The Unavoidable Condition of Alienation in Utilitarianism
Anthony Selbitschka, May 2006
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Introduction
Utilitarianism is like a parent of a teenager. Through the power struggles of who gets the car keys, whether curfew can be extended, and whose parties are to be chaperoned, the parent merely wants what is best for the child. Utilitarianism merely wants what is best for all of us. When the moral action seems to conflict with our own desires, Utilitarianism says, “You’ll thank me later,” or “Trust me, it’s for your own good.” With its goal set firmly as the greatest good/happiness/utility for the greatest number of people, Utilitarianism will always support the action that leads to the best consequence. Therefore, critics cannot argue that Utilitarianism would not bring us the best results; if it didn’t, Utilitarianism wouldn’t support it. One cannot argue against the good intentions of the parent who restricts the indulgences of the teen for the good of the teen. One can argue, however, that for a teen to be a teen, one must allow some indulgences. This tension between personal indulgences and the goal of the greater good can alienate teens from parents or, for our purposes, moral agents from the ethical model of Utilitarianism. I will set out to argue that while Utilitarianism’s intentions are good and while Utilitarianism may give us the most good for the most people, the side effect of alienation that necessarily follows is too damning to accept it as a realistic ethical model for psychologically healthy individuals.
Williams’s Critique of Utilitarianism
Bernard Williams was clever to attack Utilitarianism on the terms of alienation. Holding the greatest good to the greatest number of people as the standard of moral value, it seems that the individual is easily forgotten under Utilitarianism’s rules. While it is the individual who makes the moral decision, how would that individual be motivated to act morally when his own desires are not given a say in the matter? As an ethical theory is tested upon its motivation and objectivity, it seems that Williams has found a direct hit on Utilitarianism’s motivation.
Williams argues that Utilitarianism forces us to bring almost every decision up to the moral level: how do I justify buying a guitar when I could donate the money to charity, do I buy the fuel-efficient hybrid car or the Hummer, do I veg out on the couch or do I volunteer at the hospital with my extra time? Should I spend my time with my wife or at the homeless shelter? According to Williams, these personal interests and relationships are the ground projects that give us our individuality. Our ground projects make us unique: Joe likes to fish, Katie likes to dance, and Mike is in love with his wife and would do anything for her. To give up these ground projects for the sake of an unseen greater good would alienate an individual from his personal goals or even his own identity.
Utilitarianism could also be twisted to say: doing nothing is immoral as you could be doing something to promote utility or to prevent the negative. Williams calls this negative responsibility and adds, “…[I]f I am ever responsible for anything, then I must be just as much responsible for the things I allow or fail to prevent, as I am for things that I myself, in the more everyday restricted sense, bring about.”[i] To exemplify, Williams offers the examples of George and Jim.
George is a brilliant scientist who is offered a job at a biochemical weapons facility. Being a pacifist, working in such an environment would violate George’s personal beliefs. If George does nothing, nothing could stop a more motivated, more brilliant scientist in taking the job and creating more biochemical weapons. According to Williams, a Utilitarian could argue through negative responsibility that George should take the job and work as inefficiently as possible as he would be decreasing the potential output of weaponry. Williams asks, what about George’s integrity? Is he to be a cog in the Utilitarian machine? What about the psychological effects of getting up each morning to go to a job he hates? Regardless if George is doing the right thing, is it a life worth living?
In the case of Jim, we find him on a vacation in a foreign country where he stumbles upon a firing squad in the central square of a small town. Twenty natives were randomly selected to be killed to serve as an example against recent anti-government protests. As Jim is considered an honored guest, he is offered to kill one of the prisoners himself. As the custom goes, if the honored guest chooses to kill one prisoner, the rest are set free to mark the special occasion. If he refuses, then all twenty die. If Jim tries anything to save all twenty, he dies as well (since he is surrounded by armed guards). Utilitarianism, among most moral theories, would tell Jim to kill one of the prisoners; Williams does not disagree with this solution. It’s the calculated lack of hesitation that a Utilitarian would display as he shoots the one to save the nineteen that Williams sees as off-putting. Utilitarianism’s equation is clear: kill the one to save the many. There is no need for hesitation, remorse, or second guessing. Utilitarianism is so far alienated from humanity in this case that choosing to kill a man to save 19 is as easy as calculating 1+19=20, where this action should haunt Jim for the rest of his life, or at least demand a few sessions of therapy when he returns home. Williams demands the psychological revulsion or squeamishness that we should display when contemplating a life-or-death situation.
More discussion is needed on the conflict between an individual’s ground projects and the greater good. Imagine that an engineer has the opportunity to travel to a third world country for nine months to help develop a water purification system that will improve the lives of hundreds of people. This engineer, however, has a wife who is in her first trimester of pregnancy. If he goes, he’ll miss the birth of his child. If he stays, the project will be abandoned. Williams predicts the Utilitarian answer: “if the project or attitude is that central to his life, then to abandon it will be very disagreeable to him and great loss of utility will be involved.”[ii] So it is possible for a Utilitarian to justify abandoning the trip since missing the birth would cause so much distress that perhaps the engineer would be psychologically unfit for future projects that could bring future utility. The same theory goes for hobbies, loved ones, and downtime: the ground project could be justified as a means to keep the moral agent healthy and happy; which would result in more potential utility.
