David Sobel (2007). Therefore, this cause is too demanding, and I won’t join.” This is precisely Edmund Burke’s fallacy. For instance, it might seem that you should give away all your money to the poor, at least until you become as poor as those to whom you’re giving. In contrast, if you had taken a more moderate approach to your activism, in which you allowed yourself time for relaxation, friends, sleep, and exercise, you would have been more likely to find the process fun. In chapters 9 and 10 of text A you learned about a moral theory known as utilitarianism. Whenever we are required by utilitarianism to give up something we value to benefit others, at least we know that this benefit is greater, often much greater, than the cost to us. We want personal satisfaction, justice, wasteful beauty, sometimes even irrational indulgement – and we don’t want to stop wanting them. Insofar as charity goes, commonsense morality holds that while it is good and praiseworthy to donate, it is not considered obligatory. The theory is too demanding … (1b) Utilitarianism demands more than commonsense morality demands. From this perspective, our actions get better in proportion to how much they contribute to wellbeing. I’ll adopt an easier ethical view that expects less work from me.”. Another objection against Mill's reply says that utilitarianism is too demanding because we should maximize overall happiness regardless of our interests. Although different varieties of utilitarianism admit different characterizations, the basic idea behind all of them is to in some sense maximize utility, which is often defined in terms of well … There’s no binary “right” and “wrong”. Few people if any have ever been anything like a perfect utilitarian. This claim is based on a misunderstanding of human willpower and decision-making. I support Mill in his defense of utilitarianism against the critiscism that the ideals of utilitarianism are far too demanding to be achievable by humanity. Utilitarianism is one of the best known and most influential moral theories. A much less damaging excuse would be “I don’t have the motivation to quit.”. Shelly Kagan (1984). Utilitarianism is Too Demanding; Utilitarianism Doesn't Consider Motives; Utilitarianism's primary weakness is that it sometimes seems to give the wrong moral results. Does Consequentialism Demand Too Much? Is Utilitarianism too Demanding? A key point in this article concerns the distinction between individual actions and types of actions. Recent work on the Limits of Obligation, Objections to Utilitarianism and Responses. Similarly, we need to spend money on ourselves to stay reasonably happy and healthy to sustain our long-term motivation to do good. The main point is that the objection to utilitarianism is that people always need to have motives and actions that are beneficial to all of society. You can’t explain why, but the thought of working more on your campaign just makes you feel irritated and depressed. About 21,000 people die every day of hunger or hunger-related causes, millions of people suffer from illnesses and depression. Deliberation: In order to think about how to act, we must first know a huge amount of information. (1a) A moral theory is too demanding if it demands more than commonsense morality demands. Therefore, (1c) Utilitarianism is too demanding. This idea is a mistaken carryover from days when people believed in immaterial spirits. The LessWrong community has developed a principle called Occam’s imaginary razor, which says that when you do something you know is bad (like smoking despite it being unhealthy), you should develop a rationalization that minimizes damage to correct views of the world. “Because humans are not built to make immense self-sacrifices, the greatest reduction in suffering is often attained by modest, sustainable levels of exertion.”. Aid workers, international health care professionals and social justice volunteers sacrifice huge amounts of time, energy, and financial resources–and lose tons of time that could be spent with family and friends–in order to help out. The Journal of Philosophy. Peter Singer & Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek (2014). We might also say it is more right for an affluent person to donate 10% of their income to charity than to donate only 1%, which itself is more right than donating nothing at all. And even if such a robot existed, it would still need to expend some effort on self-maintenance, and it would still need to avoid over-exertion, just like our car does. For instance, many philosophers—utilitarian and non-utilitarian alike—would readily accept that morality can be very demanding in wartime. According to utilitarianism, whether someone should be blamed for their actions is itself something to be decided by the consequences that blaming them would have. However, even if we accept that spending resources on ourselves is of great instrumental importance for us to be able to benefit others, most of us must admit that we could be doing more. We have several components to our motivational systems, many of which are below the level of conscious access and intentional control. Better