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Utilitarianism with a Human Face

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Utilitarianism with a Human Face 1 Utilitarianism with a Human Face Bernward Gesang in: The Journal of Value Inquiry (2005) 39: 169–181 1. Utilitarianism: An Inhumane Calculus? Utilitarians are said to sacrifice the interests of individuals for a greater collective good, to threaten human rights and scorn justice. Utilitarianism is a monistic ethical theory with just one ultimate value, the maximization of happiness. Such monism is criticized for having absurd and inhumane moral consequences. Many people do not deny that happiness is important, but most people do not believe that happiness is the only thing that matters. This criticism is plausible. Utilitarianism starts with basic intuitions that are widely accepted, but it ends up absolutist, which leads to conflicts. In one respect, such conflicts are welcome to a utilitarian who seeks to oppose accepted conservative intuitions with the voice of reason. However, many utilitarians take confrontation too far. There are already resources available for a more humane utilitarianism that are worthy of development.1 They might help to temper the provocations of some utilitarians and to bring us closer to common sense. We need a greater correspondence between utilitarianism and common sense to gain a more humane utilitarianism. Ethics cannot be radically revolutionary.2 The so-called revolutionists emphasize that ethics is normative and that it cannot be its task to affirm the existing egoistic ethos. The so-called conservatives argue that revolutionary ethics will never be realized because only philosophers understand and believe in it. We seek to steer a middle course between pure conservatism and revisionism that is compatible with the fundamental concept of utilitarianism that means justified by a gain of utility. It is too easy to disregard this centerpiece of utilitarianism and just 2 to add some arbitrary modifications, justified by conventional morality. As a starting point, every utilitarian bases his decisions on the interests or happiness of everyone affected, in a neutral balancing of happiness. For a more humane utilitarian, it is worth considering that, e.g., people who demonstrate against abortion are also affected by the abortion debate. Their vital interests are touched by abortion or infanticide rules. Some of them even make it their aim in life to campaign against such rules, but many utilitarians forget their so-called external preferences while balancing happiness. There are arguments for an integration of external preferences in utilitarianism. This makes utilitarianism humane because humaneness is in part definable in terms of its relation to the enlightened moral convictions of the majority of people. The convictions create external preferences and the preferences reflect the current concept of humaneness in a society. As a result, the external preferences of the majority of people and humaneness are linked and utilitarianism and the moral convictions of the majority are also coupled. Therefore, utilitarianism cannot be a revolutionary ethics in the sense defined above because the majority convictions about morals have influence on the utilitarian calculus. 2. Criticism on the Use of External Preferences: Formal Arguments by Dworkin and Harsanyi Criticisms have been raised against this idea that are worthy of consideration. In this section, formal arguments by Ronald Dworkin and John Harsanyi are discussed. Dworkin seeks to show that utilitarianism is a failure because it has to include external preferences that lead to absurd consequences. But the consequences are not given. Dworkin’s criticism is based on the distinction between internal, or as he calls them personal, and external preferences.3 This distinction is made clearly by Christoph Fehige and Ulla Wessels: 3 External preferences, i.e., preferences whose content entails the existence or non-existence, or the satisfaction or frustration, of other people’s preferences . can be moral, benevolent, altruistic preferences, or immoral, malevolent, anti-social . preferences or mixtures of these.4 We can distinguish preferences that refer only to the personal wealth of an individual and preferences that are related to other people as well. The type of relationship is probably not only causal because many private preference realizations have causal effects on others, perhaps unintentionally. Instead, it must be based on intending the well-being or harming of others. Unless this was the case, nearly all preferences would be external. Harsanyi takes up Dworkin’s distinction and illustrates it as follows: Thus my personal interests include my economic assets, . the benefit of being alive, . my health, . my friendships, etc. I have no ‘personal interest’ in my neighbour’s joining a particular church, even if I would strongly prefer his doing so – unless his doing so would yield my prestige . or would provide other personal benefits for me.5 Dworkin and Harsanyi try to show that a utilitarian is in trouble when he includes external preferences in his measurement of utility, and they