Williams is not sold on this answer:
It is absurd to demand of such a man, when the sums come in from the utility network which the projects of others have in part determined, that he should just step aside from his own project and decision and acknowledge the decision which utilitarian calculation requires. It is to alienate him in a real sense from his actions and the source of his action in his own convictions. It is to make him into a channel between the input of everyone’s projects, including his own, and an output of optimific decision; but this is to neglect the extent to which his actions and his decisions have to be seen as the actions and decisions which flow from the projects and attitudes with which he is most closely identified. It is thus, in the most literal sense an attack on his integrity.[iii]
It is important to note that Utilitarianism may give us the correct moral decision. Williams’s critique focuses not on the results, but the means. In the case of the father-to-be engineer, seeing the birth of his first child has to be stripped down to a means of personal utility in order to weigh it against the potential utility of missing it for his project. Doing this undermines the true value of the event; it is not a mere means to utility, it is a life-shaping event that impacts the identity of this individual. To consider it as anything else, according to Williams, is a source of alienation.
Williams has packaged a strong critique: Utilitarianism forces its moral agents to bring all decisions to the moral level (negative responsibility, ground projects vs. utility), which requires its moral agents to weigh what is most important to them versus. the potential utility of another available action, but reducing a ground project to a means of utility undermines the importance of said project, thus alienating the moral agent and assaulting his integrity.
Peter Railton’s Answer To Williams
Seeing the issues of Utilitarianism and alienation, Peter Railton presents “someone who has a standing commitment to leading an objectively consequentialist life but, who need not set special stock in any particular form of decision making and therefore does not necessarily seek to lead a subjectively consequentialist life.”[iv] Railton’s sophisticated consequentialist accepts an objective, consequential standard of value—the right action is the one that maximizes the good—while rejecting consequentialism as a decision-making procedure. To justify this, Railton imagines a world where we are all alienated from our personal lives in order to serve the greater good and concludes that maximum utility could never occur under this model. In other words, in order to obtain maximum utility, we must sometimes disregard the greater good!
More importantly, Railton’s sophisticated consequentialism sets up its morality as a background; the moral agent is aware of the overall utilitarian goal, but decision-making is often handed over to subconscious reactions based upon this utilitarian disposition. This disposition “is not a mere reflex, but a developed pattern of action deliberately acquired.”[v] In other words, with goal of promoting the greater good in mind, a sophisticated consequentialist develops a learned behavior of what works and what doesn’t. After time, the agent develops a disposition based upon these deliberate, developed patterns. This answers William’s charge that Utilitarianism brings all decisions up to the moral level (should I practice guitar or volunteer). Railton’s model allows this disposition to take care of the trivial matters assuming that the greater good will come out in the end.
When presented with a moral issue, Railton expects his moral agents to recognize that yes, they should be focused on the greater good, but they should also weigh in personal goals, balance in those they love, make sure they have time for hobbies, etc. They could better serve the greater good as happy, healthy human beings. To exemplify this point, Railton introduces us to Juan and Linda.
Juan and Linda are a couple enduring a long-distance relationship. Juan senses that Linda is more lonely than usual, so he plans to make an unscheduled trip to visit her. The cost of airfare could be used toward a charity, such as disaster relief, but Juan decides to purchase the tickets anyway. Here Railton makes the distinction between acting morally and acting correctly. Using Utilitarianism in the background as a standard to which actions are deemed right or wrong, Railton believes that choosing the wrong action is not necessarily acting immorally. If a moral agent generally acts according to Utilitarianism’s guidelines yet occasionally chooses to indulge in actions that may not result in the maximum utility, Railton would not necessarily call these indulgences immoral. In his example, Railton would say that Juan made the wrong decision as the greater good was not served in purchasing the airline tickets, but Juan was not acting immorally in this case as he needs to cater to his own life, love, and integrity. Railton would tell Juan to purchase the tickets, but would also tell him that he is not doing the right action according to the objective, consequential standard of value.
Railton states that we should judge an action as right or wrong under consequentialism, but we should also develop traits that allow us to love, maintain personal goals, enjoy hobbies, and preserve our integrity. It may seem here that Railton is trying to have his cake and eat it too. He wants us to accept a moral standard of value, but realizes that a healthy human being cannot live under its rules. Rather than taking its incompatibility with human behavior as a clue that his objective consequentialism may be flawed, he instead encourages his moral agents to veer form the moral standard from time to time in order to remain healthy (for the greater good, of course).
