The unreality of utilitarianism

Utilitarianism is one of the most influential thoughts in moral philosophy, which takes the utility principle of "the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people" as the fundamental criterion for judging the morality of behavior. In daily life, utilitarianism seems to dominate people's thinking and behavior, but this practical advantage of utilitarianism also hides a major dilemma of utilitarianism: the principle of utility cannot be strictly practiced in reality.

1. Practical advantages of utilitarianism

The appeal of utilitarianism is that it is extremely realistic. At the moment of having to make a choice, people's actions tend to follow the logic that this is the best choice, that these sacrifices are for the greater "good" and are therefore worthwhile. No matter how ideally or imagined people may want to achieve their goals without any sacrifice, reality always ruthlessly forces people to make choices - only in a fictional world can the protagonist find the perfect way out of the impossible. It only takes a moment's observation to see that such options are everywhere, even just crossing the road is risking a potentially life-threatening way to get to the other side of the road. Since sacrifice is inevitable, what is the purpose of sacrifice? Reality gives the answer: the greater good. There is some justification for sacrificing a few in order to save more lives, and there is nothing to accept a small loss in order to avoid full-scale consequences.

Such reality is a luxury for the Deontologist who strives to obey the moral law. No matter how sacred the moral law is, it will lose its brilliance in the face of reality, and no matter how shining "humanity" is, it is often unable to resist the test of reality. Not only that, but the inviolable moral code in the mind of deontists is also arbitrary, that is, deontologists cannot explain where people's "moral laws in mind" come from. They either turn to God or turn to reason, but they have difficulty finding a realistic basis for moral law. Seeking the source of morality from God is tantamount to accepting the existence of God, but the existence of God cannot be tested and thus cannot be the source of morality. Even if the possibility of God's existence is accepted, the wrongness of killing innocent passers-by lies in whether it is an order from God or a moral concept accepted by God? In the former case, morality has no rational basis, but is subservient to the product of power; in the latter case, the source of morality is independent of God. Appeals to reason also fail to explain why moral laws are the way they are. Was primitive reason enough to create the morality we know today? Are nonhuman animals sufficiently rational to infer the validity of prosocial behavior?

Certainly, contemporary society seems to operate on the basis of the concept of "moral law". Why is it wrong to kill? Because murder violates the moral law of not killing. Why shouldn't the disadvantaged be discriminated against? Because discrimination violates the moral law of equality for all. The progress of society on the moral level also seems to be fully recognized for certain moral laws. Human beings can get rid of all kinds of discrimination based on group identity without the promotion of the concept of equality. However, the apparent rationality that deontology provides for the existence of moral laws shows more of the intractable tendency of human beings to make moral judgments, that is, their moral psychological characteristics. Deontology alone cannot justify the origin of these tendencies. Is the satisfaction provided by food due to the existence of some divine psychological law, or is it because the satisfaction fulfills some function?

It should be recognized that the existence of moral laws can achieve certain social functions, such as promoting mutual trust and cooperation among people, and maintaining the operation of society at a lower cost. These social functions are most likely the source of primitive morality. Since non-human animals with certain sociality also need to maintain the normal functioning of the society in which they live, the origin theory of moral law based on social function can also explain the pro-social behavior of non-human animals. As human society evolves, certain moral laws that no longer seem to have an indisputable social function may gradually emerge. Respect for members of outgroups may come from such a moral law. Respect for the rights of members of hostile groups does not necessarily fulfill an unequivocal social function. Such moral laws may arise based on rational inferences about existing moral laws. Similarly, a moral law with a social function may be divorced from its social function and become a psychologically inviolable divine law. Are we able to do anything while we are at ourselves without being considered a violation of the moral law? For example, is it okay to write racial or sexist slurs in a secret diary? How about a heartfelt admiration for the Nazis and even the evil organization that kills more? Liberals will answer in the affirmative, but many are unable to accept it psychologically, and have no intention of admitting that these actions are ethical—just as some people were instantly dug up by countless people after their private remarks years ago were dug up. attacked and even thrown into prison.

Social functionalism of the origin of moral laws is a consequentialist argument based on the fact that a moral law may lead to desired social outcomes. Even for moral laws that grow independently of primitive social functions, the justification arguments one can give often end up being the realization of some desired result. Why do people think "evil" words and actions that have no effect on others are bad at all? Because its existence reflects the evil character of the individual, even if the person has not done evil, he still has the tendency to do evil, and punishment can lead to good. Utilitarianism is the most typical subtype of consequentialism, so it can better solve the problem of the source of moral law. Classical utilitarianism limits outcomes to pleasure and pain, and the justification of arbitrary action or moral law rests with whether or not "the greatest happiness of the greatest number" is achieved. If we expand the meaning of pleasure and pain to include not only pleasure and pain in a physical or psychological sense, but everything that people seek and avoid, then this preference-based utilitarianism will have implications for human behavior and morality. Laws have great explanatory power.

