Commonsense Utilitarianism
Sooo… utilitarianism. I’ve wanted to write about this for a long time.
I consider myself a utilitarian, which most broadly speaking means that I aim to “maximize utility”. In friendlier terms, this means I’d like to bring about a world where as many people are as happy and fulfilled as they possibly can. A problem with utilitarianism is that while much has been written on it recently, most people only read it in the context of Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill of the late 1700s and early 1800s, and frequently only hear of utilitarianism in the eyes of the critics.
While I’ve written an entire series of essays on meta-ethics, this essay is intended to be stand-alone post that I can build off of and hopefully convince you to consider utilitarianism, or at least think that such a position is a reasonable choice. For some people, utilitarianism is the only theory of ethics that makes sense, whereas to others utilitarianism sounds obviously incorrect or even horrifying. My intention is that while utilitarianism might start off as unintuitive, I hope to make utilitarianism appear like “common sense”.
Utilitarianism as Equality for All
What is utilitarianism? It may sound overly intellectual, stuffy, cold, mechanical, logical, and/or unemotional at times. But if you think about it, it really isn’t.
Utilitarianism starts from the recognition that many entities have preferences or interests. In other words, they have a welfare, and can be meaningfully harmed or helped. Utilitarianism is about treating those with preferences as equal; giving people equal consideration. Regardless of whether you’re a good friend, a bitter enemy, a malnourished African child, or a cow in a slaughterhouse, utilitarianism takes your preferences into account and wants things to go as well for you as they can. Anything else would be some sort of arbitrary, discriminatory bias — like racism in ignoring the preferences of other races, sexism in ignoring the preferences of other genders, speciesism in ignoring the preferences of other species, etc. If there’s no reason to favor someone more, the default position seems to be equality, and that’s where utilitarianism starts.
So utilitarianism is about people’s maximizing everyone’s welfare, considered equally. Furthermore, utilitarianism holds that when evaluating a situation, the only thing that matters is how it ultimately impacts people’s welfares. For example, lying is not condemnable by utilitarian standards simply because it’s lying, but rather because deception frequently makes people worse off. (Though there are many cases where deception makes people better off, and thus lying is right by utilitarianism in those circumstances.)
Thirdly, utilitarianism is about prioritization. If you can spend an hour offering Alice homework help or spend an hour saving Bob from drowning, then, all else being equal, utilitarianism asks you to spend your hour saving Bob from drowning. This is because while Alice would definitely receive a benefit from getting helped with her homework, Bob would receive a dramatically larger benefit for the same amount of time, and that would maximize welfare more with the same amount of resources, which utilitarianism considers better (all things being equal). This makes utilitarianism very similar to any other sort of cost-benefit analysis, except costs and benefits are measured in the happiness of all those being affected.
Why Should *You* Be a Utilitarian?
As a minor interlude, the first question (nearly) everyone asks about utilitarianism is why they should have to be one. Is there some sort of fancy proof? I’ve seen a few, but I haven’t really liked any of them. The way my meta-ethics works out, it’s clear that utilitarianism is just one functional moral standard among many, so you can pretty much get your choice how you want to evaluate the actions of others and hold other people accountable.
Honestly, if you’re not down with this whole everyone should count equally thing, there’s really nothing I can say to you that I expect to change your mind. It’s just a fundamental difference in values. More might be said on this, but not here…
What about me? I’ve long defined myself as a “part-time” utilitarian. I do a lot of things based on the belief that everyone counts equally, like joining GivingWhatWeCan and pledging to donate 10%+ of my income to charitable causes where I believe my dollars go furthest to increase welfare. That being said, if I donate 10% of my income, that’s ~80% I’m keeping for myself (after taxes).
Surely my interests in buying “Magic: The Gathering Cards” or going to the GenCon gaming convention are not equal to that of other interests that could be addressed for that same $250, like prevent a death from malaria. Yet, I go to GenCon anyway, and I don’t feel all that guilty about it. I spend time watching television when I could be thinking more about how to save the world, etc.
