Why So Few Utilitarians?

Will Wilkinson, like me a fallen philosophy student, asserts inter alia: "surely Matt understands that the inability of utilitarianism to acknowledge principled constraints on the way people may use one another is the main reason why most moral philosophers believe utilitarianism to be false." Can't talk philosophy without distinguishing between reasons and causes! It's always seemed to me that part of the sociology of the philosophical profession is that a lot of the causation tends to run in the other direction.

If you find yourself drawn to consequentialist views, you probably won't find yourself doing work in the field of normative ethics or political philosophy. Similarly, reductionist views about consciousness seem to imply, among other things, that one oughtn't spend a ton of time doing the philosophy of mind. The fields come to be dominated, numerically, by people who think there's interesting and important work to be done in the field.

(I should say, I wouldn't really accept the utilitarian label as such and I don't think anything about a desire to curb economic inequality hinges fundamentally on whether or not one accepts utilitarianism)

Comments

Oh Matt, why have you started pandering to the intellectual lowest common denominator? If I wanted to read this kind of simplistic, black-and-white dividing of the world into utilitarians and consequentialists, I'd go to Powerline or Michelle Malkin.

;)

Posted by James Gary | October 13, 2007 10:35 AM

Hmm, they probably are a numerical minority (though I'm not sure) but there are _lots_ of utilitarian moral and political philosophers. I think it's the dominant view in Australian circles and a very major on in the UK, especially. (the Australian case is easy to understand- it's essentially always been a Benthamite society.) Many important and famous moral and political philosophers now are utilitarians of one sort or another. This is perhaps especially so in applied ethics. This wasn't so at Harvard, where Kant rules and the famous Matt was an undergrad philosophy major but to anyone who knows the broader picture the idea that utilitarians are rare at all or not a major view in moral and political theory seems a pretty crazy one.
(Reductionist views about the mind are also pretty common among those working in the area.)

Posted by Matt (not the famous one) | October 13, 2007 11:06 AM

He then went on to claim that because liberals make arguments based on the necessity of unions for fair wage negotiation that Americans aren't utilitarians. If so, we have to ask why people like Will are always making utilitarian (sometimes even Rawlsian) arguments for tax cuts.

Both liberals and libertarians make their arguments from any set of premises they can find. I suppose it seems opportunistic, but given the uncertainties of moral realism it make sense to look for viewpoints that are robustly true under a wide variety of moral premises. I suppose it's an odd coincidence that different moral systems should coincide, but given that natural selection has some influence on our moral systems, it's only reasonable that moral intuitions should correlate at least slightly with utilitarian outcomes. It's annoying that everyone seems to think utility and morality seem to roughly coincide but nobody agrees where they coincide, but that's life.

But yeah, you don't to be a utilitarian to think that a government of the people, by the people, and for the people has an obligation to do what it can to make things better for all the people.

Posted by Consumatopia | October 13, 2007 11:08 AM

"surely Matt understands that the inability of utilitarianism to acknowledge principled constraints on the way people may use one another"

Rule utilitarianism can certainly recognize principled restraints. What's more it at least has a fighting chance to be able to justify those restraints.

This is in stark contrast to the strident deontologist who necessarily smuggles utilitarian intuitions into their moral assessments but then, because of their ideology, is forced to "justify" those assessments by vague references to vague ideas like "respect".

Posted by Junius Brutus | October 13, 2007 11:19 AM

The whole thing is confusing. He says that Yglesias doesn't care about inequality per se, but I can't see why anyone would. Some see it as symptomatic of underlying unfairness, and some think it has bad effects. But does anyone think that inequality is, standing entirely on its own, meaningful?

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | October 13, 2007 11:21 AM

"does anyone think that inequality is, standing entirely on its own, meaningful?"

That does seem like it would be too crazy a view for anyone to hold, but some philosophers (not a majority, thankfully) do hold it. Larry Tempkin (at Rutgers) is perhaps the best example. He holds that inequality _as such_ is unjust, no matter the source or other effects. Now, we might have other reasons to not seek equality in particular situations, on Tempkin's view, but any inequality is unjust and prima facie bad. (A world where a tree falls and hits two people is a more just world, and in some ways [though probably not over all] a better world, on Tempkin's view, than one where a tree falls and hits one person but misses another. Like I said- it's a crazy view, but there are few views so crazy that some philosophers don't hold them. Thankfully this view has no traction at all with anyone who might make any actual political or policy decisions.)

Posted by Matt (not the famous one) | October 13, 2007 11:41 AM

"(I should say, I wouldn't really accept the utilitarian label as such and I don't think anything about a desire to curb economic inequality hinges fundamentally on whether or not one accepts utilitarianism)"

It would be difficult to label Rawls a utiliarian, for example. Or Marx. Or, to get all non-philosophical, the author of Acts:

Acts 2:43-45

43Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. 44All the believers were together and had everything in common. 45Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need.

Posted by d | October 13, 2007 11:52 AM

Similarly, reductionist views about consciousness seem to imply, among other things, that one oughtn't spend a ton of time doing the philosophy of mind.

