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Sidgwick and Contemporary Utilitarianism Sidgwick andContemporary Utilitarianism This pageintentionallyleftblank Sidgwick and Contemporary Utilitarianism Mariko Nakano-Okuno The Ohio State University, USA © Mariko Nakano-Okuno, 1999. Sidgwick to gendai kourishugi was originally published in Japanese in 1999. This translation is published by arrangement with Keisoshobo Publishing Co., Ltd. Translation © Mariko Nakano-Okuno 2011 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2011 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978–0–230–32178–6 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Nakano-Okuno, Mariko, 1970– [Sidgwick to gendai kourishugi. English] Sidgwick and contemporary utilitarianism / Mariko Nakano-Okuno p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 978–0–230–32178–6 (alk. paper) 1. Sidgwick, Henry, 1838–1900. 2. Utilitarianism. I. Title. B1649.S44N3613 2011 170.92—dc23 2011021110 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne Table of Contents List of Figures ix Preface and Acknowledgements x Notes on Abbreviations Used in the Text xv Introduction 1 Part I Sidgwick’s Theory of Ethics 7 1 The Scope of Ethics 9 1.1 What ethics is 9 1.2 ‘Action’ as a subject matter of ethics 10 1.2.1 Voluntary action 10 1.2.2 Distinction between will and desire-or-motive 10 1.2.3 A note on ‘consequences’ 11 1.2.4 Matters that are not Sidgwick’s chief concern: The goodness of motives, the formal or subjective rightness of acts 12 1.3 What a method of ethics is 14 2 An Overview of The Methods of Ethics 16 2.1 The background 16 2.1.1 Sidgwick’s concern as a utilitarian 16 2.1.2 The aim and fundamental assumption of The Methods of Ethics 19 2.1.3 How to read The Methods of Ethics 20 2.2 The overall structure of The Methods of Ethics 22 2.3 The status of utilitarianism in The Methods of Ethics 26 3 Three Methods, Intuition, and Commonsense 29 3.1 Three methods of ethics 29 3.1.1 Egoism 29 3.1.2 Utilitarianism 32 3.1.3 Dogmatic intuitionism 34 3.1.4 Sources of the three methods 37 3.2 The use of intuition 43 3.2.1 The narrower and the wider senses of ‘intuition’ 44 3.2.2 Induction and intuition 45 v vi Table of Contents 3.2.3 Three phases of intuitionism 46 3.3 ‘Commonsense’ and the ‘morality of commonsense’ 47 4 Meta-Ethical Analyses 50 4.1 Sidgwick’s meaning of ‘reason’ 50 4.2 ‘Ought’ and ‘right’ 56 4.2.1 Difference from factual judgments 57 4.2.2 Simple and indefinable 57 4.2.3 The properties of ‘ought’ and ‘right’ 60 4.2.4 Goal-adopting, instrumental, and egoistic ‘ought’ 64 4.3 ‘Good’ 66 4.3.1 Findings from common usage 66 4.3.2 What is judged ‘the greatest good on the whole’ will be the targeted end 68 4.3.3 Good as not equivalent to pleasure 71 4.3.4 Not what is desired, but what is ‘desirable’ 72 4.3.5 Good for me at present 74 4.3.6 Ultimate good on the whole for me 75 4.3.7 Ultimate good on the whole 78 4.4 Relationship between ‘right/ought’ and ‘good’ 80 4.5 Good and human consciousness 81 5 Testing the Significance of Apparent Truths 82 5.1 Four conditions proposed by Sidgwick 83 5.1.1 Clarity and precision of the terms 83 5.1.2 Conviction on reflection 85 5.1.3 Consistency 86 5.1.4 Universal or general consensus 86 5.2 An additional nontautological condition 87 5.3 The limit of common-sense morality 89 6 The Three Fundamental Principles 91 6.1 Description and interpretation of the principles 92 6.1.1 The Principle of Justice 93 6.1.2 The Principle of Rational Self-Love or Prudence 96 6.1.3 The Principle of Rational Benevolence 99 6.2 Distinctive features of each principle 100 6.3 The three principles and the five conditions 103 6.4 The three principles and the three methods of ethics 106 7 Philosophical Foundations of Utilitarianism 108 7.1 Consequentialism and