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UTILITARIANISM/CONSEQUENTIALISM PROTECTS RIGHTS
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- EXTINCTION AND NUCLEAR WAR SHOULD BE OUR TOP CONCERN
UTILITARIANISM/CONSEQUENTIALISM PROTECTS RIGHTS1. RIGHTS AND THE SOCIAL GOOD CAN ONLY BE PROTECTED THROUGH UTILITARIANISM Mirko Bagaric, Professor of Law and Head of Deakin Law School and Julie Clarke Lecturer, Deakin Law School, Spring, 2005. “Not Enough Official Torture in the World? The Circumstances in Which Torture Is Morally Justifiable,” UNIVERSITY OF SAN FRANCISCO LAW REVIEW, 39 U.S.F. L. Rev. 581, p. np. The criticism that utilitarianism has no place for rights must be responded to for the sake of completeness (and in an attempt to further redeem utilitarianism). Rights do in fact have a place in a utilitarian ethic, and, what is more, it is only against this background that rights can be explained and their source justified. Utilitarianism provides a sounder foundation for rights than any other competing theory. Indeed, for the utilitarian, the answer to why rights exist is simple: recognition of them best promotes general utility. Their origin accordingly lies in the pursuit of happiness. Their content is discovered through empirical observations regarding the patterns of behavior that best advance the utilitarian cause.
Leslie Mulholland, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Newfoundland, 1986. “Rights, Utilitarianism, and the Conflation of Persons,” JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY, June, Vol. 83, No. 6, p. 328.
For many, the persuasiveness of utilitarianism as a moral theory lies in its power to provide a way out of difficulties arising from the conflict of moral principles. The contention that utilitarianism permits people to override rights in case of conflict of principles or in those cases where some recognized utility requires that a right be disregarded, is then not an internal objection to utilitarianism. Nor does it even indicate a plausible alternative to the convinced utilitarian. For him, utilitarianism has its force partly in the coherence and simplicity of the principle in explaining the morality of such cases. 3. UTILITARIANISM IS ESSENTIAL TO PROTECTING THE RIGHTS OF CITIZENS Mirko Bagaric, Professor of Law and Head of Deakin Law School and Julie Clarke Lecturer, Deakin Law School, Spring, 2005. “Not Enough Official Torture in the World? The Circumstances in Which Torture Is Morally Justifiable,” UNIVERSITY OF SAN FRANCISCO LAW REVIEW, 39 U.S.F. L. Rev. 581, p. np. Difficulties in performing the utilitarian calculus regarding each decision make it desirable that we ascribe certain rights and interests to people that evidence shows tend to maximize happiness - even more happiness than if we made all of our decisions without such guidelines. Rights save time and energy by serving as shortcuts to assist us in attaining desirable consequences. By labeling certain interests as rights, we are spared the tedious task of establishing the importance of a particular interest as a first premise in practical arguments. 4. UTILITARIANISM PROVIDES THE FOUNDATION FOR RIGHTS AND THE SOCIAL GOOD Mirko Bagaric, Professor of Law and Head of Deakin Law School and Julie Clarke Lecturer, Deakin Law School, Spring, 2005. “Not Enough Official Torture in the World? The Circumstances in Which Torture Is Morally Justifiable,” UNIVERSITY OF SAN FRANCISCO LAW REVIEW, 39 U.S.F. L. Rev. 581, p. np. The criticism that utilitarianism has no place for rights must be responded to for the sake of completeness (and in an attempt to further redeem utilitarianism). Rights do in fact have a place in a utilitarian ethic, and, what is more, it is only against this background that rights can be explained and their source justified. Utilitarianism provides a sounder foundation for rights than any other competing theory. Indeed, for the utilitarian, the answer to why rights exist is simple: recognition of them best promotes general utility. Their origin accordingly lies in the pursuit of happiness. Their content is discovered through empirical observations regarding the patterns of behavior that best advance the utilitarian cause. EXTINCTION AND NUCLEAR WAR SHOULD BE OUR TOP CONCERN1. EXTINCTION IS A PRE-EMINENT CONCERN FOR DECISION MAKERS Jonathan Schell, the Harold Willens Peace Fellow at The Nation Institute and teaches a course on the nuclear dilemma at Yale, 2000. THE FATE OF THE EARTH, p. 95. But the mere risk of extinction has a significance that is categorically different from, and immeasurably greater than, that of any other risk, and as we make our decisions we have to take that significance into account. Up to now, every risk has been contained within the frame of life; extinction would shatter the frame. It represents not the defeat of some purpose but an abyss in which all human purposes would be drowned for all time. We have no right to place the possibility of this limitless, eternal defeat on the same footing as risks that we run in the ordinary conduct of our affairs in our particular transient moment of human history.
Robert Seeley, Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors, 1986. THE HANDBOOK OF NON-VIOLENCE, pp. 269-70. In moral reasoning prediction of consequences is nearly always impossible. One balances the risks of an action against its benefits; one also considers what known damage the action would do. Thus a surgeon in deciding whether to perform an operation weighs the known effects (the loss of some nerve function, for example) and risks (death) against the benefits, and weighs also the risks and benefits of not performing surgery. Morally, however, human extinction is unlike any other risk. No conceivable human good could be worth the extinction of the race, for in order to be a human good it must be experienced by human beings. Thus extinction is one result we dare not-may not-risk. Though not conclusively established, the risk of extinction is real enough to make nuclear war utterly impermissible under any sane moral code. 3. PREVENTING EXTINCTION OUTWEIGHS MORAL CONSTRAINTS Nick Bostrom, Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Yale University, March 2002. “Analyzing Human Extinction Scenarios and Related Hazards,” JOURNAL OF EVOLUTION AND TECHNOLOGY, vol. 9, p. 23. A preemptive strike on a sovereign nation is not a move to be taken lightly, but in the extreme case we have outlined - where a failure to act would with high probability lead to existential catastrophe - it is a responsibility that must not be abrogated. Whatever moral prohibition there normally is against violating national sovereignty is overridden in this case by the necessity to prevent the destruction of humankind. 4. MAKING RATIONAL CALCULATION IN MORALITY IS CRUCIAL TO HUMAN SURVIVAL Andrew Sayer, Department of Sociology Lancaster University, May 2004. “Restoring the Moral Dimension: Acknowledging Lay Normativity”, Accessed 12-14-2008, We need to reject the treatment of emotions as opposed to reason. On the contrary emotions can be rational. To be sure the evaluative judgements provided by emotions are fallible, but then so too is reason. Their fallibility derives from the fact that they are about something independent of them, such that they can be mistaken about it. Thus, we may mistakenly imagine that something is a threat to our well-being when it isn’t, though some degree of success in evaluating such threats is a condition of survival. 5. STRICT MORALITY ONLY LEADS TO POLARIZATION, HATRED AND RESENTMENT Melvyn Fein, Prof. of Sociology at Kennesaw University, 1997. HARDBALL WITHOUT AN UMPIRE: THE SOCIOLOGY OF MORALITY, p. 6. Evidently, morality creates problems. It is so constituted as to incite acts detrimental to human well-being. Because it contains the seeds of hurtful behavior, no matter how noble the intentions of its practitioners, it breeds unfairness, stupidity and injury. Sadly, this immorality is not an aberration and therefore cannot be eliminated simply be instructing people to do good. Download 343.42 Kb. Share with your friends:
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