I can't figure this out, though maybe it's because the philosophers of mind that I'm familiar with tend to be reductionists. So who are the people writing about their reductionist views of consciousness who aren't doing philosophy of mind? Bernard Baars? John Anderson? The PDP folks? Cognitive neuroscientists? I wonder if there's an entire set of other writers I'm missing.

Posted by RSA | October 13, 2007 11:52 AM

Being one of the few remaining hedonic utilitarians in the discipline, I've often thought that some hypothesis like yours probably plays a role.

Posted by Neil the Ethical Werewolf | October 13, 2007 11:57 AM

Its not hard at all to label Rawls a utilitarian. Read Ian Shapiro on this point.

Rights theories are forced to rely on tacit acknowledgement of utilitarian principles in order to justify their content.

You don't really think you can generate all the myriad things people call their rights just by conceptual analysis of vague terms like "respect" or "dignity" do you?

Posted by Junius Brutus | October 13, 2007 11:57 AM

I should add, though, that utilitarian convictions might not necessarily send people out to economics as such. It might send them out to do famine relief work, or to some kind of political activism, or to the business world where they collect a whole bunch of money to do philanthropic deeds with.

Posted by Neil the Ethical Werewolf | October 13, 2007 12:01 PM

Hi all,

Um, I hate to be the village idiot but what is being said here?

Posted by Gus | October 13, 2007 12:14 PM

I too am an idiot, so I probably shouldn't be here, but: Don't we have to be always keeping in mind the goal? I've always thought of myself as a utilitarian, as I'm interested in "maximizing happiness" which I thought was the supposed end-goal of Bentham, the guy who came up with the term. Because if we substitute a different goal, such as "conversion of everyone to Christianity", or "enrichment of me, in dollars", then everyone's a utilitarian, right?

And since most people won't usually argue against maximizing happiness, this utilitarianism as I define it doesn't separate me from the pack too often, in fact, the only time I see a sharp swerve from the pack is on the topic of criminal justice, in either discussing punishment for its own sake, which some non-utilitarians view as a good thing, and one of the goals of criminal justice, or the death penalty, which some of them see as important regardless of the fact that it's more expensive than a life sentence and no more of a deterrent or incapacitator. And they don't argue those premises, which studies have shown, they accept them and still say it's necessary.

Eggheads: have I been using the term incorrectly all this time?

Posted by Phoebe | October 13, 2007 12:32 PM

Yes, brutus...unlike that very specific and non vague term like "welfare" or "pleasure." Thank god we can get some rigor going on here. And by all means, let's improve things by appealing to economics.

Rule utilitarianism is simply a dodge that either fails to justify deontological prescriptions in hard cases or collapses into rule fetishism.

I actually agree somewhat with Matt's diagnosis. If you are a utilitarian, then you tend to think that there aren't too many interesting ethical questions. I would suiggest a different spin on it though: if you have such a tin ear to ethical life as to find utilitarianism plausible, then ethics looks pretty boring. But that's me being polemical.

Posted by Patrick | October 13, 2007 12:57 PM

Um, I hate to be the village idiot but what is being said here?

IANA philosopher, so seek correction, but I think the following summary is roughly accurate.

1. Yglesias says* that inequality has bad effects and that's enough to justify doing something about it.

2. Wilkinson says that People Who Think Deeply about Morality reject this kind of thinking, as it's mostly used by pederasts to justify their behavior.

3. Yglesias says (and here I'm elaborating) that the literature may reject such thinking, but that doesn't answer anything, as it's not clear that the literature doesn't reflect prior decisions by pederasts not to go into moral philosophy because of the anti-pederasty bias. He then somewhat equivocally denies being a utilitarian, and suggests that such is not necessary to justify massive government programs or his past dalliances with smooth young boys.

4. Various commenters make objections, I note my confusion, and Sinbabu--as befits a future professor--comes out in favor of pederasty.

As I said, others may have better answers.

* Actually, Wilkinson says Yglesias says, but I think Yglesias accepts his interpretation.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | October 13, 2007 12:58 PM

Tim, (may I call you that?)

I know that you are using it as an example (and that I'm getting hung up on something stupid), but what would the argument in which a pederast justifies his behavior through Yglesias' formulation look like?

(Virginal adolescence has bad effects (???) and that's enough to justify pederasty.)

Posted by Gus | October 13, 2007 1:11 PM

Because Kant (and Nietzsche) were right. Duh.

Posted by sherifffruitfly | October 13, 2007 1:18 PM

Patrick: yeah I know what you're saying. When I see someone being tortured and writhing in pain, I never know what to think. Is that person having a good time? Are they enjoying themselves? It's all so vague.

When they tell me they find electric shocks unpleasant, I just don't really know what they're getting at. I mean how bad is it? Are high voltage electric shocks worse than dropping a piece of paper on my toe? How would I be able tell? And then when I try to compare someone else's experience of torture by electric shock with the love session I had last night with that hot blond down the street, I always find it impossible to say which one of us had the better time -- him being tortured or me making sweet love with a hot blonde? Who can really say?

