utilitarianism, moral dilemmas, and moral cost

North American Philosophical Publications

Utilitarianism, Moral Dilemmas, and Moral CostAuthor(s): Michael SloteSource: American Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 22, No. 2 (Apr., 1985), pp. 161-168Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of the North American PhilosophicalPublicationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20014092 .

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American Philosophical Quarterly Volume 22, Number 2, April 1985

UTILITARIANISM, MORAL DILEMMAS, AND MORAL COST

Michael Slote

T TTILITARIANISM has been charged in a ^number of different ways with oversimplifying

morality and the moral life. But the present paper will confine its attention to two closely related ways in which this criticism can be made. Utilitarianism

has recently been accused both of blindness to the

possibility of moral dilemmas and of an inability to conceive the idea of moral cost, and in what

follows I would like to respond to these charges, not, in the perhaps expectable utilitarian fashion,

by admitting them but denying their destructive

force against utilitarianism, but by questioning the

truth of the charges. It is certainly true that (act-)

utilitarian, and, more broadly, (act-) consequen tialist moral theories have almost always been pre? sented in ways that seem to preclude moral

dilemmas and moral costs, but this appearance results from a tendency to overlook certain histor?

ically important forms of utilitarianism and from a

failure to recognize the implications of the tradi?

tional utilitarian appeal to universal impersonal benevolence. I hope, therefore, to show that the dilemmas and costs that have recently been said to

characterize ordinary moral thinking can be plaus?

ibly modelled within (act-) utilitarian moral theory. Whether this unsuspected capacity for complexity will be welcome to utilitarians and whether it will

take the edge off some of the criticism that has

been directed at utilitarianism by defenders of common-sense morality are questions to be dis?

cussed at the end of this essay.

I

Recent treatments of the idea of a moral dilemma

have focussed on a particularly de-epistemologized version of this notion. From the standpoint of these recent discussions the existence of deep moral

uncertainty is not sufficient for the existence of a

dilemma; a dilemma exists only when a person

(through no fault of his own) is faced with a morally

tragic situation in which whatever he does will be

wrong. Several recent philosophers have argued for the existence of moral dilemmas so conceived,1 but others remain unconvinced and I shall not here

attempt to settle this issue. The main point will be, rather, that if there are genuine moral dilemmas

from the standpoint of common-sense morality, then we must also allow for the possibility of util?

itarian moral dilemmas.

Recent formulations of (act-) utilitarianism and

(act-) consequentialism certainly seem to leave no

room for dilemmas: if the criterion of a morally

right or acceptable action is that it produces as

much good overall as any of the alternatives avail?

able to the agent in a given situation, then, for

example, where two acts have equally good conse?

quences and no available act would produce better

consequences, both acts will be morally right and the choice between them not, therefore, dilemma

tic. But why not say that an act is right only if it is better than any alternative, so that when two (or

more) acts tie for first place neither (none) counts

as morally right? The question is less obtuse than it may seem: the attempt to answer it actually helps to clear the way for a purely utilitarian version of

moral tragedy. For the obvious retort would be to

point out the perversity of characterizing an act

with good consequences as unacceptable simply because some other act would produce just as much

good?especially if either act would produce better

consequences than any other act that could be per? formed in the situation.

But what happens when the two actions tied for

first place would each on the whole have bad

results? Utilitarian conceptions of consequences and effects make little or no distinction between

commissions and omissions and allow for the pos 161



162 AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY

sibility that every possible act in a given situation

would make things worse off (than before). And

though it is eminently plausible to say that where

good can be accomplished, two actions tied for

first place may both count as acceptable, it is less

clearly plausible to speak this way of "tied least

evils," of actions with overall bad consequences that are nonetheless better than anything else an

agent can do in given circumstances. (Later I shall

provide an illustrative example of such cir?

cumstances.) Yet on the above-mentioned typical formulations, (act-) utilitarianism makes no distinc?

tion between cases where good can be done and

cases where evil consequences can only be

minimized; and it is precisely with respect to the

second sort of case that utilitarianism may be

tempted to acknowledge the possibility of tragic moral dilemmas. There is one historically important form of (act-) utilitarianism that is in fact clearly

dilemma-permitting, and once we see how the latter

can be developed into a plausible alternative to

contemporary versions of utilitarianism, the possi?

bility of utilitarian moral dilemmas will come into

view.