would be just to say that we’re selfish (like most people are), and we can only muster so much willpower to help others. Imagine that you did try to work every waking hour of your life fighting poverty. Jonathan Rist. Instead, utilitarianism will generally recommend praising people who take steps in the right direction, even if they fall short of the utilitarian ideal. The theory leaves no room for actions that are permissible yet do not bring about the best consequences; this is why some critics claim that utilitarianism is a morality only for saints. Here’s a plausible outcome of this scenario: Two weeks into your sleep-deprived effort, you become exhausted and fall sick. But more relevant to your discussion is that much of the “inability” of humans to make sacrifices is psychological and context-dependent. A common objection to utilitarianism is that the philosophy is too demanding. Yet in peacetime today hundreds of millions of people live in dire circumstances of extreme poverty and billions of animals suffer in factory farms and are killed every year. The theory leaves no room for actions that are permissible yet do not bring about the best consequences; this is why some critics claim that utilitarianism is a morality only for saints.1. One familiar criticism of utilitarianism is that it is too demanding. Scalar utilitarianism is the view that rightness and wrongness are matters of degree. When there is singular distress some hardships cannot be alleviated, providing that performing an alternative action cannot do … But this shows we can accept that morality can be very demanding sometimes, even requiring you to give up your life on moral grounds. This claim is based on a misunderstanding of human willpower and decision-making. This may strike you as a rather obvious … Under the circumstances of war they might think that people may have to make great sacrifices, including giving up their property or even their life. Recently Ashford has defended utilitarianism, arguing that it provides compelling reasons for demanding duties … The same can be true of our bodies and minds as we apply ourselves toward a goal. The theory can sometimes fail to live up to expectations, if the demands of the theory have not been maximised for the sum total of welfare in the universe. Many critics argue that utilitarianism is too demanding, because it requires us to always act such as to bring about the best outcome. Too demanding - if one committed themselves to helping others all the time, they would eventually exhaust themselves and would in the end not be particularly useful. Even just financially, I could clearly give 30% of my income to charity and still be OK. Should I do so, even if it means not being able to do many things that I love to do? On this view, instead of classifying actions in a binary way as either right or wrong, we should instead regard rightness and wrongness as continuous. Finally, we might decrease the demandingness of utilitarianism by adopting a scalar version of utilitarianism. Mill replies to this saying that unless it's a great contribution to society, our self interests are weighted more. In chapters 9 and 10 of text A you learned about a moral theory known as utilitarianism. One important objection is that even if people could transform themselves into perfect utilitarians at the push of a button, most of us would not want to. Finally, the proponents of utilitarianism may once again “bite the bullet” and simply accept that morality is very demanding. For instance, consider that the money a person spends on dining out could pay for several bednets, each protecting two children in a low-income country from malaria for about two years.2 From a utilitarian perspective, the benefit to the person from dining out is much smaller than the benefit to the children from not having malaria, so it would seem the person has acted wrongly in choosing to have a meal out. You decide, “Screw it! The second line of response is to argue that demandingness is not a feature of utilitarianism as a theory, but of utilitarianism as applied to a particular set of circumstances we happen to find ourselves in. The next day, once you’ve regained some energy, you have a surprising negative feeling toward activism. Relatedly, the idea of a “moral obligation” is not intrinsic to utilitarianism. Some of the points in this piece were inspired by Lukas Gloor, Carl Shulman, and others. Philosophy & Public Affairs. In fact, our minds are machines just like cars (only more complicated), and they get worn down by over-exertion. Suppose, for example, that you are wrongly sentenced to death in Texas for a crime you did not commit. For instance, committing murder is more wrong than telling a lie, because murdering usually has much worse consequences than lying. Another way of accommodating the intuition is by noting that the theory requires us to distinguish between what is wrong for someone to do, and what someone should be blamed for doing. Objection: Utilitarianism implies that we should always act in order to . These ideas appear too radical, so some moral philosophers claim utilitarianism can’t be right.