Cocking And Oakley’s Answer to Railton
So far the debate has been as follows: Williams has set up a critique that Utilitarianism is an alienating ethical model that attacks the integrity of its moral agents. It is unsuitable for a psychologically healthy human life. Railton offers in response a sophisticated consequentialism that allows its moral agents to lead a more human life where ground projects and personal relationships are allowed their say. A moral agent can morally choose a loved one over the greater good; he may be wrong, but not immoral. Dean Cocking and Justin Oakley question whether a moral agent under Railton’s model has the ability to maintain a relationship with a friend or loved one.
While Cocking and Oakley grant Railton’s claim that moral agents “need not aim at maximizing the good, nor need be motivated directly by the desire to maximize the good,”[vi] they still see the potential of alienation. Let’s go back to Juan and Linda. While Railton allows Juan to purchase the plane ticket to visit Linda without deeming him immoral, Cocking and Oakley see the justification of the action as a source of alienation between Juan and Linda. Juan’s unscheduled trip is justified as a means to keep Juan healthy and happy while being indirectly motivated by the greater good. Juan would justify himself by saying, I am human and I need to have a healthy romantic relationship in order to (indirectly) satisfy the greater good. Cocking and Oakley suggest that Linda would want the unscheduled visit to be justified by love in itself, not as a means to an indirect goal. They do not see the difference between Juan and Linda and a student indirectly motivated by success in school befriending a professor:
Railton may be correct to claim that a person such as Juan, whose life is governed by an agent-neutral consequentialist regulative ideal, would be capable of having certain kinds of relationships, in that he can permissibly devote more time, attention, and resources to a particular person. But why should we call this a friendship… there are many different kinds of relationships where we can favor others our time and attention and, moreover, act for their sake, but would not thereby necessarily qualify as friendship. For example, a good doctor-patient relationship, or a good teacher-student relationship, would be compatible with those characterizations, yet clearly those relationships are not typically conceived of as friendships.[vii]
While a professor may have a good relationship with a particular student who needs more attention than the other classmates, the relationship was established to meet a specific goal: to improve the student’s performance in class. After the student passes with flying colors, it should not be a shock if the relationship terminates at the semester’s end. If a doctor establishes a strong relationship with a patient who has been battling cancer for years, the relationship may rightfully terminate when the patient is cured. The greater goal under which the relationship was established—to cure the disease—was accomplished; therefore there is no longer a need for the relationship. If Juan must justify his relationship with his wife as a means to help him achieve the greatest utility—directly or indirectly—then this relationship is no different than the doctor’s or the teacher’s (as each is established or justified as a means/ends situation). If the greatest utility is met, should Juan get a divorce? Relationships with friends and loved ones cannot be justified to an ulterior motive without alienating the individuals involved or without reducing the situation to a service-client relationship.
The bottom line of Cocking and Oakley’s overall argument is: when the standard of value is the greatest good for the greatest number of people, a moral agent must justify why he chose to act for person x over person y or group z. The moment the agent uses his friendly relationship with person x as the justification, the person or relationship is alienated from its true meaning. If Juan’s trip has to be justified in any terms besides his love for Linda, then the relationship is compromised.
The Unavoidable Conditions of Alienation in Utilitarianism
Bernard Williams has shown that Utilitarianism presents a standard of value that is out of our reach. We cannot possibly always act for the greater good and maintain our health and individuality (love interests, hobbies, free time). Peter Railton’s indirect consequentialism—or sophisticated consequentialism—produced a healthier ethical model in which his moral agents were not under the constant burden of promoting the greater good in every decision. Cocking and Oakley have demonstrated that despite Railton’s success in reining in Williams’s critique, alienation still finds its way into the sophisticated consequentialist’s relationships. I will now argue that alienation is unavoidable in Utilitarianism.
The source of alienation in Utilitarianism is rooted in the fact that the goal for the greatest good for the greatest number of people is outside of the individual making the moral decision. All moral actions that an agent performs have to be justified against a faceless community or an unknown potential for utility under Utilitarianism. To be truly motivated to act upon a moral code without alienation, the action must be in the interests of the agent himself or the people or causes that he cares about.
Take the cliché ethical situation: Joe finds a wallet packed with money on the street with I.D. Joe wants the money to buy an Ipod but refuses, as he knows that stealing is wrong. He mails the wallet and cash to the owner. Was Joe alienated from his desires here? No. Joe knows the possible consequences of stealing: guilt, incarceration, diminished pride, fear of God’s punishment, breaking a commandment, refusing to live by a categorical imperative. Regardless of Joe’s reasoning here, he has brought the situation to his level: how would I live with myself, how would I feel if I did this, will I go to hell if I did that, what if someone did this to me?
Now consider that Joe finds $50 in his pocket and remembers the bonus he earned at work. On a whim, he orders $50 worth of roses and sends them to his wife’s office. Ecstatic, Joe’s wife calls Joe and asks the occasion. “No reason, besides I love you,” Joe replies sincerely. Without the influence of Utilitarianism, Joe has no reason to justify the purchase, his relationship with his wife, or why his wife is more deserving than another person who could have used a pick-me-up. Any justification for buying the flowers that resides outside of the relationship itself would alienate Joe from his wife.
