Why I Am Not A Utilitarian

There are two main methods to attack an ethical system. The first is to attack its internal logical consistency. If an ethical system is not logically consistent, it must be rejected. If an ethical system passes the logical consistency test, then the second test is to appeal to its intrinsic beauty and goodness. For example, even secularly-minded people tend to believe that the Christian doctrine of “love your neighbor” as yourself is a beautiful ethical statement — even if they may disagree about how Christians apply this principle. But if a system of ethics are ugly, then they should be rejected. As Bertrand Russell pointed out, Nietzsche’s ethics were logically consistent, but they were also reprehensible.

Utilitarianism fails both of these tests.

The Short Version

• The Genocide Objection I submit that any ethical system that does not categorically prohibit slavery and genocide of minority groups should be immediately disqualified on the grounds that it fails the test for intrinsic beauty and goodness.

  While it is unlikely that slavery or genocide would maximize happiness (or preferences, …), it is theoretically possible. To paraphrase Benjamin Franklin, utilitarianism is two wolves and a lamb voting about what to have for dinner. Of course, there are utilitarian protections that make genocide more difficult than simply holding a vote. Many forms of utilitarianism give strong preferences extra weight, and the principle of declining marginal utility means that a preference to live counts for a heck of a lot more than a preference to kill. But all this does it make genocide and slavery more difficult. If the minority group’s “vote” counts ten times as much, then it means genocide will not happen unless the minority group is less than percent of the population. If they count one hundred times as much, then they must be less than 1% of the population. If they count for much more than this, then this form of utilitarianism is starting to seem suspiciously like having a right to life and a right to liberty. The leading utilitarian ethcists Peter Singer recognizes this when he says on page 94 of his book ‘Practical Ethics,’ that “if we are preference utilitarians we must allow that a desire to go on living can be outweighed by other desires.”

• Utilitarianism is irrational. For a belief to be held rationally, it must be held with logical consistency. This is clearly true in science. If Theory A implies B, then a scientist cannot rationally believe A while denying B. This principle is equally valid in ethics (for further explanation, here is an accessible introduction to logic, which includes belief logic).

  Utilitarians cannot do this, because if they were a member of an oppressed minority group, they would not willingly submit to their own death by genocide or their own enslavement. Thus they cannot accept all the logical consequences of their beliefs. This is not true for people who support an unalienable right to life.

This concludes the short case against utilitarianism. Below are some more objections.

The Test of Logical Consistency

• Collapse of Rule Utilitarianism. Rule utilitarianism has rules against the abhorrent practices that standard utilitarianism permits (such as slavery and genocide). But now we are no longer maximizing X or even the utility of X - we might be dramatically lowering them. If we find violations of human rights repellent, then rule utilitarianism partially collapses to natural rights ethics. Rule utilitarianism becomes a hodgepodge - it inherits its rules from other forms of morality, then tries to maximize happiness (or preferences, …). It is an inconsistent form of ethics, even by utilitarian standards.

The Test of Intrinsic Beauty and Goodness

• The Tortured Babies Objection. Babies have extremely low status under utilitarianism because they are not rational. At best they are granted minor value because they have a capacity to suffer - but since they are not self-conscious, even this capacity to suffer is limited. This justifies abortion and infanticide - which most utilitarians believe are ethical - but it also justifies selling babies to psychopaths who then torture them to death. Unlike slavery and genocide, you have only a very low hurdle to clear if you want to torture a baby.
• The Nasty Schoolchildren Objection. Perhaps slavery is unlikely. But consider a very routine example in which people gain happiness (or preferences, ….) at the expense of the few: teasing and bullying. If the whole class gets a good laugh at the expense of the child that does not fit in, then the sadness of the one child can easily be overcome by the pleasure of the many.
• The Nasty Gossip Objection. A group of people can gain happiness (or preferences, …) by spreading nasty gossip about someone behind their back. There is no need to factor in that person’s unhappiness because they do not even know about it. Sometimes gossip gets back to the victim, but oftentimes it does not. According to utilitarianism, this nasty gossip is ethical.
• The Objection From Evil Preferences. Utilitarianism does not distinguish between good and evil. My preference to torture my neighbor to death counts just as much as his preference not to be tortured.

  In practice utilitarianism usually makes the distinction; more people will be made sad by my neighbor’s death than happy. But it cannot guarantee it - after all, my neighbor may be a modern day Scrooge with more enemies than friends. Or he could be a member of a disliked ethnic or religious minority. Maximizing happiness is usually - but not always - the moral thing to do. The fact that they can differ means that something else other than happiness sets the moral standard. This is a strong argument that utilitarianism misses what really separates good from bad.

