I think you convincingly argue that “utilitarianism’s track record suggests it has good consequences” isn’t a valid argument for consequentialism, due to its circularity. Accepting that, there might still be a valid place for track record arguments: as rebuttals to the criticism that utilitarianism is self-effacing. As you know, a common criticism of utilitarianism is that it fails on its own grounds, by eliminating guardrails that keep people from causing harm. The fact that thoughtful utilitarians opposed many harmful actions—even ones that had wide support—suggests otherwise. (More generally, even though circular arguments fail as positive arguments for a view, they seem like potentially valid counters to criticisms of self-contradiction.)
You may also believe that consequentialism broadly is clearly correct but are uncertain whether utilitarianism specifically is good. In that case, utilitarianism having broadly positive consequences under a wide range of axiologies would be more comforting than philosophies with no track record, or a broadly negative one.
i hadn’t thought of this, but yes, i agree, in those cases it does make sense!
on a more mundane level, i think it also works as a corrective to the misconception that utilitarians are especially cold or heartless and that sort of thing.
I’m not sure the criticism of utilitarianism failing on its own grounds is very common. My understanding is that when people point to harms that someone following utilitarianism would cause, their claim is that this is entirely consistent with utilitarianism, and that that’s the problem with utilitarianism. They object to the harms themselves (because they violate non-consequentialist duties).
Of course a plausible response is often that non-naive utilitarianism would not endorse such harms. Because they are not actually outweighed by the benefits when taking a full accounting of the consequences. i.e. The utilitarian thing to do is often not “try to do the utilitarian calculation based on a faulty world-model and take the ‘optimal’ action.” But we knew this without looking at the historical track record.
Thanks! I don’t have a great sense of how common the criticism I mentioned is, so maybe “common” was too strong. It does seem to be at least prominent enough to get discussed in the SEP article on consequentialism:
Furthermore, a utilitarian criterion of right implies that it would not be morally right to use the principle of utility as a decision procedure in cases where it would not maximize utility to try to calculate utilities before acting. [...] This move is supposed to make consequentialism self-refuting, according to some opponents.
But you’re probably right that some of the people who point to historical track records have non-consequentialist arguments in mind.
Thanks for writing this! Great points.
I think you convincingly argue that “utilitarianism’s track record suggests it has good consequences” isn’t a valid argument for consequentialism, due to its circularity. Accepting that, there might still be a valid place for track record arguments: as rebuttals to the criticism that utilitarianism is self-effacing. As you know, a common criticism of utilitarianism is that it fails on its own grounds, by eliminating guardrails that keep people from causing harm. The fact that thoughtful utilitarians opposed many harmful actions—even ones that had wide support—suggests otherwise. (More generally, even though circular arguments fail as positive arguments for a view, they seem like potentially valid counters to criticisms of self-contradiction.)
You may also believe that consequentialism broadly is clearly correct but are uncertain whether utilitarianism specifically is good. In that case, utilitarianism having broadly positive consequences under a wide range of axiologies would be more comforting than philosophies with no track record, or a broadly negative one.
i hadn’t thought of this, but yes, i agree, in those cases it does make sense!
on a more mundane level, i think it also works as a corrective to the misconception that utilitarians are especially cold or heartless and that sort of thing.
I’m not sure the criticism of utilitarianism failing on its own grounds is very common. My understanding is that when people point to harms that someone following utilitarianism would cause, their claim is that this is entirely consistent with utilitarianism, and that that’s the problem with utilitarianism. They object to the harms themselves (because they violate non-consequentialist duties).
Of course a plausible response is often that non-naive utilitarianism would not endorse such harms. Because they are not actually outweighed by the benefits when taking a full accounting of the consequences. i.e. The utilitarian thing to do is often not “try to do the utilitarian calculation based on a faulty world-model and take the ‘optimal’ action.” But we knew this without looking at the historical track record.
Thanks! I don’t have a great sense of how common the criticism I mentioned is, so maybe “common” was too strong. It does seem to be at least prominent enough to get discussed in the SEP article on consequentialism:
But you’re probably right that some of the people who point to historical track records have non-consequentialist arguments in mind.