Why Utilitarianism is Unique in This Criticism
The conclusion that Utilitarianism has an unavoidable tendency toward alienation due to its source of justification being outside of the moral agent’s interests leads to two possible conclusions. The first is that this leads to a model of egoism where the only moral obligations we have are ones that connect to something we want for ourselves. The other conclusion is that Utilitarianism is unique in its alienation and other ethical theories that promote acting outside the interests of the moral agent can escape this criticism.
Considering the first conclusion, I will grant that yes, an egoist will not suffer from the alienation between his inside interests or ground projects and his moral obligations since his moral obligations within the egoist model are all directly related to himself. While granting this, I must highlight the difference between egoism’s fitting within the previously established conditions of avoiding alienation and concluding that these conditions lead to egoism. Yes, egoism fits, but it does not necessarily follow that egoism is the only possible ethical theory without alienation. Moreover, it could be argued that while egoism is free of alienation between the moral agent and his moral obligations, the agent may feel alienated by or from his peers as he seems to shut them out of all moral considerations.
Utilitarianism is unique in that it defines its morality in terms of quantity: how much good is being produced for how many people. Thus, all actions are weighed against other actions that could have produced more utility (hence Williams’s concept of negative responsibility). As other ethical models are more concerned about how an action is performed (is it done according to a set of virtues, commandments, imperatives, etc.) rather the amount of utility that comes from its consequences, their agents escape the burden of negative responsibility. Without this burden, other ethical models provide the freedom for its agents to take up ground projects without the forced justification on how it will lead to the greatest possible utility.
It is certain that other ethical models will often require its agents to veer from their personal goals or interests in order to stay within that particular moral code, but these ethical models differ from Utilitarianism by the fact that they allow these interests and goals to remain ends in themselves. Imagine a Good Samaritan who sees a stranded motorist while driving to a pickup basketball game. He stops and helps, but he knows that he’ll miss most of the game. In order to help a stranded motorist, he had to veer from his ground project of basketball in order to uphold his moral ideals. While playing basketball, however, he never has to justify why he isn’t driving around the city looking for other stranded vehicles. His free time is exactly that: free time. Basketball doesn’t have to be justified against saving the world, a greater good, or making this individual a healthier person who will be more able to provide more utility. He plays simply because he likes it. Under the previously mentioned concept of negative responsibility, a Utilitarian would have to justify how basketball fits in to his Utilitarian goal. Basketball would have to be conceived as a means to the Utilitarian goal in order to justify why the moral agent is playing basketball instead of volunteering at the homeless shelter. Escaping the burden of negative responsibility, other ethical models seem to leave hobbies as hobbies and free time as free.
With that said, we must now address whether Utilitarianism is a special case in terms of alienation. Why am I picking on Utilitarianism over other ethical models when it seems that other models may have moral justifications outside of the moral agents’ interests? The answer resides in Utilitarianism’s goal for its consequences: the greatest good for the greatest amount of people. This greater good reduces its agents and their ground projects into numbers that hopefully add up to maximum utility. Relationships, hobbies, personal interests may be allowed, but they must be justified (directly or indirectly) in terms of an unseen utility of an unseen group. This justification converts our loved ones and our interests into a means toward an ends, which in turn undermines their true value as our ground projects.
Conclusion
As previously mentioned, an ethical model is judged on its objectivity and its motivation. Utilitarianism has undeniable success in objectivity. I have mentioned that one cannot argue against its results, as Utilitarian will always strive to provide the greatest good to the greatest amount of people, or in other words: the best possible conditions. If the results were poor, odds are that a Utilitarian did not support the action. Where Utilitarianism fails is in its motivation. The closer the rationale for action is related to the interests of its agent, the more the agent is motivated to act accordingly. Once the rationale is based on groups, causes, or people outside the interests of the agent, the agent becomes less willing to act accordingly. The resulting alienation is proportional to how far removed the issues are from the agent’s interests. Through the arguments of Williams and Cocking & Oakley, I have shown that an agent is forced to justify his actions against a greater good, which lies outside the agent. This will result in alienation. Even if the agent is motivated to achieve the greater good as if it were a cause he cares about deeply, relationships with friends and loved ones must also be justified and subject to alienation. For an ethical theory to be free of alienation, its agents must be treated as ends in themselves, not means towards a greater good. This is the root of the unavoidable condition of alienation in Utilitarianism.