On the other hand, when someone tells me there is direct connection between my having inherent dignity as a human being to my right not to have my car stolen, that seems crystal clear and undeniable.

Posted by Junius Brutus | October 13, 2007 1:21 PM

The sense of "justice" that evolved in primates (see The Moral Animal) is too strong in the vast majority of people for them to make rational choices about ethics / the greater good. It is not a failure of the correctness or completeness of utilitarianism, it is a failure of the human mind to function rationally.

Posted by Gore/Edwards 08 | October 13, 2007 1:23 PM

The simple formulation, inequality has bad effects, strikes me as insufficient to justify the conclusion that something must be done.

Inequality of economic outcomes, surely, also has good effects. It is necessary to motivate participants in economic competition, for instance. Inequality is necessary to sort worthy enterprises from fatuous ones . . . to distinguish talent from incompetence. So Yglesias' argument, I think, is not against inequality qua inequality, but rather against the current quantum of inequality. He would not favor, I'm guessing, an enforced total equality (ask the Cambodians how that turned out), but rather a different inequality arranged by different means. And "inequality has bad effects" will not suffice to justify the conclusion that we should shift from one inequality to another.

Posted by southpaw | October 13, 2007 1:30 PM

A lot of what's going on, too, is that deontologists have been tilting at shamefully caricatured conceptions of utilitarianism (or consequentialism more broadly) for decades and show no signs of slowing down. It's probably very easy to get through intro or even advanced philosophy classes without any clue that, in fact, utilitarians have been taking the problem of principled constraints seriously since more or less forever. This feeds into the selection effects Matt was talking about.

Utilitarianism proper has taken some hard knocks because its value theory is right up there front and center, and *everyone's* value theory looks pretty sketchy when held up to the light. But it has always baffled me why people think "if bizarre circumstances were to arise, your theory would produce results that our intuitions find bizarre" is a devastating argument.

The curious are invited to read Philip Pettit's papers on consequentialism, especially the wonderfully concise 7-pager here.

Posted by x. trapnel | October 13, 2007 1:45 PM

I know that you are using it as an example (and that I'm getting hung up on something stupid), but what would the argument in which a pederast justifies his behavior through Yglesias' formulation look like?

I am using it mostly as a joke, and I've limited exposure to philosophy, but I think you could gin one up. You might say that pederasty harms the youth very little if at all, but that the benefits to Yglesias of rubbing oil over the soft, rounded shoulders of a pre-pubescent boy cannot be overstated. You sum the pluses and the minuses, and come out in favor of Dirty Old Man Yglesias.

As I understand it, there are all manner of flavors of utilitarianism, and all sorts of limiting criteria for each. This is probably a description best left to that hedonic utilitarian, Dr. Feelgood...er, Werewolf.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | October 13, 2007 1:47 PM

What a minute Brutus, are you saying that it is a tough call whether a person getting electrodes attached to their testicles are having their basic human dignity respected? You find that a hard call? Really?

But this is clearly all just goofy. How much pleasure for other people overcomes the teste-electrodes? If a million people get mildly tickled at seeing you tortured, how much can I torture? Head-slapping, water-boarding, or electrocution? How many pounds of chocolate equals the pleasure of being in love? Is physical pain the only standard of welfare? If my family prospers, but I suffer a lot of pain, is that net positive?

Simply pointing to when people are obviously in pain doesn't get you anywhere, especially when one of the ways of violating someone's dignity is inflicting intense pain on them.

Posted by Patrick | October 13, 2007 1:48 PM

Junius: I am symphathetic to the argument you make regarding Rawls. Not entirely sure I buy it, but it is a good criticism.

Phoebe: You wrote: "Don't we have to be always keeping in mind the goal? I've always thought of myself as a utilitarian, as I'm interested in "maximizing happiness" which I thought was the supposed end-goal of Bentham, the guy who came up with the term. Because if we substitute a different goal, such as "conversion of everyone to Christianity", or "enrichment of me, in dollars", then everyone's a utilitarian, right?"

Well, everyone is not a utilitarian. What if your goal or telos is going to heaven? Or the "common good?" These would require other means, not utilitarian means, and wouldn't necessarly include the tallying up of utility in the population. Depending on your conception of the good, they might include measures that would reduce happiness on balance, but would presumably push forward that definition of the common good. Take your example of "converting everyone to Christianity," this would almost assuredly reduce society's utility (though of course we can't be sure.) Christianity's missionaries are a drag (just ask pre-Christian Augustine).But in any case the relevant metric would be whether or not you were being successful in converting people, not whether you were making them happy. The examples write themselves.

In any case, here just some recent examples of people who are critical of utilitarianism: Alastair MacIntyre, Bernard Williams, Philippe Foot, Charles Taylor, and most Theologians.

Posted by d | October 13, 2007 1:59 PM

Patrick: you make assertions about the requirements of "dignity." How do you ascertain the facts about this "dignity" of which you speak?

Based on observation, experience and learning, I make straightforward judgments about the effect of different potential behaviors on my utility all the time. So does everyone.

