Act and Rule Utilitarianism

**This is from guest blogger, Aaron.**

In his article, “Extreme and Restricted Utilitarianism,” J.J.C. Smart argues for what he calls extreme utilitarianism. General utilitarianism, according to Smart, holds that an action is made good by its consequences, and extreme utilitarianism holds that each individual action should be assessed on its own basis. Commonsense rules of morality will generally apply, but they are to be viewed as defeasible rules of thumb. If in a certain instance it turns out it would be better to break some rule, the rule should be broken. Restricted utilitarianism, on the other hand, holds that the rules are strict, not rules of thumb. They must always be upheld. What makes this view utilitarian is that the rules should be judged according the consequences that would follow from adhering to them (Shafer-Landau, Ethical Theory, 475-76).

In both cases, the utilitarian view needs a criterion by which to assess value so that practical judgments can be made. While this aspect of utilitarianism is not the main focus of Smart’s paper, he mentions in the second to last paragraph that “human happiness and misery…[should be] the objects of our pro-attitudes and anti-attitudes” (480). He then asserts that he views ethics as a subset of answers to the question, “what actions are ration?” Presumably, the answer is supposed to be that the rational actions, in terms of ethics, are those that most promote human happiness. I will provide two reasons I find this account unconvincing.

The first reason to think that goodness is not maximizing human happiness is that sometimes, one can feel good for having done the right thing even though one has not maximized overall human happiness. Suppose, for instance, that there is a very depressed person attempting to commit suicide, and suppose also that I simply cannot stand being around him. Furthermore, due to some shared social circles, if this person continues to live, I must continue to interact with him. Thus, we may suppose that if this person dies, overall human happiness will be maximized, even if we factor in any feelings of guilt I may have afterward for letting him die, and we may suppose that I am aware of all this. Given the circumstances, I cannot escape the feeling that if I were to save the depressed person, I would, to some extent, feel good about what I had done. However, this cannot be because human happiness will be maximized—I already know will not be. Rather, the good feeling must come from knowing that I have done the right thing. If you find this case convincing, then you must agree either that you and I are hardwired to be immoral (since, if morality is determined by human happiness, the morally good thing to do is let the depressed person commit suicide), or that utilitarianism is wrong.

The second reason I do not like Smart’s characterization of goodness as human happiness, and of ethical action as those that are most rational, is that it is difficult to see what answer could be given to the question, “why should happiness be prioritized?” Sure, the utilitarian can say that people like being happy, but what does that prove? Action, it seems, requires a goal before it can be rational. Thus, we should ask why human happiness is right goal for ethical action. Why not something else? Why shouldn’t we say that, for instance, humans are sufficiently valuable to be worth making sacrifices for? Consider a starving child near death in a third world country, and suppose you go to that country to aid in relief work. Suppose that you are then faced with the choice to either help the child, or not. Suppose she is close to death, and you know that if you save her she will lead a difficult life. Moreover, taking the time to save her now will be costly in terms of energy, and will bring you a great deal of discomfort both now and in the future—now, because you must work to help her, and in the future because you will worry over her well-being. Thus, you have every reason to believe that saving the child will not increase human happiness. Let us even suppose this assessment is correct! Should you leave the child to die of starvation, or even, to cut short her unhappiness, should you kill the child (assuming the psychological damage you will suffer as a result is sufficiently small)? Surely, to borrow Smart’s term, this would be a monstrous act. It appears, therefore, that what is rational given the goal of maximizing human happiness may not be rational given the goal of avoiding monstrous acts.
 

Thus, it seems to me that extreme utilitarianism fails on at least two counts. The first is that, at least sometimes, it is the fact that one has done something good that causes happiness, not happiness that retroactively causes what one has done to be good. The second reason is that attempting to maximize human happiness allows one to justify truly monstrous actions.

Extreme Utilitarianism

**This is from guest blogger, Kelsen A.**

J.J.C. Smart is an Extreme Utilitarian. The Extreme Utilitarian believes that an action is right based on the total utility of that particular action and not the general utility of an action. A few examples may make this clear. He uses the example of saving a drowning person. In general this is the right thing to do. So the Restricted Utilitarian will say it is always right to save a person who is drowning. However, Smart believes that in particular cases, breaking the rule is in fact the right thing to do. For example, if the person drowning were to be Hitler, the total utility of letting him drown would be higher than saving him. Smart's next example (which is a common example) is much more interesting though. Here is the scenario: Your friend is on his death bed on a desert island and asks you to promise to give all his money away to a jockey club. You promise to do so. When your friend dies, you have the opportunity to give his money to a hospital instead which would make better use of the money and produce overall more utility. No one will ever know that you made a promise so the effects on the integrity of keeping a promise will remain intact. Smart argues that breaking the rule of keeping promises is the right thing to do in this scenario. I find this to be tricky. It seems like you owe your friend to keep the promise but there is clearly a better option. The restricted utilitarian will stick with abiding by the rule, "One ought keep promises he or she makes." But the Extreme Utilitarian after careful calculations of the options can in this instance break the rule because the happiness of breaking the rule is greater than not. I think this is the more reasonable stance to take. Abiding by the rule seems to be a general stance to take but given one particular instance following the rule when it's not producing the most utility is giving some importance to the rule. We talked about happiness being the only intrinsic good for the utilitarian. This would seem to put the restricted utilitarian in a place where obeying a rule provides some good other than happiness. Smart agrees that obeying the rule will be right 99% of the time but there are cases when given time to reevaluate, one should break the rule. I can see a few places to ask questions here. What reasons would we have for not breaking the rule in these 1% of cases? If breaking a rule is acceptable, why do we have general rules? Couldn't we just evaluate each one on it's own? Do we praise the person for breaking the rule when as a society we should abide by there rules?

Smart has a few answers and I find the discussion on the difference between an action being right and an action being praiseworthy to be the most interesting follow up. Smart argues that a person can be wrong but praiseworthy. For example, the person who saves a drowning Hitler did the wrong thing but is praiseworthy for making a snap decision and going in to rescue the drowning person. Similarly, the person who gave the money to the hospital did the right thing but, he would be blameworthy for breaking his promise. This is not particularly intuitive. A person can be blamed for doing the right thing? Smart uses an example of watering flowers in a water shortage. If everyone did it, there would be problems. So by rule, no one should water their flowers. However, if one person does it and gives the pretty flowers away to make someone happy this won't have any negative effects on the water supply and will have positive effects on the people receiving flowers. It seems like the right thing to do is for one person to break the rule. If you had to choose, and knew you were the only one considering doing this, would you break the rule? You would be doing the right thing in the extreme utilitarian sense but would be blameworthy for using water on flowers. I'm not so sure this distinction works but a disagreement in which the person is praiseworthy leads to problems of one person being praiseworthy for watering her flowers and the next is blameworthy for watering his flowers. This seems to commit us to saying that if we believe in extreme utilitarianism, then we must also accept an extreme view on praiseworthiness and blameworthiness in order to not have a conflict of right and blameworthy that Smart is willing to accept.