Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
action. Now, according to Pluhar, Prior Existence Utilitarianism cannot
condemn the action or project of having the miserable child before the
child actually exists. Therefore, she assumes that the corresponding
character cannot be judged wrong.
45
However, utilitarianism has more possibilities of taking character into
account than Pluhar considers. Pluhar assumes a version of utilitari-
anism that accepts actions as a direct evaluative focal point, and char-
acter as an indirect one. In that case, actions would be directly evaluated
in terms of the welfare they produce. We would be required to choose
the action that maximises welfare. Character would be evaluated indi-
rectly, depending on the action. We would need to know whether an
action is right or wrong, and could then conclude whether the character
of the agent was right or wrong. As Pluhar puts it: '
For a utilitarian
, the
bad characters of the parents do not “give the project a strong immoral
value”:
it is the project that makes their characters bad.
'
46
If that version
of utilitarianism is assumed, then, in the case at hand, there would
indeed be no way of condemning the character, if the action to which
it leads is morally acceptable. That, however, would be a peculiar kind
of utilitarianism, with actions as a primary and character as a secondary
focal point. A person's character could only be evaluated on the basis
of the consequences of each particular action. That is not the way char-
acter evaluations are typically made. One could wonder what the use of
making character evaluations in that way would be if character would
not be a more general category than a particular action.
Let me briefly investigate more promising possibilities. One alterna-
tive is to turn it around and argue for character as primary evaluative
focal point and evaluate acts only indirectly. In that case, an act would
be right if it sprang from the right disposition, i.e. if the agent had the
right character. For instance, let us assume that the disposition of caring
particularly for one's own child is generally a good thing, i.e. gener-
ally maximises welfare. Imagine a case in which a mother rescues her
own child from a burning building rather than several others. According
to the version of utilitarianism we are now considering, with character
as a primary and actions as a secondary focal point, rescuing her own
child rather than several others would be the morally right thing to do.
However, I think that the focus on character, rather than acts, would
be suited as a decision procedure, if at all, rather than being an attrac-
tive account of rightness. As a decision procedure, i.e. a rule of thumb
indicating how to go about maximising welfare, focusing on character
might recommend itself because it avoids making complex welfare
calculations before every action. Furthermore, focusing on character
Search WWH ::
Custom Search