Apples and oranges — Part I: what is wrong with utilitarianism, anyway?

Utilitarianism is a philosophy to guide the choices we make, in which these should be judged on their consequences, against a requirement of maximizing happiness and well-being (or minimizing harm) for all affected individuals. Is this approach realistic and useful, or fundamentally unfit for purpose?

Our days are filled with innumerable decisions. Many are trivial and of little consequence (like what to cook for dinner or which shirt to wear), some are pretty momentous (whether to quit our job or break up with our partner). Different people make different decisions about the same kind of thing all the time — we are a heterogeneous lot. But the same person (you, or I!) tends to make decisions that are more or less consistent over time. How do we do that?

Two decision making modes

We make use of two mechanisms to make choices. One is a process in which all (or at least the most important) aspects — the pluses and the minuses — of the options we have available are evaluated and combined into a single result, allowing us to determine which option gives us the most joy, or the least pain. It is, of course, what we know as cost-benefit analysis. This process delivers consistency in the same way that the algebraic summing of quantities produces the same result, every time you do the calculation (because that is what we really do here). In the same circumstances, we therefore tend to prefer the same option.

The other mode is based on the application of rules. Whenever we are faced with a choice between multiple options, we invoke a rule (or, more commonly, a set of rules) that tells us what to do. Some of these rules we develop ourselves (“no coffee after midday”), others we choose to adopt (reflecting our values, e.g., “buy fairtrade” or our religion, e.g., “ do not covet your neighbour’s ass “), yet others are imposed, like laws (“don’t exceed the speed limit”).

These two mechanisms not only mean we are mostly pretty consistent in our choices, but they also reduce the cognitive load of making decisions. This is good because we are cognitive misers who seek to minimize thinking effort (and we don’t always have all the time in the world to make up our minds). At first sight, the latter seems superior in this respect, but given that there will often be lots of rules that are at play and that need to be identified and combined, that advantage may not be so great. Imagine choosing what speed to drive at. There is of course the maximum permitted speed (by law), but most people will on occasion exceed this limit, and invoke additional rules and exceptions. You might keep meticulously below the limit in built-up areas, but on country roads you might have a rule that you drive faster than legally permitted on a straight road with good visibility. On motorways your rule could be to set your cruise control a little over the speed limit, but not so much that you’d attract the attention of the police. Maybe you have a rule that this setting might be a bit higher at night when the road is clear, and another one telling you to slow down to well below the speed limit when it is raining. That’s a lot of rules for a very simple choice.

The same question, using the analytical approach might require you to estimate, on the cost side of opting for a higher speed, the risk of getting caught speeding, the elevated risk of an accident (and of serious consequences if you do have an accident), the fuel consumption for a given speed and so on. On the benefit side, you might consider the reduction in travel time, the consequences of arriving earlier (e.g., catching your flight), or the enjoyment that driving at a given speed delivers. You can then weigh up whether those benefits feel sufficiently attractive to justify the cost.

The ethics test

The difference between the two approaches is most acute in ethical affairs, for example in the trolley problem. This classic moral thought experiment, first formulated by the British philosopher Philippa Foot in 1967, is popular among moral psychology researchers, and has even been set up in real life. A runaway trolley (also known as a tram) comes hurtling down a track, and is sure to kill a group of five unsuspecting workers. However, there is lever that you can pull to divert the trolley to a side track, where only one worker will be killed.

If you decide to pull the lever in order to minimize the number of fatalities, then you would be following the philosophy of utilitarianism, which tells us we must consider the totality of the consequences of our actions, and maximize well-being (or ‘ utility’ **, a broad concept that reflects the pleasure something gives us, or the pain it inflicts), or minimize harm.

However, pulling the lever is a deliberate act that will directly lead to the death of the lone worker. This might violate an important rule (“don’t kill people”) that you hold. If you decide not to pull the lever for this reason, you would be following the philosophy of deontologism, in which right and wrong are not judged by the outcomes of actions, but by whether they adhere to certain rules.

The trolley problem illustrates not only that ethical challenges are hard. It also demonstrates that having one’s decisions guided by a calculation of the costs and benefits (on which basis diverting the trolley would win hands down) is not necessarily as straightforward as it perhaps first seemed.

Utilitarianism under scrutiny

A few weeks ago, the eclectic economist Russ Roberts, host of the rather splendid podcast, published a 4-part essay in which he constructs a comprehensive critique of utilitarianism, billed as the “intellectual backstory” to his recently published book, Wild Problems: a guide to the decisions that define us. Does this critique, which pretty much summarizes the most important points of criticism that can be levelled at utilitarianism, leave it fatally wounded, or can it be redeemed?

Roberts argues that the calculus that guides our day-to-day choices, based on measuring and totting up the pros and cons of prospective actions — pleasure and pain — is unsuitable for making big life decisions. These are indeed rife with disparate aspects, many of which intangible (say, a person’s dignity, or the atmosphere of a city) and unmeasurable (for example the beauty of a landscape or the sound a car exhaust makes). The conventional approach for trading off apples and oranges is to compress them into a monetary value or another one-dimensional number, but this is just not possible for such complex, immaterial characteristics.

Utilitarianism also necessarily simplifies issues way too much. It focuses on what can be quantified (e.g., evaluating charities solely on the basis of their overheads), or by mapping them onto spuriously precise made- up numbers (e.g., ‘food insecurity’ at 10.6%), which can only mislead us when making decisions. Moreover, anything that cannot be quantified is left out, as if it has no bearing on the decision.

Jeremy Bentham, the founder of utilitarianism, wanted to be the Newton of morality, writes Roberts. He claimed that working out moral decisions could be as straightforward as calculating the trajectories of celestial bodies, with the same precision and accuracy, simply by adding up the positive and negative impacts. This is not only practically impossible since utility is far too vague as a concept to pin down, it also leaves no room for the rich context within which we make decisions, characterized by rules of conduct, social norms, culture, community, relationships and so on.

Bentham’s promise, that utilitarianism can draw the line between right and wrong, objectively, scientifically and precisely, cannot be fulfilled. Furthermore, a life well-lived is not a matter of accumulating pleasure and avoiding pain, and it is not a calculus equation to be solved.

All this looks like a pretty solid challenge to utilitarian thinking. In part II we will explore these claims, and in the final part we will attempt to answer the question whether or not utilitarianism has (and indeed ever had) a future. Tune in next week!

(edit: Part II is here, and part III here.)

Originally published at http://koenfucius.wordpress.com on August 26, 2022.

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