II

The dilemma-permitting version of utilitarianism

I have in mind is to be found in Bentham's An

Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legis? lation. The 1823 version of the Introduction treats

the principle of utility as requiring that one act to

produce the greatest happiness of those affected by one's actions, but it does this in a prominent long footnote, and the main text of the work reads the

same as the original edition of 1789 and understands

the principle of utility as making the lightness or

wrongness of an act depend on whether it contrib?

utes to human happiness or to human unhappiness. Now such an interpretation of the principle of utility differs from the first-mentioned version of the prin?

ciple in (at least) two important respects. To begin with, it allows what I have elsewhere called moral

satisficing. Instead of requiring that right acts be

optimific, it treats acts as right if they merely make

some contribution on balance to human happiness, and Bentham's original understanding of the prin?

ciple of utility is thus a form of satisficing (act-)

utilitarianism, as opposed to those optimizing,

maximizing versions of (act-) utilitarianism that

have more recently been favored and that Bentham

himself introduces in the second edition of his Intro?

duction.2

But Bentham's original principle of utility differs

from recent optimizing act-utilitarianism in another

important respect. The latter allows one to "flip a

coin" when two or more actions are tied for first

place with respect to the goodness of consequences, and it makes no distinction between consequences tied for being least bad and consequences highest in positive goodness. But Bentham's original

theory requires that a right act have positively good consequences, and so entails that a moral dilemma

would come about in any situation where an agent found that every possible course of action would on the whole have deleterious effects.

Now Bentham's early version of utilitarianism

may well be thought inferior to now-prevalent

optimizing versions. The earlier principle of utility makes any act right that has good consequences

(for human happiness), and it thereby sets a ridicul?

ously low standard for morality, allowing an act

to count as right even if it produces much less good than many of its alternatives. But it is not the unde

mandingness of Bentham's early version of the

principle of utility that makes moral dilemmas pos? sible, but rather its demand that any right act have

overall good consequences, a demand not made by most contemporary versions of act-utilitarianism.

So Bentham's satisficing version of utilitarianism

may be faulted for permitting (inappropriate kinds

of) moral satisficing, without the dilemma-permit?

ting element in the theory having thereby in any

way come under attack. And in fact even an

optimizing form of act-utilitarianism can lead to

moral dilemmas. Thus consider the moral theory that results if one demands of a right action both

that it produce consequences no less good than

those producible by any alternative act available to

a given agent and that those consequences be, on

balance, good. Such a theory clearly demands

optimific behavior; but it sets the additional require? ment that right actions have good consequences on

balance, and, as with Bentham's earlier view, this

element of the theory just introduced entails the

possibility of situations where no matter what one



UTILITARIANISM, MORAL DILEMMAS, AND MORAL COST 163

does, one acts wrongly. So both satisficing and

optimizing forms of utilitarianism can lead to moral

dilemmas. Ruth Marcus (among others) has recently

claimed that act-utilitarianism cannot lead to moral

dilemmas, and has offered a particular explanation of this impossibility.3 The explanation is not, she

thinks, that act-utilitarianism makes use of only one principle for judging the morality of actions,

but, rather, the fact that common-sense moral prin?

ciples make the intrinsic features of an act

immediately relevant to its moral status, whereas

utilitarianism treats as relevant only the conse?

quences of an action, not its intrinsic nature. (She

allows, however, that many dilemmas arise, for

our ordinary morality, in virtue of a conflict

between certain intrinsic characterizations of

actions and considerations of consequences.) How?

ever, if the above-mentioned dilemma-prone forms

of the principle of utility are coherent, then whether or not they are as plausible as standard contempo?

rary optimizing utilitarianism, it should be clear

that Marcus's account of dilemmas is flawed.

Bentham's earlier version of the principle of utility and the principle requiring acts that both optimize and have positively good consequences are both

single-principle act-utilitarian moral theories that

make moral status depend on consequences, rather

than the intrinsic characterization of actions; yet

they allow for moral dilemmas, so it cannot be the absence of morally-relevant intrinsic characteriza?

tions that prevents (the most popular contemporary form of) act-utilitarianism from generating moral

dilemmas; and Marcus's more basic assumption that utilitarianism does not allow for dilemmas?an

assumption shared alike by recent defenders and

critics of utilitarianism?holds only for certain ver?

sions of (act-) utilitarianism, not for (act-) utilitarianism per se.