But I frankly don't know what "dignity" is. You say inflicting pain "violates" someone's "dignity". I'm not sure how we'd know it either way.

On the other hand, all of us are quite competent at making judgments about utility and relative utility and interpersonal comparisons of utility. We all do it all the time.

Now if you are unable to judge that $40 billion spent on healthcare for children is going to produce more utility than $40 billion in tax cuts for billionaires then you're not worth listening to on questions of ethics and public policy.

Posted by Junius Brutus | October 13, 2007 2:05 PM

Junius,

I've determined that your living space could produce more utility by housing some of the underprivileged children who visit my local soup kitchen. Please surrender your keys and the deed tomorrow at noon.

Posted by southpaw | October 13, 2007 2:10 PM

southpaw: No can do. And the law doesn't require me to.

Are you proposing that we institute a new policy of property confiscation based on arbitrary proclamations issued by commenters who call themselves southpaw on Matthew Yglesias' blog?

Now about that public policy question I posed in my last post. Do you have any doubt that $40 billion spent on SCHIP would produce more utility than $40 billion in tax cuts for billionaires?

I propose in all seriousness we make that a law. And I propose that you southpaw be required by force if necessary to pay whatever taxes you owe to the federal government under the law. And I can make a serious and persusaive argument that this proposal is almost all upside and very little downside and I could basically paint you a picture about why that is so based on common sense psychology that everyone understands.

I'm still waiting to hear about Patrick's awesome new dignometer and how he uses real world empirical evidence to establish the different likely distributions of dignitude as the result of various public policies.

Posted by Junius Brutus | October 13, 2007 2:33 PM

Suppose that's true Brutus (and it isn't really, but suppose it is), please define "utility" in a way that is not vague or question-begging.

You say "we just know" utility. But if that is the standard, then why do I have to say anything more about dignity?

I could, but it depends on the whole Kantian story. But if you don't, then why should I?

Posted by Patrick | October 13, 2007 2:36 PM

Junius,

No worries. As long as you're prepared to subordinate your utilitarianism to the rule of law and representative government, I'm happy as a clam. Best of luck on the override vote.

Posted by southpaw | October 13, 2007 2:46 PM

Patrick:

I don't say we "just know" utility. I say we gather observational data for years and years, create mental models that are constantly being tested and refined, and make judgments about the effects of a behavior or a policy on people's utility based on those mental models.

Utility has the advantage of being a real thing --as real as our experience, which is about as real as it gets. Do you seriously doubt that there is such a thing as the experience of pain or pleasure?

Practical questions about how we measure it do not seem insurmountable to me. We each use our own personal mental models to make these estimates all the time, and, if we are at all competent, our models are probably not wildly wrong.

Patrick: do you have any doubt that there will be greater net experience of happiness/pleasure/utility, as measured by your own personal mental models for happiness/pleasure/utility, as a result of spending $40 billion on SCHIP for poor kids rather than tax cuts for billionaires who long ago passed the point of diminishing marginal returns on consumption?

I mean you're right that there will be many situations that are tough, borderline, calls. That's why we should go for the low hanging fruit first and do things like pass national health insurance and fully fund Social Security because those are pretty easy calls to make in terms of confidently predicting the production of significant net utility gains. And we should have a democratic system of decision-making to make these calls because I think history and experience teach that greater happiness/pleasure/utility will result under a democratic system than any other practical alternative.

Posted by Junius Brutus | October 13, 2007 2:59 PM

Patrick: if you have an argument, Kantian or otherwise, that somehow explicates the concept of dignity in a way that doesn't ultimately amount to the empty stipulation that dignity = inherent worth and that therefore whatever else you say about dignity is inherently worthy. And if you can do all that without reference to the experiences of pleasure and pain, well let's hear it.

Can you give me the short version? My utilitarian theory allows me to give YOU the short version. I haven't heard any objection from you to my claim about SCHIP vs. tax cuts.

Utility/happiness/pleasure? I believe in those things. I think they refer to something real in my experience. I think there is some real sense to the idea that experiences have properties that can be quantified with some non-zero significant degree of accuracy and in fact this is how we operate as human beings every day.

I think its sensible to say that one experience is more pleasurable than another and I think, quite often, we can go so far as to say that Experience A is FAR more pleasureable than Experience B, and that often if you apply that finding to a population you can make a reasonable judgment about whether one policy will produce more of that desired experiential property than another, in the net and on the whole.

Posted by Junius Brutus | October 13, 2007 3:29 PM

I don't see how, if you believe in happiness and pleasure, you can deny the importance of dignity.

Consult your own experience of human beings, or an anthropologist if you prefer, and you'll discover that they almost uniformly seek pride and status within their society and are pleased and happy when they achieve those things. And humans are quite displeased and unhappy when their social status is reduced by humiliation or abuse.

To be sure, dignity is a social construct--the manifestation of achieved social status and the authority that comes along with it. But from the L.A. Crips to the blogosphere to the US Senate, it's a real force in human affairs.

Posted by southpaw | October 13, 2007 3:45 PM

"please define "utility" in a way that is not vague or question-begging."