Better/Worse, Not Right/Wrong
Some of this is just that I need to prevent myself from burning out, but much of it is me just wanting to be selfish at times and spend money on me. Thus I may not be an ideal or perfect utilitarian, but I’m still doing very well, so I’m “satisficing” and tapping out at a certain level. …And I have been increasing that level periodically.
On ideal utilitarian grounds my behavior may be seen as sub-optimal, but this doesn’t mean that I’m horribly immoral or deserve condemnation. Instead, in utilitarianism, actions can be placed on a scale from better to worse, our goal is to strive for better. There are still lots of utilitarian things you could be doing, and I feel like everyone could take more seriously the value that everyone should count equally. If you’re doing a fairly good job, I won’t condemn you. Instead, I will encourage you and myself to do better.
Indeed, such encouragement seems more effective at promoting good behavior, and is thus good for improving welfare, and thus what utilitarianism would suggest! I’ll talk more about blameworthiness in utilitarianism on a later date.
Utilitarianism and Separateness of Persons
Let’s get back to Alice and Bob. As I’ve described Utilitarianism, we care about both Alice and Bob (as well as everyone else who has preferences, including nonhuman animals, equally in proportion to the strength of their preferences), but occasionally have to neglect to help one in order to use our resources to help the other instead. Or, worse, we may have to hurt Alice in order to help Bob more.
This leads many people to think that utilitarianism is just chasing aggregate utility for the sake of aggregate utility and doesn’t care who has to get hurt in the process. This is referred to as the “separateness of persons” objection, which states that utilitarianism is flawed because it doesn’t take seriously the fact that people are distinct. But this misses the mark.
As argued by Richard Chappel, the loss to Alice for the sake of Bob is regrettable; we wish that it could have turned out that both Alice and Bob received benefits. However, the benefit to Bob outweighs the harm to Alice, and thus should take place. It isn’t some aggregate that is the focus of attention, nor is it that we expect Alice to somehow be compensated by the benefit that Bob receives. Instead, its just the end result of caring for both Alice and Bob equally and then working out the priorities under the condition of limited resources. We can’t bring benefits to them both, but we have an opportunity to drastically help Bob with a little harm to Alice, so we should take it.
Utilitarianism, Love, and Warm Calculations
The cold and calculating image of utilitarianism brings to mind more than someone concerned with aggregation over that of actual people, but rather someone who only does things out of cold calculation. Your friend hospitalized and needs visitors? Should you go? You best do a utility calculation and only go if it comes out to maximize total welfare! Right?
Well, hopefully not! First, calculations don’t also have to be cold and unemotional; that’s Straw Vulcan stuff. We make calculations specifically because we’re warm and we care, and we want to make sure we do what we can to help as many people as possible. That aside, ignoring your friends on the basis of utility calculations would diminish friendship altogether, which very much would make the world worse! Quite frankly, love and the human element are one of the most important factors for people’s well-being, so it would be very remiss for utilitarianism to not include them at all.
Secondly, no utilitarian would actually be calculating constantly if he or she wanted to be a practical utilitarian. When I next analyze utilitarianism, I’ll expand on this and sketch out how utilitarians can actually make decisions in a real and practical world.
Followed up in: How a Utilitarian Crosses the Street
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Thanks to Sasha Cooper, Boris Yakubchik, Stephen Diamond, and Gregory Lewis for improving this essay.
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I now blog at EverydayUtilitarian.com. I hope you'll join me at my new blog! This page has been left as an archive.
On 1 Nov 2012 in All, Normativity, Utilitarianism. 14 Comments.
2 Nov 2012, 11:43 am
Have you read what JS Mill said about this? In Utilitarianism, he wrote about how some people criticize utilitarianism for being cold and emotionless while others criticize it for being too emotional.
2 Nov 2012, 12:46 pm
A major source of objections to Utilitarianism comes from people who want certain kinds of actions to be off-limits even if the consequences are better in some instances.