However, at this point it might be said that

Bentham's early version of utilitarianism and its

dilemma-prone optimizing offshoot are completely

implausible and so of strictly historical interest.

And it might then be claimed that any half-way

plausible form of utilitarianism will be dilemma

free, whereas common-sense morality at its subtlest and most adequate precisely allows for dilemmas. But I wonder whether the two dilemma-producing

versions of utilitarianism mentioned earlier can

both be regarded as faulty forms of utilitarianism.

Given the way act-utilitarianism has typically been

conceived and justified as a moral theory, I think

dilemma-producing versions of utilitarianism may have as good a claim to express the fundamental

moral ideals of utilitarianism as contemporary ver?

sions.

Ill

The principle of utility has long been viewed as

expressing the dictates of an impersonal, or impar? tial, benevolence. Our own benevolence is more

concerned with some people than with others and concern with ourselves can hardly be called benevo?

lence at all, but when we abstract from our own

particular identities, we may imaginatively feel an

impersonal benevolence that is equally interested

in the welfare of every individual, and utilitarians

usually regard the principle of utility as justified

by the fact that its dictates would recommend them?

selves to anyone who adopted a purely benevolent

but impersonal standpoint. Thus utilitarianism

treats benevolence (or sympathy) as the most fun?

damental moral motive, and takes a certain univer?

salized form of ordinary human benevolence (or

sympathy) as the touchstone of moral justification, whereas common-sense morality treats benevo?

lence as only one of several forms of moral moti? vation and justification.

But what is benevolence? Our ordinary notion

conveys the idea of wishing well and wishing to

do well by, but what is supposed to underlie the

principle of utility in current optimizing formula?

tions is some sort of impersonal desire that things should somehow turn out for the best.4 There is a

disparity here that has been neglected in recent

discussions, but that has great significance for our

understanding of utilitarianism. The universal

impersonal benevolence that is the touchstone of recent utilitarian justification is an ideal theoretical

distillation of the ordinary benevolent desire that, in various situations, things should turn out for the

best for certain people other than oneself. But ordi?

nary benevolence can express itself no less in the desire to do well by people than in the desire to

do the best one can for people, and these two




expressions have importantly different implications with respect to situations where anything one does

or does not do will make things worse for people. In such circumstances one can fulfill the desire to

do the best one can but cannot in the ordinary sense

do well by, or help, people; and ordinary benevo?

lence, at least in one of its aspects, is thereby thwarted. (Even in situations where one can help

people, benevolence may not be entirely satisfied

if everything one can do will still leave those people

fairly badly off. However, I shall ignore this com?

plication in what follows.) But then to the extent

that utilitarian moral argument is grounded in a

form of universalized benevolence, it is subject to

the same fundamental dichotomy. Impersonal benevolence will involve the impersonal desire that

things turn out for the best possible in any given situation, but also the desire that, where things are

not ideal, they should somehow be made better; and such benevolence will thus only be partially fulfilled through actions which on the whole make

things worse for people at the same time that they make the best of a bad situation. But the question then arises why utilitarianism should require the

satisfaction of only one of the two components of

(universal impersonal) benevolence in order for an

action to count as right. Should it not, rather,

require that both elements of its foundational

benevolence be satisfied in order for an act to count

as morally acceptable, thus yielding our dilemma

prone optimizing version of utilitarianism rather

than the less demanding version of the principle of

utility recently in favor?

