Normative Ethical Theories
23
Normative Ethical Theories
Egoism and Utilitarianism
Each person should seek to maximize his own interests (whatever these may be)—usually “in the long run” or over a life-span.
John Hospers, “Rule-Egoism”
The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.
John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism
1—Introduction
Normative theories in ethics seek to provide an account of what actions are right and wrong and why. In current discussions of ethics, normative theories are usually grouped into two basic and mutually exclusive groups—teleological and deontological.
There are two different senses of the term teleological when it is used to identify teleological normative theories in ethics. First, teleological ethics can refer to certain types of natural moral law theories that depict the purpose of human life in general, and moral rules in particular, to be that of moving toward and promoting the end or goal (the telos) for which we were made—ideal human flourishing in accordance with our human nature. This sense of “teleological ethics” is not the one we are using in this chapter. Virtue ethics is closely related to this type of teleological theory, and this way of thinking will be examined in the next chapter. The second notion of a teleological ethical theory is the one we have in mind here. Roughly, this notion of teleological ethics holds that the rightness or wrongness of an act is exclusively a function of the goodness or badness of the consequences of that act. Ultimately, consequences and consequences alone are crucial. So understood, teleological ethics is in conflict with deontological theories of ethics. Deontological ethics deny the claim that consequences are the sole determinant of rightness or wrongness. It places limits on the relevance of teleological considerations. Deontologists hold that some acts are intrinsically right or wrong from a moral point of view. This approach will be studied in the next chapter.
Utilitarianism is clearly the most widely accepted teleological theory. Some, however, have accepted another teleological view—ethical egoism. Thus in what follows we will state and evaluate ethical egoism and different forms of utilitarianism, in that order.
2—Ethical Egoism
2.1 Exposition of Ethical Egoism
The most plausible form of ethical egoism, embraced by such philosophers as Ayn Rand and John Hospers, is called universal or impersonal rule egoism (hereafter, ethical egoism): each person has a moral duty to follow those and only those moral rules that will be in the agent’s maximal self-interest over the long haul. For the ethical egoist, one has a duty to follow “correct” moral rules. And the factor that makes a rule a “correct” one is that, if followed, it will be in the agent’s own best interests in the long run. Each person ought to advance his or her own self-interests, and that is the sole foundation of morality.
Ethical egoism is sometimes confused with various distinct categories. First, there is individual or personal ethical egoism, which says everyone has a duty to act so as to serve my self-interests. Here, everyone is morally obligated to serve the speaker’s long-term best interests. Second, there is psychological egoism, roughly, the idea that each person can only do an act that the person takes to maximize his or her own self-interest. Psychological egoism is a descriptive thesis about motivation to the effect that we can only act on motives that are in our own self-interests. Psychological egoism is sometimes used as part of an argument for ethical egoism, but the two are distinct theses.
Third, ethical egoism is not the same thing as egotism—an irritating character trait of always trying to be the center of attention. Nor is it the same as being what is sometimes called a wanton. A wanton has no sense of duty at all, but only acts to satisfy his own desires. The only conflict the wanton knows is that between two or more desires he cannot simultaneously satisfy (e.g., to eat more and lose weight). He knows nothing about duty. Fifth, ethical egoism is not to be confused with being an egoist, that is, being someone who believes that the sole worth of an act is its fairly immediate benefits to the individual himself or herself.
2.2 Arguments for Ethical Egoism
Among the arguments for ethical egoism, two have become most prominent. First, some argue that ethical egoism follows from psychological egoism. The argument goes like this: Psychological egoism is true, and this implies that we always and cannot help but act egoistically. This is a fact about human motivation and action. Further, ought implies can. If I ought to do x, then I must be able to do x. If I cannot do something, then I have no duty or responsibility to do it. Applied to egoism, this means that since I can only act egoistically, whatever account of moral action must be consistent with this fact of human psychology, and ethical egoism is the best of these accounts. Moreover, since I cannot act nonegoistically, then I have no duty to do so. Thus ethical egoism is the correct picture of moral obligation since it is consistent with and best captures the nature of human motivation and action.
Does this argument work? Most philosophers have not thought so. First, the principle of psychological egoism—that we always act to maximize our own self-interest—is ambiguous. So stated, the principle fails to make a distinction between the result of an act versus the intent of an act. If it is understood in one way it is irrelevant, and if it is taken in the second way it is false. If the statement merely asserts that, as a matter of fact, the result of our actions is the maximization of self-interest, then this does not imply ethical egoism. Ethical egoism is the view that the thing which morally justifies an act is the agent’s intent to maximize his own self-interest. So the mere psychological fact (if it is a fact) that people only do those acts that result in their own satisfaction proves nothing.
On the other hand, if the statement claims that we always act solely with the intent to satisfy our own desires, then this claim is simply false. Every day we are aware of doing acts with the sole intent of helping someone else, of doing something just because we think it is the right thing to do, and of expressing virtuous, other-centered behavior. As Christian philosopher Joseph Butler (1692–1752) argued,
Mankind has various instincts and principles of action as brute creatures have; some leading most directly and immediately to the good of the community, and some most directly to private good. . . . It is not a true representation of mankind, to affirm that they are wholly governed by self-love, the love of power and sensual appetites. . . . It is manifest fact, that the same persons, the generality, are frequently influenced by friendship, compassion, gratitude; . . . and liking of what is fair and just, takes its turn amongst the other motives of action.
Furthermore, it is not even true that we always try to do what we want. We sometimes experience akrasia (weakness of will) when we fail to do or even try to do what we want (see Rom 7:15-25). And we sometimes do (or try to do) our duty even when we don’t want to do it.
Second, this argument for ethical egoism suffers from what has been called the paradox of hedonism. Often, the best way to get happiness and the satisfaction of desire is not to aim at it. Happiness is not usually achieved as an intended goal, but rather it is a by-product of a life well lived and of doing what is right. If people always act in order to gain happiness, then it will remain forever elusive. Now, a major purpose of a moral theory of rules and actions, ethical egoism included, is to specify and offer a justifying account of what one should intend to do in moral actions. Seen in this light, ethical egoism requires us to act with the intent of maximizing our own self-interests, and it is the actual maximization of our own self-interests that justifies an act. However, the paradox of hedonism brings to light the fact that the goal specified by ethical egoism (actual maximization of one’s self-interests) is often thwarted by the proper moral intentions (acting with the intent of maximizing one’s self-interests) indicated by ethical egoism. Thus psychological egoism presents a paradox for advocates of ethical egoism when viewed as a model of human intention and action.
