: 118-124.
Conee, E. 1982. Utilitarianism and Rationality. Analysis 42: 55-59.
Garcia, J.L. and Nelson, M.T. 1994. The Problem of Endless Joy: Is Infinite Utility Too Much for Utilitarianism? Utilitas 6: 183-192.
Geach, P. 1956. Good and Evil. Analysis 17: 32-42.
Gustafsson, J.E. 2019. Is Objective Act Consequentialism satisfiable? Analysis 79: 193-202.
Kroon, F. 1980. A utilitarian paradox. Analysis 41: 107-112.
Mueller, O.L. 2003. Can They Say What They Want? A Transcendental Argument against Utilitarianism. The Southern Journal of Philosophy 41: 241-259.
Narveson, J. 1963. The Desert-Island Problem. Analysis 23: 63-67.
Nelson, M.T. 1991. Utilitarian Eschatology. American Philosophical Quarterly 28: 339-347.
Oreste Fiocco, M. 2013. Consequentialism and the World in Time. Ratio 26: 117-231.
Rivera‐López, E. 2012. The Moral Murderer: A (More) Effective Counterexample to Consequentialism. Ratio 25: 307-325.
Sider, T. 1993. Asymmetry and Self-Sacrifice. Philosophical Studies 70: 117-132.
Splawn, C. 2001. The Self-other Asymmetry and Act-utilitarianism. Utilitas 13: 323-333.
Stocker, M. 1976. Agent and other: Against ethical universalism. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 54: 206-220.
Thomson, J.J. 1994. Goodness and Utilitarianism. Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 67: 7-21.
Westphal, F. 1972. Utilitarianism and "conjunctive acts": a reply to Castaneda. Analysis 32: 982-85.