Nor does it seem open to the utilitarian to argue that such a requirement would be much too demand?

ing; for the optimizing theory that utilitarians now

prefer is open to the same charge, and all the moves

that utilitarians have made against that charge can

be made against the charge that dilemma-prone versions of utilitarianism are too rigorous. It is

often said, for example, that act-utilitarianism

demands too much self-sacrifice from agents, but

the reply has been that self-sacrificing optimific action is required from the standpoint of disin?

terested benevolence and that one can in any case

distinguish between an agent's acting wrongly and

its being right to blame her for doing so (or wrong to praise her for doing so). A similar point can be

made about the optimizing dilemma-prone version

of utilitarianism introduced above. It makes it even

harder to act rightly than the prevalent version of

the theory, but act-utilitarianism evaluates actions

from the standpoint of impersonal benevolence,

judging them in terms of whether (or perhaps how

well) they serve what such benevolence desires (of

actions); and as we have seen, impersonal universal

benevolence can naturally be expressed as desiring of actions not only that they be optimific but also

that they not make things worse than they already,

imperfectly, are. Such benevolence is thus more

complex as a motivation and method of justification than utilitarians and anti-utilitarians have realized, and to the extent that a given action fails to satisfy both the goals benevolence has with respect to given actions, there seems no reason, from the standpoint of act-utilitarianism, to insist that the action is

nonetheless morally right. One can and perhaps should say, rather, that it is wrong, but that it may nonetheless be right to praise or not to blame it,

provided, again, that the latter action serves the

twin goal of optimizing and generally improving (not disimproving) things for people. It is difficult to see how the act-utilitarian can claim that pre?

sently prevalent versions of utilitarianism are better or more adequate expressions of its underlying rationale than the dilemma-prone version men?

tioned above.

However, perhaps the best way to see how natur?

ally dilemmas can arise within a recognizably util? itarian perspective would be to imagine cir? cumstances that might unavoidably elicit guilt from a utilitarian moral agent in the same way that common-sense moral dilemmas are supposed to

make guilt inevitable for ordinary moral agents.

Imagine an impersonally benevolent person who

has devoted his life to helping people, but who

learns that the has contracted a particularly virulent

form of plague. Wherever he moves (and even if

he stays put) he will infect people (via various

carriers of the disease). There is no known way of

immediately isolating him or sealing him off in

such a way that no one is infected, and whatever

he does, people?different people in different cases

depending on where or whether he moves and on

how he acts?will be made worse off than they would be, say, if he could instantaneously disap? pear.




What will the conscientious person with utili?

tarian motivation feel about his actions if he learns

that he has such a disease? An agent with the sort

of strong benevolent motivation utilitarian theory treats as fundamental will clearly be appalled not

only about what has happened to him but also about

the future course of his life. He is likely to feel

pain at (aghast at) the thought of what he is doing to people he would like to help (even though he

may recognize that it is no fault of his own that he

is in such a situation). But then, after the horrible

consequences start to mount up, is he likely to feel mere regret for harming the particular people he

does? Will he not also feel guilty about what he

has done (and cannot stop doing), and in the cir?

cumstances is such a feeling not just as appropriate or reasonable as in those tragic situations that deon

tological theorists have described? I think the above

example illustrates a utilitarian moral dilemma that

is just as plausible from the standpoint of utilitarian

moral psychology as those moral dilemmas that can be generated from within ordinary morality and its accompanying moral psychology. The infected

benevolent person will feel horror at the things he

does to people and there is nothing either about such horror or about the benevolence that underlies it that makes it imperative to interpret it as involving regret that acknowledges no wrongdoing, rather than a sense of guilt for doing wrong things. Con?

sistently with its underlying rationale, i.e., with the impartially benevolent motivation it treats as

the basis for all moral justification, there is no reason for utilitarianism to treat such cases as

involving only regret and thus as illustrating the

(dilemma-free) principle of utility now prevalent, rather than as exemplifying guilt (belief in one's own wrongdoing) and thus the dilemma-prone ver? sion of the utility principle introduced above. And if in addition one grants the existence of moral dilemmas under the assumptions of deontological

morality, then the similarity between the present case and the usual deontological examples should

tip the scale in favor of a form of utilitarianism that clearly does make room for dilemmas.5

IV

Some of the complexity, then, of the notion of

benevolence has been left untapped by defenders

and critics of (act-) utilitarianism, and this neglect has resulted in a failure to notice the possibility of

(act-) utilitarian moral dilemmas. But the notion

of benevolence is in fact more complex than I have

yet suggested, and other elements in the notion can

be shown to lead to a utilitarian version of the

(deontological) notion of "moral cost." Bernard

Williams has recently invoked this notion in order

to illustrate a moral phenomenon in some sense

intermediate between moral dilemmas and the inno?

