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- The philosophy of utility
- The problem of unpredictability of consequences
Utilitarianism Responses“I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.” -Paul the Apostle
In its simplest manifestation, utilitarianism holds that agents ought to act in a way that will maximize utility, and more specifically, maximize the good of as many people as possible. That act is right which produces the best consequences for the greatest number of people. There are at least two interesting things from the outset about a philosophy of utility-maximization. The first is that utilitarianism seems to assume that singular moral agents make choices involving other agents, choices that produce strings of consequences felt by others. The second important characteristic of utilitarianism is that it assumes there is a measurable level of “happiness” or utility, measurable at least in the sense that it lends itself to some kind of assessment when the agent is making the choice in question. Both of these assumptions will be questioned later in this essay, but for now it is important to distinguish a little more about utilitarianism itself. Because the basic form of utilitarianism begs the question of whether we are speaking of individual actions, or sets of actions expressed in general rules, philosophers have tried to separate utilitarianism into two different manifestations. They are: 1. Act Utilitarianism: "What effect will my doing this act in this situation have on the general balance of good over evil?" 2. Rule Utilitarianism: "What general rule when followed by all in situations like this would produce the greatest happiness for the greatest number?" (http://saul.snu.edu/syllabi/philosop/PHIL3013/301318.htm) Because rule utilitarianism seems to be a more reasonable way to “make ethics,” most utilitarians today are rule-utilitarians, although rule-utilitarianism, it should be noted, also seems to encompass act utilitarianism at the level of individual choices. However, philosopher J. J. C. Smart argues that rule-utilitarianism ultimately collapses into act-utilitarianism: “Suppose that an exception to rule R produces the best possible consequences. Then this is evidence that rule R should be modified so as to allow this exception. Thus we get a new rule for the form ‘do R except in circumstances of the sort C.’ That is, whatever would lead the act-utilitarian to break a rule would lead the Kantian utilitarian to modify the rule. Thus an adequate rule-utilitarianism would be extensionally equivalent to act-utilitarianism” (J. J. C. Smart, UTILITARIANISM FOR AND AGAINST, 1973, pp. 10-11). So utilitarianism, whether in the form of general rules or individual acts, says agents should make choices based on predicted consequences, to maximize the good, for as many people as possible. Each of the components of this philosophy are questionable, and the following sections in the essay address each in turn. The problem of unpredictability of consequencesThe first of my objections is that utilitarianism assumes we can predict consequences. My argument is that we cannot. An example will illustrate this point: Suppose I am walking along the waterfront and I see a child struggling in the water. Concerned that the child will drown, and knowing I am a good swimmer, my rule-utilitarian maxim kicks in: “I ought to act to save that child. It will result in good for the child, and (because I like to help people) good for me as well.” I have calculated the probable consequences of my action, and finding that the consequences will be desirable, I jump in the water. Swimming towards the struggling child, I prepare to save the child. Just then, the undertow strengthens. It sucks us both under. We both drown. Now, other ethical formulas would hold that I did the right thing, even though the consequences were not desirable, and were not what I had planned. Utilitarianism, however, would force a retroactive condemnation of my action, because the consequences that finally resulted were actually worse than if I had done nothing, if I had just continued walking along the waterfront. For if I had kept walking, only one person would have drowned, but because I jumped in the water (and because of the undertow), two people drowned. What is going on here? To begin with, utilitarianism cannot account for my intent alone. Unlike Kant’s categorical imperative, utilitarianism measures the morality of one’s actions based on the consequences. Thus, my intent to save the child is irrelevant. Regardless of any other consideration, this alone seems to render utilitarianism an incomplete moral philosophy. Surely I ought to receive my due “moral credit” simply for attempting to save the child, even if I fail. But more importantly, utilitarianism seems to assume a universe full of predictable consequences. It seems to assume that if a moral agent acts upon the prediction of consequences, those consequences will behave as predicted. But the universe doesn’t work this way. Instead, the universe is “complex.” Actions result in more unpredictable than predictable consequences. It is not a matter of human beings simply lacking the intellect to predict consequences. Rather, as philosophers of complexity point out, the very nature of actions and consequences is unpredictable. This unpredictability makes it impossible to assign responsibility to specific agents for specific consequences. Danilo Zolo explains some of the manifestations of reality’s complex nature in this way: Complexity “refers to the cognitive situation in which agents, whether they are individuals or social groups, find themselves. The relations which agents construct and project on their environment in their attempts at self-orientation—i.e. at arrangement, prediction, planning, manipulation—will be more or less complex according to circumstances.” Similarly, as the situation becomes more complex, more laden with interdependent variables (as are almost all political situations), “the more interdependent the variables become. Variations in the value of one variable inevitably act on other variables (and so too they on it), making the task of cognition (and operation) more difficult…Once a certain threshold of complexity is crossed, the very quality changes of the calculations needed to predict the effects of the recursive relations which interconnect the environmental factors. Even analysis of individual phenomena becomes less certain, given that their basic condition—and developments from that condition—can scarcely be separated from the nexus of non-linear connections” (Danilo Zolo, Democracy and Complexity, 1992, pp. 6-7). The drowning child example, and Zolo’s observations about complexity, suggest that utilitarianism can never really be a philosophy which offers any guidance for ethical actions, since those actions are to be measured by something that can never be measured: actions’ consequences. 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