think he cannot avoid this. The main justification given by Dworkin and Harsanyi for the accusation of external preferences is the injury of the impartiality postulate. Harsanyi and Dworkin regard the inclusion of external preferences as an injury of the principle of equality, which says that everyone counts as one, no one for more than one. Dworkin explains himself, using the example of a swimming pool, the construction of which was supported by many nonswimmers out of sympathy: If the altruistic preferences are counted, the result will be a form of double counting: Each swimmer will have the benefit not only of his own preference, but also of the preference of someone else who takes pleasure in his 4 success.6 Harsanyi agrees with him. Are they right? We should distinguish a formal and a material point. An injury of the formal impartiality postulate exists when specific individuals count extra. In this formal sense, the impartiality postulate is not injured by the counting of external preferences. An individual does not count for more just because he is the particular individual he is. In Dworkin’s example, all swimmers could profit from external preferences, and the same holds true in every relevantly similar situation. People affected by certain external preferences are considered twice in a way and counted twice because of these preferences. That does not change the fact that we can claim in a clear and understandable sense that everyone counts the same. The preferences of minorities affected by so-called prejudices are not disregarded. They are considered as before and then weighted according to their intensity. Also, the external preferences of members of these minorities are considered, so there is no procedural unfairness. No one is counted twice because the internal preferences of Arthur and the supporting external preferences of Jane and Jill are still preferences of different people, each of which still counts as one. The interests of Arthur, Jane, and Jill are different, each is an individual interest with similar content, and every interest counts as one, whose weight is only adjusted according to its intensity. In any case, the core of Dworkin’s objection is not directed at formal impartiality but at material egalitarianism.7 Dworkin speaks explicitly of an unfairness that arises through the unavoidable consideration of external preferences in utilitarianism.8 Material fairness, the lack of which Dworkin actually criticizes, only takes place in utilitarianism when we include the external preferences. Additionally, we can turn the reproach of injuring the equality postulate against Dworkin. If we consider external preferences to be independent preferences, then we do not treat every interest the same way if 5 the external preferences are abandoned.9 All classical utilitarians went about their calculations in the same way, considering all interests equal, and that seems to be reasonable for every ethics based on interests. Exceptions from this principle of equal consideration have not been well justified until now. It goes against the logic of utilitarianism to acknowledge bad preferences or unauthorized welfare, which are only bad and unauthorized in the light of commonsense morality. 3. Criticism on the Use of External Preferences: They are Irrational A utilitarian therefore has to include in his calculations the interests of parties who are not directly affected. He cannot simply discard them as irrational. But this seems to be the standard reaction of many utilitarians. According to them, most external preferences are irrational because they are motivated, e.g., by religion or metaphysics. This allows them to be rejected. Rationality standards could be used as a filter with which we could exclude certain preferences as irrelevant. It may sometimes be correct to label external preferences as irrational in a special sense, but this does not mean that they should not be considered. In order to understand this, we must clarify the definition of rational interests. A utilitarian can insist on the rationality of interests, but only in a narrow internal sense. Justifiably, nearly all utilitarians start from the idea that in the ideal case only enlightened preferences should be counted.10 This means that, in the ideal case, preferences are tested. In the test procedure developed by Richard Brandt, it is relevant, e.g., whether the different preferences of a person are consistent with one another and whether they are based on correct factual assumptions.11 According to this procedure, one of Jim’s preferences is internally irrational precisely when Jim would not have this preference under ideal conditions of information. This measure of rationality is internal and 6 not related to rationality in the light of modern science, since Jim himself is the authority who decides the rationality of his preferences. A preference is internally rational if Jim still holds it after Brandt’s test, where Jim has received all the relevant information. This is independent from the question of whether Jim’s preference is rational according to the external rationality standards of scientists.
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