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Utilitarianism and Psychological Realism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 September 2009

SOPHIE RIETTI
SOPHIE RIETTI*
Affiliation:
University of Ottawasrietti@uottawa.ca
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Abstract

Utilitarianism has frequently been criticized for lacking psychological realism, but what this means and why it is thought to matter varies. This article distinguishes and examines three main relevant kinds of appeals to psychological realism: (a) A minimalist, self-avowedly metaethically neutral and empirically based ‘ought implies can’ approach, exemplified by Owen Flanagan. (b) Arguments from psychological costs and flourishing, exemplified by Michael Stocker and Bernard Williams. (c) ‘Thick’ psychological realism, exemplified by Elizabeth Anscombe, where a conception of human nature does not simply provide constraints on value theory, but forms the substantive basis on which it builds. The main challenge raised for utilitarianism turns out to be metaethical, not a matter of empirical psychology. The question is not so much whether utilitarianism can accommodate (putative) descriptive facts of human psychology as such, but what normative weight these facts should be given and why.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Utilitas , Volume 21 , Issue 3 , September 2009 , pp. 347 - 367
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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References

1 Williams, Bernard, ‘A Critique of Utilitarianism’, in Bernard Williams and J. J. C. Smart, Utilitarianism: For and Against (Cambridge, 1973), pp. 77–135Google Scholar.

2 Stocker, Michael, ‘The Schizophrenia of Modern Ethical Theory’, The Journal of Philosophy 73 (1976), pp. 453–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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10 On some possible implications of this point, see e.g. Lenman, James, ‘Consequentialism and Cluelessness’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 29 (2000) pp. 342–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar – also his ‘Utilitarianism and Obviousness’, Utilitas 16 (2004), pp. 322–5 and Mason, Elinor, ‘Consequentialism and the Principle of Indifference’, Utilitas 16 (2004), pp. 316–21 in replyCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 On this issue, see e.g. Railton, Peter, ‘Alienation, Consequentialism and the Demands of Morality’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 13 (1984), pp. 134–71Google Scholar; Cocking, Dean and Oakley, Justin, ‘Indirect Consequentialism, Friendship, and the Problem of Alienation’, Ethics 106 (1995), pp. 86–111CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mason, Elinor, ‘Can an Indirect Consequentialist be a Real Friend?’, Ethics 108 (1998), pp. 386–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Horton, Keith, ‘The Limits of Human Nature’, Philosophical Quarterly 49 (1999), pp. 452–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar; as well as Sneddon, ‘Feeling Utilitarian’ – noting invocations of Mill throughout. Stocker (‘Schizophrenia’) arguably anticipates a great deal of the debate on indirect consequentialism and utilitarianism in his ‘schizophrenia’ argument – the coming apart of motivation and justification is in his view precisely the problem, and not a solution, to the gap between human nature and what certain moral theories, particularly impartialist ones, ask of agents. I will not try here to settle any of these issues with any definiteness – that would be a topic for a whole different article (at least), but note also that Stocker is arguing primarily against moral theories that imply pervasive disconnect between human motivating drives and moral justification, not against the need for correctives to our actual motivational structures. Stocker's view does however imply that, in principle at least, the reasons a theory provides for action should be suitable to become motives, or the theory is schizophrenic.

12 Nozick, Robert, Anarchy, State and Utopia (New York, 1974), pp. 42–5Google Scholar.

13 This point is particularly emphasized by Michael Stocker – see ‘Agent and Other: Against Ethical Universalism’, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 54 (1976), pp. 206–20, and ‘Emotional Identification, Closeness and Size: Some Contributions to Virtue Ethics’, Virtue Ethics: A Critical Reader, ed. Daniel Statman (Edinburgh, 1997), pp. 118–28. Self–other asymmetry as an issue for moral theory is also discussed, with significantly less emphatic conclusions than Stocker's, in Slote, Michael, ‘Morality and Self–Other Asymmetry’, The Journal of Philosophy 81 (1984), pp. 179–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Splawn, Clay, ‘The Self–Other Asymmetry and Act-Utilitarianism’, Utilitas 13 (2001), pp. 323–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar, on the prospects of incorporating the distinction within a utilitarian ethical system.

14 Flanagan, Varieties, p. 33.

15 Flanagan, Varieties, p. 51.

16 Williams, ‘A Critique of Utilitarianism’, pp. 97–100.

17 Williams, Bernard, ‘Morality, the Peculiar Institution’, from Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (London, 1985), pp. 174–96Google Scholar.

18 See especially Williams, Morality.

19 Slote, ‘Morality’.

20 ‘Agent and Other’.

21 ‘Defending Options’.

22 A commonly raised possibility, also considered by Stocker (‘Schizophrenia’, ‘Emotional Identification’), is that impartialist ethics that abstract from the ‘thicker’ psychology may be more suited to institutional contexts and decision-making for large populations, while more thickly psychologically realistic approaches might be suited to a level of personal interaction and individual life-choices. But this in turn raises a problem about how cleanly the levels can be kept distinct in practice.

23 This article builds on a presentation originally made to a panel on consequentialism for the Canadian Philosophical Association. Thanks are due to the panel members, the organizer and to the audience members for feedback and comments.