Download Bernard Williams: A Critique of Utilitarianism Phil 240, Introduction to

ƒ Utilitarianism
ƒ Kantian Ethics
Main Point
Williams objects that the impartiality of such ethical theories is too separate from particular others, and moral agency.
Wider Examples
ƒ“One thought too many”
ƒ“One thought too few”
ƒThe complaint is that modern moral theories, such as utilitarianism, have a blind spot to an important set of ethical concerns.
“... the consequentialist has no footing on which to say 'This would be permissible, this not'; because by his own hypothesis, it is the consequences that are to decide, and he has no business to pretend that he can lay it down what possible twists a man could give doing this or that.”
Consequentialism & Nonconsequentialism
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Consequentialists hold that “the right action is that which out of the actions available to the agent brings about or represents the highest degree of whatever it is the system in question regards as intrinsically valuable—in the central case, utilitarianism, this is of course happiness.”
Nonconsequentialists hold that sometimes the right action produces a state of affairs that is worse than would be produced by an alternative action.
Negative Responsibility
For consequentialists, what matters is not how my action brings about some consequences, but simply which
consequences it brings about.
NEGATIVE RESPONSIBILITY
“If I am ever responsible for anything, then I must be just as much responsible for things that I allow or fail to prevent, as I am for things that I myself, in the more everyday restricted sense, bring about.”
Consequentialism
•Value is a certain state of affairs being a consequence of what I do …
•Relation to something being a "consequence" of my “actions”
is quite broad …
•Leads to doctrine of negative responsibility …
George is a poor chemist looking for a job. He opposes chemical and biological warfare. He is offered a job in a lab that researches chemical and biological warfare. If he does not take the job, someone else with tremendous zeal for chemical warfare will take the job. What should he do?
Jim comes across 20 innocent prisoners about to be executed. Their captor says that if Jim will shoot one of the prisoners, he will let the rest of them go free. Jim dislikes this idea, but the prisoners are begging him to accept. What should he do?
Utilitarianism
“Take the job; kill the Indian”
Williams objects
What matters is not just a question of the rightness of the answers, but of what sorts of considerations are taken as relevant for the agent. Common element of cases: If the agent does not
do some disagreeable thing, others will, and
the results will be worse
Utilitarianism
“Take the job; kill the Indian”
Williams objects
Utilitarianism fails to appreciate “the idea, as we might first and very simply put it, that each of us is specially responsible for what he does, rather than for what other people do. This is an idea closely connected with the value of integrity.”
Common element of cases: If the agent does not
do some disagreeable thing, others will, and
the results will be worse
Utilitarianism and Integrity
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All of us have projects and commitments with which we deeply identify.
To ask someone to set these aside and act so as to maximize overall goodness “is to alienate him in a real sense from his actions and the source of his action in his own convictions. . . . It is, in the most literal sense, an attack on his integrity.”
What is Integrity? •Classical Sense: “psychic wholeness”; a state of undividedness; a unified sense of self.
•Related Sense: To have “integrity” is to stand by one’s deepest commitments.
Utilitarianism and Integrity
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All of us have projects and commitments with which we deeply identify.
To ask someone to set these aside and act so as to maximize overall goodness “is to alienate him in a real sense from his actions and the source of his action in his own convictions. . . . It is, in the most literal sense, an attack on his integrity.”
1. Alienation from moral feelings
2. Alienation from actions (and projects, etc.)
Motivation: A Utilitarian Counter‐Argument Squeamishness
“There is a powerful and recognizable appeal that can be made … that a refusal by Jim to do what he has been invited to do would be a kind of selfindulgent squeamishness.”
The suggestion is that we should resist anti‐utilitarianism sentiments. Williams’ Reply: Alienation from Moral Feelings
“The reason why the squeamishness
appeal can be very unsettling … is …
that we … cannot regard our moral feelings merely as objects of utilitarian value. Because our moral relation to the world is partly given by such feelings, and by a sense of what we can or cannot ‘live with’, to come to regard those feelings from a purely utilitarian point of view, that is, as happenings outside one’s moral self, is to lose a sense of one’s moral identity; to lose, in the most literal way, one’s integrity.”
Problems for Utilitarian Agents
A utilitarian agent must regard his own projects/commitments as just “one among others.”
Projects of others can, to an objectionable extent, determine his decisions:
a)Positively, if there are harmless projects within his causal field which he can assist.
b)Negatively, if there are harmful projects within his causal field which he can thwart
Utilitarianism does not recognize the importance of a person's own projects and commitments in shaping his life and giving it meaning.
It is absurd to ask a man to abandon his deepest commitments whenever the utility network points to another decision as "optimific.”
This alienates him from his actions and the source of his action in his own convictions. Rick’s Choice
“In the film Casablanca the expatriate adventurer Rick (played by Humphrey Bogart) gives up the love of his life because of her importance to another man. Although she loves this other man less, she sustains him in his crucial work as a leader of the anti‐
fascist resistance. “In explaining his decision, Rick says that in the world they face, it’s easy to see that their private concerns do not amount “to a hill of beans” and that their love must yield to larger and weightier concerns.”
(Shaw 1999, 277)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEWaqUVac3M&feature=related
Rick’s Choice
“No matter how central our projects are to us, circumstances can compel us to subordinate them to the greater good. … Williams’ writings sometimes seem to imply that Rick made the wrong choice by putting aside what was of greatest importance to him in order to advance the greater well‐being of others. But this position, which smacks of egoism, is too extreme to be credible.”
(Shaw 1999, 277)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEWaqUVac3M&feature=related
“These sorts of considerations do not in themselves give solutions to practical dilemmas such as those provided by our examples; but I hope they help to provide other ways of thinking about them … In fact, it is not hard to see that in George’s case, viewed from this perspective, the utilitarian solution would be wrong … Jim’s case is different, and harder. But if (as I suppose) the utilitarian is probably right in this case, that is not to be found out just by asking the utilitarian’s questions.”
1.
Williams argues against utilitarianism, yet his argument is also supposed to count against Kantian ethics. How does the criticism apply? Is the criticism importantly different in this case?
2.
Does the integrity objection “smack of egoism” … or does Williams have a good complaint?