I can detect it and refer to it and therefore I can define it ostensively. There probably will be a way to define it in terms of p-fibers firing once brain science advances far enough.

You know that feeling you get when you make love to that hot blond down the street? That's an example of a kind of pleasure. You know that feeling you get when you stub your toe? That's a kind of pain. You know that feeling you get when you hold your hand in fire? That's another kind of pain.

I know you recognize a family resemblance between stubbing your toe and burning your hand that makes it logical to categorize those experiences together but not to include the hot sex with the blond down the street in the same category.

I could go on. You would understand what I was talking about in each instance. We would make roughly similar judgments about relatve quantities often enough.

Posted by Junius Brutus | October 13, 2007 3:47 PM

southpaw said, "you'll discover that they almost uniformly seek pride and status within their society and are pleased and happy when they achieve those things."

key words: "pleased" and "happy".

If you can point to a regular correlation between "dignity" or "shmignity" and pleasure/happiness, then that is plainly a consequentialist endeavor that I have no problem with.

Posted by Junius Brutus | October 13, 2007 3:50 PM

Junius,

Patrick: do you have any doubt that there will be greater net experience of happiness/pleasure/utility, as measured by your own personal mental models for happiness/pleasure/utility, as a result of spending $40 billion on SCHIP for poor kids rather than tax cuts for billionaires who long ago passed the point of diminishing marginal returns on consumption?

I have very serious doubts. A tax you believe to be unjust is likely to decrease your happiness, even if the tax is imposed on someone else. Multiply that unhappiness by millions of people and you may have a very large decrease in happiness. The utility calculation is not just a matter of whether a dollar will buy more happiness for a sick child than for a billionaire, but the effect on the happiness of everyone of a law that forcibly redistributes that dollar. Another factor is the effect of the tax on productivity. If the tax reduces productivity, leading to fewer dollars in total, that effect could reduce happiness more than the effect of spending the dollar on a sick child rather than a billionaire increases it.

We could massively increase taxes on all Americans and spend the revenue on relieving poverty and disease in the third world. Even if they lost half of their current income to that tax, most Americans would still be far richer than most people in developing nations. But no major politician is proposing such a policy, and there is no popular support for it.

Posted by Mixner | October 13, 2007 4:10 PM

This is precisely my point Brutus, you are conflating and equivocating on "utility" and "pleasure."

Let's call the pleasure you define "ostensively" and identity with C-fiber firings hedonic pleasure.

Then, you say that it is the case that we make comparisons of "utility" and act on them all the time.

I am suggesting the plausibility of the second claim is based upon a trivial sense where "we do what we most want" or "we do what we think is most worthwhile."

However, if the claim is "we tend to make accurate evaluations of hedonic pleasure comparisons and act on those" then the claim seems self-evidently false. The idea that when I act to help a friend or take pleasure in the joy of dancing or painting, that what is REALLY going on is JUST C-fiber firings that come from chocolate is certainly not OBVIOUSLY true, the way you make it sound...in fact it seems obviously false. It doesn't seem even remotely plausible that the value of a loving relationship or raising a child or acting justly is simply their ability to produce pleasurable sensations. Why not just take a pill then?

It doesn't seem that this is even true of pleasure. It seems a deep mistake to equate pleasure with certain phenomenological sensations. What of the pleasure of dancing for the sake of dancing? Is that "pleasure" really just about C-fibers firing? Doubtful, very doubtful. Certainly not self-evident.

Let me put it another way. A hedonic account of value is either a)obviously false if interpreted phenomenologically (that is, the only things of value are things that produce certain sensations in the mind) or b)trivial when interpreted as "the things that are valuable are those that are worthwile for people to pursue." We make evaluations of what is worthwhile to pursue all the time (those are the vacuous utility calculations economists rely on). We don't make phenomenological evaluations all the time; often they are just irrelevant.

The short Kantian response is this: utilitarianism treats people as tools for the maximization of valuable mental states (pleasurable feelings). However, people are not tools. They are self-authenticating sources of reasons that cannot be sacrificed to produce more chocolate sensations in other people. This does not seem crazy or mystical. It seems precisely correct.

Posted by Patrick | October 13, 2007 4:25 PM

Paul Graham recently made a larger version of this argument:

http://www.paulgraham.com/philosophy.html

as a Philosophy major who regretted the choice, I found parts of his essay quite compelling.

Posted by Sam Penrose | October 13, 2007 4:43 PM

I AM saying that the only ultimate value is phenomenological. The rest of it just talk and talk is cheap. But everyone knows what happiness and pleasure feel like and values those feelings. Why you think dancing is not phenomenologically pleasurable is a mystery to me.

Why not just take a pill?

That's a live question. Probably because the life of a junkie doesn't actually seem to maximize people's happiness. They seem to build a tolerance to their drug and to have to go to great expense to buy the drug and to become psychologically dependent so that other real long term values are sacrificed for short term benefit in a way that ultimately does not actually optimize the pleasure derived from those experiences.

