Utilitarianism

A Contemporary Statement

Robin Barrow

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781317406549
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

In this book, first published in 1991, the author Dr Robin Barrow adopts the view that utilitarianism is the most coherent and persuasive ethical theory we have and argues in favour of a specific form of rule-utilitarianism. This book will be of interest to students of philosophy.

1 What Lies Ahead?

DOI: 10.4324/9781315683560-1

In his celebrated book, After Virtue, Alasdair MacIntyre introduces ‘the disquieting suggestion’ that ‘we have … lost our comprehension, both theoretical and practical, of morality.’¹ He concedes that we still use moral language and hold what we are pleased to call moral beliefs. But could it be, he asks, that we do this without any adequate grasp of the underlying conceptual scheme that makes coherent sense of the moral domain? Are we perhaps in the same situation as we would be if we had only fragments of scientific knowledge and information, but lacked understanding of the body of scientific theory that would enable us to make sense of the fragments?

MacIntyre's hypothesis, even as starkly presented here, seems to me plausible, although his explanation of the state of affairs, his working out of the implications and his conclusions may be another matter. It may very well be the case that our moral understanding is confused and fragmentary, and that it does not extend far enough to enable us to make sense of our beliefs. If that is so, MacIntyre is also correct in his further suggestion that ‘analytic philosophy’, if it is interpreted to mean an activity that is exclusively ‘descriptive and descriptive of the language of the present at that’,² would not be able to help us. For, if we do not go beyond the way that we do talk, and hence the way in which we do think, we cannot escape the disjointed, incomplete and very possibly contradictory understanding that we have. (MacIntyre does not in fact say that analytic philosophy is ‘exclusively’ descriptive of the language of the present. He uses the equivocal word ‘essentially’, but I take him to mean by that, ‘to all intents and purposes’, or ‘as near as makes no matter’.)

However, ‘analytic philosophy’ does not have to be interpreted so narrowly. One may think of the attempt to analyse morality, or any other concept, not merely as an attempt to describe our use of moral terms, but as an attempt to show a certain amount of respect, though by no means an unqualified respect, for the thinking that is suggested by our language, while at the same time endeavouring to tease out unrecognized implications, to imagine or conceive of possibilities, and to structure the whole by reference both to the canons of logical reasoning to which we subscribe and to such non-moral knowledge as we have that seems pertinent. In other words, while we cannot ignore the fact of our confused moral understanding, we can to some extent go beyond it and knock some sense into it. (As in fact, of course, MacIntyre himself attempts to do, though he would not call his method ‘analytic philosophy’.) It is reasonable to suppose that ‘the language of morality is in (a)… state of grave disorder’,³ and that one cannot rectify this by means of a narrow form of linguistic philosophy. It is not reasonable to suppose that a broader conception of philosophical analysis will not be crucial to any attempt to impose order.

But before embarking on the task of, in part, making use of philosophical analysis to arrive at a coherent account of morality, I want briefly to consider a broader, more populist, thesis. This thesis affirms that morality is dead, both in the sense that, in general terms, moral considerations no longer govern our lives, and in the sense that there is no reason why they should, since what have sometimes been thought of as sui generis obligations are no more than conventions, even if they are conventions that arise out of certain particular needs and preferences.

The state of the world today may certainly seem to some to provide evidence for such a view. The prevalence of such acts as mugging, theft, hostage taking, rape, sabotage, fraud, vandalism, terrorism, and murder; the brutality and cynicism of governments, the political oppression, the individual materialism and selfishness, and other such-like evidence, with which we are all too familiar, could certainly be taken as an indication that we neither are, nor aspire to be, particularly moral. And the fact that some of these acts arise out of conflicting values and ideologies may be taken as a sign that there are many competing moralities in existence, as may the fact that, in the opinion of some, the above list of horrors could be augmented by reference to abortion, pornography, euthanasia, cruelty to animals, the provision of contraceptives to the young and drunken driving. It is hardly contentious to observe that there is little uniformity of opinion on what acts are morally acceptable, what makes an action morally acceptable, and even whether the notion of morality has any distinctive meaning separate from notions such as prudence, self-interest, cultural preference or traditional value. Morality, on anybody's view, is certainly confused and very possibly losing its appeal.