• The Separatness of Persons. Peter Singer observes in his book ‘Practical Ethics’ that the essence of utilitarianism is that it is universal; we should not only consider how our actions affect ourselves, we should also consider the preferences of others. But that leads to humans losing their individuality. Consider a world that consists only of a Christian and an atheist. The Christian wants his neighbor to go to church. Every Sunday morning the atheist must give equal weight to the Christian’s preference, so every other week he has to go to church (or attend half a service every week?) even though he doesn’t want to. Anything less would be immoral. Conversely, the Christian has to stay home from Church once a week because he has to consider how decision would affect his neighbor’s preferences. Utilitarianism forces each of them to become half Christian, half Atheist. But that is not what either person wants!

  We need an ethical system that is universal - that has the same rules for everyone - but that still respects what the liberal philosopher John Rawls calls the ’separateness of persons.’ A natural rights based ethics does this - everyone has the freedom to worship as they please (or not at all). Golden Rule ethics also does this - you might want your neighbor to go to Church, but not if means that you have to stay home. Instead, both will end out granting each other the space to make their own decisions.

• The Smart People Are Worth More Objection. If you only “count” in a utilitarian ethical system because you have a capacity such as self-awareness or rational thought, then logically you must give extra value to people who have more of this capacity. Conversely, you must reduce the value of people who have less of it. Utilitarians would like to keep things at three distinct categories: (1) fetuses and young infants who have little intrinsic value, (2) higher animals who have partial value (some utilitarians would eliminate this category) and (3) children and adults, who have the full intrinsic value. But adults are more rational and self-aware than children, and some adults are more rational and self-aware than other adults. Logically, adults should count for more than children, and smart adults should count for more than dumb adults.
• What is X? Utilitarianism has been around for almost 150 years and utilitarians still haven’t decided what they want to maximize: pleasure, happiness, dignity, preferences etc… Or conversely, what they want to minimize: pain, suffering, poverty, displeasure etc…
• Maximize the total? Or utility? Suppose that the X we want to maximize is wealth. What if a new policy would give $2 to a rich person while taking away $1 from a poor person? Now consider that X is not wealth, but happiness or freedom.

  Most utilitarians mitigate this problem with utility functions. Make it so that a dollar for a rich person counts less than a dollar for a poor person. This helps to reduce, but not eliminate, the chance that slavery or genocide would be justified. But now utilitarianism can no longer claim to maximize X. How much total X are you willing to sacrifice to create a more egalitarian distribution of X? Should you have some mild redistribution? Or go all the way to utility socialism? Winston Churchill once quipped that the goal of socialism is to make everyone equally miserable. Is that the goal of utilitarianism? If so, that is quite a reversal from trying to maximize happiness.

• The Three Mile Island Objection. Three Mile Island was a disaster, but some good came out of it. People became more aware of the risks of nuclear power. If Three Mile Island prevented unsafe nuclear plants from being built, and spurred research into safer nuclear power (or led to the end of nuclear power), then three mile island may have actually been a net gain for society. It has been decades since three mile island occurred and we still do not know whether it was a net gain or a net loss. In a chaotic system it is usually impossible to make long term predictions of the future.
• Hedonism One response to the problem of three mile island would be to focus on the immediately knowable consequences of an action. As Peter Singer puts it in ‘Practical Ethics,’ you discount the value of future happiness just as bankers discount the value of money in the future (this is the reason for interest - 200 hundred dollars ten years from now is worth the same as 100 dollars today). But for utilitarianism - which does not distinguish between good and bad desires - this approach leads directly to hedonism. If you have to choose between studying hard or partying hard, then utilitarianism would tell you to party hard.
• Power Corrupts. Most utilitarians dismiss the attacks on utilitarianism’ inability to create an objective calculation of the total utility as a straw man. They would claim that the important lessons of utilitarianism are the general principles that are shown to be ethical, not the minutia of whether action X results in a net increase in happiness (or pleasure, preferences, …)

  But consider slavery in early America. If utilitarianism could give an actual number for its utility, then abolitionists could run the numbers and (hopefully) prove enslaving an ethnic minority does not maximize happiness (or pleasure, preferences, …). But without an objective calculation this is not possible. Since slavery is at least theoretically possible under utilitarianism, racist whites could appeal to the general principle without an objective standard interfering.

  A good axiom in political theory is that you should design your political system with the realization that your worst enemy may someday assume power. Utilitarianism’ inability to create objective and transparent calculations opens a huge loophole that would justify oppression. By contrast a rights-based system is much more difficult to corrupt. It is easy to “know your rights” and that the government’s attempts restrict your speech or liberty are wrong.