cent overriding of one prima facie duty by another.6

Where, for example, an official has to harm or

violate the rights of some innocent individual in

order to avoid some terrible large-scale disaster or

achieve some important public good, it may be

appropriate for him to feel distaste at what he does even though he correctly believes that he is acting

rightly. Such distaste will represent a recognition of the moral cost of doing what is right in those

particular circumstances, a moral cost not present in those favorite cases of the intuitionists where one prima facie obligation simply overrides

another. Where the obligation to keep a promise is overridden, for example, by the obligation to save a drowning child, one may have a subsequent duty to give some sort of explanation of the

promise-breaking to the party concerned; but a dis?

quieting sense of having done something morally distasteful will clearly be inappropriate. In cases of political necessity of the sort mentioned above, on the other hand, such moral unease or disquiet will be a sign of sensitivity to genuine moral cost. But since the cost in these cases exists despite the fact that, all things considered, one does the right thing, such cases are clearly also different from those tragic examples in which whatever the agent does is wrong.

Williams holds that the notion of moral cost indi? cates a subtlety, or a complexity, in (sophisticated) ordinary moral thought that cannot be matched by utilitarian moral thinking. Utilitarianism, he

claims, leaves no room for a notion of moral?as

opposed to other kinds of?cost. Williams goes on to suggest that this omission results from, or is at least closely connected with, the maximizing character of utilitarian moral conceptions. But the

main point to be made in what follows is that the




fundamental utilitarian appeal to (a universalized

form of) benevolence can naturally generate a util?

itarian conception of moral cost and moral disquiet and can do so even within a maximizing act-utili?

tarian framework.

To understand why we must focus, once again, on the many-sidedness of the notion of benevo?

lence. We have seen that ordinary human benevo?

lence can involve not only a concern to do the best

one can for certain people, but also a concern

simply to do well by those people. But benevo?

lence, especially universal benevolence, can

(must?) also involve a concern not to harm anyone and not to leave anyone's well-being neglected. A

truly benevolent person will have qualms?and

why not moral qualms??about harming some

people in order to benefit a great many others, and

in a world such as ours will also naturally agonize over whom or where to help: asking himself, e.g., whether he should give his money to famine relief

in Bangladesh or in the Sahel; or whether he can

do more good fighting for freedom in Afganistan or in El Salvador. But this agony will amount to

more than an epistemological doubt about where

he can maximize human well-being, something that

is readily dispelled if and when he decides that the

path he chose was indeed for the best. For he may

easily retain a residue of agony, of moral shudder, for those he could not help. By the same token, a

person who goes to an orphanage and adopts, from

among the children there, the child who seems

most in need of help and helpable, may be sub?

sequently haunted by the thought of all the orphaned children he could not help?he may focus this

feeling on particular children he remembers. And

it is not likely entirely to console him to think, even if he has reason to think it, that he has done

more for the child he chose than he could have

done for any of the others. Benevolence aims not

only to do the best it can in a given situation and

to help rather than hurt people on balance, but also

to leave no one?at least no object of its concern?

badly off and uncared for, and this aim can leave

a sense of moral consternation, when one's

maximizing actions have left someone neglected or worse off than previously.7

This further facet of ordinary benevolence makes

it possible to acknowledge a utilitarian analogue

of the notion of moral cost Williams sees

exemplified in ordinary (deontological) morality. It is possible for an act-utilitarian with a maximizing criterion of right and wrong nonetheless to make

room for the idea of the moral cost of a particular

maximizing action, because the idea of universal,

impersonal benevolence naturally encompasses, in

addition to the concern to maximize overall

(summed-up) human welfare, a concern that no

one should be harmed or neglected. (Remember that utilitarianism has traditionally made no distinc?

tion between the consequences of omissions and

commissions. From a utilitarian perspective, failure

to help is equivalent to harming.) Williams treats moral cost as a fairly rare

phenomenon of the moral life, but from the

standpoint of universalized utilitarian benevolence, moral costs are constantly being incurred even by those who act optimifically. Helping some people almost always involves failing to help others one

could have helped instead, and so the foregoing discussion implies that if utilitarianism is correct, moral cost is a practically universal feature of moral

activity. Since the acknowledgement of such costs

is typically accompanied by unease or consterna?

tion, and utilitarianism seeks to promote happiness, it might be thought that this result of ours is in

tension with utilitarian doctrine and must somehow

be incorrect. But that would be a mistake.