Second, the practical advantages of utilitarianism?

However, this advantage of utilitarianism exists only at the level of abstract philosophical argument. If we start from the perspective of practical application, we will quickly find that the utility principle has no practical application at all. For an ethical principle to be applicable in reality, it should clearly define three types of behaviors: moral behavior, immoral behavior, and permitted behavior, and the moral behavior it stipulates is achievable. Utilitarianism defines moral behavior as the behavior that maximizes a social welfare function that depends on the utility function of all members of society affected by a certain behavior. In order to apply utilitarianism in reality, three conditions need to be met: (1) the specific form of the social welfare function is determinable; (2) the relative value of the individual utility function under different behaviors is determinable; (3) The maximum value of the social welfare function exists and can be obtained. However, in reality, none of these three conditions can be met.

For utilitarianism, the first condition does not seem to be a problem. A utilitarian social welfare function is usually a simple summation of member utility functions. However, the sum is too rough to capture the delicate concept of "social welfare". For example, considering the reality that different people in the population have different susceptibility to pleasure and pain, the summation will make different individuals have different equivalent weights in the social welfare function. This weight difference can exist independently of diminishing marginal effects. Due to the diminishing marginal effect, the members of the middle and lower classes of society should receive more inclination of social resources compared to the upper classes of society, so that the total amount of welfare per unit resource can be maximized. The difference in pleasure and pain receptivity, however, is different. Sensitivity to pleasure and pain reflects the differences in individual psychological traits. Although there is a certain relationship with social status (for example, people with lower social status have higher physical pain sensitivity), there is no necessary relationship. Therefore, individuals of any social class may appear utility monsters that are extremely sensitive to pleasure and pain, and their utility will receive a great weight in social welfare calculations. There are also individuals in the population who are insensitive to pleasure and pain. For example, patients with depression have anhedonia, and patients with congenital analgesia cannot perceive physical pain. The equivalent weight of these people in the social welfare function will be over-reduced and smaller than the average person. In addition to differences in susceptibility, the sum is also affected by the number of individuals. Since the sum is a function of the mean and the number of individuals, increasing the sum can be achieved either by increasing the mean or by increasing the number of individuals. Therefore, maximizing the sum of the utilities of all individuals may lead to the conclusion of infinitely expanding the low-utility population.

Other social welfare functions also fail to describe social welfare satisfactorily. Another form of social welfare function commonly used by utilitarians is the mean function. The mean function can avoid the conclusion of infinite expansion of the low-utility population, but it cannot solve the problem of individual susceptibility differences. The oversensitivity of the arithmetic mean to extreme values is one of the most well-known statistical phenomena. Individuals who are extremely sensitive to pleasure and pain also get larger equivalent weights in the mean function. The geometric mean can reduce the influence of extreme values to a certain extent, but it cannot completely avoid the influence of extreme values. From a statistical point of view, the goal of social welfare function selection is to select a statistic that reasonably describes the overall welfare state of the society. However, any statistic is almost always accompanied by inevitable pitfalls. Mode and median can eliminate the influence of extreme values, but may lead to killing people with two extremes of social utility, and allocate their social resources to individuals whose utility values are the median and mode to increase the welfare of social subjects. . The minimum value can take into account the needs of the most vulnerable individuals to the greatest extent, but can lead to the dire conclusion of killing the rich to help the poorest. Another disadvantage of mode, median and minimum is that they cannot take into account the utility of all individuals in the society, but are only determined by the utility of a few individuals - this is equivalent to the weight of the majority of individuals in the social welfare function becoming zero. .

Taking a step back, even if the specific form of the social welfare function can be determined, the form of the individual utility function is also ambiguous. In order to avoid problems such as utility comparison among individuals, modern economics has basically abandoned the cardinal utility theory in theory, and adopted the ordinal utility theory. Although the ordinal utility theory only requires that the individual's own utility can be sorted by size, and does not require that the utility can be added or subtracted, it still faces a major problem: only I know the impact of my behavior on my utility, and others can only based on my external Taking a guess at my utility state in performance. This information asymmetry results in the indeterminate impact of behavior on society as a whole. There is only one case where the social impact of an action is certain: the action affects only the actor himself. This situation is usually classified as the private matter of the individual. Therefore, for utilitarians, individuals should have absolute freedom in private affairs. Any intervention destroys the individual's autonomous decision on their own utility function. All others are allowed to do is to provide information and help the actor maximize. own utility function. In reality, however, not all affairs are private. On the contrary, there are a large number of public things in social reality that involve multiple objects—and these are the things that moral philosophy is most concerned with. In these scenarios, however, utilitarianism cannot fail in the face of information asymmetry. Utilitarianism, arguably, faces a dilemma: it is the weakest in the situations where it is most needed, and it is the most useless in the situations in which it is best at.