• The Experience Machine. The philosopher Robert Nozick images a machine similar to a sensory deprivation tank. Once you are submerged it can give you any experience you could ever imagine or desire. Most people would not choose to go into the experience machine even though it makes you happy and satisfies desires. This undermines the validity of many forms of utilitarianism - it is not actually being happy or having desires satisfied that people really want.
• The Utility Monster Objection. Consider the Genocide Objection. There is a minority ethnic group that makes up 10% of the population. It is easy to justify genocide because they are “outvoted” 90% to 10%. Even if a few humanitarians disagree, it is still 80% to 20%. Of course, the soon-to-be executed ethnic group has much stronger feelings on the subject than the evil majority ethnic group. We can go a long way to preventing genocide by allowing the strength of a preference as a factor. But some people have stronger desires than others; utilitarianism could be held hostage to these utility monsters (as Robert Nozick calls them) who have obsessive preferences. Everyone else becomes sacrificed to the monster’s maw. The stoic poor family will have to sacrifice for the hysterical rich family that is upset because their Rolls Royce got a dent.

  We don’t have to give extra weight to strong preferences - but then it gets a lot easier to justify killing innocent people. Perhaps a compromise is possible; employ a utility function for the strength of preference. Strong preferences still count extra, but not as much. But to whatever degree we reign in utility monsters, we’ve made it that much easier to kill an innocent person. We’re caught between a rock (utility monsters) and a hard place (not being able to distinguish between good and bad preferences).

• The Scapegoat Effect. According to utilitarianism, there is only one role for punishment: deterrence. Punishing people deters future crimes, and thus maximizes happiness (or pleasure, preferences, …). But it doesn’t matter if the right person is punished. Whoever is punished will be unhappy regardless of their guilt or innocence. You can reasonably argue that an innocent person will be more outraged, and thus have a stronger preference. But the strength of preference will be overwhelmed compared to the deterrence value. This is particularly true when the crime is difficult to solve. In those cases, happiness (preferences, …) will be maximized by making a scapegoat out of an innocent person.
• The Secrets Objection. People in utilitarian societies will be aware of the scapegoat effect, which will lead to an inevitable mistrust of the laws and a general breakdown of society. Other breakdowns would start to happen. For example, people might stop working hard at their jobs knowing that utilitarianism, like communism, will guarantee them an income. More generally, utilitarianism is vulnerable to “gaming the system” for both good and bad. This is why many critics of utilitarianism have noted that it would only work if kept secret. People need to live their lives and make their choices based on a non-utilitarian system of ethics. Economists will recognize this objection: behavior is elastic and utilitarianism creates some perverse incentives.

A Third Test: Why Be Ethical?

This is a difficult test for any atheist system of ethics. Utilitarianism is not like Ayn Rand’s egoism, or a liberal system of social contract theory. In those cases self-interested people recognize they can further their self-interest by cooperating to form a government with laws and police force. But utilitarianism frequently demands sacrificing your self-interest for others. Why should an atheist do this?

• Evolution and the moral sense. Evolution is the most popular method of reconciling atheism with morality. Humans are a social animal. We succeed through cooperation. Evolution has given us a moral sense to further this cooperation with others. But the ultimate motivation for this is to pass on as many genes as possible. So what if you don’t want to pass on as many genes as possible? Why should you then be ethical? Or what if you your best rational assessment is that in a particular case, you can best maximize your ability to pass on your genes by not cooperating? Our moral sense evolved because it is a good guideline, not because it is always correct.
• Peter Singer. Peter Singer attempts to provide a reason in his book Practical Ethics. He observes that societies reflect what most of their members want. And if most people to be ethical then society “wants” to be ethical. And societies have the power to reward individuals with social esteem. This brings us back to self-interest as the basis for ethics: we should not merely be self-interested in order to get a reward from society.

Further Reading

• Here is a critical Review of Practical Ethics by Peter Singer
• Here is another “Why I am not a utilitarian” list.
• If you recall from the beginning of the article, there are basically two tests for ethical systems: rational ethical beliefs must be able to be held consistently, and they must have a sense of beauty of goodness. The Golden Rule (treat others as you want to be treated) passes both of these tests easily. It consistency can be proven in formal logic. The logician Harry Gensler does this in his book An Introduction to Logic. Intuitively this makes sense because at its heart the Golden Rule is a consistency principle: treat others as you want to be treated. The fact the Golden Rule is found in nearly every religion in the world also testifies to its beauty and goodness. One final note: an overly literal formation of the Golden Rule - the letter rather than the spirit - leads to absurd results, such as masochists being allowed to hurt others. The proof of the Golden Rule mentioned above was of a sophisticated formulation that avoids these problems.
• If you are interested in a book that both defends natural rights ethics and attacks modern utilitarianism, then I highly recommend Moral Theory by David Oderberg.

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