Posted by Junius Brutus | October 13, 2007 4:45 PM

Mixner said, "I have very serious doubts. A tax you believe to be unjust is likely to decrease your happiness, even if the tax is imposed on someone else. Multiply that unhappiness by millions of people and you may have a very large decrease in happiness. The utility calculation is not just a matter of whether a dollar will buy more happiness for a sick child than for a billionaire, but the effect on the happiness of everyone of a law that forcibly redistributes that dollar..." etc.

Notice: that your natural response was to argue in terms of a diffeent evaluation of the consequences. You thereby cede my larger argument.

We'll have to debate it as an empirical question, but you have now acknowledged that its a perfectly intelligible debate.

Posted by Junius Brutus | October 13, 2007 5:01 PM

Thanks, a very helpful insight.

Posted by Steve Sailer | October 13, 2007 5:02 PM

Part of the confusion in this debate is that Yglesias made an argument which did not address Wilkinson's world view, and since Wilkinson, not surprisingly, considers his world view to be an essential one to be addressed, he considers the argument to be a failure and reads into it more than is there.

But there is no responsibility that an argument to be worthwhile, or to be a good argument, must answer every silly view that is out there.

So Yglesias' argument is not meant to be a defense of the view that it would be a good thing to have policies that minimize inequality. It is an argument that the way to minimize inequality is to place less emphasis on the way that the current distribution of inequality came about, and more on what are the current factors that would affect distribution in the future. Obviously, as some of the responses to him pointed out, these are not completely distinct, but Yglesius is certainly right that we should not assume they are identical.

Wilkinson is complaining that this ignores the possibility that the current distribution of wealth came about in a fashion that is so bound up in justice that any attempt to try to minimize inequality is unjust, and so we need to look at the history in order to determine whether minimizing inequality is a just goal. The support for such a view is probably overstated by the membership in the Libertarian party. An argument for such a view that cannot be dismissed as a noble failure (like say that of Nozick) is still being awaited. So I think Yglesias can be forgiven for not thinking his post needed to include an argument against the view.

It is true that most people reject Utilitarianism because they think it gets the basis of morality wrong. It is also true that this is more true of the population at large than of philosophers. It also is true that at least in anglo-american philosophers, reductionists on the mind-body problem are overrepresented among professional philosophers.

A bigger puzzle is why there are so many philosophers who are Wittgensteinians since central to Wittgensteinianism is the uselessness of being a professional philosopher.

Posted by Lon | October 13, 2007 5:14 PM

Junius,

Notice: that your natural response was to argue in terms of a diffeent evaluation of the consequences. You thereby cede my larger argument.

I didn't "cede" anything. I pointed out that to evaluate the effect on utility of a tax-and-spend policy that redistributes wealth from rich to poor, you need to do a lot more than just ask "Will this dollar buy more happiness for a poor person or a rich person?" Taxing billionaires to fund an increase in spending on SCHIP could very well produce a lower overall utility.

Posted by Mixner | October 13, 2007 5:17 PM

But notice that once you say that all value is phenomenological, Brutus, you have surrendered the very thing you wanted: clarity and precision. It is simply not clear how we can compare phenomenological pleasures or how we can reduce all the things we value to pleasurable feelings in the mind (or endorphins in the brain). The solution you offered, utility preference analysis, simply does not do that since it its plausible depends on not reducing utility to pleasurable sensation.

My point is that now you are engaged in a substantial error theory of value. And once you do that, you give up the "common sense" or "self-evident" mantle. You have to motivate the view in some other way. And that motivation you have utterly failed to provide.

Posted by Patrick | October 13, 2007 6:12 PM

Patrick: what is difficult about understanding phenomenal pain or pleasure? We do it all the time. We compare different past utilities, different probable future utilities based on doing this that or the other thing -- and we do it all the time. That's how we make many day-to-day decisions.

Hmm, Do I want to read poetry or play pushpin? I think right now I would find pushpin boring and poetry would be kind of interesting, so I think I'll read poetry. Oh this poetry was fun for a while but I'm getting tired of it, I think I'll read some philosophy instead. Better yet, I wonder if that hot blond down the street is home? Which sex was better -- the hot blond down the street or the time I met that redhead in Chicago? Definitely the rehead in Chicago. etc. etc.

We make interpersonal comparisons of utility all the time. We compare very disparate goods and decide in favor of one or the other. Would I rather watch a documentary right now or veg out to an action flick? Right now I think I'd prefer to watch the action flick. Should I order the chicken or the beef? And then after dinner I ponder the question who had the better beef Restaurant A or Restaurant B? I liked B better.

See? Its easy. We do it all the time. Literally.

Posted by Junius Brutus | October 13, 2007 7:33 PM

"Wilkinson is complaining that this ignores the possibility that the current distribution of wealth came about in a fashion that is so bound up in justice that any attempt to try to minimize inequality is unjust, and so we need to look at the history in order to determine whether minimizing inequality is a just goal. The support for such a view is probably overstated by the membership in the Libertarian party."

