Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
warrant it. In these cases, the act utilitarian will perform a detailed analysis of the
consequences to determine the best course of action.
3.
Act utilitarianism ignores our innate sense of duty.
Utilitarianism seems to be at odds with how ordinary people make moral decisions.
People often act out of a sense of duty or obligation, yet the act utilitarian theory
gives no weight to these notions. Instead, all that matters are the consequences of
the action.
W. D. Ross gives the following example [19]. Suppose I've made a promise to
A. If I keep my word, I will perform an action that produces 1,000 units of good for
him. If I break my promise, I will be able to perform an action that produces 1,001
units of good for B. According to act utilitarianism, I ought to break my promise to
A and produce 1,001 units of good for B. Yet most people would say the right thing
for me to do is keep my word.
Note that it does no good for an act utilitarian to come back and say that
the hard feelings caused by breaking my word to A will have a negative impact on
total happiness of
N units, because all I have to do is change the scenario so that
breaking my promise to A enables me to produce 1,001
−
N units of good for B.
We've arrived at the same result: breaking my promise results in 1 more unit of good
than keeping my word. The real issue is that utilitarianism forces us to reduce all
consequences to a positive or negative number. “Doing the right thing” has a value
that is difficult to quantify.
4.
We cannot predict with certainty the consequences of an action.
In doing the utilitarian calculus, we can identify possible consequences of an action,
but we may misjudge the certainty, intensity, and duration of these consequences.
The action may have other unforeseen consequences that we forget to include in our
calculation. These errors may cause us to choose the wrong course of action.
5.
Act utilitarianism is susceptible to the problem of moral luck.
As we noted in the previous point, sometimes actions have unforeseen conse-
quences. Is it right for the moral worth of an action to depend solely on its con-
sequences when these consequences are not fully under the control of the moral
agent? This is called the
problem of moral luck
.
Suppose I hear that one of my aunts is in the hospital, and I send her a bouquet
of flowers. After the bouquet is delivered, she suffers a violent allergic reaction
to one of the exotic flowers in the floral arrangement, extending her stay in the
hospital. My gift gave my aunt a bad case of hives and a much larger hospital bill.
Since my action had far more negative consequences than positive consequences, an
act utilitarian would say my action was bad. That doesn't seem fair.
+
Two additional arguments have been raised against utilitarianism in general. We'll
save these arguments for the end of the section on rule utilitarianism.
While it is not perfect, act utilitarianism is an objective, rational ethical theory that
allows a person to explain why a particular action is right or wrong. It joins Kantianism
on our list of workable ethical theories we can use to evaluate moral problems.