Since the problem of information asymmetry stems from the private nature of other people's psychological states, the development of neuroscience may provide a solution to this problem. There have been some studies trying to find neurobiological markers of pleasure and pain, but they are far from being applicable. On the one hand, the predictive ability of these biological indicators for individual happiness and pain status is still insufficient, and can only explain about half of the variability of individual subjective status (that is, the correlation coefficient between predicted status and actual status is about 0.7), and it also faces the inconsistency of specificity. high puzzle. On the other hand, these metrics rely on neuroimaging devices (such as EEG and MRI) that are difficult to implement at scale. In the words of utilitarians, the cost-benefit nature of these neuroscientific outcomes is unsatisfactory, at least for now.

Even in the distant future world, where neuroscience can easily and accurately describe the utility function of individuals, utilitarianism still cannot satisfy the third condition that the maximum value of the social welfare function exists and is available. For utilitarianism, only actions that maximize the social welfare function are moral actions. However, this requirement cannot be realized in reality. Even if the form of the utility function of all individuals is known and identical, an exhaustive search must be carried out in all behavior spaces to obtain the maximum value of the utility function. However, this is almost impossible because the behavioral space is infinite, and there are behavioral options beyond the level of individual awareness. These problems may be partially resolved by weakening utilitarianism, requiring only that individuals choose actions that maximize their utility within the constraints of their cognitive level. However, even limiting the optional behavior, getting the best value is still a difficult task. From the perspective of the reality of human psychology, people may just choose an option that looks good at the moment, or set a threshold, and choose a behavior whose utility can exceed this threshold to a certain extent, regardless of whether it can maximize the utility function. .

If we take a step back and assume that the actor can achieve the maximum value of the utility function, utilitarianism still faces the final blow of reality: the most basic moral behavior in the eyes of utilitarians is that only saints can do to ordinary people. The well-known trolley problem can be used as a typical example. Assuming my most cherished person lies on the track on one side of the tram and five strangers on the other, I can follow the teachings of utilitarianism and sacrifice for one of the most obvious moral acts (kill one to save five) The most cherished person? For ordinary people, such moral requirements are tantamount to asking themselves to become a cold-blooded saint. Such a request is by no means uncommon for utilitarians. It can be argued that there is no permissible behavior in utilitarianism, because all permissible behaviors must be in one of the multiple behaviors that maximize the utility function, and any behavior that cannot achieve the most utility value is no longer an allowed behavior. . Likewise, there is no supererogation in utilitarianism, because there is no utility value greater than the optimal value. For utilitarians, a person's life is a continual act of immorality.

3. Unrealistic Utilitarianism

Can utilitarianism become a reality without considering behavior as the basic unit of analysis of utilitarianism, and instead building rule-based utilitarianism on the basis of rules?

cannot.

The above three conditions are not affected by the utilitarian unit of analysis. Whether it is based on behavior or rules, utilitarianism must determine the specific form of the social welfare function, judge the relative value of the individual utility function under different behaviors, and require the maximization of the social welfare function. Rule utilitarianism can examine what kind of rules can maximize the social welfare function in a more sufficient time limit, but it can never abandon the utility principle. A simpler solution is to assume that most existing social moral rules maximize the social welfare function in the long run. However, besides blindly following existing rules, "maximizing the social welfare function in the long run" is not a clear concept. How long is the long term? If a moral rule's contribution to social welfare is only apparent in 100 million years, it is moot to consider it now. Maybe 100 million years from now, humans will no longer exist. "Maximizing the social welfare function in the long run" also does not take into account the short-term effects of the rules. Maximizing the social welfare function should balance the short and long term.

It can be seen that both behavioral utilitarianism and rule utilitarianism are unrealistic in the strict sense. This unreality is mainly based on theoretical analysis, but there is still a lack of sufficient evidence for the reality of utilitarianism at the empirical level. At its core, the utility principle attributes the moral properties of behavior to empirical facts: whether an action is moral or not depends on the existence of other actions that increase the overall welfare of society. After the above three conditions are met, it is a real question how big the social welfare difference caused by different behaviors is. Therefore, utilitarianism is not only a moral philosophy of necessity, but also an empirical science that examines the impact of behavior on society. However, empirical studies examining the social impact of a wide variety of behaviors cannot exist for all of them. In fact, the social impact of most actions depends only on the subjective judgments of people (especially those with the right to speak), rather than empirical facts—adding to the unrealistic nature of utilitarianism.

All in all, strictly speaking, whether it is theoretical analysis or empirical evidence, utilitarianism lacks the reality that people expect. Any invocation of the greater "good" to justify an action requires more careful analysis rationally, unless one is willing to mistake the right to speak for justification. Having said that, even clearly unjustified behaviors are not impossible, and unjustifiable behaviors are naturally possible. Moral philosophy attempts to establish the yardstick of behavioral legitimacy through reason, but human behavior depends on psychological states, social structures, and contingent factors, not on the precepts of moral philosophy. Strict justification is necessary for philosophy, but not for actions that take place in the world. From this point of view, the reality dilemma of utilitarianism can have no effect on reality.