Finally, as a model of human action, psychological egoism rules out the possibility of libertarian freedom of the will. Libertarian freedom was discussed in chapter fifteen, so a detailed exposition will not be presented here. For present purposes, it should be noted that if libertarian freedom is the correct account of human action, then these propositions follow: (1) No amount of internal states (e.g., desires, beliefs, emotions) are sufficient to produce behavior. (2) The agent himself or herself must spontaneously exercise his or her causal powers and act for the sake of a reason that functions as the end or teleological goal for the sake of which the action was performed. On this view, psychological egoism is false if taken as a total account of human action, because psychological egoism is a version of compatibilism and libertarianism is the preferred account of human agency. Psychological egoism (as a theory about unexceptionable human action or motivation) cannot underwrite any moral theory since “ought” (S ought to do x) implies “may not” (S may not do x). Libertarian freedom is controversial and not everyone accepts this model of action, but for those who do, this argument has force.
A second argument for ethical egoism may be called the closet utilitarian argument. It is pointed out that if everyone acted in keeping with ethical egoism, then the result of this would be the maximization of happiness for the greatest number of people. If acted on, ethical egoism, as a matter of fact, leads to the betterment of humanity. There are two main problems with this argument. First, it amounts to a utilitarian justification of ethical egoism. As we shall see shortly, utilitarianism is a rival normative theory. It is problematic, therefore, for someone to use a rival theory, in this case utilitarianism, as the moral justification for ethical egoism. If one is an ethical egoist, why should he or she care about the greatest good for the greatest number for its own sake, and not merely because such “caring” would itself lead to greater satisfaction of one’s individual desires? Second, the claim seems to be factually false. Is it really the case that if everyone acted according to ethical egoism, it would maximize everyone’s happiness? Surely not. Sometimes self-sacrifice and personal denial is needed to maximize happiness for the greatest number, and this argument for ethical egoism cannot allow for that to be the case.
2.3 Arguments Against Ethical Egoism
Among the arguments against ethical egoism, three are most prominent. First, there is the publicity objection. Moral principles must serve as action guides that inform moral situations. Most moral situations involve more than one person and, in this sense, are public situations. Thus moral action guides must be teachable to others so they can be publicly used principles that help us in our interpersonal moral interactions. According to ethical egoism itself, however, it may be immoral for me to teach others to embrace ethical egoism because that could easily turn out not to be in my own self-interest. It may be better for me if others always acted altruistically. Thus it could be immoral for one to go public and teach ethical egoism to others, and if so, this would violate one of the necessary conditions for a moral theory, namely, that it be teachable to others.
In response, some have claimed that we have no good reason to believe that a moral doctrine needs to be consistently promulgatable. Why, it is asked, should we have to be able to teach a moral doctrine to others? Couldn’t someone consistently hold to the following moral notion, P: “It is never right to promulgate anything”? Unfortunately, this response fails because it does not capture the public nature of moral principles insofar as they serve as action guides to adjudicate interpersonal moral conflict. How could principle P serve as an action guide sufficient to deal with the various aspects of duty, virtue, and rights that constitute much of the point of action guides in the first place?
Moreover, this response fails to take into account the universalizability of moral rules. If I should never promulgate anything, then this implies that I should not teach something to someone else. But there does not seem to be a clear moral difference in this case between others and myself. To be consistent, then, I should not promulgate this moral principle to myself. Is it possible to promulgate a principle to oneself? It would seem so. All that is involved here is that one seek to instruct oneself about the principle in view through reading and other means in order to strengthen one’s commitment to the principle. Now if I should not promulgate this moral principle to myself, then this implies, among other things, that if I hold to P as a moral principle that should be universalized, then, applying P to myself, I would no longer have moral grounds for embracing P. On the other hand, if I do not think P should be universalized, then in what sense is P a moral principle (since universalizability is most likely a necessary condition for a principle to count as moral)?
A second argument against ethical egoism is called the paradox of egoism. Some things—for example, altruism, deep love, genuine friendship—are inconsistent with ethical egoism. Why? Because these features of a virtuous, moral life require us not to seek our own interests but rather those of the other. Moreover, ethical egoism seems to imply, for example, that helping others at one’s own expense (where there is no long-term payoff for the actor) is wrong. Thus egoism would seem to rule out important, central features of the moral life. The main point of a normative moral theory is to explain and not to eliminate what we already know to be central facets of morality. Furthermore, in order to reach the goal of egoism (personal happiness), one must give up egoism and be altruistic in love, friendship, and other ways. Thus egoism is paradoxical in its own right and it eliminates key aspects of the moral life.
Some respond by claiming that altruism is fully consistent with ethical egoism. In fact, say egoists, we ought to do acts that benefit others because that is in our own self-interest. But this response fails to distinguish pseudo-altruism from genuine altruism. Genuine altruism requires that an altruistic act have, as its intent, the benefit of the other. An act whose sole intent is self-interest but which, nevertheless, does result in the benefit of others is pseudo-altruism. If you found out that someone “loved” you or did an “altruistic” act toward you solely with the intent of benefiting himself and not you, then you would not count that as genuine love or altruism even if the act happened to benefit you in some way. Thus “egoistic altruism” is a contradiction in terms. Ethical egoism is consistent with pseudo-altruism but not with genuine altruism.
Finally, a third objection claims that ethical egoism leads to inconsistent outcomes. A moral theory must allow for moral rules that are public and universalizable. But ethical egoism could lead to situations where this is not the case. How? Consider two persons, A and B, both of whom are themselves ethical egoists and who are in a situation involving a conflict of interests. For example, suppose that there was only one kidney available for transplant, that A and B both need it, and that the one who does not get the kidney will die. According to ethical egoism, A ought to act in his own self-interests and prescribe that his desires come out on top. A has a duty to secure the kidney and thwart B’s attempts to do the same. This would seem to imply that A should prescribe that B has a duty to act in A’s self-interest since A’s getting the kidney is the correct, universalizable moral outcome. Of course B, according to ethical egoism, has from his perspective a duty to act in B’s own self-interest. But now a contradiction arises because ethical egoism implies that B both has a duty to give the kidney to A and to get it himself.