Suppose you’re in a space escape pod with a known amount of oxygen and a known rescue time. According to the math, two of the three people on board have to stop breathing long before the rescue. If three good Catholics are on board, they’ll all die. If three consequentialists are on board, maybe they’ll flip coins and off themselves. But what if you’re the only consequentialist and the other two people refuse to kill or be killed? You would have to murder at least one of them to save a life. I’d be inclined to do it, but I know a LOT of people would refuse on moral grounds.
Scenarios like this doesn’t necessarily make Utilitarianism an unfit moral theory. Maybe it’s the best we can do to balance our moral goals in a systematic way, despite trolleys, space capsules, and real life conundrums. Sometimes I think the biggest reason normative theories are treated like they are is that many people are rule-averse. What they really want from morality is validation of their feelings, and their feelings aren’t systematically coherent.
2 Nov 2012, 2:09 pm
One of the fundamental problems I have with utilitarianism is the problem of comparative utility: how exactly does one compare the welfare/utility between individuals? As far as I understand it, utility is a useful concept in choice theory as long as an individual has a menu of options ranked by preference. That’s all fine and good. But what about when you have two individuals? They each have their own ranked preferences, but how do you compare whose preferences are “stronger” such that a certain action will maximize utility between the two people? After all, these ranked menus lead to ordinal utilities, not cardinal ones – we can use numbers in utility calculations for convenience as long as we realize that we’re using them for their ordinal properties alone. We don’t have “utility-o-meters” or “welfare-o-meters”.
So what objective fact(s) of the matter can we point to when attempting to maximize utility between 2 or more individuals? If its preference, we have the problem pointed out above: in what meaningful sense can we say that person X wants a certain outcome more than person Y? And if we’re maximizing something else besides preference, then we lose the main results of the main theorems of utility under choice theory: that maximizing utility necessarily allows you to choose rationally (defined in a very specific way) and to maximize the chances of getting what you want. Otherwise, if you’re maximizing something, we have to ask: what are we maximizing and why? Until these questions are answered satisfactorily, I have trouble seeing how utilitarianism can get off the ground.
2 Nov 2012, 8:20 pm
From a moral-realist perspective, this objection might be fatal. But Peter locates the essence of utilitarianism as a “utile is a utile,” whoever experiences it. On this pragmatic utilitarianism, it seems pretty reasonable to assign each person the same distribution of potential utilities.
Although I have theoretical disagreements–if forced to state my “values” in similar terms, I’d opt for giving a lot of weight to eliminating inequality–the utiles of the oppressed count for more than the utiles of the privileged. (I kind of wonder why Peter thinks his values are better than mine, in this regard–I’d be glad to offer the opposing argument.) [I gather Parfit has adopted a similar view (prioritarianism), which means I may have to read his latest.]
But apart from these somewhat esoteric points, where I disagree with Peter practically is that I think the “one person, one utile” principle offers almost no practical guidance is ethical matters (object level).
The effort to infuse utilitarianism with content (where it’s really pretty empty) leads to a way excessively near-mode approach to ethical and social problems, a sub-Managerialism! ( http://tinyurl.com/6pt9eq5 )
P.S. For those interested in the problem of weakness of will in philosophy of mind, I’ve started a series “Philosophical and political implications of ego-depletion theory” at http://tinyurl.com/arg4ttq
3 Nov 2012, 3:32 pm
I haven’t read Utilitarianism, though I have read On Liberty. Would Utilitarianism be worth reading?
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I’d agree and look forward to exploring this further. To me, utilitarianism seems to be the only way an intuition about equal consideration of interests surviving reflective equilibrium.
Any departure from utilitarianism seems to require some sort of “patching”, or rules-averseness along the lines you mentioned. I’d also agree about people using morality to validate their incoherent feelings.
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I don’t think it’s impossible. We certainly can do it on a quick, intuitive level — like I said, homework help for Alice seems dramatically outweighed by saving Bob from drowning, even without a direct calculation. And the bulk of day-to-day utilitarianism is going to be driven by these kinds of intuitions.
