[This post was originally written in early 2024 by a friend from Colby, who prefers to stay anonymous. I edited it. Back then, him and I were deeply engaged in Effective Altruism polemics. It was fun to write/edit. Although it is not as relevant now, I thought I’d share it anyway!]
This essay aims to critique the sort of ‘common Utilitarianism’ that many of my friends who, like me, have read books such as Rationality: From AI to Zombies and generally want to do good and become ‘more rational.’ What I dislike, though, is that when my friends read from a few authors they like, they’re prone to adopt more of the authors’ worldview without having them critically examined.
I enjoyed writing this piece because rather than solely critiquing Utilitarianism, for which there are far better essays, it is specifically tailored to a group of people, providing the most relevant critiques to this group and an alternative.
Utilitarianism and other ‘isms’
How do we choose a particular set of ethics? In my experience, young effective altruists (EAs) and rationalists choose consequentialist ethics based on what is prima facie attractive about them. After all, if I’m already purchasing fuzzies and utilions separately, then why not do the most good? This mindset leads to repugnant conclusions, which they inflict upon themselves to their detriment.
Thoughts can range from the rather benign “Between the death of my family and N people stubbing their toe, there is a finite number of people where the former would be preferable” to the more damaging “Am I killing someone because I chose to buy Starbucks today?”. While I know both are naive, studying more Utilitarianism won’t resolve the fundamental contradiction between their own moral development and Utilitarianism.
Ethics that attempt to systematise our morality cleanly will always lead to conclusions that are irreconcilable with a person’s intuitions and will only get worse with continued moral development. While harmful, the alternative isn’t obvious. Today’s popular moral landscape consists of either deontological ethics, which is too god-fearing for young EAs, or consequentialism with its own problems.
This essay will engage in a critique of Utilitarianism most relevant to young Effective Altruists and Rationalists. It will also provide an alternative theory of moral development from Laurence Becker’s A New Stoicism. I do this not because I believe his theory is the be-all and end-all but because it is improper for me here to criticise without providing at least an alternative.
Our Problem
Most moral choices you make will have the same clear answer regardless of the popular philosophy you subscribe to. You aren’t in a trolley problem daily or coming across drowning children, nor are you making decisions for huge populations. You aren’t an agent whose hardest problem is deciding what you ought to do. The problem is that you’re a human agent. You have human desires & repugnancies, social bonds, and impressions forced upon you every waking second.
How do you respond to the death of someone you love or deal with defeat? Although I am implicitly comparing Stoicism to Utilitarianism, they are not all analogous. Utilitarianism is not a personal ethic and never can be. Once a philosophy calls you to begin reasoning from nowhere and not yourself, there will be little to say about dealing with grief. Utilitarianism’s often lauded ‘objectivity’ turns out to be a hindrance for all of us who don’t live in thought experiments.
Utilitarianism
Utilitarianism is only tenable insofar as practicalities and human psychology constrain it. It logically entails a great deal, but we, as agents, are constrained by our humanity.
- Utilitarianism entails impartiality, and therefore, we ought to care, or at least act as we do, just as much about our family as strangers half a world away. Still, since this is impossible, caring about your family is okay.
- Utilitarianism entails that inalienable rights don’t exist, so there are cases where violating human rights is permissible, like forced organ donation. But pragmatically, it’s not a good idea to normalise that so you can safely ignore that.
- Utilitarianism entails working as much as possible to create the most utility, but since we’d burn out, it’s okay to engage in recreation.
- Utilitarianism entails that it’d be okay to raise humans for consumption in certain circumstances. Still, since it’s impossible to do this without other negative external consequences, it’s okay to be against it.
If you could undergo surgery which would remove your need to care about your family, engage in recreation, and everything else which is instrumental for normal humans to “do the most good”: Would you do it?
After all, you’d become the perfect utilitarian agent. Unmoored from your silly primitive intuitions, familial bonds, and need for rest, you could finally do the most good.