However, the question of whether morality is truly dead depends for an answer partly on what we mean by ‘dead’, and partly on what we mean by ‘morality’. Perhaps, for example, an issue such as whether the young should be encouraged to use birth control is not a moral issue at all. Perhaps the revolutionary violence that has become widespread of late is, as some claim, morally justified. And perhaps some of the thinking that passes for moral can be shown to be incoherent in itself and discounted, and therefore no longer constitutes evidence that our understanding, taken collectively, is inconsistent. One thing, at any rate, is very clear: whether morality is dead or not, the moral sense is very far from dead. We may not like the fervour and fanaticism of various particular groups, but we can hardly deny that some of them act with a distinctively moral fervour. They believe passionately that what they are doing is morally justified, or even (which may be different, as we shall see)⁴ morally right. They do not act purely, if at all, for selfish reasons, prudential reasons, or the thrill of it, but for what they regard as morally compelling reasons. Furthermore, much of the furious reaction to such acts of terrorism as I have in mind is a moral indignation. No doubt other elements, such as wounded pride, patriotism, self-interest and fear come into it, but it seems plain enough that many of us, however inarticulately, can still feel a distinctive sense of outrage that we label ‘moral outrage’. Even if certain acts, such as mugging or burning abortion clinics, can arguably be seen as being beyond an objective form of moral reasoning, the nature of the more spectacular events grabbing world headlines, and people's reactions to them, seem to indicate that a sui generis sense of rightness and wrongness, which, in anybody's language, is what we mean by a specifically ‘moral’ sense, is very far from dead.

It may, however, be the case that there is a crisis of moral faith, particularly amongst those who lack religious or ideological conviction, or who recognize logical objections to grounding their moral beliefs in their religion, and who concede the fact that an ideology that does their moral thinking for them avoids the question of whether what they do is truly moral. Such people do not necessarily lack opinions on moral matters, or lack a moral sense, but, being aware of the difficulty of grounding moral judgements in reason and of establishing them as objective truths, as well as being sensitive to the complexities of actual situations, they feel uneasy at putting forward their own convictions as if they were self-evident truths, or condemning those of others, as if they had some expertise and authority that entitled them to judge. Some may go so far as to embrace some explicitly relativistic view of morality; but even those who still believe that some actions are right and others wrong, regardless of time and place, may see this belief as an article of secular faith, rather than a matter of demonstrable fact.

A substantial part of moral philosophy during this century has, whether by chance or design, contributed to a weakening of the idea of moral knowledge, and hence moral certitude. The basic arguments to establish the logical independence of religion and morality are to be found as far back as Plato's dialogues. But in this century their logical separateness has become a philosophical orthodoxy. There is no obvious way, if there is a way at all, in which we can make sense of and validate moral judgements by relying on religion. Coherent secular bodies of thought that give rise to particular moral prescriptions have likewise been dismissed, very often, as ideologies, with the implication that, however well worked out, they rest on unproven and unprovable evaluative premisses. More generally, the presumption that moral beliefs could be objectively substantiated by some form of reasoning was given a severe jolt by the logical positivist doctrine that all truths were either analytic or empirical, and that moral (aesthetic and religious) claims, being neither, were literally ‘non-sense’. Moral claims were acknowledged to have significance, essentially because they evinced the attitude of the speaker; but they did not amount to propositions that were capable of being true or false.