Ethical egoists respond by claiming that this objection fails to capture adequately the nature of ethical egoism. They claim that as an ethical egoist, A should not hold that B should act in A’s self-interest, but in B’s own self-interest. This would seem to solve the problem of contradictory duty above. But this way of stating ethical egoism does not seem to capture the egoistic spirit of ethical egoism because it leaves open the question of why egoist A would need to hold that B should act in B’s interest and not in A’s.
Moreover, there is yet another problem for this formulation of ethical egoism, which can be brought out as follows: A holds that B has a duty to get the kidney for B himself, have his own (B’s) interests come out on top, and thus do an act that actually harms A even if this were not B’s intent. But in this case, ethical egoism still seems to imply an inconsistent posture on A’s (and B’s) part, namely, that A thinks that B has a duty to get the kidney for himself since A thinks that B should act in B’s own self-interest. But if B does so act, the results will actually harm the maximization of A’s self-interest. Thus A, acting in his own self-interest, will have a duty to thwart B from doing his own duty. Any moral theory that implies that someone has a moral duty to keep others from doing their moral duty is surely in trouble, so the objection goes. And it is hard to see how an ethical egoist A could claim that someone else had a duty to harm A himself.
Not everyone accepts this argument. Some claim that we often find it to be the case that we have a duty to thwart what is the duty of others. For example, in war, one soldier has a duty to thwart another’s efforts to do his duty to win. If we separate beliefs about ethical situations from desires, so the response goes, then A can believe B has a duty to win the war or get the kidney, but A can at the same time desire these objectives for himself and act on those desires. In general, the belief that B ought to do x does not imply that A wants B to do x.
What should we make of this response? First, the soldier example fails because it does not distinguish between subjective and objective duty. Subjective duty is a duty someone has when one has done one’s best to discover what is and is not the right thing to do. If someone sincerely and conscientiously tries to ascertain what is right and acts on this, then one has fulfilled one’s subjective duty, and in a sense, he is therefore praiseworthy. But people can be sincerely wrong and fail to live up to their objective duty—the truly correct thing to do from a God’s-eye perspective—even if they have tried to do their best. Soldier A could only claim that soldier B has a subjective duty to obey his country. But A could also believe that B has an objective duty to do so only if B’s country is, in fact, conducting a morally justified war. Now either A or B is on the right side of the war even though it may be hard to tell which side is correct. Thus A and B could believe that only one of them actually has an objective duty to fight and thwart the other. So the war example may not give a genuine case in which A believes B has a(n) (objective) duty to fight and that he has a(n) (objective) duty to thwart B.
Second, what about the point of separating beliefs from desires? For one thing, a desirable feature of any moral theory is that it describes what a virtuous person is and how virtue can be achieved. Now one aspect of a virtuous person is that there is a harmony between desire and duty. A virtuous person desires to see the good prosper and moral duty honored. With this in mind, it becomes clear that ethical egoism, if consistently practiced, could produce fragmented, nonvirtuous persons who believe one thing about duty (for example, A believes B ought to do x) but who desire something else altogether (for example, A does not desire B to do x).
If we grant, however, that the ethical egoist’s distinction between beliefs and desires is legitimate from a moral point of view, then this distinction does resolve the claim that ethical egoism leads to a conflict of desire, where, for example, A desires the kidney for himself and A also desires that B get the kidney. Given this distinction between beliefs and desires, ethical egoism implies that A believes that B has a duty to get the kidney while allowing that A desires that he himself have it. Nevertheless, this response misses the real point of the objection to ethical egoism. That point is not that ethical egoism straightforwardly leads to a conflict of desires. Rather, the objection shows that ethical egoism leads to an unresolvable conflict of moral beliefs and moral duty. If A and B are ethical egoists, then A believes that it is wrong for B to get the kidney but also that it is B’s duty to try to get it. But how can A consistently believe that B has a duty to do something wrong? And how can A have an objective duty to thwart B’s objective duty?
2.4 Christianity and Ethical Egoism
Before we move on to utilitarianism, we need to look at one more issue. Some claim that the Bible, with its emphasis on avoiding hell and going to heaven and on securing eternal rewards for life on earth, implicitly affirms ethical egoism as an appropriate moral theory. This is supposed to count as an argument against Christianity since, granting the inadequacy of ethical egoism, Christianity implies an incorrect moral theory. What should we make of this claim? It is clear that legitimate self-interest is part of biblical teaching. But does this mean that Scripture implies ethical egoism as a moral theory?
To begin with, we need to distinguish between achieving what is in my self-interest as a by-product of an act versus self-interest as the sole intent of an act. Scriptural passages that appeal to self-interest may simply be pointing out that if you intentionally do the right thing, then a good by-product of this will be rewards of various kinds. It could be argued that these passages do not clearly use self-interest as the sole legitimate intent of a moral action. For example, Exodus 20:12 says, “Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.” Clearly, the Ten Commandments, of which this verse is a part, are to be obeyed largely because they are the correct moral commands of a holy God, not solely because they are in the self-interests of the believer.
This observation relates to a second distinction between a motive and a reason. Roughly, a motive is some state within a person that influences and moves that person to believe something or to act in a certain way. By contrast, a reason is something that serves rationally to justify some belief one has or action one has done. Citing a reason for believing x is an attempt to cite something that makes it likely that x be true. Citing a reason for doing x is an attempt to cite something that makes x the thing that I rationally or morally ought to do. In this context, just because something, say self-interest, serves as a motive for an action, it does not follow that it also serves as the reason that justifies the action in the first place. Self-interest may be a legitimate motive for moral action, but, it could be argued, God’s commands, the objective moral law, and so on could be rationally cited as the things that make an act our duty in the first place. The Scriptures may be citing self-interest as a motive for action and not as the reason for what makes the act our duty.
Moreover, even if Scripture is teaching that self-interest is a reason for doing some duty, it may be offering self-interest as a prudential and not a moral reason for doing the duty. In other words, the Bible may be saying that it is wise, reasonable, and a matter of good judgment to avoid hell and seek rewards without claiming that these considerations are moral reasons for acting according to self-interest. In sum, it could be argued that Scripture can be understood as advocating self-interest as a by-product and not an intent for action, as a motive and not a reason or as a prudential and not a moral reason. If this is so, then these scriptural ideas do not entail ethical egoism.
