I share your doubts, partly for reasons you described. But also because the track record becomes even murkier when you look even slightly beyond “early utilitarians” (and especially, beyond philosophers themselves) to broadly utilitarian sentiments. “The ends justify the means” is perhaps most closely associated with Machiavelli, who called for ruthless violence and cruelty from leaders in order to stay in power. Mao Zedong’s Wikipedia page notes he was drawn to a consequentialist worldview from an early age, believing “strong individuals were not bound by moral codes but should strive for the greater good.” Both of those men considered themselves serious philosophers.
This provokes a semantic debate on who or what “counts” as broadly utilitarian in their worldviews. I can’t stop anyone from squirming into a flattering view of history, with a generously narrow definition of utilitarian, and an uncharitably broad definition of a competing philosophy’s adherents. But to me, it feels like “no true Scotsman.”
Besides, the narrower your definition of utilitarian, the more irrelevant its track record becomes to producing better outcomes. It doesn’t get us very far to observe that utilitarianism produces better moral insight among philosophers, if we’re intending it to also guide the decisions of policymakers or everyday people. As Mauricio alluded, a common argument against consequentialism is that in practice, people are really bad at predicting how to achieve good consequences, or else have wildly different conceptions of what a better world would look like. Some, for example, are convinced a poverty-free communist utopia is within reach, and we just need to “break a few eggs” to get there. Encouraging these people to ignore act-based side constraints has justified all manner of depravity over time, and probably led to atrocity as often as to moral progress. So if the circular argument you mentioned is true, and producing better outcomes is what matters in a moral framework, then simplified heuristics can have real value, and we’d better be damn sure it’s actually for the greater good if we want to bypass them.
He was inspired by Friedrich Paulsen, whose liberal emphasis on individualism led Mao to believe that strong individuals were not bound by moral codes but should strive for the greater good, and that the “end justifies the means” conclusion of Consequentialism
It seems unfair to me to associate utilitarianism (a philosophy of impartial altruism, consequentialism, and well-being) to someone who a) neither read nor cited the original works, or even associated himself with it, b) explicitly was influenced by a philosophy that many would consider as an ideological rival to utilitarianism, and this is cited as evidence for his association with utilitarianism.
(That said, I agree that spreading utilitarianism is not obviously net good, especially if we emphasize consequentialist thinking extremely strongly towards people who aren’t sold on impartial altruism. To a lesser extent, moral uncertainty and well-being are also very important messages that we may want to preload before consequentialism).
Thanks for noting this. I have edited the Wikipedia article so that it reflects what the original source actually claimed. Bizarrely, someone used the passage
A strong individual was not bound by moral principles and strived for the achievement of a great goal. The dictatorship of the will and unlimited power. What a novel interpretation of liberalism.
in the cited book (Alexander Pantsov & Steven I. Levine (2013) Mao: The Real Story, New York: Simon & Schuster, pp. 40–41) to write (emphasis added):
liberalemphasis on individualism led Mao to believe that strong individuals were not bound by moral codes but should strive for the greater good.
Then this is combined with the expression “end justifies the means” to claim that Mao was a consequentialist, which is nowhere stated in the book.
Good catch—I confess I did not click through to Paulsen’s page, and agree it was a reach for the page (and therefore, me) to explicitly link consequentialism with Mao’s ideological roots.
As a fan of utilitarianism myself, I do think Mao’s general approach to social reform remains a fair cautionary tale about moral views which would entirely discard a presumption in favor of act-based side constraints, or place too much faith in their own ability to predict cause and effect, both of which are criticisms of utilitarianism’s usefulness. But the same could be said for many world leaders, and that’s more relevant to my “moving beyond philosophers” argument than Mao’s particular philosophy, which was more political than moral, and probably of a different category than people like Bentham.
Thanks for the reply! I think the question that’s relevant to me is something like
a) would teaching (or following) utilitarianism on the margin be more beneficial than teaching Kantianism or some other non-utilitarian ethical system?
or
b) would teaching (or following) utilitarianism on the margin be more beneficial than not teaching (systematized) ethics at all?
I think Mao’s example is hardly evidence against a), and if anything is straightforwardly evidence for it. I think it is weak evidence against b), but overall quite weak. I think plenty of horrendous actions were committed by people without deep training in (systematized) ethics. Genghis Khan comes to mind for example.
When I think about ways utilitarianism can be self-effacing, two obvious mechanisms comes to mind:
We may be bad at forecasting the future consequences of our actions, and cause lots of harm ex post due to genuine miscalculation, motivated reasoning, or bad luck.
Evidence for this: If we see many examples of dictators who studied Bentham and Mill diligently but (mis)applied their ethics and did horrendous things, for example by dropping a minus sign in a utility calculation somewhere, then this is evidence in favor of greater epistemic humility about our predictive power and our ability to predictably cause positive outcomes.
Utilitarian reasoning may create moral licensing/”create cover” for selfish actors to do horrendous actions in the name of good.
Evidence for this: If we see many examples of dictators who call themselves utilitarians, Benthamites, etc, and do many evil actions in the name of utilitarianism, then this will be evidence to me that utilitarianism-in-practice has horrifying consequences even if in the abstract “true” utilitarians may be immune to these issues.
(I think this is what you were getting at with the “no true Scotsman” argument?)