This so-called emotivist theory of ethics is, of course, far from being regarded as the final word on the subject. Nonetheless, A.J. Ayer's Language, Truth and Logic,⁵ which presents a bold version of such a thesis, is still widely read, and subsequent developments in moral philosophy have, to some extent, reinforced the tenor of his approach by concentrating heavily on formal features of morality. For example, the influential early work of R.M. Hare⁶ concentrated exclusively on making formal points about the nature of moral discourse, such as that it is prescriptive and universalizable, and left many with the impression that it didn't much matter what you did, so long as you did it sincerely and consistently. A great deal of other work on the analysis of various moral concepts is certainly open to the charge of being circular and locked within the assumptions of our time and place in history. At the same time, though few philosophers would be so naive as to conclude directly from evidence of cultural variation that moral beliefs are simply cultural preferences, the increase in our awareness and understanding of cultural variation, thanks to the work of sociologists and anthropologists and the changing world situation, has probably given further impetus to the idea that morality is more or less adequately summed up in Thrasymachus’⁷ claim that ‘right’ is simply ‘might’ – in other words, that ‘morality’ is just the name that we give to conventions foisted upon us by the powerful, in their own interest.

In so far as there is a substantive view of morality dominant in the Western world, one might, in any case, say that it is incoherent. That view, which I refer to as the ‘liberal-democratic view’, assumes a plurality of fundamental moral principles of equal weight. For example, the principles of freedom, equality, and happiness are held in equal regard and, where these principles clash, it is assumed that there is no rational way of determining the superiority of the claims of one principle over another. Furthermore, the fact that these basic principles cannot themselves be shown to be true is generally emphasized. A premium is therefore set on such values as autonomy and on the importance of each individual at any rate having rational grounds, derived from one or more of the principles, for performing particular actions. As against this view, it may be said that, if it is agreed that the basic principles are articles of faith, there seem to be no obvious grounds for insisting that people should reason from these first principles. Why should we not act on faith or by intuition in respect of specific situations as well? Besides, if the various fundamental principles are indeed of equal weight, then it surely follows that, in cases of a clash between them, there is no correct answer to the question of which one we should give priority to. A decision to subordinate everything to the claims of, say, equality could not legitimately be dismissed as ‘unreasonable’, since, by the premisses of the theory, reason does not come into the matter. To act in the interests of happiness would be no better and no worse than to act in the interests of freedom.⁸

Given this emphasis on, variously, linguistic analysis of moral concepts the formal characteristics of moral discourse, and an intuitively appealing but more or less inoperable set of principles, it is small wonder that some philosophers have expressed dissatisfaction. Philippa Foot, for example, has tried to argue for the idea of substantive virtues and vices.⁹ Iris Murdoch turned back to Plato for inspiration in the idea of the Good.¹⁰ G.J. Warnock argued that morality could not be defined simply in terms of formal and procedural values, and that it is also necessarily about what he termed people's ‘well-being’.¹¹ But despite these bold attempts, and other far more comprehensive and detailed theories of ethics of a substantive nature, MacIntyre's view that our understanding of morality, as evidenced by our language, is in a ‘state of grave disorder’¹² is hardly surprising.

In this book I attempt to present a coherent and plausible case for a particular moral theory. I hope to avoid the problem of the grave disorder of our moral language by refusing to be entirely bound by the implications of our language, on the grounds that our language may embody incoherent thoughts and that it is possible to stand, at least to some extent, on the outside of a particular form of discourse.¹³

Since the linchpin of the view that ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• 1 What Lies Ahead?
• 2 What is an Ethical Theory and of What Kind of Proof is it Susceptible?
• 3 What is Utilitarianism?
• 4 What is Happiness?
• 5 Is Utilitarianism Necessarily Conservative?
• 6 Rule- or Act-Utilitarianism?
• 7 Quantity or Quality of Happiness?
• 8 Does the Utilitarian Recognize Other Values Besides Happiness?
• 9 Will the Utilitarian Accept Scapegoats and Will he Perform Acts of Supererogation?
• 10 Does Utilitarianism Offer an Impoverished Conception of Morality?
• Bibliography
• Name Index
• Subject Index