Second, even if Scripture teaches that self-interest contributes to making something my moral duty, ethical egoism still does not follow. For one thing, ethical egoism as a normative ethical theory teaches that an act is moral if and only if it maximizes my own self-interests. Ethical egoism teaches that self-interest is both necessary and sufficient for something to be my duty. It could be argued, however, that egoistic factors, while not the sole factors that are morally relevant to an act (other things like self-sacrifice and obeying God because it is intrinsically right may also be relevant), nevertheless, are at least one feature often important for assessing the moral worth of an act. Moral duty is not exhausted by self-interest as ethical egoism implies, but self-interest can be a legitimate factor in moral deliberation, and Scripture may be expressing this point.
In addition, it is likely that the precise nature of self-interest contained in Scripture is different in two ways from the self-interest that forms part of ethical egoism. For one thing, according to ethical egoism, the thing that makes an act right is that it is in my self-interest. The important value-making property here is the fact that something promotes the first-person interests of the actor. Here, the moral agent attends to himself precisely as being identical to himself and to no one else.
By contrast, the scriptural emphasis on self-interest most likely grounds the appropriateness of that self-interest, not in the mere fact that such interests are mine, but in the fact that I am a creature of intrinsic value made in God’s image and, as such, I ought to care about what happens to me. Here I seek my own welfare not because it is my own, but because of what I am, namely, a creature with high intrinsic value. Consider a possible world where human persons have no value whatever. In that world, ethical egoism would still legislate self-interest, but the second view under consideration (that self-interest follows from the fact that I am a creature of value) would not because the necessary condition for self-interest (being a creature of intrinsic value) does not obtain in that world.
Both Kantian and teleological views have to take the self into consideration no less than others. My self is relevant in universalizability considerations. Also, there may be special contexts in which my own interests are a fundamental consideration—for example, where my own eternal destiny is at stake. Furthermore, for the gift of heaven to be significant, it must answer some personal interest or desire for salvation. Could God be glorified for his provision of salvation if it was not something in which we had an interest?
There is a second way that the nature of self-interest in Scripture and in ethical egoism differ. As C. S. Lewis argued, there are different kinds of rewards, and some are proper because they have a natural connection with the things we do to earn them and because they are expressions of what God made us to be by nature. Money is not a natural reward for love (one is mercenary to marry for money) because money is foreign to the desires that ought to accompany love. By contrast, victory is a natural reward for battle. It is a proper reward because it is not tacked on to the activity for which the reward is given, but rather victory is the consummation of the activity itself.
According to Lewis, the desire for heaven and rewards is a natural desire expressing what we, by nature, are. We were made to desire honor before God, to be in his presence and to hunger to enjoy the rewards he will offer us, and these things are the natural consummations of our activity on earth. Thus the appropriateness of seeking heaven and rewards derives from the fact that these results are genuine expressions of our natures and are the natural consummation of our activities for God. By contrast, according to ethical egoism, the value of results has nothing to do essentially with our natures or with natural consummations of activities. Rather, the worth of those outcomes is solely a function of the fact that they benefit the agent himself. And that’s all there is to it.
This completes our discussion of ethical egoism. We now turn to a far more popular version of teleological ethics, namely, utilitarianism.
3—Utilitarianism
Utilitarians view the moral life in terms of means-to-ends reasoning. The essence of utilitarianism can be stated in this way: the rightness or wrongness of an act or moral rule is solely a matter of the nonmoral good produced directly or indirectly in the consequences of that act or rule. Utilitarianism can be clarified and criticisms of it sharpened by probing three different aspects of theories bearing this name: utilitarian theories of value, the principle of utility itself, and different forms of utilitarianism.
3.1 Utilitarian Theories of Value
We first need to distinguish between moral and nonmoral values. In clarifying the notion of nonmoral value (sometimes called goodness), a utilitarian can correctly point out that a number of things can have intrinsic value without that value being moral. In this context, moral value, sometimes called rightness, refers to moral rules (do not steal) or individual moral actions (an act of stealing) or kinds of actions (for example, stealing-type actions in general). Examples of nonmoral intrinsic value (things with intrinsic value apart from moral rules and actions) are these: health, beautiful art, friendship, mathematical knowledge. What is meant by intrinsic value here? If something has intrinsic value—for example, joy—then it is valuable in and of itself, it is an end in itself, and it is good and worthy of being desired for its own sake. By contrast, if something has instrumental value—money, for example—then its sole value is as a means to intrinsic value. Note that there could be intrinsic values without instrumental ones, but there could be no instrumental values without intrinsic ones. Finally, something has mixed value (e.g., health) if it has both intrinsic and instrumental value.
Utilitarians differ about what values we should seek to produce as consequences of our actions; this is a disagreement about what has intrinsic nonmoral value. There are three major utilitarian views regarding intrinsic value. First, hedonistic utilitarianism conceives of utility solely in terms of happiness or pleasure. All other things are valuable only insofar as they are means to gaining happiness or pleasure and avoiding unhappiness and pain. One of the earliest utilitarians, Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832), was a quantitative hedonist. According to Bentham, the amount of pleasure versus pain is what matters, and he tried to develop a hedonic calculus whereby one can calculate the total amount of pleasure versus pain likely to be produced by an act. His calculus relied on considerations of the intensity, duration, nearness, and purity of the pleasure that an act would have as its consequences.
Another early utilitarian, John Stuart Mill (1806–1873), rejected this approach. Mill pointed out that it is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. On Bentham’s view, a satisfied pig had a larger quantity of pleasure than a dissatisfied Socrates and thus would exemplify more value. But, Mill argued, something is wrong with this notion. Bentham failed to distinguish different kinds of pleasure and neglected or overlooked the fact that some kinds of pleasure are of more value than others—for example, intellectual pleasure versus a full stomach. Moreover, it is difficult to know how to calculate the duration and intensity of various pleasures as envisaged by Bentham. Thus the application of the hedonic calculus in concrete situations of moral action/decision-making is extremely problematic. Mill embraced qualitative hedonism wherein it is still pleasure versus pain that constitutes utility, but now room is made for different kinds of pleasure. For example, on this view it is not such things as friendship or beautiful art themselves that have intrinsic value, but the pleasure that comes from them. A problem for Mill’s view is that it fails adequately to specify just how we are to rank the relative value of different kinds of pleasure.
A second view, in opposition to hedonism, is called pluralistic utilitarianism. In this view, not only do pleasure and happiness have intrinsic, nonmoral value, but a number of other things do as well. Other intrinsic, nonmoral values countenanced by pluralistic utilitarians include knowledge, love, beauty, health, freedom, courage, self-esteem, and so on. For example, according to pluralistic utilitarianism, it is not merely the pleasure produced by friendship that is of value, but friendship itself. Advocates of this approach claim that it is intuitively obvious that the items listed above do, indeed, have intrinsic value, and no one has offered any single feature that all these diverse items have in common.
