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Should Utilitarianism Be Scalar?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 March 2013

GERALD LANG
GERALD LANG*
Affiliation:
University of Leedsg.r.lang@leeds.ac.uk
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Abstract

Scalar utilitarianism, a form of utilitarianism advocated by Alastair Norcross, retains utilitarianism's evaluative commitments while dispensing with utilitarianism's deontic commitments, or its commitment to the existence or significance of moral duties, obligations and requirements. This article disputes the effectiveness of the arguments that have been used to defend scalar utilitarianism. It is contended that Norcross's central ‘Persuasion Argument’ does not succeed, and it is suggested, more positively, that utilitarians cannot easily distance themselves from deontic assessment, just as long as scalar utilitarians admit – as they should do – that utilitarian evaluation generates normative reasons for action.

Type
Research Article
Information
Utilitas , Volume 25 , Issue 1 , March 2013 , pp. 80 - 95
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013

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References

1 I will most often refer to utilitarianism, rather than consequentialism, though little turns on the distinction between them in this debate.

2 This is most obviously true of act-utilitarianism, of course.

3 See Norcross, Alastair, ‘The Scalar Approach to Utilitarianism’, The Blackwell Guide to Mill's Utilitarianism, ed. West, H. (Oxford, 2006), pp. 217–32Google Scholar; and Norcross, , ‘Reasons Without Demands: Rethinking Rightness’, Contemporary Debates in Moral Theory, ed. Dreier, J. (Oxford, 2006), pp. 38–53Google Scholar. This is slightly rough; I provide a more precise characterization of scalar utilitarianism at the beginning of sect. II.

4 Norcross, ‘Reasons Without Demands’, p. 44.

5 For a fuller discussion, see Slote, Michael, ‘Satisficing Consequentialism’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume 58 (1984), pp. 139–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 But see Lawlor, Rob, ‘The Rejection of Scalar Consequentialism’, Utilitas 21 (2009), pp. 100–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 101–2, for suggestive criticism of the second step.

7 Norcross, ‘Reasons Without Demands’, p. 41; original emphases; Norcross, ‘Scalar Approach’, p. 220, offers an identically worded argument.

8 Norcross, ‘Scalar Approach’, p. 220.

9 Norcross, ‘Reasons Without Demands’, p. 38; see also Norcross, ‘Scalar Approach’, p. 230.

10 See Smith, Michael, The Moral Problem (Oxford, 1994), ch. 4Google Scholar, for a detailed discussion of this distinction.

11 Norcross, ‘Scalar Approach’, pp. 224–7, also discusses the connections between wrongness and blame; Hooker, Brad, ‘Right, Wrong, and Rule-Consequentialism’, The Blackwell Guide to Mill's Utilitarianism, ed. West, H. (Oxford, 2006), pp. 233–48, at 239–41Google Scholar, offers a good reply.

12 See McElwee, Brian, ‘Consequentialism, Demandingness and the Monism of Practical Reason’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 107 (2007), pp. 359–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar. McElwee clearly has act-consequentialism in mind.

13 See Kagan, Shelly, The Limits of Morality (Oxford, 1989)Google Scholar.

14 See Norcross, ‘Reasons Without Demands’, pp. 46–7; and Norcross, ‘Scalar Approach’, pp. 229–30.

15 To be clear: the distinction between internalism and externalism about reasons differs from the distinction between internalism and externalism about motivation, which was under the spotlight in sect. VIII.

16 See Brink, David, Moral Realism and the Foundation of Ethics (Cambridge, 1989), esp. chs. 3, 8CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Railton, Peter, Facts, Values and Norms (Cambridge, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Williams, Bernard, ‘Internal Reasons and the Obscurity of Blame’, in his Making Sense of Humanity (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 35–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 39 (emphases added); see also Williams, , ‘Internal and External Reasons’, in his Moral Luck (Cambridge, 1981), pp. 101–13, at 110CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 See the references in n. 17. (The further literature on these issues is, of course, enormous.)

19 I thank an audience at Durham University, especially Richard Cookson and Nick Zangwill, and also Daniel Elstein, Ulrike Heuer, Rob Lawlor and Georgia Testa, for their comments on earlier versions of this article. I also thank an anonymous reviewer for useful comments on the penultimate version. I'm especially grateful to Rob Lawlor and Brian McElwee for many extremely helpful and instructive conversations about these issues.