The inutility of utilitarianism in public policy

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Discuss Goodin’s claim that ‘under those special conditions that characterize public policy-making, utilitarianism looks distinctly credible, in a way it might not for private individuals in guiding their personal conduct


1. Introduction

In the last several decades, utilitarianism has been exposed as an inhuman and inadequate account of morality. While Goodin is prepared to concede utilitarianism’s losses in the world of private morality, he claims it can still withstand assault in the public sphere. But Goodin’s defence is paltry; his arguments are inadequate and he simply fails to address several key utilitarian faults. The idea of a utilitarian politician remains just as unpalatable as that of a utilitarian individual, and the potential consequences much more disturbing. Utilitarians will just have to get used to the fact that morality cannot be reduced to maths.

Utilitarianism is the thesis that that whatever act maximises overall levels of pleasure is the morally correct act. This essay will begin by describing Goodin’s conception of specifically political kind of utilitarianism. I will then outline Goodin’s contention about how this form of utilitarianism is immune to three important anti-utilitarian arguments – that it asks too much of people, that it provides an easy excuse for breaking moral codes and that it ignores the role-dependent aspects of morality. In section three I will show that this argument is flawed while in section four I will put forward four more anti-utilitarian arguments which Goodin fails to address – that utilitarianism is deeply counter-intuitive, that it demands an inhuman personality, that it falsely conflates individuals into a single mass and that there exists no single measure of human welfare on which to base the theory anyway.


2. Utilitarianism: good for government?

Goodin believes that while utilitarianism is a weak philosophy when imposed upon a private actor, it is credible when applied to public actors.

…there is something special about the situation of public officials that makes utilitarianism more plausible for them… than for private individuals (Goodin 1995: 62)

A central part of Goodin’s argument is that public actors, if they are to be utilitarian at all, would be forced to adopt rule-utilitarianism rather than act-utilitarianism. That is, rather than act according to the specifics of every scenario, they must formulate general rules which will have the overall effect of maximising utility. Goodin argues that this is both necessary - politicians have too little information to fine-tune policies to individual circumstances and public policies can in any case only affect general tendencies – and desirable - since the existence of clear rules renders life more predictable and makes self-regulation by citizens more likely (ibid.: 63). Goodin argues that this kind of utilitarianism is able to withstand the standard attacks on utilitarianism.


2.1. Not just for saints?

Utilitarianism is often criticised for requiring of everyone a fanatical selflessness – the utilitarian must constantly be acting so as to maximise the total good, regardless of our particular wishes. In a world of appalling widespread poverty, this would mean impoverishing ourselves to subsistence level, at least if few others were willing to make similar sacrifices. However, the public actor has the power to ensure that everyone is required to make the same sacrifice, so that nobody has to make an intolerably burdensome one (ibid.: 67). Thus an act that seems fanatical at the private level becomes only reasonable at a public level.


2.2. Doesn’t justify every means?

Utilitarianism is also criticised for asking too little. Nothing is left sacrosanct as every line can be guiltlessly transgressed if it is to be transgressed for the greater good. Cherished concepts such as innocence and justice are made meaningless. Moral dilemmas are reduced to cold mechanical formula as the end justifies every means (Hampshire 1978: 4).

Goodin tries to allay such fears by reminding us that ‘government house utilitarianism’ is rule-utilitarianism. In prescribing rules rather than specific actions it ends up becoming a kind of deontology, thus allowing us to preserve our reverence for specific prohibitions regardless of the consequences (Goodin 1995: 69). It is very difficult in practice, or so Goodin argues, for law-makers to circumnavigate their own laws and act according to the requirements of a specific scenario (ibid.: 71).

In those rare situations where it is possible to bypass the rules, Goodin argues that there are few situations in which breaking a deontological law really would produce the most utility, since the damage done by breaking a law, will, in the long-term, greatly reduce levels of utility – e.g. in response to the classic anti-utilitarian example of hanging an innocent man to prevent a bloody riot, Goodin argues that hanging the innocent man will diminish trust in a legal system with terrible consequences (ibid.: 70).