Stoicism’s Theory of Moral Development
Agency is our most important faculty. Through reason and experience, we can improve our judgement through continuous exercise. While other skills, such as rhetoric and medicine, have limited scope, our agency is all-encompassing and includes itself via recursion. We can use our agency to improve our agency.
Our lives are an optimisation problem. We have many endeavours, but they generate conflicting requirements. For example, I may want to enjoy the company of my friends and do well on a test, but I cannot progress towards both at once.
By exercising judgement (agency), I can solve this local optimisation problem. I determine how much time I need to study to do well and satisfy both endeavours. I have more than two desires, though, and to best balance all of them, I need to continuously optimise until I have optimised globally.
To best optimise, I must perfect my agency by exercising agency. Since agency is all-encompassing, I also get better at everything else by focusing on my agency. As we recursively perfect our agency, we acquire “strong norms corresponding to the usual notions of wisdom, justice, benevolence, beneficence, courage, temperance, and other traits that are standardly called virtues”.[1] These norms arise from healthy humans perfecting their agency because we are prosocial beings capable of reason.
Utilitarianism and other ‘isms’
Even if you find this theory of moral development ludicrous, how do we justify that Utilitarianism or any other “ism” which attempts to systematise ethics clearly should dictate what we ought to do? Unlike the previous naturalistic account of ethics, Utilitarianism does not appear to arise from healthy moral development but instead is artificially created. It stems from a misunderstanding of what human flourishing consists of.
Your ethics shouldn’t tyrannise over you. The fact that they do results from Utilitarianism having a lot to say about how to act but very little to say about by what right it does. Why do you not accept repugnant conclusions entailed by Utilitarianism with equanimity and instead need to wring your hands over them?
The Ones Who Walk Away
In The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas by Ursula K. Le Guin, there exists a utopian city whose very existence is predicated on the suffering of a young child. The child is malnourished and naked. While many visit the child, none show it any kindness. If it were fed, clothed, and shown kindness, then “all the prosperity and beauty and delight of Omelas would wither and be destroyed.” These are the terms of this utopia. Thousands live ‘fulfilled’ lives, or one child who is “too degraded and imbecile to know any real joy” is cared for.
How do you feel about such a utopia? Most likely, you consider it to be no utopia at all. The Utilitarian calculus here is abundantly clear. One could add a few more pathetic children, and Omelas would still be in the green. But unfortunately for you, you have acquired certain norms in your moral development regarding fairness, justice, benevolence, etc. Fortunately for Utilitarians, we do not live in thought experiments. Our psychology and limited foresight constrain us, so it’s not okay for a doctor to steal your organs or raise humans for consumption. But if I offered to make you not so constrained. That you’d have perfect foresight, and the emotional bonds which hamper your impartiality were dissolved. Would you take my offer?
If not a life full of fun, friendship and festivity predicated on the suffering of a starving child in a basement, what constitutes a good life? Virtue. It is necessary and sufficient for happiness.
Conclusion
This has been a critique of Utilitarianism and a brief overview of Stoicism’s naturalistic account of ethics. Well-read consequentialists will have several objections to the arguments presented, and I’m not ignorant of that. This essay aims to provide the most relevant critiques to lay utilitarians and provide a potential alternative – not to handle the most academic arguments.
Further Reading
Aside from reading the ancient texts, I highly suggest reading one of the books under Introductions to Stoicism such as John Sellars’ Stoicism. I also suggest reading Laurence Becker’s A New Stoicism with the associated e-book, Towards a New Stoicism, by Massimo Pigliucci. The paraphrased theory of moral development contained in this essay originates from them. It’s important to realise that Stoicism, aside from a brief revival in the 16th century, has been inactive for over a millennia so it’s important that it be reconsidered in light of all the historical development it missed. A New Stoicism accomplishes exactly that.
[1] Laurence Becker, A New Stoicism (Princeton University Press).