As a (Somewhat lapsed) member thereof, I'd like to point out that we do not, in fact, believe that any attempt to try and minimize inequality would be unjust. If you, for instance, decided of your own free will to divide your own assets up among people less well off than yourself, it would reduce inequality, and be perfectly fine from a libertarian standpoint. Ditto if you freely persuaded others to follow your example.

It would be rather more accurate to state that we're not concerned with end states, but process. It's not increasing or decreasing inequality that is just or unjust, it's how you go about it.

Sadly, most people who decry inequality as unjust are addicted to radically unjust (From a libertarian perspective.) ways of addressing that inequality.

Posted by Brett Bellmore | October 14, 2007 8:55 AM

Seems to me that the trouble with utilitarianism is that it is self-refuting. That is: the pursuit of maximum utility (which always ends up equaling the pursuit of maximum pleasure) is not the most effective way of maximizing utility/pleasure.

Pleasure is one of those things that evades you precisely to the extent that you aim at it. Pleasure is the bloom on an activity well done, as Aristotle puts it. In other words, pleasure attends the real aim of activity--doing something well. It is not itself the aim of activity. And when you take your eye off doing what you're doing, and start looking for the pleasure that will come from it, you don't do what you're doing very well, and the pleasure you were looking for slips away.

In other words, if you're a good utilitarian, and care about maximizing pleasure, you shouldn't be a utilitarian, but an Aristotelian.

Or, to put it even more crudely: Aristotelians do it better.

Posted by Will Roberts | October 14, 2007 11:18 AM

Will: you're confusing utilitarianism as a method of assessing ethical theories and utilitarianism as a guide to day-to-day personal behavior.

Even as a critique of utilitarianism as a guide to personal behavior, your argument is self-refuting. If what you say is true, then obviously the utilitarian in their personal behavior would aim at doing activities well, rather than focusing on happiness per se -- and they would do so on utilitarian grounds.

Posted by Junius Brutus | October 14, 2007 12:16 PM

Junius Brutus:

I disagree. First of all, utilitarianism isn't just a "method of assessing ethical theories," it is itself an ethical theory. That is, it tells us what is good (pleasure) and why it is good (because, as Hume said, it doesn't make any sense to ask why pleasure is good, it has the quality of being an end in itself). One can evaluate all sorts of things by utilitarian criteria: personal choices, public policy, states of affairs, other ethical theories, etc.

I was being a bit polemical and casual, for sure, but for the sake of clarifying:
1. Evaluating choices, policies and theories on utilitarian grounds is itself an activity that can be evaluated on utilitarian grounds.
2. If we do so, I believe we come to the following conclusion: evaluating things on utilitarian grounds does not maximize utility.
3. Contra Hume, pleasure is not an end in itself, but a side-effect of activities that:
a) possess internal norms, and
b) are themselves worth doing for their own sakes.
4. Therefore, we ought to engage in such activities for their own sake, guided by their internal normativity.
5. Behaving thusly, we do not evaluate our activities on utilitarian grounds; they just happen to provide us with pleasure.

Posted by Will Roberts | October 14, 2007 12:53 PM

Will: you're confusing utilitarianism as a method of assessing ethical theories and utilitarianism as a guide to day-to-day personal behavior.

He could be. Or he could be saying that even when assessing ethical theories your aim should be intrinsically superior analytical achievement and not the most expedient route to pleasure maximization. All depends on how you look at it.

Posted by southpaw | October 14, 2007 1:06 PM

1. Evaluating choices, policies and theories on utilitarian grounds is itself an activity that can be evaluated on utilitarian grounds.
2. If we do so, I believe we come to the following conclusion: evaluating things on utilitarian grounds does not maximize utility.

I disagree. You have a point in the context of social behavior. But the same considerations don't apply to the question at hand: the practice of metaethical theorizing.

Evaluating my every next move and word on the basis of a comprehensive utilitarian calculus when out on a date, for example, will probably not meet the utilitarian test of producing the most happy result. But you can't generlize from this to the idea that utilitarianism fails as method of metaethical analysis.

3. Contra Hume, pleasure is not an end in itself, but a side-effect of activities that:
a) possess internal norms, and
b) are themselves worth doing for their own sakes.

You're begging the question. You can look at practices as having internal norms and intrinsic value. But that is precisely what is at issue, so you can't just assume it as you do here. Most people do things because doing those things makes them happier -- and they are aware that those things make them happier.

Thus you may pursue scholarship as being in some sense worth doing for its own sake. But if you do, I bet you enjoy scholarship. And I bet you know you do. So you may tell yourself that you are some Christ-like scholar doing it purely for the benefit of posterity, but I think most scholars find scholarship satisfying so I am in no way compelled to join your assumption.

4. Therefore, we ought to engage in such activities for their own sake, guided by their internal normativity.
5. Behaving thusly, we do not evaluate our activities on utilitarian grounds; they just happen to provide us with pleasure.

Yeah, and I read Playboy but only for the articles.

In the end, you'll never be able to peg utilitarianism as self-defeating by pointing to some other ethical theory X -- (especially not on the grounds that theory X is better at producing happiness!). Utilitarianism is a method not a substantive set of values. It has no prior substantive content and is thus theoretically compatible with any content that you might arrive at by whatever means.

