Philosophy 361 Ethics Darwall Fall 1995 MILL V I Last time we considered two of several objections to utilitarianism that Mill responds to in Ch. II. Another line of criticism is to argue that AU's implications for specific cases conflict with moral common sense. Some examples: (a) keeping a (secret deathbed) promise (e.g. Harman, p. 154). According to AU, the promise has no intrinsic bearing on what it is right to do. (b) harming one person in order to benefit another. According to AU, there is no greater duty not to harm than there is to benefit--so long as there is compensating happiness to others. (c) [a related matter] since what matters for AU is the total net happiness, how the happiness and unhappiness that make up the total is distributed across persons is irrelevant, so long as it does not affect the total. Thus, according to AU acts A and B are morally equivalent. w x y z A -2 2 2 2 B 1 1 1 1 II Note that all of these cases involve issues of justice or rights. The common complaint then becomes that, at worse, utilitarianism is inconsistent with justice, and, at best, it has no place for justice in the theory. In Chapter V Mill responds to this complaint direct. Let us consider how he proceeds. A. Mill begins, "in all ages of speculation one of the strongest obstacles to the reception of the doctrine that utility or happiness is the criterion of right and wrong has been drawn from the idea of justice." (Ch. V;par. 1) Mill does not doubt that the sentiment of justice is widely shared, or even that it is natural in some sense, but neither of these facts entails that it should have "binding force". "Mankind are always predisposed to believe that any subjective feeling, not otherwise accounted for, is a revelation of some objective reality." (Ch. V;par. 2) B. The first question, Mill thinks, is "to attempt to ascertain what is the distinguishing character of justice, or of injustice." (par. 3) And, "to find the common attributes of a variety of objects, it is necessary to begin by surveying the objects themselves in the concrete." (par. 4) Mill's list: (i) "it is mostly considered unjust to deprive ayone of his personal liberty, or any other thing which belongs to him by law." but (ii) if "the legal righs of which he is deprived [are] rights which ought not to have belonged to him; in other words, the law which confers on him these rights [is] a bad law . . . [then] opinions will differ as to the justice or injustice of infringing it." (iii) "it is universally considered just that each person should obtain what he deserves." (iv) "it is confessedly unjust to break faith with anyone." (v) "it is, by universal admission, inconsistent with justice to be partial" (vi) justice is often thought to have something to do with equality. III Thus our sentiments about justice are complex, and perhaps inconsistent. So it is open to a utilitarian to argue that there is no coherent set of views here at all, only a hodgepodge of elements from different and conflicting cultural traditions. But while Mill thinks we need to be critical of these ideas, he does think that there is a thread that runs through them. A. The "idee mere, the primitive element, in the formation of the notion of justice, was conformity to law" (par. 12) As, however, critical questions were raised about laws themselves, and laws weren't assumed authoritative simply because they exist, "the sentiment of injustice came to be attached, not to all violations of law, but only to violations of such laws as ought to exist, including such as ought to exist but do not . . . " (par. 12) B. Thus, something is unjust if it is contrary to what ought to be the law. This is too restrictive as it stands, Mill thinks, because "mankind consider the idea of justice and its obligations as applicable to many things which neither, nor is it desired that they should be, regulated by law." (par. 13) There are many areas of life where having a law would be too meddlesome and inefficient, even though we think it possible, in these areas, for a person to act justly or unjustly. But even here, Mill says, our sentiment of justice is tied to the idea of law and sanction. "It would always give us pleasure, and chime in with our feelings of fitness, that acts which we deem unjust should be punished, though we do not always think it expedient that it should be done by the tribunals." And when issues of justice are involved, then we think that either formal or informal sanctions--e.g. expressed disapproval, removal of trust, disengagement of friendship, feelings of guilt, and so on--will be appropriate For example, compare a charitable act we might judge to be a good thing to do, but not an injustice or violation of a right not to do, with repayment of a debt to which another person has a right. Mill concludes: "we do not call anything wrong [N.B. HOW MILL MOVES FROM 'UNJUST' TO 'WRONG' HERE] unless we mean to imply that a person ought to be punished in some way or other for doing it--if not by law, by the opinion of his fellow creatures; if not by opinion, by the reproaches of his own conscience." (par. 14) IV Now note that prominent in Mill's account of the ordinary notion of justice (and indeed now of what it is for something to be wrong) is the idea that something ought to be law, or that it ought to be the case that there exists a practice, either formal (in law) or informal, of applying sanctions against certain kinds of behavior. This raises the following question: if this is what being unjust or wrong depends on, what is the criterion of whether there ought to be a law, or an informal practice, applying sanctions against conduct of a given type? Mill's answer: UTILITY. "To have a right, then, is, I conceive, to have something which society ought to defend me in the possession of. If the objector goes on to ask why it ought, I can give him no other reason than general utility." (par. 18) Thus: it is unjust to harm another if, and only if, a general practice of applying sanctions to those who harm would maximize total net happiness. It is unjust to break a promise if, and only if, a general practice of applying sanctions (informal in most cases) to the breaking of promises without justifications or excuses of certain standardly recognized kinds would maximize total net happiness. and so on. V The question arises, is an action wrong if it is unjust? Indeed, is it even wrong, other things equal, if it is unjust? Notice that still, according to AU, the fact that an act would be unjust, even on Mill's theory of justice, would neither establish that it was wrong, nor have any independent weight in determining that whatsoever. Still, Mill suggests that an act is wrong only if it would maximize happiness to have a practice applying sanctions against it. This suggests that he doesn't really hold AU after all (there is other textual evidence as well). It may be that he holds a different theory we may call rule utilitarianism or RU. Rule utilitarianism (RU): An act is wrong if it is contrary to a rule such that having a practice of enforcing that rule (formally or informally) would promote the greatest total net happiness (in preference to having a practice enforcing some other conflicting rule). As we saw last time, someone who holds AU has a place for rules (the "secondary principles" of Ch. II), but only as guides or rules of thumb. The sort of rules that figure in RU are rules of a different sort. They are what Rawls calls practice rules as opposed to summary rules. [On this distinction, study "Two Concepts of Rules" carefully] VI A question to leave you with: should a utilitarian hold AU or RU? On the one hand, RU seems likelier to accord with most people's moral judgments about cases. On the other hand, if what matters must is the general happiness, then why should one not do what will promote that, even if it conflicts witth some rule, the general enforcement of which, would maximize happiness. As moral agents, what we have in our power is simply to act, not to create a rule, so why should we not therefore be concerned with which act would best promote the general good?