[6.7.3.] An Objection to Rule Utilitarianism.

 

Do the rules identified by rule utilitarianism have exceptions?

 

For example, what should we do in a situation where we could seriously increase utility by violating someone’s right to privacy? Should we violate the rule and thus increase utility, or should we follow the rule?

 

It seems like the rule utilitarian is faced with a dilemma:

·         If she says that we should break the rule in order to increase utility, then she has basically abandoned rule utilitarianism and adopted act utilitarianism again... and so she is once again faced with all the arguments against act utilitarianism (e.g., the Rights Argument, the Excessive Demand Argument).

·         But if she says that we should always follow the rule, even when breaking it would increase utility, then “as philosopher J. J. C. Smart puts it, the utilitarian’s original concern for promoting welfare has been replaced by an irrational ‘rule worship.’” (EMP 112)

 

 

[6.8.] The “Common Sense is Wrong” Defense of Utilitarianism.

 

Some philosophers have rejected the rule utilitarianism defense and have taken a very different approach to defending utilitarianism against arguments like the Rights Argument and the Excessive Demand Argument.

 

This is the approach taken by the Australian philosopher J.J.C. Smart[1], in the book An Outline of a System of Utilitarian Ethics (1961):

 

Admittedly utilitarianism does have consequences which are incompatible with the common moral consciousness, but I tended to take the view “so much the worse for the common moral consciousness.” That is, I was inclined to reject the common methodology of testing general ethical principles by seeing how they square with our feelings in particular instances. (EMP 112)

 

Smart’s approach is as follows:

·         acknowledge that common-sense agrees with the second premise of the Rights Argument (“There are some instances when it is immoral to violate someone’s right to privacy, even when doing so will result in an increase in overall well-being.”) and of the Excessive Demand Argument (“You are not always obligated to do whatever will have the best overall consequences for everyone; at least sometimes, it is permissible to do trivial things that benefit only yourself”);

·         claim that in the case of these arguments, common-sense is simply wrong and that the second premise is false;

·         maintain that act utilitarianism is true.

 

Let’s return to the Excessive Demand Argument. Smart’s defense of utilitarianism would be to say that the second premise of that argument is false. That premise says: “it is not always morally obligatory to do something other than what will have the best overall consequences for everyone.” This seems like common-sense, something almost everyone would agree with. But Smart thinks that in this case common-sense is mistaken. (As we will see, this seems to be the view on world poverty taken by Peter Singer.)

 

Returning to MCR for a moment… One of the important lessons that Rachels thinks we can learn from Moral-Cultural Relativism is that, for the most part, our moral beliefs result from inculcation rather than from a rational process of examining all the options and choosing the one that has the most reasons behind it. We have the moral beliefs we do because of how we were raised; what we were taught by our parents, teachers, and others; absorbing beliefs and habits from the people around us and from the culture as a whole. This is where our “moral common-sense” (or as Smart says, our “common moral consciousness”) comes from.

 

But these common-sense ideas about right and wrong might be incorrect.  In particular, they might be incorrect if they are incompatible with a moral theory that has the weight of reason on its side.

 

Two hundred years ago, the moral common-sense of many Americans told them that it was moral to treat black people very differently than whites. This just seemed obvious to many people. And we now know that they were wrong.

 

A different way to illustrate this point: On most issues (murder, rape, punishing the innocent, torturing children, dancing, riding in an automobile), contemporary Americans share the same common-sense responses.

 

But there is a small group of issues (e.g., abortion and homosexuality) where our moral common-sense diverges.  For some issues, many people think that X is obviously immoral, while many others think that X is obviously not immoral.  Someone’s common-sense reaction is mistaken.  So our moral common-sense is fallible (it is capable of being wrong).

 

Even if we reject Smart’s defense of act utilitarianism, we can still learn this valuable lesson from it: moral common-sense is fallible—it is possible for it to be wrong.

 

 

[6.9.] Utilitarianism and World Poverty.

 

As you read in Mylan Engel’s[2] short article “9/11 and Starvation,” the number of innocent children who die everyday from malnutrition and untreated, poverty-related disease is about ten times greater than the number of people who died in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.[3] And yet the United States government, as well as the governments of other Western-style democracies, have not launched an all-out “war on poverty” or “war on starvation” in the same way that they have launched a “war on terror.”

 

Peter Singer (b. 1946) is a very controversial Australian bioethicist who teaches at Princeton University.[4] He is also a modern utilitarian and a founder of the animal rights movement.

 

One of his first publications was “Famine, Affluence, and Morality” (Philosophy and Public Affairs, 1972).

 

The article you read, “The Singer Solution to World Poverty” (The New York Times Magazine, Sept. 5, 1999), updates the views taken in the earlier work.

 

Singer thinks, not simply that it is a good thing for people to donate to famine relief, but that for most Americans, it is obligatory. Here Singer disagrees with most Americans, who seem to think that donating money to famine relief is supererogatory.

 

 

[6.9.1.] The Central Station Argument.

 

In the end, what is the ethical distinction between a Brazilian who sells a homeless child to organ peddlers and an American who already has a TV and upgrades to a better one—knowing that the money could be donated to an organization that would use it to save the lives of kids in need? (RTD 155)

 

Singer believes that there is no moral distinction between the two. Since selling a homeless child to an organ peddler in order to buy yourself a new television is immoral, it is also immoral for a middle-class American to spend money on a new TV instead of giving that money to a charity that would use it to save the life of a child (or the lives of many children).

 

Objection: it is a very different thing knowingly to give a child who is standing right in front of you over to organ peddlers in exchange for a new television, than to spend money on a new television rather than give that money to a charity, who would use that money to save the life of a child you will never see.

 

Singer’s Response: if you are a utilitarian like him, then there really is no moral difference, because the consequences are the same in each case: another child in a foreign country dies when he didn’t have to.

 

Singer realizes that not everyone reading his article is a utilitarian, and he writes:

 

…one doesn’t need to embrace my utilitarian ethic to see that, at the very least, there is a troubling incongruity in being so quick to condemn Dora for taking the child to the organ peddlers while, at the same time, not regarding the American consumer’s behavior as raising a serious moral issue. (RTD 156)

 

But Singer has another argument to offer in support of his utilitarian position, one that may be stronger than the “Central Station” argument…

 

 

Stopping point for Monday October 19. For next time:

• read “All Animals are Equal” by Peter Singer (RTD ch.14)
• study today’s notes
• pop quiz possible