A number of modern utilitarians have rejected pluralistic utilitarianism. The main problem they point out is that the aforementioned values are relatively useless in determining what one should do. Widely different views exist about the relative merits of the items listed above. Furthermore, no common scale seems to exist for comparing and ranking, say, friendship, including the various kinds of friendship that can take place, with such values as aesthetic experience or courage. For this and other reasons, most contemporary utilitarians embrace a third theory of value—subjective preference utilitarianism. Because it seems to many to be futile and presumptuous to attempt to develop a general theory of value, this position holds that an act ought to maximize the satisfaction of individual desires and preferences. The goal of moral actions is the satisfaction of desires or wants that express individual preferences.
Unfortunately, this theory seems to be a version of combinatorial relativism (see chap. 22); it thus collapses into a form of relativism when it is used to specify goodness for action-guiding purposes. Why? Because when one attempts to use the principle to determine what action to take, any act whatever can be justified as long as it satisfies an individual’s private preferences. If someone desires to be a child molester or to practice some form of self-deprecation, then, in this view, such an act is appropriate because it could maximize the satisfaction of individual desires. The theory cannot account for the simple fact that people can have morally unacceptable preferences such as the desire for genocide.
Utilitarians have responded to this charge in the following way. They supplement the principle of subjective preference with a condition of rationality: the good consists in the satisfaction of individual desires that it is rational to desire. They claim that utilitarianism is not responsible for solving the problem of universal idiocy. In other words, the subjective preference view only takes into account rational preferences. Neither child molestation nor acts of self-deprecation are rational, so they do not count as “appropriate” preferences.
But what is meant by rationality here? Let us distinguish between prescriptive rationality and descriptive rationality. Prescriptive rationality involves two things: (1) the ability to have justified beliefs about what is intrinsically valuable and (2) having those beliefs appropriately inform one’s desires. This type of rationality cannot be what the utilitarian has in mind, for such a rationality either implies pluralistic utilitarianism (the ability to have justified beliefs about what has nonmoral value) or it is deontological (the ability to have justified beliefs about what has intrinsic moral value). Either way, the definition of rationality would be circular: the “good” is defined as what it is rational to desire, and “rational” is defined as what people desire when they desire the good.
The only type of rationality available to the subjective preference form of utilitarianism is descriptive rationality, which necessarily involves two things: First, the ability to use efficient means to accomplish certain ends, once those ends are posited. But this alone is not adequate to save subjective preference utilitarianism, for one could posit morally abhorrent ends and still be rational if one knew efficient means to accomplish those ends. So a second thing must be included in descriptive rationality: one is rational if and only if one desires what all psychologically normal (i.e., statistically usual) people desire. If one is psychologically balanced, then one presumably will not choose to be a child molester. Our human natures are contingent—they could have turned out to have been different, say, if evolutionary progression had taken a different turn. Given the contingent human natures that we happen to have, whatever statistically usual people desire is what it is rational to desire. And as a contingent matter of fact, such people happen not to desire to be child molesters.
But the question is why a normal person would not choose such a way of life. The answer cannot be that such acts are simply wrong, for in this case the advocate of subjective preference utilitarianism would be arguing in a circle. It could have turned out that psychologically “normal” (i.e., typical) people would prefer to have satisfied a number of highly immoral desires. No contradiction is involved in this claim. There are possible worlds (including the future of the actual world) where people, as a contingent matter of fact, typically desire to molest children. But if this were the case, the satisfaction of these desires would be morally appropriate in the subjective preference view. For this reason, such a view must be judged inadequate. Any view that even allows for the logical possibility that child molestation and a host of other immoral acts could be morally justified has a wrong conception of value. And because human preferences may change as time goes by, we may not be raising worries about what is merely logically possible.
By way of conclusion, two important things must be kept in mind when contemplating a utilitarian theory of value. First, moral value (moral acts and rules) only have instrumental value. They are solely a means to an end. Utilitarians differ over what that end, called “the good,” amounts to. The “right” is to the “good” as a means is to an end. This can be pictured as in table 23.1.
Table 23.1. Utilitarian theories of value
The Right
The Good
moral acts and rules
pleasure (quantity or quality), pluralistic value, “rational” subjective preference
instrumental value
intrinsic value
Second, most utilitarians are objectivists regarding the nature of nonmoral value. For hedonist and pluralist utilitarians, the good is objective and not dependent on the beliefs or desires of individuals. By contrast, for subjective preference utilitarians, the good is relative to individual beliefs and desires, and thus it is subjective.
3.2 The Principle of Utility
As we have just seen, utilitarians differ about what value counts in defining utility, where utility stands for whatever the good is that we should seek to maximize in the consequences of our moral acts and rules. Utilitarians also differ about the form of the principle of utility itself. The principle of utility states the goal or test for what one ought to do. According to utilitarianism, most generally, a moral act (or moral rule) is right if and only if consequences of the right kind and/or in the right measure are (actually) produced by the action (or are a result of following the moral rule). But this is still too general, and utilitarians are divided about the best way to characterize this principle more precisely. Each of the following has been proposed:
Clearly, these principles can easily come into conflict with each other. So utilitarians disagree significantly about what is right and wrong in precisely the same situation. Principles (a), (b), (c), (d) are self-explanatory and need no special comment, but it may be helpful to clarify principles (e) and (f).
To simplify, suppose we have a society of ten persons and we have ten pieces of candy to distribute. Let hedon stand for one unit on the pleasure-pain scale or continuum, with pleasure on the positive side and pain on the negative side. Further, suppose eight people in our society derive +1 hedon from a piece of candy, one person hates candy and gets –1 hedon from eating a piece, and one candy connoisseur derives a whopping +5 hedons from each piece. Principle (e) states that in considering what is right and wrong in a given circumstance, one must estimate the amount of utility (i.e., the good versus bad consequences) produced as a function of two things: the total number of positive versus negative hedons generated and the total number of people involved.