And no matter what X is or how you arrived at it, I can always ask, "Does X maximize happiness?".

Posted by Junius Brutus | October 14, 2007 1:51 PM

Fair Brutus,

I am no ascetic. I have no problem with pleasure and happiness. I have no interest in denying the pleasure and happiness I achieve through the activities I pursue. But that is neither here nor there.

You write: "Utilitarianism is a method not a substantive set of values."

I ask in return, a method for what?

As a method for empirically describing how people act (as suggested by your claim, "Most people do things because doing those things makes them happier"):

a) it's either not true in many instances (we're the animal that commits suicide, after all), or else

b) its so empty as to be meaningless (this is the problem marginal utility/rational choice theory gets into: if you can construct a rational choice argument for buying lotto tickets--which you can--then every choice is rational by the very fact that its a choice; hence, you have no theory). You get close to this with your final claim, that "no matter what X is or how you arrived at it, I can always ask, 'Does X maximize happiness?'"

On the other hand, if utilitarianism is a method for evaluating courses of action, etc., then it is a method for sorting out which Xs are better and which are worse. But then it is not purely formal at all; it has as a substantive content the claim that X is better than Y if X, not Y, maximizes happiness.

You can't have it both ways: utilitarianism cannot simultaneously be a purely formal method with no substantive content and at the same time a rival of normative theories.

Posted by Will Roberts | October 14, 2007 2:56 PM

Esteemed Will:

I have been discussing utilitarianism as a metethical theory not an empirical psychology. You're right I spoke too loosely when I said that utilitarianism had no substantive content. That is not strictly true, but it is true that utilitarianism has ALMOST no substantive content other than, in many formulations, a hedonic theory of value. What that means in terms of every day activity is an empirical question and no one, as a utilitarian, has a prior commitment to any particular strategy in the pursuit of realizing the maximization of happiness. Utilitarianism is very pragmatically flexible that way.

Here's what's wrong with your argument. First you propose a very tendentious characterization of what utilitarianism counsels with regard to day-to-day activity. Then you claim that utilitarianism, thus distorted, is a poor guide to maximizing utlity, so poor in fact as to be self-defeating. Much better, you say, is to be an Aristotelian and pursue various practices for their own sakes.

But, if what you suggest really works, then it would obviously be endorsed by utilitarianism, so it is no objection to utilitarianism at all, only to the caricature of it you drew for yourself.

And utilitarianism is not empty. While utilitarianism will not be able to make really fine distinctions, it can be a very important guide to public policy. Thus, I have been arguing that $40 billion spent on health insurance for poor children is a better use of the money than if it were used to lower taxes on billionaires. That is a substantive moral claim that follows quite plausibly from utilitarian premises.

Posted by Junius Brutus | October 14, 2007 3:37 PM

How dare you bring it back to the policy questions at hand, Traitorous Brutus!

I'm not sure we need utilitarianism to tell us that SCHIP is better than further tax cuts, but if your utilitarianism will endorse my Aristotelianism, then my Aristotelianism will abide your utilitarianism.

Posted by Will Roberts | October 14, 2007 3:53 PM

Agreed then, my epiphenomenal friend. As long as your Aristotelianism delivers the goods, my utilitarianism is unconcerned about you telling yourself whatever stories you find pleasant about various "sakes" belonging to various "practices".

BTW: I may be traitorous, but I am guided only by the greater good of the republic!

Posted by Junius Brutus | October 14, 2007 4:04 PM

Seems to me that the trouble with utilitarianism is that it is self-refuting. That is: the pursuit of maximum utility (which always ends up equaling the pursuit of maximum pleasure) is not the most effective way of maximizing utility/pleasure. Pleasure is one of those things that evades you precisely to the extent that you aim at it.

Does it? How have you determined this? It seems to me that you are more likely to get pleasure by seeking it than not seeking it, by doing things that you have reason to believe will give you pleasure than by doing things that you do not. Yes, sometimes you find pleasure in doing things you don't expect to give you pleasure, or that you do for reasons other than the pursuit of pleasure, but in general you're more likely to get pleasure from doing things you like doing. And I don't see how your claim would show that utilitarianism is self-refuting even if it were true. If the moral choice is the one that maximizes pleasure, it's not just the effect on the chooser's own pleasure that matters but the effect on everyone else's too.

But defining utility as pleasure is not my idea of utilitarianism, anyway. I think it is more properly defined as the maximization of happiness or preference. And I think almost everyone is a utilitarian, in this sense, almost all of the time. Consequentialist arguments dominate our public discourse about morality. Even religious people, who are more likely to talk about morality in terms of rules or commandments, usually seem to feel obliged to offer some consequentialist justification or rationale for their moral assertions (e.g. homosexuality is wrong not just because it violates God's will, but because it harms families and society).

It is only at the margins, when we get to issues like torture, that people tend to get nervous about utilitarian arguments.

Posted by Mixner | October 14, 2007 4:51 PM