James Rachels is a contemporary American philosopher who has written widely on ethical topics. In this essay, he begins by stating what he calls Classical Utilitarianismand then discusses various criticisms of the view. Classical utilitarianism holds three things:

1) Consequences are all that count in the moral evaluation of actions.

2) The only consequences that count are the production of happiness and unhappiness.

3) Each person's happiness counts for exactly as much as each other person's.

Rachels considers two main sorts of criticisms of Utilitarianism: its claim that happiness is the only good, and its claim that consequences are all that matter in determining right and wrong. We begin with the first.

According to Rachels, saying that happiness is the only good gets the cart before the horse. He uses the example of a pianist who is in an accident and whose hands are injured, leaving her unable to play the piano. The hedonist would say that this is a misfortune because it makes her unhappy. Rachels says that this is exactly backwards: it makes her unhappy because it is a misfortune. Her unhappiness is a rational response to somethng objectively bad. Being able to play the piano well is valuable for its own sake. The pianist has lost a valuable capacity, andthatis why she is unhappy. Playing the piano makes her happy because it is worthwhile and not vice-versa.

Some forms of utilitarianism are straightforwardly subject to this criticism. But it's not clear that Mill's is. As we saw, Mill acknowledges that some things we desire as part of our happiness rather than as a means to it. This would include such things as skills and virtues. Where Mill and Rachels may seem to part company is when Mill insists that nonetheless, what makes these things valuable is that they do contribute to our happiness. At this point it's hard to know who is right. Consider someone who pursue dancing as a serious hobby. Such a person will put a lot of time into practice and workshops, doing boring drill to improve skills and master movements. Furthermore, most dancers experience some dissatisfaction and frustration because they aren't always able to dance as well as they would like. But any dancer I know also finds that there are times when the dancing is absolutely exhilarating. Doing it produces a state of mind that is very close to ecstasy. That has an awful lot to do with why people dance.

My point is this: even if the psychological states that we think of as part of happiness or pleasure are by-products of things that we do because they seem valuable in themselves, most of these things would never get done if they typically made us unhappy or produced discomfort. It isn't obviously wrong to say that what makes skills such as basketball or writing or dancing valuable is the fact that they give us real enjoyment. Mill's understanding of the psychology is not crude or obviously wrong just because he insists on the role of happiness in the value of such things.

Think in particular about Rachel's piano player. Why does she regret the loss of her skill? She certainly considers piano playing a valuable activity. But isn't this at least partly because it is a rewarding thing todo? In losing her ability to play the piano, hasn't she lost a source of complex enjoyment? Hasn't she lost something that was a source of happiness?

So yes: she is unhappy because she lost something valuable. But the thing she lost was valuable in important part because of the complex enjoyment and pleasure it produced. And to the extent that this is right, Rachels' criticism seems off the mark.

In fact, this whole business is very subtle. If you are interested in looking into its psychological aspects, you might consider looking at the book calledFlow, by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

Rachels' other example is more problematic for Mill. Suppose that someone whom you think of as your friend actually doesn't like you at all and spends much time mocking you behind your back. No one ever tells you. Have you been in some way harmed or wronged? Rachels thinks the answer is yes. He thinks that even though there are no consequences that you ever become aware of -- no obvious effect on your happiness -- something is definitely wrong here. But utilitarianism doesn't do a good job of explaining what, since we can't point to any unhappiness produced by your false friend's actions.

This example is harder for the utilitarian to respond to, though s/he might point out that it is just luck that no actual bad consequences (hurt feelings, etc.) have come your way. We tend to dislike the idea that somehow we are living a lie or are deceived -- whether we know it or not. But the case is subtle enough that for some people it might not carry much weight. They might argue that we could just as well see utilitarianism as providing us with reasons not to worry about such things.

Virtue is trickier. We value things like honesty not because being honest makes us feel good, but because honesty is (by and large) good. Here Mill's subtlety doesn't seem quite on target. We are capable of learning to take pleasure in virtues such as honesty. But on many occasions, the exercise of these virtues is genuinely painful. We don't keep doing it because somewhere down the road, they will make us happy. We do so because it is right.

So far, Mill might agree. That isn't our reason. But he seems committed to saying that if honesty had no capacity to add to our happiness, it would not be valuable, and this might seem wrong.

However, even if Mill has the psychology wrong here, he might point out: the practice of honesty may not add to the happiness of the honest person. But honesty does have a tendency in the long run to add to general human happiness. And Mill might insist that if this were not so, honesty would not be valuable.

Here we are in the realm of moral psychology, and it is a complex realm, as even these brief comments should indicate. But there is a way of sidestepping at least some of this debate. We can generalize utilitarianism: instead of saying that the moral goal should be the greatesthappinessof the greatest number, we could say that the moral goal is the greatestgoodof the greatest number, however "good" is to be understood.

We will leave these controversies and move on to a different set of issues. Rachels claims that utilitarianism sometimes seems to recommend courses of action that are quite simply wrong. He gives three examples:

1) Falsely accusing an innocent person to a satisfy an angry mob. Here it is possible that the greatest happiness will be produced by doing this, but it is deeply and obviously unjust. It simply seems wrong.