Principle (f) makes no reference to the latter factor and only focuses on the total hedons generated. Principle (f) would require that we give all ten pieces to the candy connoisseur because this generates fifty hedons (five hedons for each of ten pieces of candy). Compare this to each individual getting one piece. The first eight people contribute one hedon each, the connoisseur contributes five hedons, and the candy hater yields minus one for a total of twelve hedons. Since this is less than fifty hedons, principle (f) requires that our moral duty is to give all ten pieces to the connoisseur. Principle (e), however, is more complicated because it requires that the number of people be factored into the equation. If all ten pieces are given to the connoisseur, that only includes one person compared to ten people involved in an equal distribution. Principle (e) dictates that we balance the amount of hedons with the number of people included, and thus differs from (f) in its orientation.
It is beyond the scope of our present discussion to analyze further these alternative formulations of the principle of utility. The point to be emphasized here is that utilitarians are not agreed about how to state the principle of utility. This disagreement has often been presented as a criticism of the theory. Furthermore, each individual formulation of the principle of utility is subject to criticism. Consider principle (e) above, the formulation most often associated with utilitarianism. The difficulty with formula (e) is that (e) attempts to balance two different scales used to evaluate the morality of an act or rule: the number of people affected and the total amount of utility produced. This can easily lead to conflicting answers as to what is or is not one’s duty in a given case because one action could be better for more people while the alternative action produces more overall utility.
Another more general criticism of the principle of utility involves the way it is used by utilitarians. Utilitarians emphasize that what we should try to do in our actions is maximize the utility in the consequences of those actions in the long run. They are not interested in the short-term consequences of an act; what matters is the total utility produced by that act, and this must take into account the long-range affects of that act.
But now a problem enters the picture. It is difficult, if not impossible, to know the comparative long-term consequences of alternative acts one could perform. Short of being (nearly) omniscient, one could hardly judge accurately that alternative A is his duty and action B is morally forbidden. Keep in mind that the agent’s intentions have no bearing on the moral character of the agent’s action. Someone could sincerely do A, thinking that it would produce the most utility, but actually do the immoral thing if B turned out in the long run to maximize utility vis-à-vis A. Some utilitarians respond to this by claiming that one merely has a duty to do an act in light of what it is reasonable to expect will be the consequences of an act, and has no duty to do what actually maximizes utility in the long run. Further, doing one’s best to act in light of reasonable expectations about consequences will itself maximize utility compared to not acting at all or acting in ways that do not reasonably offer the expectation of maximizing utility.
But this response misses the point. The point is not that moral agents are responsible to do the best they can in their actions and, since they are not omniscient, they will sometimes make mistakes. This point is correct and applies to all moral theories. The real issue surfaced in the objection is that utilitarian approaches to morality and moral decision-making have a defect that is central to the theory. The very factor that makes an action right or wrong—the long-term utility produced by that act compared to alternative acts—often (if not typically) has an uncertainty that paralyzes moral decision-making and that brings to center stage a tentativeness about duty that is not conducive to the development of conviction and character (see chap. 24).
As Solomon noted in Ecclesiastes 2:18-19, “I must leave [the fruit of my labor] to those who come after me—and who knows whether they will be wise or foolish? Yet they will be master of all for which I toiled and used my wisdom under the sun. This also is vanity.” Solomon’s point is this: If the worth of my labor and its fruits derives from the long-term consequences of that labor, then there is a certain emptiness and paralyzing uncertainty to my current actions because I could actually be contributing to something with bad long-term effects. Thus, if my current labor is to have value, then that worth must derive from something in addition to its long-term consequences.
The paralyzing impact of utilitarian views of the principle of utility has also been highlighted by what is called the no-rest objection. According to utilitarianism, one is to do that act which maximizes utility in the long run. But for any act one could perform, there will always be a potentially infinite set of alternative acts. How is one effectively to take into account all the relevant alternatives? And how can one even approximately evaluate the long-term consequences of each of these alternatives?
Before we look at different forms of utilitarianism, we need to examine one more question regarding the principle of utility: Does the principle of utility commit utilitarianism to a form of moral relativism? Many people mistakenly believe the answer to be yes. In order to see why this is mistaken, let us make a distinction between something being a relation versus something being relative. Being red is a simple property. It takes only one thing, say an apple, to have it. By contrast, a relation is an objective feature of the world that obtains between two or more things. For example, “larger than” or “between” are relations. Note that it is an objective feature of the world whether or not some object A is larger than some object B or some object C is between two other objects D and E. Such facts do not depend on the beliefs of people. Believing that A is larger than B is not what makes it so. On the other hand, something (a belief) is relative if its truth or falsity is dependent on the beliefs of individuals or cultures. It is sometimes said that P is true-for-me but false-for-you. Such a statement expresses the idea that the truth of P is subjective—its truth depends on P being believed.
Now utilitarianism makes the morality of an act (or rule) a relation between the act and the consequences produced in that specific circumstance. For act utilitarians (see below), an act of stealing by Smith on Tuesday is right or wrong in relation to the consequences of that specific act. The same could be said for an act of stealing by Jones on Wednesday. In each case, moral rightness or wrongness is a relation to those and only those circumstances involved in that very case. Thus moral rightness or wrongness is not invariant; it changes as consequences and circumstances change. Some people think that this variation makes utilitarianism a form of relativism. But this is mistaken for, in any given situation, it will be an objective feature of the world (not always easy to discover) as to which action will actually maximize utility in that case. So even though utilitarianism does turn rightness or wrongness into a relation, which makes moral value something that can vary as circumstances vary, utilitarianism does not make moral value dependent on the beliefs of individuals. It, therefore, is not a form of relativism.
3.3 Different Forms of Utilitarianism
Finally, there are two major versions of utilitarianism: act utilitarianism and rule utilitarianism. Act utilitarianism focuses on the utility produced by particular concrete acts, and rule utilitarianism focuses on the utility produced by adopting rules governing kinds of acts. Before we can understand the difference between these two approaches, we must first take into account two preliminary distinctions: (1) an act type versus an act token and (2) a summary concept of rules versus a practice concept of rules.
An act type is a kind of act that can take place in different places at the same time or at different times. Act types are repeatable. A promise-keeping kind of act, a promise-breaking kind of act, and a stealing type act are all examples of act types. An act token, however, is a particular, concrete instance of a type of act. If Smith breaks a promise at noon on Tuesday and Jones does the same thing at noon the next day, then these are two act tokens of the same kind of act. If Roth steals at noon on Thursday, this is a third act token, but it is an instance of a different type of act (a stealing type act and not a promise-breaking type act).