Utilitarianism frequently invokes a distinction

between moral theory and moral practice, and it

has been frequently suggested, for example, that

the principle of utility, which represents the theoret?

ically correct utilitarian standard of right and wrong

action, ought not (on grounds of utility) to be used, or frequently used, as a guide to action in everyday life. The same kind of point can be made in regard to moral costs (as well as in regard to moral dilem?

mas). Utilitarian theory may properly accommo?

date these notions, but hold that ordinary moral

agents should be ignorant of, or at least not dwell

upon, the moral costs of their actions; and if this

goal is best accomplished when ordinary moral

thinking is conducted in largely non-utilitarian

terms, then the theoretical acknowledgement of

moral cost may simply give the utilitarian a further

reason for encouraging (acknowledging) a split between utilitarian moral theory and the ideas that




ought to govern everyday moral thinking. Of course, the moral costs that a (maximizing)

act-utilitarian theory accommodates will not turn

upon the violation of deontological prohibitions, but will all be costs from the specific standpoint of benevolence, costs, therefore, in human well

being and the like. But clearly such moral costs

can also be incurred from the point of view of

common-sense moral thinking. It can sometimes

be the right thing, in common-sense moral terms, to fulfill an obligation or duty even though (many)

people will suffer as a result. But an ordinary per? son's sense of having done the right thing in such a case may be as appropriately qualified by a sense

of moral disquiet at what she is doing (has done) as in the cases Williams mentions where deontolog? ical claims are overridden in the name of overall

human welfare. And the recognition of this

common-sense moral possibility may in turn make

it easier to see how an entirely welfare-oriented

morality like maximizing act-utilitarianism can also

accommodate the idea of moral cost.

Our discussion also has implications for the

Rawlsian thesis that the utilitarian injunction to

maximize the sum of human happiness treats

humanity as a kind of single superperson and

thereby fails to respect the distinctness of moral individuals.8 Although Derek Parfit has already countered this claim by pointing out that utilitarianism is far more naturally associated with an atomistic view of men that dissolves them into

conglomerations of particular mental items than with any form of social organicism,9 the above treatment of moral cost suggests another way in

which act-utilitarians might seek to answer the

charge of neglecting the separateness of persons. Just as the concern to maximize the sum of human

utility represents one familiar feature of utilitarian universal benevolence (a concern with mankind's

well-being in sensu composite), an acknowledge? ment of moral costs arises from another aspect of universal benevolence, from its concern that no

individual should be harmed or neglected (its con? cern with mankind's well-being in sensu diviso). So a maximizing act-utilitarianism that acknowl?

edges moral costs thereby does acknowledge the distinctness of individuals and give at least some

moral weight to the claims of individuals as against the larger group.

V

How, then, finally, does the foregoing discussion

bear on the strengths and weaknesses of (act-) utilitarianism? In particular, does the fact that

(maximizing act-) utilitarianism naturally accom?

modates the possibility of moral dilemmas and

moral cost help to undercut the prevalent criticism

that utilitarianism oversimplifies the moral life?

To some extent, I think, it does. Those who have

emphasized the phenomena of moral cost and moral

dilemmas in ordinary morality have spoken dis?

paragingly of the utilitarian's inability to make sense of these particular forms of moral complexity or moral subtlety; and if utilitarianism can,in fact, allow for dilemmas and moral cost, then this par? ticular source of criticism should dry up. It would

then presumably be replaced by some sort of

critique of where utilitarianism finds its moral costs

and tragedies. For all such costs and tragic dilemmas will involve some loss of human welfare

and arise in connection with the idea of benevo?

lence, whereas common-sense morality, while pos?

sibly granting the existence and force of these sorts

of costs and dilemmas, will insist that cost and

dilemma can also arise in connection with its deon?

tological principles (intuitions) and with the interac? tion between the latter and the benevolent concern

with consequences. Common-sense morality and

utilitarianism will disagree, then, not about the existence of dilemmas and moral costs, but about their nature and extent. But even if common-sense

morality assumes a wider variety of dilemmas and costs than utilitarianism does, the latter may well