Goodin claims that it is a ‘truly exceptional case’ where a politician will be faced with a situation whereby utilitarianism requires a rule to be broken and the politician is able to get away with it. His answer to the criticism that utilitarianism makes the concept of dirty hands meaningless is therefore simply to say that for the most part, politicians have no cause to get their hands dirty.


2.3. Roles and partial obligations

The third flaw of utilitarianism which Goodin acknowledges is that it does not account for roles and partial obligations. According to this perspective, we have agent-relative duties to benefit particular people, and to benefit them personally (Goodin 1995: 72). Goodin once again answers by acknowledging the weight of this charge when directed at private utilitarianism, but argues that everything changes when utilitarianism is applied to the public sphere. Public actors who act according to partial obligations are not acting according to morality, rather they are guilty of nepotism. Likewise, we do not care if a public agent provides a good personally, or employs some other agent to provide it (Goodin uses the example of one country managing to manipulate another country into providing a domestic service (ibid.: 74)). What seems alien in the private sphere is natural in the public.


3. All Goodin’s arguments fail

3.1. Utilitarianism can still potentially ask too much

The possible end-states made desirable by utilitarianism are simply too diverse for Goodin to be able to rule out the possibility of government house utilitarianism asking too much. For example, utilitarianism may demand that a minority be impoverished in order that the majority’s prosperity be multiplied, thus increasing overall utility. If the public actor takes his duty to maximise overall utility seriously, isn’t he led inexorably towards a totalitarian mindset? People do not generally use their freedom for maximum overall utility – so why not use whatever means the government has available to manipulate and coerce them into optimally productive behaviour? However unlikely they seem, there is no way that Goodin can prove that such scenarios would never be desirable from a utilitarian perspective.


3.2. Utilitarianism enfeebles morality

Goodin is also unsuccessful in his attempt to convince us that deontological prohibitions will for the most part be respected under government house utilitarianism. He claims that situations where there is significant utilitarian cause for them to be broken are exceedingly rare. Yet other writers argue more convincingly that such situations are in fact the norm in the political world.

Michael Walzer goes as far as to say that if a politician is not willing to commit moral transgressions, he will fail to achieve anything at all.

No one succeeds in politics without getting his hands dirty (Walzer 1974: 66)

Goodin response is to claim that politicians find it very difficult to circumnavigate the rules and that it is clearly foolish from a consequentialist perspective to break deontological prohibitions, but daily reality would surely prove him entirely wrong. Politicians are constantly misleading us not because they fail to take a realistic consequentialist perspective, but because they are particularly consequentialist in their outlook.


3.3. Roles and obligations still play a part

Goodin’s argument against this criticism is more convincing, but still shows utilitarianism to be an inadequate account of morality, even public morality. Goodin himself accepts the limitations of his own argument when he acknowledges that public actors do have partial obligations, for example to particular groups to whom they have made campaign promises and to one’s own nation (Goodin 1995: 73). Goodin argues that, even with these special obligations the morality is still end-centred rather than agent-centred, so it is still essentially a utilitarian morality. While it is true that public morality is concerned only with ends, it is highly questionable whether a moral theory which acknowledges the authority of a set of potentially conflicting obligations emerging from relationships between role-defined actors can be counted utilitarian. Rather than defend utilitarianism per se, Goodin has simply latched it on to an altogether different kind of morality.


4. The criticisms which Goodin forgot

Utilitarianism remains implausible even in the public sphere not only because Goodin’s counter-argument against the three key criticisms described above is weak, but also because he ignores several powerful anti-utilitarian arguments altogether.