So much for the difference between act types and tokens. What about the second distinction, between summary and practice conceptions of rules, in this case moral rules like “Do not steal” or “Do not break promises”? According to the summary conception of rules, such moral rules are like a scientific generalization. For example, the scientific rule “All ravens are black” is a generalization reached by starting with the examination of several individual cases—raven1 is black, raven2 is black, and so on, such that all ravens examined so far are black—and then generalizing to the conclusion that, probably, all ravens whatsoever (both examined and unexamined) are black. Note two things about this example. To begin with, individual cases (e.g., each specific raven) are more fundamental and important than the rule. The rule is justified by the cases, not vice versa. Further, the rule is merely a useful summary of what has been found to be true so far (All examined ravens have been black) and a guiding rule of thumb for future cases (Ravens examined in the future will most likely be black). What would happen if we came upon a white raven? Our rule (All ravens are black) does not tell us that ravens must be black. If that were the case, we would be forced to classify our new bird as a nonraven simply because it is white. No, we would affirm that we have before us a white raven and we would change the rule to “In most cases, ravens are black.” The rule would still be a convenient, generally correct guide in most cases, but it would not be universally true.
The practice conception of rules is a very different one. A practice is a form of activity specified by rules (and offices, roles, duties, etc.). The game of baseball, the system of tort law, and the insurance industry are examples of institutions or practices in this sense. Here, if one wants to engage in activity within a practice (e.g., pitch in baseball, sue someone in court), then he or she must follow the rules of the game that constitute the very essence of that practice. The rules of a practice already exist prior to individual activities that take place within that practice. If one is going to pitch, then he or she must get a baseball (not a javelin), go to a baseball diamond (not a pool hall), and throw the ball according to certain rules. These rules are not useful summaries of past observations of what pitchers have so far done. Rather, they are definitional. Rules determine the practice. If someone was throwing a javelin in a pool hall and claimed to be pitching in baseball, we would not think that our rule “All pitchers throw a baseball over home plate in such and such a way” needed to be altered slightly like we do when we find a white raven. No, we simply would not count the javelin thrower as an example of pitching in baseball regardless of what he or she calls it. With these distinctions in mind, we are in a better position to understand the difference between act and rule utilitarianism.
1. Act Utilitarianism. According to act utilitarianism, an act is right if and only if no other act available to the agent maximizes utility more than the act in question. Here, each moral act is treated atomistically; that is, it is evaluated in complete isolation from other acts. Act utilitarians regard act tokens, not act types, as the proper object of moral evaluation. Each individual moral situation (Should Smith break his promise on Tuesday?) is more important than the rule relevant to that situation (In general, keep your promises). Moreover, act utilitarians employ a summary notion of moral rules, not a practice conception. General moral rules like “Don’t steal,” “Don’t break promises,” or “Don’t punish innocent people” are mere rules of thumb; summaries of how people up to this moment have generally experienced the consequences of acts similar to the one under consideration. If I am considering the morality of an act of stealing, then the rule “Don’t steal” reminds me that such acts usually do not maximize utility. But such rules have no intrinsic moral value, nor do they dictate to me how I must view the present act. That is, moral rules like “Don’t steal” do not constitute the very moral essence of specific actions of stealing. Instead, they are mere rules of thumb and as such are fallible aides in reflecting the actual moral character of a specific act under consideration.
A number of objections have been raised against act utilitarianism. First, act utilitarianism makes it possible to morally justify a number of acts that seem to be immoral. For example, if it would maximize utility to break a promise, for the police to punish a man they know to be innocent (perhaps to show the efficiency of the police and to serve as a deterrent, provided of course that they keep this a secret to prevent social chaos resulting from a lowering of respect for the police), or for a few to be enslaved for the benefit of the majority, then there are no grounds within act utilitarianism to judge these acts as immoral. Sometimes actions of this kind will produce the “morally desirable consequences.” But any doctrine that treats these immoral acts as morally justifiable is wrong.
The idea behind these points is that we start our moral theorizing—in this case, our attempt to state a normative theory like act utilitarianism—with rational intuitions about what is and is not morally appropriate. It is wrong to punish an innocent person, period. If a theory like act utilitarianism could imply that such an act would be morally obligatory or even permissible, then that theory must be rejected because we have better grounds for believing that we should not punish an innocent person than we have for accepting act utilitarianism. If something has to go it is the theory, not our intuitions. Of course, utilitarians can respond that, in this case, we should simply adjust our intuitions in light of the theory. But the critic of act utilitarianism is using intuitional knowledge of specific moral cases in roughly the same way that scientists use facts, namely, as an important factor to use in evaluating alternative theories, and it is hard to see how this can be mistaken. Moreover, making an exception to a rule may not in the long run be such a good thing. Thus act utilitarianism threatens to collapse into rule utilitarianism.
The criticisms listed above tend to show that act utilitarianism does not accord with our conviction that individuals have intrinsic value with individual rights and that persons are not merely bundles of social utility. In these cases, people are treated as means to an end, sometimes on the grounds that doing so will have great social utility. But this fails to treat these persons as intrinsically valuable ends with individual rights. Put differently, it is difficult to derive a robust, intuitively acceptable principle of justice that respects the intrinsic rights of individuals from a principle of utility.
Third, act utilitarianism turns trivial acts into moral acts. Consider the choice of what cereal to eat for breakfast. Suppose three cereals were available to you and that one of these would produce slightly more utility than the others if it were selected, perhaps because it is slightly better in flavor, texture, and so on. In this case, act utilitarianism would imply that you were morally obligated to eat this cereal because that act would maximize utility. But in spite of act utilitarian claims, such an act does not seem to be a moral act at all. Thus act utilitarianism fails because it turns trivial acts like this into issues of moral obligation.
Other objections, which apply equally to act utilitarianism and rule utilitarianism, will be considered below. In light of the objections just mentioned, some utilitarians have formulated different versions of rule utilitarianism, which they believe handle these objections in a way not possible within an act utilitarian framework.
2. Rule Utilitarianism. According to rule utilitarianism, an act is right if and only if it falls under a correct moral rule that covers that generic type of act. And a rule is a correct moral rule if and only if everyone’s acting on this rule would maximize utility compared to everyone’s acting on an alternative rule. Rule utilitarians emphasize act types (not act tokens) and a practice conception of moral rules.