But in fact while both mechanisms are abstractly reasonable, in practice I don’t observe much of either (whereas there are clear and compelling harms of competing philosophers, or at least false Scotsman following philosophers, like Nietzsche, Marx, Kant etc). So overall I think it’s a stretch to believe that utilitarianism is abstractly reasonable but the evidence is against utilitarianism judged on utilitarianism’s own merits.
I share your doubts, partly for reasons you described. But also because the track record becomes even murkier when you look even slightly beyond “early utilitarians” (and especially, beyond philosophers themselves) to broadly utilitarian sentiments. “The ends justify the means” is perhaps most closely associated with Machiavelli, who called for ruthless violence and cruelty from leaders in order to stay in power. Mao Zedong’s Wikipedia page notes he was drawn to a consequentialist worldview from an early age, believing “strong individuals were not bound by moral codes but should strive for the greater good.” Both of those men considered themselves serious philosophers.
This provokes a semantic debate on who or what “counts” as broadly utilitarian in their worldviews. I can’t stop anyone from squirming into a flattering view of history, with a generously narrow definition of utilitarian, and an uncharitably broad definition of a competing philosophy’s adherents. But to me, it feels like “no true Scotsman.”
Besides, the narrower your definition of utilitarian, the more irrelevant its track record becomes to producing better outcomes. It doesn’t get us very far to observe that utilitarianism produces better moral insight among philosophers, if we’re intending it to also guide the decisions of policymakers or everyday people. As Mauricio alluded, a common argument against consequentialism is that in practice, people are really bad at predicting how to achieve good consequences, or else have wildly different conceptions of what a better world would look like. Some, for example, are convinced a poverty-free communist utopia is within reach, and we just need to “break a few eggs” to get there. Encouraging these people to ignore act-based side constraints has justified all manner of depravity over time, and probably led to atrocity as often as to moral progress. So if the circular argument you mentioned is true, and producing better outcomes is what matters in a moral framework, then simplified heuristics can have real value, and we’d better be damn sure it’s actually for the greater good if we want to bypass them.
I was surprised to read this line:
Clicking through the wikipedia page, I see:
And clicking further, I get:
It seems unfair to me to associate utilitarianism (a philosophy of impartial altruism, consequentialism, and well-being) to someone who a) neither read nor cited the original works, or even associated himself with it, b) explicitly was influenced by a philosophy that many would consider as an ideological rival to utilitarianism, and this is cited as evidence for his association with utilitarianism.
(That said, I agree that spreading utilitarianism is not obviously net good, especially if we emphasize consequentialist thinking extremely strongly towards people who aren’t sold on impartial altruism. To a lesser extent, moral uncertainty and well-being are also very important messages that we may want to preload before consequentialism).
Thanks for noting this. I have edited the Wikipedia article so that it reflects what the original source actually claimed. Bizarrely, someone used the passage
in the cited book (Alexander Pantsov & Steven I. Levine (2013) Mao: The Real Story, New York: Simon & Schuster, pp. 40–41) to write (emphasis added):
Then this is combined with the expression “end justifies the means” to claim that Mao was a consequentialist, which is nowhere stated in the book.
Good catch—I confess I did not click through to Paulsen’s page, and agree it was a reach for the page (and therefore, me) to explicitly link consequentialism with Mao’s ideological roots.
As a fan of utilitarianism myself, I do think Mao’s general approach to social reform remains a fair cautionary tale about moral views which would entirely discard a presumption in favor of act-based side constraints, or place too much faith in their own ability to predict cause and effect, both of which are criticisms of utilitarianism’s usefulness. But the same could be said for many world leaders, and that’s more relevant to my “moving beyond philosophers” argument than Mao’s particular philosophy, which was more political than moral, and probably of a different category than people like Bentham.
Thanks for the reply! I think the question that’s relevant to me is something like
or
I think Mao’s example is hardly evidence against a), and if anything is straightforwardly evidence for it. I think it is weak evidence against b), but overall quite weak. I think plenty of horrendous actions were committed by people without deep training in (systematized) ethics. Genghis Khan comes to mind for example.
When I think about ways utilitarianism can be self-effacing, two obvious mechanisms comes to mind:
We may be bad at forecasting the future consequences of our actions, and cause lots of harm ex post due to genuine miscalculation, motivated reasoning, or bad luck.
Evidence for this: If we see many examples of dictators who studied Bentham and Mill diligently but (mis)applied their ethics and did horrendous things, for example by dropping a minus sign in a utility calculation somewhere, then this is evidence in favor of greater epistemic humility about our predictive power and our ability to predictably cause positive outcomes.
Utilitarian reasoning may create moral licensing/”create cover” for selfish actors to do horrendous actions in the name of good.
Evidence for this: If we see many examples of dictators who call themselves utilitarians, Benthamites, etc, and do many evil actions in the name of utilitarianism, then this will be evidence to me that utilitarianism-in-practice has horrifying consequences even if in the abstract “true” utilitarians may be immune to these issues.
(I think this is what you were getting at with the “no true Scotsman” argument?)
But in fact while both mechanisms are abstractly reasonable, in practice I don’t observe much of either (whereas there are clear and compelling harms of competing philosophers, or at least false Scotsman following philosophers, like Nietzsche, Marx, Kant etc). So overall I think it’s a stretch to believe that utilitarianism is abstractly reasonable but the evidence is against utilitarianism judged on utilitarianism’s own merits.
Quick update: I do consider SBF’s fraud to straightforwardly be evidence for both 1) and 2), even if by itself far from overwhelming evidence.