1) treat certain situations (e.g. the one mentioned

earlier) as dilemmatic which ordinary morality? with its somewhat less insistent emphasis on

benevolence, and greater insistence on the rights of the moral agent?would not regard as such and also 2) find the moral cost involved in certain fail? ures of benevolence (again see the examples men?

tioned above) more poignant, or less negligible, than common-sense might be inclined to do. So it cannot be said that utilitarianism oversimplifies by acknowledging only a small subclass of the dilemmas and costs attendant upon common-sense

morality. In that case, the disagreement between utilitarianism and common-sense moral theory




cannot readily confine itself to questions about the

appropriate complexity or subtlety of moral

theoretic structures. It is the intuitions that fill out

moral structure?not the structures themselves?

that constitute the main issue between utilitarianism

and common-sense morality. It may be theoreti?

cally undesirable to find ourselves so much at the

mercy of intuitions, but such may be our position, nonetheless, and we may have to acknowledge that

fact in order to make further progress in this area.

But how welcome, in the end, will what we have

been saying here be to the convinced utilitarian?

Will not the utilitarian theorist be inclined to reject our offering of moral costs and moral dilemmas on

the grounds that these phenomena add clutter to a

theory whose greatest virtue is its simplicity? To

a large extent recent developments in utilitarian

moral theory have undercut the availability of such

a response. Utilitarians now put great emphasis on

such distinctions as that between first-level and

second-level moral thinking and that between the

utilitarian/consequentialistic evaluation of par? ticular acts and the utilitarian/consequentialistic evaluation of motives (or rules), and they devote a great deal of time to attempts to show how to

resolve conflicts whose possibility arises from these

very distinctions (e.g., possible conflicts between

acting from an optimific general motive and per?

forming an optimific action). Thus utilitarian

theorizing has now passed far beyond the defense

of the principle of utility and typically attempts to

elaborate a rather complex system of moral struc?

tures founded upon the familiar utilitarian

touchstone of impersonal benevolence. To point out that the structures thus elaborated make room

for, perhaps even demand, a recognition of moral

cost and dilemmas is not to undercut some basic

utilitarian-theoretic drive for simplicity.10 Far from

it: it is merely to take one or two further steps in

the systematic articulation of a perennially

appealing form of moral theory.11

University of Maryland Received March 6, 1984

NOTES

1. See, for example, Bernard Williams, "Ethical Consistency," in Problems of the Self, (Cambridge, 1977), ch. 11; Bas van

Fraassen, "Values and the Heart's Command," Journal of Philosophy, vol. 70. (1973), pp. 3-19; and Ruth Marcus, "Moral

Dilemmas and Consistency," Journal of Philosophy, vol. 77. (1980), pp. 121-36. Two of the most plausible and frequently

mentioned examples of dilemmatic situations are Agamemnon's tragic choice at Aulis and Sartre's example of the young man

forced to choose between joining the Free French and caring for a helpless bereaved mother.

2. See my "Satisficing Consequentialism," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume, 1984.

3. Op. cit.

4. Cf., for example, S. Scheffler, The Rejection of Consequentialism, (Oxford 1982), p. 2.

5. Incidentally, even present forms of optimizing utilitarianism allow for moral dilemmas in certain logically imaginable (though

highly unrealistic) scenarios. If, for any n, God will create n happy people, if one stands I In of an inch away from a given wall

at a given time, then under various further simplifying assumptions, no act one can perform at the time in question will count as

best (or tied-best), and by the usual utilitarian criterion one will inevitably act wrongly.

6. "Politics and Moral Character," in Moral Luck, (Cambridge, 1981).

7. Cf. van Fraassen, op. cit.

8. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, (Cambridge Mass., 1971), pp. 22ff.

9. "Later Selves and Moral Principles," in A. Montefiore. (ed.), Philosophy and Personal Relations, (London, 1973), pp. 137-69.

10. One might seek to base utilitarianism solely on the optimizing component of universal benevolence and thus, by eliminating

the concern to see positive good done and see no one neglected, remove any taint of moral dilemmas or moral cost from one's

theory. But what could possibly justify such a move?

11. I would like to thank John Baker and Timothy Williamson for helpful suggestions.



utilitarianism, moral dilemmas, and moral cost

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