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[i], Bernard Williams, “A Critique of Utilitarianism,” in J.J.C. Smart and Benard Williams, Utilitarianism: For and Against (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), p. 93
[ii] Williams p. 116,
[iii] Williams p. 116,
[iv] Peter Railton, “Alienation, Consequentialism, and the Demands of Morality,” in Consequentialism and Its Critics, ed. Samuel Scheffler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 114
[v] Railton, p. 153
[vi] “Indirect Consequentialism, Friendship, and the Problem of Alienation,” Cocking, Dean; Oakley, Justin, in Ethics: An International Journal of Social, Political, and Legal Philosophy, vol. 106, no.1, p. 87
[vii] Cocking and Oakly, p. 92
Anthony Selbitschka, May 2006
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Introduction
Utilitarianism is like a parent of a teenager. Through the power struggles of who gets the car keys, whether curfew can be extended, and whose parties are to be chaperoned, the parent merely wants what is best for the child. Utilitarianism merely wants what is best for all of us. When the moral action seems to conflict with our own desires, Utilitarianism says, “You’ll thank me later,” or “Trust me, it’s for your own good.” With its goal set firmly as the greatest good/happiness/utility for the greatest number of people, Utilitarianism will always support the action that leads to the best consequence. Therefore, critics cannot argue that Utilitarianism would not bring us the best results; if it didn’t, Utilitarianism wouldn’t support it. One cannot argue against the good intentions of the parent who restricts the indulgences of the teen for the good of the teen. One can argue, however, that for a teen to be a teen, one must allow some indulgences. This tension between personal indulgences and the goal of the greater good can alienate teens from parents or, for our purposes, moral agents from the ethical model of Utilitarianism. I will set out to argue that while Utilitarianism’s intentions are good and while Utilitarianism may give us the most good for the most people, the side effect of alienation that necessarily follows is too damning to accept it as a realistic ethical model for psychologically healthy individuals.
Williams’s Critique of Utilitarianism
Bernard Williams was clever to attack Utilitarianism on the terms of alienation. Holding the greatest good to the greatest number of people as the standard of moral value, it seems that the individual is easily forgotten under Utilitarianism’s rules. While it is the individual who makes the moral decision, how would that individual be motivated to act morally when his own desires are not given a say in the matter? As an ethical theory is tested upon its motivation and objectivity, it seems that Williams has found a direct hit on Utilitarianism’s motivation.
Williams argues that Utilitarianism forces us to bring almost every decision up to the moral level: how do I justify buying a guitar when I could donate the money to charity, do I buy the fuel-efficient hybrid car or the Hummer, do I veg out on the couch or do I volunteer at the hospital with my extra time? Should I spend my time with my wife or at the homeless shelter? According to Williams, these personal interests and relationships are the ground projects that give us our individuality. Our ground projects make us unique: Joe likes to fish, Katie likes to dance, and Mike is in love with his wife and would do anything for her. To give up these ground projects for the sake of an unseen greater good would alienate an individual from his personal goals or even his own identity.
Utilitarianism could also be twisted to say: doing nothing is immoral as you could be doing something to promote utility or to prevent the negative. Williams calls this negative responsibility and adds, “…[I]f I am ever responsible for anything, then I must be just as much responsible for the things I allow or fail to prevent, as I am for things that I myself, in the more everyday restricted sense, bring about.”[i] To exemplify, Williams offers the examples of George and Jim.
George is a brilliant scientist who is offered a job at a biochemical weapons facility. Being a pacifist, working in such an environment would violate George’s personal beliefs. If George does nothing, nothing could stop a more motivated, more brilliant scientist in taking the job and creating more biochemical weapons. According to Williams, a Utilitarian could argue through negative responsibility that George should take the job and work as inefficiently as possible as he would be decreasing the potential output of weaponry. Williams asks, what about George’s integrity? Is he to be a cog in the Utilitarian machine? What about the psychological effects of getting up each morning to go to a job he hates? Regardless if George is doing the right thing, is it a life worth living?
In the case of Jim, we find him on a vacation in a foreign country where he stumbles upon a firing squad in the central square of a small town. Twenty natives were randomly selected to be killed to serve as an example against recent anti-government protests. As Jim is considered an honored guest, he is offered to kill one of the prisoners himself. As the custom goes, if the honored guest chooses to kill one prisoner, the rest are set free to mark the special occasion. If he refuses, then all twenty die. If Jim tries anything to save all twenty, he dies as well (since he is surrounded by armed guards). Utilitarianism, among most moral theories, would tell Jim to kill one of the prisoners; Williams does not disagree with this solution. It’s the calculated lack of hesitation that a Utilitarian would display as he shoots the one to save the nineteen that Williams sees as off-putting. Utilitarianism’s equation is clear: kill the one to save the many. There is no need for hesitation, remorse, or second guessing. Utilitarianism is so far alienated from humanity in this case that choosing to kill a man to save 19 is as easy as calculating 1+19=20, where this action should haunt Jim for the rest of his life, or at least demand a few sessions of therapy when he returns home. Williams demands the psychological revulsion or squeamishness that we should display when contemplating a life-or-death situation.
More discussion is needed on the conflict between an individual’s ground projects and the greater good. Imagine that an engineer has the opportunity to travel to a third world country for nine months to help develop a water purification system that will improve the lives of hundreds of people. This engineer, however, has a wife who is in her first trimester of pregnancy. If he goes, he’ll miss the birth of his child. If he stays, the project will be abandoned. Williams predicts the Utilitarian answer: “if the project or attitude is that central to his life, then to abandon it will be very disagreeable to him and great loss of utility will be involved.”[ii] So it is possible for a Utilitarian to justify abandoning the trip since missing the birth would cause so much distress that perhaps the engineer would be psychologically unfit for future projects that could bring future utility. The same theory goes for hobbies, loved ones, and downtime: the ground project could be justified as a means to keep the moral agent healthy and happy; which would result in more potential utility.
