This is a valiant attempt to try to ease the tension between utilitarianism and actual human behavior:
Joshua Greene seems to want to have his cake and eat it too: defend utilitarianism while accepting the fact that parents lavish money on their kids that could, from an objective utilitarian viewpoint, be better spent on less fortunate people in the world.
His clever move is to suggest that utilitarianism is an "ideal." We accept that people will never reach the ideal because their extreme concern for their children is so deeply rooted. But the ideal is nevertheless an important goal to aspire to.
If we accept that it's a matter of degree, not of strict compliance with binding rules, that raises the question how close it's reasonable to want people to get to the ideal. It's easy to accept one of his examples: parents who are considering buying an $800 stroller for their child should instead buy a perfectly adequate $200 stroller and donate the $600 they save to charity.
But that example dodges the more uncomfortable questions you raise once you start pursuing this line of argument. For instance (to loosely use another of Greene and Joshua Knobe's examples), instead of paying for your child to go to their top choice of college, you could send them to a cheaper, inferior college (or even no college at all), saving thousands of dollars, and donating the money to a charity that does lots of good for suffering people -- say, Doctors Without Borders. It's easy to imagine that an objective and purely utilitarian observer would prefer the inferior college and the massive donation to a humanitarian charity. But it's impossible to imagine significant numbers of real people actually making that kind of decision.
One particularly revealing thing about this exchange is that Greene himself admits that he would hardly follow a utilitarian regimen of being stingy with his children to allow for morally magnificent levels of philanthropy. Why isn't he convinced by his own "ideal"?
I admit that I share Greene's cognitive dissonance. I habitually analyze ethical questions as if utilitarianism were true. Yet if I were a parent, I would knowingly spend extraneous resources on my children that could have led to objectively better consequences if donated to strangers. (And aside from having children, I'd say the same thing of spending for myself.) I don't mean this to be a remotely surprising commentary on my own character; I'm sure the same thing is true of everyone I know.
Even if you make some sacrifices that are laudable on utilitarian grounds, you'll never even come close to doing all you could to maximize net utility. Is there any point to an ethical commandment that no one ever follows?
IN THE COMMENTS: "Jason (the commenter)" adds:
What is the utility of utilitarianism?
I think the speakers minimized the problems associated with individuals following utilitarianism by focusing so much on parents and their children. You'd also have to stop giving special treatment to your relatives, spouse, friends, et cetera.
I suspect if enough people behaved this way the fabric of society would collapse. Of course, they'd be so free of passion they'd probably cease to exist after a generation. Why would utilitarians have kids in the first place?
5 comments:
Is there any point to an ethical commandment that no one ever follows?
What is the utility of utilitarianism?
I think the speakers minimized the problems associated with individuals following utilitarianism by focusing so much on parents and their children. You'd also have to stop giving special treatment to your relatives, spouse, friends, et cetera.
I suspect if enough people behaved this way the fabric of society would collapse. Of course, they'd be so free of passion they'd probably cease to exist after a generation. Why would utilitarians have kids in the first place?
For personal behavior a better motivator is something like pride. I think even Joshua Greene believes this. Listening to him talking about the rich person and their $800 stroller he almost sounded like he was trying to shame them into being more charitable.
So, I would say the benefit of utilitarianism is as a rhetorical tool for politicians. The definition of what that the greater good is, is vague, allowing you to justify pretty much anything. You could even say Ayn Rand and Hitler were utilitarians; it's that undefined.
"If we accept that it's a matter of degree, not of strict compliance with binding rules, that raises the question how close it's reasonable to want people to get to the ideal."
I think the problem here is that you'd like to see a black/white type of answer to a question that requires one to think in shades of grey (which is harder).
"Is there any point to an ethical commandment that no one ever follows?"
Yes, if it moves people closer to following the ideal (assuming you accept the ideal is a good one).
Question: What do you mean by "...as if utilitarianism were true"? Utilitarianism is not descriptive, is it?
"True" = correct about how we ought to behave, i.e. a correct (true) moral theory.
"If we accept that it's a matter of degree, not of strict compliance with binding rules, that raises the question how close it's reasonable to want people to get to the ideal."
This is another problem. Doing things for the benefit of others isn't utilitarianism. If utilitarianism were just about giving away money we'd call it charity, and charity has already been covered by all the major religions I can think of.
Utilitarianism is about doing bad things to a minority to help a majority. Generally the minority does not include oneself. I don't see how this is an ideal anyone should strive for.
Utilitarianism is helpful when you have to decide between killing two groups of randomly selected people--kill the fewest people! For most other purposes it is ripe for abuse.
In a literary context, Turgenev explored the crux of these issues masterfully in Fathers and Sons. His character Yevgeny Bazarov believes only in science and scorns emotion as irrational. Turgenev, like Paul Krugman ironically enough in his essay today on where economics went wrong, illustrates the doom that awaits adherents to models of human behavior constructed solely on rational principles.
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