But I also think it’s possible to get more precise, within limitations. I’ll write more about it.
3 Nov 2012, 4:15 pm
Or, regardless of whether you’re a billionaire milking the malnourished African child, etc.–your welfare is equally of concern.
Yes, but “discrimination” is bad when it compounds or creates inequity. “Class warfare,” of which the rightwing accuses those interested in equality, relieves inequity. So does affirmative action for racial inequality. These are “good” forms of discrimination.
Utilitarianism celebrates a society where the augmentation of privilege counts the same as the elimination of poverty. [Not that utilitarian arguments can't be made for eliminating poverty, but notice that the grand utilitarian consensus in today's society emphasizes the middle class, not the poor (listen to election propaganda).]
So, let me see. Reflective equilibrium is a test for a good ethics. But the “intuition” that we should all count the same is a given. If you were serious about “reflective equilibrium,” you would see the “intuition” as subject to the same test. On the one hand, you want to keep your basic intuitions uncontested; on the other, you want to contest your secondary intuitions by means of reflective equilibrium.
This is just a convenient eclecticism. If you want to be pragmatic about your ethics, reflective equilibrium has nothing to do with it. Reflective equilibrium is supposed to find objective moral truth. If you’ve concluded (correctly) there’s no such thing, you should be consistent; if ad hoc amendments are needed, so what?
Also, while the “value” that we’re all the same is widespread, the value that “we” includes cows isn’t. In its favor is only a moral-realist conviction that there really is something called “utility” that constitutes The Good. If you admit you can’t argue that we “should” all count the same, on what basis do you recommend your ethics to the majority, who think the notion of “discrimination” being bad when applied to cows is laughable? People who think otherwise are almost necessarily moral-realists. There’s no serious pragmatic argument that I’ve seen to extend equality to cows.
3 Nov 2012, 6:56 pm
I know you know this about me, but just for the clarification of others, I am not a moral realist.
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I don’t understand what you mean by assigning people the same distribution of potential utility. Do you mean that we’d expect everyone to be capable of the same range of experiences? That we can assume “rough equivalence of events” — like you eating a cake would be worth the same as me eating cake, utility-wise?
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I’m not sure what intuitions motivate a bias for the underprivileged. The underprivileged are already a major focus of utilitarianism because they’re the ones easily helped. Your endorsement of prioritarianism seems to be in favor of “double counting” this effect.
Where do you suspect a utilitarian and prioritarian would diverge in their actions?
Relatedly, I’m also not sure why you discount the preferences of the world’s most oppressed — nonhuman animals.
Lastly, what actions, if anything, do you do to “live in accord” with prioritarianism? (I accept “moral externalism”; I think you can endorse priortiarianism without being hypocritical in not following it.)
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I don’t think values can be “better” than other values, because I think “better” is only defined in reference to a value structure. You’d need some sort of second-order values to evaluate this.
That being said, I think my values follow from equal consideration of interests and yours do not.
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Parfit’s prioritarianism view can be seen in his essay “Equality and Priority” (PDF). I think a good pro-utilitarian critique of it comes from Richard Chappell here and here. Chappell is where most of my support of utilitarianism comes from.
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That surprises me. Why do you think that? It’s intuitively clear, at least, that money would be much better spent donated to demonstrably effective charities than say on $5000 cheeseburgers. That’s practical. More will be said in future essays.
3 Nov 2012, 7:00 pm
Indeed they are, and I’ll edit the essay to make that clear. What I meant by bad discrimination was making an arbitrary distinction for who’s interests matter. It seems arbitrary to say the poor matter more than the rich above and beyond the fact that it is much easier to help them with the same amount of resources (diminishing marginal returns).
To make matters stark, does the life of a poor person matter more than the life of a rich person?
17 Nov 2012, 12:59 pm
It is probably worth distinguishing preference-util from welfarism. You switch between talking about valuing preferences to valuing welfare. These overlap a lot, but not so much they can be used interchangeably.