Here acts are no longer evaluated in isolation from moral rules. The reason act utilitarianism failed was that one could sever a particular act of keeping a promise or punishing an innocent person from general moral rules (“Keep promises,” “Punish only guilty people”) and evaluate the utility produced by that particular act directly. In act utilitarianism, if breaking a promise does not weaken respect for the moral rule to keep promises (in which case chaos would result and bad utility would be produced), then the act can be justified. Rule utilitarians tighten the connection between rules and acts. An act token (a specific case of stealing) is viewed in light of the act type (stealing types of acts in general) of which it is an example. And an act type is evaluated by reference to the correctness of a moral rule relevant to that act type taken as a moral practice. Utility calculations enter into the process at the level of evaluating alternative moral rules governing alternative moral practices and act types. For example, if everyone followed the rule “Punish only guilty people,” then this would lead to greater utility than if everyone followed the rule “Punish innocent people as well as guilty people.”
Thus rule utilitarianism cannot be used to justify the problematic acts cited against act utilitarianism. Further, it is claimed that it would not maximize utility if we treated trivial acts such as what to eat for breakfast as moral issues. Utility is maximized if areas of individual freedom are maintained, or so say rule utilitarians.
But is it really the case that we do not treat choices of breakfast food as moral questions because doing so would fail to maximize utility? On the contrary, it seems that such acts are just not moral by their very nature. Further, act utilitarians argue that when faced with any moral situation, we should always follow this rule: when faced with a moral dilemma, then maximize utility. This is the correct moral rule for everyone to adopt, for if one does, then utility will be maximized, and thus rule utilitarianism would entail the adoption of this particular rule. But, say act utilitarians, this rule is just another way of expressing act utilitarianism. So in reality rule utilitarianism collapses back into act utilitarianism. After all, act utilitarians claim that producing utility is what matters, and acts, not rules, produce utility in the concrete, actual world.
Three further objections have been raised against both rule and act utilitarianism. First, there is the publicity objection we encountered earlier in our treatment of ethical egoism. It is surely possible that if people adopt a deontological approach (see chap. 24) to ethics, then this could actually maximize utility compared to people adopting utilitarianism. If people simply acted out of pure respect for the moral law and believed that moral rules have objective, intrinsic moral value, this could maximize utility more effectively compared to people consciously acting as utilitarians. In this case, utilitarian theory would imply that it would be morally wrong to teach others to be utilitarians. Any moral doctrine that allows for the possibility that it could be immoral to teach that doctrine to others is surely flawed.
Second, rule (and act) utilitarianism denies the existence of supererogatory acts whereas there do seem to be such acts. A supererogatory act is one that is not morally obligatory (one is not immoral for failing to do such an act) but nevertheless is morally praiseworthy. A supererogatory act is thus an act of moral heroism done above and beyond the call of moral duty. Examples include giving half of one’s income to the poor, throwing oneself on a bomb to save another person, and so on. In each of these cases one could act in supererogatory way or fail to. Either option would produce a certain amount of utility, and the option that produced the greater utility would be morally obligatory according to both rule and act utilitarianism. So supererogatory acts become impossible. But in spite of utilitarianism, such acts not only seem possible, they sometimes actually occur.
Finally, both rule and act utilitarianism are inadequate in their treatment of motives. We rightly praise good motives and blame bad ones. But utilitarianism implies that motives have no intrinsic moral worth. All that matters from a moral point of view are the consequences of actions, not the motives for which they are done.
Utilitarians have a response to these last two criticisms, which further clarifies the nature of utilitarianism as a moral position. They argue that it maximizes utility if we allow areas of moral freedom (recall the breakfast example). Thus any rule requiring that one must do supererogatory acts would not itself maximize utility. So supererogatory acts should be preserved because that would produce the best consequences. Similarly, we should praise good motives and blame bad ones because such acts of praise and blame will maximize utility compared with praising bad motives and blaming good ones or failing to discuss motives altogether.
At this point, the real difficulty with utilitarianism seems obvious: it misconstrues the real nature and source of our moral obligations. Contrary to what utilitarianism implies, some acts just appear to be intrinsically right or wrong (torturing babies for fun), some rules seem to be intrinsically right or wrong (punishing only guilty people), some areas of life seem to be intrinsically trivial (what to eat for breakfast) or supererogatory (giving half your income to the poor). From a moral point of view, some motives (morally) should be blamed or praised for what they are intrinsically and not because such acts of praise or blame produce utility, and humans seem to have intrinsic value and rights, which ground what is just and unjust treatment regarding them. In our opinion, utilitarianism fails to explain adequately these features of the moral life.
Chapter Summary
There are two main types of normative ethical theories: teleological and deontological. A teleological theory can either be a natural law position or a theory implying that the rightness or wrongness of an act is exclusively a function of the good or bad consequences of that act. This chapter focuses on two main examples of this latter usage: ethical egoism and utilitarianism.
Ethical egoism is the view that each person has a moral duty to follow those rules that will be in the agent’s self-interest over the long haul. It should not be confused with certain other ideas (for example, egotism) discussed in the chapter. Two main arguments for ethical egoism are the argument from psychological egoism and the closet utilitarian argument. The publicity objection, the paradox of egoism, and the fact that ethical egoism leads to inconsistent outcomes are debilitating problems for the theory. Ethical egoism was also compared to biblical teachings related to it.
Utilitarians claim that the rightness or wrongness of an act or moral rule is solely a matter of the nonmoral good directly or indirectly produced in the consequences of that act or rule. Different utilitarian theories of value (quantitative and qualitative hedonism, pluralistic, and subjective preference utilitarianism) were examined, followed by a survey of various statements of the principle of utility. The most popular statement of this principle is the claim that one ought to act so as to produce the greatest happiness for the greatest number. Act and rule utilitarianism are two different forms of this teleological theory. The former focuses on act tokens and a summary concept of rules; the latter focuses on act types and a practice concept of rules. The chapter concluded with criticisms of utilitarianism in all of its major formulations.
Checklist of Basic Terms and Concepts
act token
act type
act utilitarianism
altruism (pseudo versus genuine)
closet utilitarian argument
deontological ethics
descriptive rationality
egoist
egotism
ethical egoism (universal or impersonal rule egoism)
hedonistic utilitarianism (quantitative and qualitative)
individual or personal ethical egoism
instrumental value
intrinsic value
mixed value
moral value (rightness)
nonmoral value (goodness)
no-rest objection
objective duty
paradox of egoism
paradox of hedonism
pluralistic utilitarianism
practice conception of rules
prescriptive rationality
principle of utility
psychological egoism
publicity objection
rule utilitarianism
subjective duty
subjective preference utilitarianism
summary conception of rules
supererogatory act
teleological ethics
utilitarianism
utility
wanton