2) The case of the woman who, in the course of pressing assault charges, was told that she needed to be photographed nude. The officer was lying; it wasn't necessary. Instead, he passed the pictures around to his friends. Rachels points out that not only were her legal rights violated; her moral rights were as well. It might well be that the pleasures the officers got from the pictures outweighed the women's distress. But our reaction -- mine, at least -- is that this fact is at best morally irrelevant and in fact makes the whole situation more repugnant. The pleasures that wrongdoers get from their actions count for nothingin trying to decide whether a course of action is acceptable.

3) Suppose I make a promise to you and it becomes mildly inconvenient for me to keep it -- just a little more inconvenient for me than the keeping of the promise would be helpful to you. A utilitarian would have to say that I can break my promise. But this seems wrong. Promising creates obligations that don't simply depend on convenience.

How might the utilitarian respond? Rachels considers three possibilities:

1) Declare the examples too far-fetched to be worth considering. This is a shallow and unreasonable response. Some of the examples are entirely realistic. But even if they weren't, their point is to help us understand what makes actions right, and to make clear that even if an action produces the most happiness, it may be wrong. Furthermore, even if a particualr right action happens to produce the most happines amng teh alternatives, the action may be right for a quite different reason than the happiness it produces: because it is just, for example.

2) Modify utilitarianism. The version we have been considering is Act Utilitarianism. It directs us to consider the consequences of each individual action. Rule Utilitarianism applies the utilitarian principle to rules; we are to ask which rules, if generally followed, would produce the greatest happiness.

So Rule utilitarianism is a kind of consequentialism about rules. Interestingly, about individual acts, it looks like deontology: evaluate the act by reference to the appropriate rule.

Rule utilitarianism will probably eliminate the worst cases we have described. But the word "probably" here is disturbing. It might turn out that there are cases in which a rule that directs sacrificing the interests of individuals would be the one that rule utilitarianism favored. And this might just seem wrong.

While this weak criticism is fine as far as it goes, doesn't get to the deeper problems with rule utilitarianism. To apply utilitarianism to rules, how do we evaluate rules? We ask what the consequences would be if everyone followed them. In deciding among a number of possible rules, we choose the one that would produce the most happiness overall if the rule were universally followed. But whether or not a rule would produce more happiness than another rule will depend on the sorts of people who make up the society where the rule will be applied. If a large fraction of the people are both rather thick-skinned and also take pleasure in things that harm other people, the rules that would work the best at producing happiness might well be rules that are morally unacceptable; they might be rules that would allow happiness to be promoted at the expense of justice, minority rights, or common decency.

The underlying point is this: utilitarianism says that each person's happiness counts equally. So far, this seems right and reasonable. But utilitarianism also assumes -- at least, in its classic version -- that happiness is happiness; pleasure is pleasure. That is, if something would make someone happy, we are obliged to throw that into the equation, regardless of how detestable the source of happiness is. And this holds just as much at the level of rule utilitarianism just as at the level of act utilitarianism. But the fact that some people take pleasure in cruelty is not even the slightestreason, from a moral point of view, for considering the cruelty to be allowed. The fact that people take pleasure in cruel behavior makes their cruel actionsworse, and not better. However, Rule Utilititarianism would seem to say that if society is filled with a lot of people whose main source of pleasure is being cruel, we have to take that into account in deciding which rules would produce the most happiness.

So my problem with the rule utilitarian solution is this: consequences are important; no doubt about it. But to build ethics on the assumption that consequences areallthat matter seems to be a mistake from the get-go, even if we work with rules rather than individual actions.

3) The third possible defense of utilitarianism is to reject the objections. Some writers insist that Act Utilitarianism is a clean, orderly theory. They deny that it should give way in the face of the sorts of objections we have been considering -- objections based on our common-sense moral responses. They insist that mere common sense is not to be trusted.

Common sense is tricky; it's often not to be trusted. Pointing this out is worthwhile. Still, I'm inclined to think that this third defense has a large element of science-worship about it, especially the worship of highly theoretical science. But it also seems to be questionable method. Ethics deals with the realm of ordinary life; our ordinary moral reactions are the basic data that ethical theories need to make sense of. Without some "common sense" moral intuitions, we would have no way at all of evaluating utilitarianism or any other moral theory. Moral intuitions have a relationship to ethics that is much more intimate than the relationship of common sense to science. To give no weight to our moral reactions -- even thoughtful ones based on considerable experience -- is not only arbitrary, it is to miss much of what makes for real moral life. Some people genuinely enjoy torturing others. We may not be able to give a theoretical defense of our view that this counts for absolutely nothing in the moral evaluation of torture, but that seems like a poor reason to stop giving money to Amnesty International.

This brings us back to a point that we touched on briefly in class: the most plausible approach to moral theory seems to be one that relies on reflective equilibrium. We have beliefs abut moral principles. And we have particular reactions to particular situations. Sometimes the principles and the paricular reactions agree. Sometimes they don't. Sometimes we modify our reactions in the light of principles. But sometimes we modify what we take the principles to be in the light of particular situations. What we need to do is bring our principles and our intuitive reactions into accord with one another. And that means that we can't simply ignore moral intuitions.

© copyright Allen Stairs, 1998

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