Williams is not sold on this answer:
It is absurd to demand of such a man, when the sums come in from the utility network which the projects of others have in part determined, that he should just step aside from his own project and decision and acknowledge the decision which utilitarian calculation requires. It is to alienate him in a real sense from his actions and the source of his action in his own convictions. It is to make him into a channel between the input of everyone’s projects, including his own, and an output of optimific decision; but this is to neglect the extent to which his actions and his decisions have to be seen as the actions and decisions which flow from the projects and attitudes with which he is most closely identified. It is thus, in the most literal sense an attack on his integrity.[iii]
It is important to note that Utilitarianism may give us the correct moral decision. Williams’s critique focuses not on the results, but the means. In the case of the father-to-be engineer, seeing the birth of his first child has to be stripped down to a means of personal utility in order to weigh it against the potential utility of missing it for his project. Doing this undermines the true value of the event; it is not a mere means to utility, it is a life-shaping event that impacts the identity of this individual. To consider it as anything else, according to Williams, is a source of alienation.
Williams has packaged a strong critique: Utilitarianism forces its moral agents to bring all decisions to the moral level (negative responsibility, ground projects vs. utility), which requires its moral agents to weigh what is most important to them versus. the potential utility of another available action, but reducing a ground project to a means of utility undermines the importance of said project, thus alienating the moral agent and assaulting his integrity.
Peter Railton’s Answer To Williams
Seeing the issues of Utilitarianism and alienation, Peter Railton presents “someone who has a standing commitment to leading an objectively consequentialist life but, who need not set special stock in any particular form of decision making and therefore does not necessarily seek to lead a subjectively consequentialist life.”[iv] Railton’s sophisticated consequentialist accepts an objective, consequential standard of value—the right action is the one that maximizes the good—while rejecting consequentialism as a decision-making procedure. To justify this, Railton imagines a world where we are all alienated from our personal lives in order to serve the greater good and concludes that maximum utility could never occur under this model. In other words, in order to obtain maximum utility, we must sometimes disregard the greater good!
More importantly, Railton’s sophisticated consequentialism sets up its morality as a background; the moral agent is aware of the overall utilitarian goal, but decision-making is often handed over to subconscious reactions based upon this utilitarian disposition. This disposition “is not a mere reflex, but a developed pattern of action deliberately acquired.”[v] In other words, with goal of promoting the greater good in mind, a sophisticated consequentialist develops a learned behavior of what works and what doesn’t. After time, the agent develops a disposition based upon these deliberate, developed patterns. This answers William’s charge that Utilitarianism brings all decisions up to the moral level (should I practice guitar or volunteer). Railton’s model allows this disposition to take care of the trivial matters assuming that the greater good will come out in the end.
When presented with a moral issue, Railton expects his moral agents to recognize that yes, they should be focused on the greater good, but they should also weigh in personal goals, balance in those they love, make sure they have time for hobbies, etc. They could better serve the greater good as happy, healthy human beings. To exemplify this point, Railton introduces us to Juan and Linda.
Juan and Linda are a couple enduring a long-distance relationship. Juan senses that Linda is more lonely than usual, so he plans to make an unscheduled trip to visit her. The cost of airfare could be used toward a charity, such as disaster relief, but Juan decides to purchase the tickets anyway. Here Railton makes the distinction between acting morally and acting correctly. Using Utilitarianism in the background as a standard to which actions are deemed right or wrong, Railton believes that choosing the wrong action is not necessarily acting immorally. If a moral agent generally acts according to Utilitarianism’s guidelines yet occasionally chooses to indulge in actions that may not result in the maximum utility, Railton would not necessarily call these indulgences immoral. In his example, Railton would say that Juan made the wrong decision as the greater good was not served in purchasing the airline tickets, but Juan was not acting immorally in this case as he needs to cater to his own life, love, and integrity. Railton would tell Juan to purchase the tickets, but would also tell him that he is not doing the right action according to the objective, consequential standard of value.
Railton states that we should judge an action as right or wrong under consequentialism, but we should also develop traits that allow us to love, maintain personal goals, enjoy hobbies, and preserve our integrity. It may seem here that Railton is trying to have his cake and eat it too. He wants us to accept a moral standard of value, but realizes that a healthy human being cannot live under its rules. Rather than taking its incompatibility with human behavior as a clue that his objective consequentialism may be flawed, he instead encourages his moral agents to veer form the moral standard from time to time in order to remain healthy (for the greater good, of course).
Cocking And Oakley’s Answer to Railton
So far the debate has been as follows: Williams has set up a critique that Utilitarianism is an alienating ethical model that attacks the integrity of its moral agents. It is unsuitable for a psychologically healthy human life. Railton offers in response a sophisticated consequentialism that allows its moral agents to lead a more human life where ground projects and personal relationships are allowed their say. A moral agent can morally choose a loved one over the greater good; he may be wrong, but not immoral. Dean Cocking and Justin Oakley question whether a moral agent under Railton’s model has the ability to maintain a relationship with a friend or loved one.