4.1. Utilitarianism is counter-intuitive

When Goodin tries to assure us that utilitarianism will only very rarely demand that cherished prohibitions be transgressed, it is difficult to escape the suspicion that he is searching for a ‘consequentialist argument for some sentiment which does not have its roots in consequentialist considerations at all’ (Williams 1981: 44). Why does Goodin seem so reluctant to allow that utilitarianism may require that we ignore prohibitions against such intuitively abhorrent notions as illegally hanging the innocent when they are obstacles to greater utility? If utilitarianism were an adequate moral scheme, surely we should dismiss such qualms as irrational and the possibility that such events may occur frequently would be of no cause for concern. In its attempt to reduce morality to a simple mathematical formula, utilitarianism is forced into ‘a great simple-mindedness’ (Williams 1973: 149).


4.2. Utilitarianism is inhuman

Utilitarianism’s counter-intuitive bent highlights the fact that it would be a very strange person who genuinely made all his moral decisions according to utilitarian calculations. By denying their validity, ‘utilitarianism alienates one from one’s moral feelings’ (Williams 1973: 104). A deep-seated reluctance to become a killer is to be regarded as an unpleasant sensation to be weighed against other pleasing or displeasing feelings and nothing more.

Utilitarianism similarly demands that we renounce all notions of integrity. Whatever projects, non-utilitarian beliefs or notions of identity a man has come to build his life on, must simply be abandoned if it comes into conflict with the requirements of the greatest good. The only virtue which a man may truly possess is utilitarian benevolence, all other dispositions and attachments are merely numbers in the utilitarian calculator – they are thus stripped of any genuine significance (Williams 1973: 116)

What kind of person would be willing to subordinate their identity and all their most powerful intuitions to the cold mechanics of utilitarian calculation? Do we really want to be governed by people following such an inhuman moral code, who cannot acknowledge that ‘there are actions which remain morally disagreeable even when politically justified’ (Williams 1981: 62).


4.3. Utilitarianism obliterates the moral status of individual

Another way in which utilitarianism fails to live up to our most strongly-felt moral intuitions is in its conflation of individuals into a single unity. As has already been said, the maltreatment of a minority for the greater benefit of the majority is entirely justifiable from a utilitarian perspective if it produces greater overall unity (Williams 1973: 142). For example, since children who are brought up by state institutions are statistically very likely to enter crime and lead a generally miserable life, it would best from a utilitarian perspective for the state to simply execute them as young children – before they have a chance to reduce overall utility - at least if this could be done secretly. The patent evil of such a policy is invisible to the utilitarian.


4.4. There is no common measure!

Finally, the concept at the very core of utilitarianism is in itself nonsensical. Utilitarianism must assume some kind of common measure by which all human welfare can be measured. Yet it is obvious that this common measure does not exist. The vast multiplicity of pleasures and pains available to the human psyche cannot possibly be measured like counters on an abacus. How can such varied human goods as a sense of achievement, excitement at danger, absorption in music, passionate love, a sense of material security and marital bliss be compared on a single scale?

It is true that in the case of public actor, the concept of human welfare can legitimately be given a more limited scope, but even here, is there any clear, mathematical way of measuring the good of economic wellbeing with that of physical health, education or liberty? Yet these are all goods which politicians regularly talk of as having independent value.


Conclusion

Goodin’s argument fails to demonstrate that utilitarianism possesses credibility even in the public sphere. The flaws in utilitarianism are just too profound for it to be rehabilitated by a simple restriction of its applicability. The very characteristics that make it attractive - its simplicity and apparent rationality – are also its downfall. Such a lucid abstraction cannot hope to do justice to the Byzantine world of human morality.


Bibliography

• Goodin, RE (1995), Utilitarianism as a Public Philosophy (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press)
• Hampshire, S (1978), Public and Private Morality (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press)
• Williams, B (1973), ‘A Critique of Utilitarianism’ in JJC Smart and B Williams, Utilitarianism: For and Against (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press)
• Williams, B (1981), Moral luck: philosophical papers (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press)
• Walzer, M (1974), ‘Political Action: The Problem of Dirty Hands’ in M Cohen and T Nagel (eds) War and Moral Responsibility (Princeton, Princeton University Press)