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Brink, Kagan, Utilitarianism and Self-Sacrifice*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 January 2009

Abstract

Act-utilitarianism claims that one is required to do nothing less than what makes (or can reasonably be expected to make) the largest contribution to overall utility. Critics of this moral theory commonly charge that it is unreasonably demanding. Shelly Kagan and David Brink, however, have recently defended act-utilitarianism against this charge. Kagan argues that act-utilitarianism is right, and its critics wrong, about how demanding morality is. In contrast, Brink argues that, once we have the correct objective account of welfare and once we accept that act-utilitarianism is a criterion of moral rightness, not necessarily a good method for everyday moral thought, act-utilitarianism is not as demanding as its critics claim. I shall argue that Brink's arguments for thinking act-utilitarianism is not so demanding fail. I shall then argue against Kagan that, in comparison with act-utilitarianism, rule-utilitarianism is considerably less demanding and more plausible.

Type
Discussion
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

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Footnotes

*

Thanks go to Roger Crisp, Andrew Moore, Robert Frazier, David Brink, David McNaughton, and an anonymous reviewer for this journal for helpful comments on a previous draft of this paper. I am also grateful to the members of the Philosophy Departments at Keele and Reading, especially John Cottingham, for discussion of the paper.

References

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3 Kagan, , pp. 12.Google Scholar

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8 Brink, ch. 8, sect. 2.

9 Ibid., pp. 222–31.

10 The theory is objectivist because how much the realization of these capacities benefits me is not determined solely by how much pleasure I get out of it or of how much it satisfies my desires.

11 Brink, , p. 233.Google Scholar

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13 Brink, , p. 242.Google Scholar

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15 See Singer, P.'s ‘Famine, Affluence, and Morality’, Philosophy and Public Affairs, i (1972), 229–43Google Scholar; and Practical Ethics, ch. 8.

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17 Brink, , pp. 256–61Google Scholar. At p. 216 n.4, Brink cites important articulations of this point by J. S. Mill, Sidgwick, G. E. Moore, P. Railton, and Parfit. Brink's use of this point is closest to Railton's. See Railton, , ‘Alienation, Consequentialism, and the Demands of Morality’, Philosophy and Public A airs, xiii (1984), 134–71Google Scholar. For acute criticism of Railton's line of thought, see Johnson, C., ‘Character Traits and Objectively Right Action’, Social Theory and Practice, xv (1989), 6788CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Later in the text, I shall put forward an argument against Brink that applies equally well against Railton.

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19 Ibid., p. 434.

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21 Here I borrow from Parfit's matchless discussion (Parfit, , pp. 2930).Google Scholar

22 Ibid., p. 30.

23 A similar point is made in Mackie, J. L.'s Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong, Harmondsworth, 1977, at p. 123.Google Scholar

24 The same argument could be made against Railton's defence of act-consequentialism (op. cit.).

25 Kagan, , p. 34.Google Scholar

27 Ibid., p. 35. Cf. pp. 395–6.

28 See the quotations from Sidgwick and from Dworkin earlier in the text. Cf. Kagan, , pp. 368–9.Google Scholar

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33 The rules in question must of course be ‘fairly general’ because rule-utilitarianism collapses into extensional equivalence with act-utilitarianism if the rules are allowed to be infinitely specific.

34 See Ross, W. D., The Right and the Good, Oxford, 1930, pp. 34–5.Google Scholar

35 One of the most prominent objections to rule-utilitarianism is this. Rule-utilitarianism requires us to follow the set of rules whose social acceptance would have the best consequences, and it requires this of us even when this set of rules is not widely accepted. But following such rules in such circumstances can result in disaster. The claim that we are supposed to stick to such rules even when doing so will result in disaster is implausible. Rule-utilitarians have an answer to this objection. Their answer is that the utility-maximizing set of rules will include a rule that one prevent disasters (see Brandt, R., ‘Fairness to Indirect Optimific Theories in Ethics’, Ethics, xcviii (1988), 341–60, at p. 359CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and ‘Morality and Its Critics’, American Philosophical Quarterly, xxvi (1989), 89100, at p. 96Google Scholar). For further discussion of rule-utilitarianism's rule that one prevent disasters, see my ‘Rule-consequentialism’, sects. II and III, and ‘Rule-consequentialism and Demandingness’, 269–70, 274–5.Google Scholar