While Cocking and Oakley grant Railton’s claim that moral agents “need not aim at maximizing the good, nor need be motivated directly by the desire to maximize the good,”[vi] they still see the potential of alienation. Let’s go back to Juan and Linda. While Railton allows Juan to purchase the plane ticket to visit Linda without deeming him immoral, Cocking and Oakley see the justification of the action as a source of alienation between Juan and Linda. Juan’s unscheduled trip is justified as a means to keep Juan healthy and happy while being indirectly motivated by the greater good. Juan would justify himself by saying, I am human and I need to have a healthy romantic relationship in order to (indirectly) satisfy the greater good. Cocking and Oakley suggest that Linda would want the unscheduled visit to be justified by love in itself, not as a means to an indirect goal. They do not see the difference between Juan and Linda and a student indirectly motivated by success in school befriending a professor:
Railton may be correct to claim that a person such as Juan, whose life is governed by an agent-neutral consequentialist regulative ideal, would be capable of having certain kinds of relationships, in that he can permissibly devote more time, attention, and resources to a particular person. But why should we call this a friendship… there are many different kinds of relationships where we can favor others our time and attention and, moreover, act for their sake, but would not thereby necessarily qualify as friendship. For example, a good doctor-patient relationship, or a good teacher-student relationship, would be compatible with those characterizations, yet clearly those relationships are not typically conceived of as friendships.[vii]
While a professor may have a good relationship with a particular student who needs more attention than the other classmates, the relationship was established to meet a specific goal: to improve the student’s performance in class. After the student passes with flying colors, it should not be a shock if the relationship terminates at the semester’s end. If a doctor establishes a strong relationship with a patient who has been battling cancer for years, the relationship may rightfully terminate when the patient is cured. The greater goal under which the relationship was established—to cure the disease—was accomplished; therefore there is no longer a need for the relationship. If Juan must justify his relationship with his wife as a means to help him achieve the greatest utility—directly or indirectly—then this relationship is no different than the doctor’s or the teacher’s (as each is established or justified as a means/ends situation). If the greatest utility is met, should Juan get a divorce? Relationships with friends and loved ones cannot be justified to an ulterior motive without alienating the individuals involved or without reducing the situation to a service-client relationship.
The bottom line of Cocking and Oakley’s overall argument is: when the standard of value is the greatest good for the greatest number of people, a moral agent must justify why he chose to act for person x over person y or group z. The moment the agent uses his friendly relationship with person x as the justification, the person or relationship is alienated from its true meaning. If Juan’s trip has to be justified in any terms besides his love for Linda, then the relationship is compromised.
The Unavoidable Conditions of Alienation in Utilitarianism
Bernard Williams has shown that Utilitarianism presents a standard of value that is out of our reach. We cannot possibly always act for the greater good and maintain our health and individuality (love interests, hobbies, free time). Peter Railton’s indirect consequentialism—or sophisticated consequentialism—produced a healthier ethical model in which his moral agents were not under the constant burden of promoting the greater good in every decision. Cocking and Oakley have demonstrated that despite Railton’s success in reining in Williams’s critique, alienation still finds its way into the sophisticated consequentialist’s relationships. I will now argue that alienation is unavoidable in Utilitarianism.
The source of alienation in Utilitarianism is rooted in the fact that the goal for the greatest good for the greatest number of people is outside of the individual making the moral decision. All moral actions that an agent performs have to be justified against a faceless community or an unknown potential for utility under Utilitarianism. To be truly motivated to act upon a moral code without alienation, the action must be in the interests of the agent himself or the people or causes that he cares about.
Take the cliché ethical situation: Joe finds a wallet packed with money on the street with I.D. Joe wants the money to buy an Ipod but refuses, as he knows that stealing is wrong. He mails the wallet and cash to the owner. Was Joe alienated from his desires here? No. Joe knows the possible consequences of stealing: guilt, incarceration, diminished pride, fear of God’s punishment, breaking a commandment, refusing to live by a categorical imperative. Regardless of Joe’s reasoning here, he has brought the situation to his level: how would I live with myself, how would I feel if I did this, will I go to hell if I did that, what if someone did this to me?
Now consider that Joe finds $50 in his pocket and remembers the bonus he earned at work. On a whim, he orders $50 worth of roses and sends them to his wife’s office. Ecstatic, Joe’s wife calls Joe and asks the occasion. “No reason, besides I love you,” Joe replies sincerely. Without the influence of Utilitarianism, Joe has no reason to justify the purchase, his relationship with his wife, or why his wife is more deserving than another person who could have used a pick-me-up. Any justification for buying the flowers that resides outside of the relationship itself would alienate Joe from his wife.