I also think talking about utilitarianism as motivated by equality as a bit of a stretch. Classical util (the sort you appear to be endorsing) is devoid of any ‘packaging concern’: classical utils care about improving the welfare of the worst off over the better off only because as a matter of fact this is the best way to improve aggregate well-being: for a given blob of resources, spending these on worst-off welfare generates more utiles than better-off welfare.
I’d imagine most folks take there to be more of an imperative to prefer the worst off beyond efficacy – if we lived in the world where a power-law distribution of income really was the most effective distribution of resources for aggregate utility, we should want to change it. Prioritarian intuitions are that some ‘hit’ to aggregate is worth it if the improvements in welfare accrue to those worst off. (Another approach would be a pluralist consequentialist who cares about other things such as equality/justice/desert in their own right). It isn’t double counting if you are capturing a separate intuition.
17 Nov 2012, 4:47 pm
I use them interchangeably because I don’t think they come apart except in odd scenarios, and I’m not personally sure yet what I value in those odd scenarios. I think it might be prudent to standardize on welfarism, so I’ll go back and make that edit, but I think welfare is a bit of a cop-out because it’s not clear what exactly someone’s “welfare” is, and for all we know, that could be their preferences.
I also might just bite the bullet and talk solely about “happiness”, which currently I think is the best concept worth maximizing, but seems to get people thinking that I want to force everyone onto heroin. My plan for now will be to make it a touch clearer, and then clarify it further in a future essay.
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I think there is a confusion between considering people equally and considering interests equally. I think utilitarianism is very much motivated by equality of interest.
I think this can become clear in the scenario of deciding whether to help a poor person or a rich person. If you’re deciding who to allocate $1000 to, it’s clear that you should give it to the poor person because their going to get higher utility than the rich person (because of diminishing marginal returns on money).
However, if you’re deciding who is deserving of life-saving medication, I don’t think the poor person is intrinsically deserving just because they’re worse off. Here, usually spillover concerns dominate — we should favor saving the person who will be missed the most, or who’s death would negatively impact the world the most, or who has the most years left to live, etc.
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That’s definitely true. However, I do think that some people see diminishing marginal returns and think this alone automatically requires prioritarianism, which is not true. But there are weirder things going on, relative to my intuitions.
Take two worlds:
W1: Everyone has 100 utility
W2: Half of the people have 100 utility, the other half have 200 utility
Richard Chappell notes that prioritarianism wouldn’t necessarally say W2 is worse, but that there is something being lost by shifting from W1 to W2. However, this violates the person-affecting view that “something can only be bad if it is bad for someone”. So if you share that person-affecting intuition, prioritarianism becomes wonky.
I also think it’s really tough, in these multi-concern views, to define how tradeoffs work, if the values are even commensurable at all. How do you decide between W1 and W2, if at all? And if you can make a decision, can’t you just define the trade-off in a robust manner, and then collapse the intuition into your definition of “utility”?
Utilitarianism already places some utility in equality, since obviously inequality can create unhappiness all by itself.
17 Nov 2012, 4:48 pm
Thanks for the insightful and thought-provoking comment, by the way.
17 Nov 2012, 4:53 pm
After looking back through the essay a bit, all I’ve really done is confused myself about what the difference between welfare and preferences really are, so I think I’m going to save it for a future essay.
20 Nov 2012, 11:38 am
Just to clarify: it’s egalitarianism, not prioritarianism, that sees something bad about adding super-well-off people to the world. Prioritarianism is perfectly compatible with whole-heartedly endorsing the shift from W1 to W2; its flaws lie elsewhere.
(But thanks for linking to my posts!)
20 Nov 2012, 11:44 am
Thanks for the clarification. I’m always happy to use links to incorporate great work. I don’t remember where I said it, but I’ve noted before that it was your work on separateness of persons (incorporated into this essay) that made utilitarianism intuitive to me and rescued it from otherwise deadly objection.