the maximization principle 108 7.1.1 Consequentialism 108 7.1.2 The maximization principle 112 Table of Contents vii 7.2 Hedonism 113 7.2.1 What pleasure is 113 7.2.2 Definition of pleasure for quantitative comparison 116 7.2.3 Pleasure and good: psychological vs ethical hedonism 123 7.2.4 Proof of ethical hedonism 129 7.3 Basis of utilitarianism 145 7.4 Utilitarianism and commonsense 147 7.5 Utilitarianism and egoism 151 Part II A Reexamination of Contemporary Utilitarianism 155 8 An Approach not Appealing to Moral Intuition 161 8.1 Hare’s stance 162 8.2 Hare’s argument for utilitarianism 166 8.2.1 Logic of moral judgment 166 8.2.2 Relevant facts 173 8.2.3 Cognition and replication of preferences 175 8.2.4 Utilitarian moral judgment 178 8.3 Hare’s implicit use of Sidgwickean principles 182 9 A Reappraisal of Hedonism 189 9.1 Hare’s preference-satisfaction theory 192 9.2 Difficulties 194 9.3 The Hajdin–Hare debate: Sidgwick’s proof revisited 196 9.4 Further examination: Is hedonism the whole truth? 202 10 Interpersonal Comparison and Maximization 206 10.1 Paradoxical results of rejecting the measurement 208 10.1.1 Nonutilitarian strategy I: Majority rule and transitivity 208 10.1.2 Nonutilitarian strategy II: Scoring according to rank 211 10.2 Key devices for interpersonal comparison: Conversion ratio and extended sympathy 215 10.3 The maximization of total utility 220 11 Reconciling the Dualism of Practical Reason 223 11.1 Some attempts 224 11.2 Brandt’s approach 227 11.2.1 Social moral system and rational choice 227 11.2.2 The double-edged argument for utilitarianism 233 viii Table of Contents 11.3 Unsolved problems 235 11.3.1 Slight differences in social moral systems 236 11.3.2 Internal conflicts still remaining 237 Concluding Chapter 240 Notes 245 Bibliography 257 Index 265 List of Figures 10.1 The preference-ranking paradox 211 10.2 21 people’s preference rankings as to X, Y and Z 212 10.3 21 people’s preference rankings as to Y and Z 213 10.4 Different preference scales graded in different ways 217 ix Preface and Acknowledgements This book deals with the moral philosophy of the nineteenth-century British utilitarian philosopher, Henry Sidgwick. However, the main theme of this book is not historical but rather an analysis of his impacts on contemporary ethics. Though this book focuses on the implica- tions of Sidgwick’s ethical theory to contemporary utilitarianism, this analysis extends beyond utilitarianism to include a more holistic examination of the philosophical foundations of ethics. This is done in light of an accurate interpretation of what John Rawls and Derek Parfit acknowledge as the best book in ethics: The Methods of Ethics written by Henry Sidgwick. To be honest, Sidgwick’s works did not appeal to me in the earliest stage of my career as an ethics researcher. I was heavily impacted by R. M. Hare’s moral philosophy together with his two-level preference- utilitarian theory, and thus my research interest lay almost exclusively with contemporary works, such as those of Hare, Derek Parfit and R. B. Brandt. At that time, I could not see the point of investigating an old-fashioned scholar who lived a hundred years ago. Only when I noticed that both Parfit and Brandt, and even Rawls, who is considered to be one of the strongest opponents of utilitarianism, quite frequently refer to Sidgwick in developing their own arguments, did I finally start my in-depth study of Sidgwick. Might he have made a significant contribution to the field of contemporary ethics? Perhaps. However, it seemed to me that these contemporary authors had not fully explicated Sidgwick’s own ethical theory. Rawls surely mentions Sidgwick when he criticizes classical utilitarianism in his major work (Rawls 1971, Ch.
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