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By Paul
05/21/03 (Edited 02/27/12)
It's the nature of debate about moral theory that people inevitably want each theory to fit their personal intuition of what's right and wrong about particular example scenarios. If the theory doesn't fit the intuition of what a person thinks he or she would want to do in that scenario, common thought is that the theory must have a problem. Utilitarianism, as a high profile theory, has often come under fire for not matching intuition. In his paper "A Critique of Utilitarianism," Bernard Williams suggests that impartiality is a flaw. Williams claims utilitarianism has gone too far with impartiality, and that the intuition he sees in certain examples proves this, but Williams may in fact be the one going too far by making this claim.
Williams uses two examples to try to get the reader to say utilitarianism doesn't produce intuitively correct results, but his reasoning fails in several ways. First he creates the example of George, who has the chance to take a job as a biological weapons researcher but has a strong belief that biological warfare is immoral. It's to his family's benefit that he take the job, and George's colleague makes the argument to him that by accepting the job he can prevent someone with less scruples from taking it and pushing research ahead faster. Williams says that the utilitarian choice here is to accept the job, and this is likely true. It isn't (despite what Williams says) obviously true, since George is likely to be fired if he refuses to do his job very well, and the time he spends working there prevents him from doing anything else about biological warfare (such as, for example, becoming politically active and trying to get the media to swing public pressure against the biological warfare research). However, even if taking the job does turn out to be the utilitarian thing to do, this doesn't contradict the fact of it being a tough decision for George which may result in him refusing the job. It would be the most moral thing for him to take the job, perhaps, but due to his hatred of biological warfare he feels a revulsion towards having to see the process of the weapons being researched and produced. It bothers George to be around something that reminds him of biological warfare, because he doesn't want to feel a personal connection to bad things going on. This desire to avoid seeing what he hates is related to his judgment of the weapons as immoral, but the avoidance is not itself moral behavior. The avoidance is about his wanting to not be reminded of the existence of the weapons at all times -- no one enjoys being reminded of a bad thing, even if it's morally greater for him to endure the reminder. Much like most people, George prefers to have the option of thinking about everyday domestic issues instead of having biological warfare constantly on his mind because of his job. George is acting out of self-interest if he refuses the job, placing his own interests over moral interests, but of course everyone does this at times. It may be the most moral for him to take the job and slow down research, but it's not at all inconsistent for him to decide to bypass the chance to do some amount of moral good so that his personal (independent from morality) desires to have peace and escape reminders of things he dislikes can be satisfied. In this way, Bernard Williams may be making a correct point about George's decision being very difficult, but not doing any harm to utilitarianism.
The second example Williams uses is the case of Jim and the Indians, and there are again flaws in jumping to the conclusion that this is a problem with utilitarianism. In the scenario Pedro is about to shoot twenty Indians, but if Jim agrees to personally shoot one then the other nineteen will be set free. Williams says that the obvious utilitarian thing to do is kill the one to save the other nineteen. This is true of course, as nineteen lives easily outweigh whatever suffering Jim might go through by killing the one. Morality tells Jim to pull the trigger in this situation. Psychologically, however, the decision will not be anywhere near as simple as the moral situation. In this case, one thing that keeps him from immediately agreeing with shooting the one person is the sense of hope that real life situations tend to include. Williams mentions Jim's brief fantasy of revolt which he dismisses, and in thought experiments it can be specified that there's no chance of saving everyone, but even if there's no logical reason for hope people don't tend to want to admit the lack of hope in real life. Jim is likely to hold on to a fantasy that he can create a best case scenario by finding some sort of way to save everyone, something he's somehow been overlooking. Saving everyone, of course, is easily the best utilitarian outcome... Jim holds out hope for the best possible utilitarian outcome, even if logic may try to tell him it's not reasonable. If Jim could make himself believe with absolute conviction that there's nothing which can be done outside of the choice presented, then he would find that the moral thing to do is shoot one person to save the rest. Still, even after resolving the moral aspect, there's a non-moral aspect which must be factored into the decision to shoot or not to shoot... this non-moral aspect causes the choice to remain difficult. If Jim lets Pedro kill all twenty Indians, it may happen after Jim has left or at least Jim will be allowed to turn around and not look. From Jim's self-interested perspective, it may be easier to deal with twenty unseen deaths than with one visible death where he must see the face and feel the gun. People in general aren't comfortable with death and killing, and when a situation has some amount of killing as an inevitable result there's an understandable desire to shrivel up and sit in a corner and not have to be aware of it. Thousands of people die around the world every day, but we only really start to care if we're forced to see it. Here, Jim would naturally find it easier to shrink back and attempt to disassociate himself from the situation rather than get involved with something he knows will end in killing. Note however that despite the difficulty of the choice Jim faces, if he were to abandon his own motivations and choose the morally best solution he would kill the one to save nineteen. Since the factors clouding the issue are factors outside of morality, utilitarianism is not shown by this example to have problems no matter which decision Jim makes.
Utilitarian thinking can generate the most moral choice, while at the same time not showing that it will be the choice made or that the choice will be easy if it is made. Morality would have no use if it always coincided with what the person wants to do... the moral way doesn't have to be the easy way. The very most moral way isn't actually expected of anyone: if you think it's morally good to help the poor, that doesn't mean you must spend all free moments among the poor helping them. As long as the choices a person makes don't involve acting to change a system for the worse, other people are understanding and don't expect the person to put aside all of their personal interests... however, if a person does overcome their personal interests to cause a great deal of good (such as setting back the biological weapons program by ten years, or saving nineteen lives in spite of the horrible price exacted from the individual having to shoot), they're very likely to be seen as morally strong or even morally heroic for their action. Morality, since it's not just a description of how people want to act, tends to urge selflessness and often conflicts with personal desires. That's not to say self-interest can't win or that it's a tragedy of any sort when self-interest wins, especially if the stakes are small, but the component of the situation that's moral must urge being selfless. Morality and other interests balance each other and compromise with each other in the decision making process. Thus, morality is not the entirety of life and so long as people aren't being morally evil it's not usually expected that they put full effort into doing the most moral things they can with all of their time. The utilitarian method can generate the moral input, but there's still always other input to be considered.
The life of every person includes a process of balancing personal desires with moral considerations. When Bernard Williams criticizes utilitarianism for not including enough emphasis on the element of personal agency, he's looking for personal agency in the wrong place. He considers it a part of morality, but the interest in personal projects can still be considered non-moral and simply self-interest even if the personal interests are a result of a dislike of something that was originally caused by a moral judgment of it. All Williams can really say, in the end, is that utilitarianism doesn't always recommend the action we're most comfortable with. This is reasonable, as any moral theory must urge a person to act for the greater good even against personal desire. The action a person chooses to take may or may not the same as what their moral theory recommends, for morality is only one of the factors in a decision.