Why Utilitarianism is Unique in This Criticism
The conclusion that Utilitarianism has an unavoidable tendency toward alienation due to its source of justification being outside of the moral agent’s interests leads to two possible conclusions. The first is that this leads to a model of egoism where the only moral obligations we have are ones that connect to something we want for ourselves. The other conclusion is that Utilitarianism is unique in its alienation and other ethical theories that promote acting outside the interests of the moral agent can escape this criticism.
Considering the first conclusion, I will grant that yes, an egoist will not suffer from the alienation between his inside interests or ground projects and his moral obligations since his moral obligations within the egoist model are all directly related to himself. While granting this, I must highlight the difference between egoism’s fitting within the previously established conditions of avoiding alienation and concluding that these conditions lead to egoism. Yes, egoism fits, but it does not necessarily follow that egoism is the only possible ethical theory without alienation. Moreover, it could be argued that while egoism is free of alienation between the moral agent and his moral obligations, the agent may feel alienated by or from his peers as he seems to shut them out of all moral considerations.
Utilitarianism is unique in that it defines its morality in terms of quantity: how much good is being produced for how many people. Thus, all actions are weighed against other actions that could have produced more utility (hence Williams’s concept of negative responsibility). As other ethical models are more concerned about how an action is performed (is it done according to a set of virtues, commandments, imperatives, etc.) rather the amount of utility that comes from its consequences, their agents escape the burden of negative responsibility. Without this burden, other ethical models provide the freedom for its agents to take up ground projects without the forced justification on how it will lead to the greatest possible utility.
It is certain that other ethical models will often require its agents to veer from their personal goals or interests in order to stay within that particular moral code, but these ethical models differ from Utilitarianism by the fact that they allow these interests and goals to remain ends in themselves. Imagine a Good Samaritan who sees a stranded motorist while driving to a pickup basketball game. He stops and helps, but he knows that he’ll miss most of the game. In order to help a stranded motorist, he had to veer from his ground project of basketball in order to uphold his moral ideals. While playing basketball, however, he never has to justify why he isn’t driving around the city looking for other stranded vehicles. His free time is exactly that: free time. Basketball doesn’t have to be justified against saving the world, a greater good, or making this individual a healthier person who will be more able to provide more utility. He plays simply because he likes it. Under the previously mentioned concept of negative responsibility, a Utilitarian would have to justify how basketball fits in to his Utilitarian goal. Basketball would have to be conceived as a means to the Utilitarian goal in order to justify why the moral agent is playing basketball instead of volunteering at the homeless shelter. Escaping the burden of negative responsibility, other ethical models seem to leave hobbies as hobbies and free time as free.
With that said, we must now address whether Utilitarianism is a special case in terms of alienation. Why am I picking on Utilitarianism over other ethical models when it seems that other models may have moral justifications outside of the moral agents’ interests? The answer resides in Utilitarianism’s goal for its consequences: the greatest good for the greatest amount of people. This greater good reduces its agents and their ground projects into numbers that hopefully add up to maximum utility. Relationships, hobbies, personal interests may be allowed, but they must be justified (directly or indirectly) in terms of an unseen utility of an unseen group. This justification converts our loved ones and our interests into a means toward an ends, which in turn undermines their true value as our ground projects.
Conclusion
As previously mentioned, an ethical model is judged on its objectivity and its motivation. Utilitarianism has undeniable success in objectivity. I have mentioned that one cannot argue against its results, as Utilitarian will always strive to provide the greatest good to the greatest amount of people, or in other words: the best possible conditions. If the results were poor, odds are that a Utilitarian did not support the action. Where Utilitarianism fails is in its motivation. The closer the rationale for action is related to the interests of its agent, the more the agent is motivated to act accordingly. Once the rationale is based on groups, causes, or people outside the interests of the agent, the agent becomes less willing to act accordingly. The resulting alienation is proportional to how far removed the issues are from the agent’s interests. Through the arguments of Williams and Cocking & Oakley, I have shown that an agent is forced to justify his actions against a greater good, which lies outside the agent. This will result in alienation. Even if the agent is motivated to achieve the greater good as if it were a cause he cares about deeply, relationships with friends and loved ones must also be justified and subject to alienation. For an ethical theory to be free of alienation, its agents must be treated as ends in themselves, not means towards a greater good. This is the root of the unavoidable condition of alienation in Utilitarianism.
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[i], Bernard Williams, “A Critique of Utilitarianism,” in J.J.C. Smart and Benard Williams, Utilitarianism: For and Against (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), p. 93
[ii] Williams p. 116,
[iii] Williams p. 116,
[iv] Peter Railton, “Alienation, Consequentialism, and the Demands of Morality,” in Consequentialism and Its Critics, ed. Samuel Scheffler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 114
[v] Railton, p. 153
[vi] “Indirect Consequentialism, Friendship, and the Problem of Alienation,” Cocking, Dean; Oakley, Justin, in Ethics: An International Journal of Social, Political, and Legal Philosophy, vol. 106, no.1, p. 87
[vii] Cocking and Oakly, p. 92
posted by a_equals_a | 8:43 PM
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