I thought I should point out that Joshua Greene is a utilitarian, and that it seems doubtful he thinks his data counts against utilitarianism. The point behind many of his studies, I think, is to explain the cognitive errors we make when making non-utilitarian judgments (and the fact that most people make these errors doesn’t point to a flawed utilitarianism so much as it does a flawed humanity). You should go to his homepage and read “The neural bases of cognitive conflict and control in moral judgment” (2004). (See also “Moral Heuristics” [2005] by Sunstein in BBS).

Also, Greene’s dissertation defends utilitarianism against its usual rejoinders–like that it is vulgar, absurd, unfair, outdated, etc.

I agree that “ought implies can,” and I am a big fan of Bill Casebeer. I think that virtue ethics is crucial. Facts about our evolution and our neurobiological makeup restrict and empower various ways in which the goal of maximizing happiness can be realized, but they are not inconsistent with utilitarianism. On the contrary, it is necessary to understand the functional constraints of a system in order to optimally restructure it. (Could an engineer ignore the laws of physics?)

Finally, you stated that you won’t believe me if I claim the values you listed are valuable only by virtue of their ties to happiness. But they are. Happiness coherently unites our value judgments in a way that none of those other candidates for intrinsic value do. For arguments in favor of happiness as the good, see Sumner’s “Welfare, Happiness, and Ethics” and Silverstein’s “In Defense of Happiness: A Response to the Experience Machine” (2000).

I have trouble with Layard’s arguments from the git-go. If utility is really measurable on a ratio scale (or at least an interval scale), no one’s been able to figure out how to do it. I’m actually inclined to doubt that there there is a single dimension of “happiness” or utility at all. In any event, very little work that’s being done in psychology today requires the assumption of such a single dimension.

What kind of neurological evidence does Layard take as decisive?

Robert Campbell

I started to make a really long comment, but ended up putting my comments here.

Maybe greater utility for others doesn’t motivate me, but is it possible that avoiding greater disutility would? I take it that Hume is more inclined to think of us as sympathizing with people who are doing really poorly, rather than with people who are doing really well.

I suspect that this would meet the requirement of stability (which I totally approve of and think is the yardstick to measure morality and policy against) only if I’m right about our natural sympathies extending to those doing poorly, *and* this sympathy motivates us to action.

We should probably want some guide to changing our intuitions, and utilitarianism, at least in some versions, strikes me as a good sort of theory to use.

What sort of utilitarianism? Does anyone have much time for act utilitarianism? Clearly I’m motivated by my goals/interests, but your goals/interests don’t (necessarily) motivate me. And certainly not the goals/interests of people I don’t know about (unless I ‘feel’ for everyone, everywhere. In which case I belong in an institution. Either academic or mental).

The aggregate happiness should motivate someone from an original position point of view. If I don’t know who I’m to be (Rawls), or have an equal probability of being just anyone (Harsanyi), then I would be interested in aggregates precisely because of expected utility theory. The more aggregate utility/happiness, the more likely it is that I would fall in a category that gets greater utility/happiness. From *that* position (and only from that position?) should aggregates make a difference.

Wait: if we’re looking at legislators, we’ll want them to think a little bit about aggregate happiness levels as well.

As for the many things that you list, I believe they are worthwhile primarily because they allow people to lead fuller, happier lives. You could argue that they contribute to other ends — and even that they are goods in themselves. But if you ask people why they value achievement, friendship, health, etc., most people will say, because those things makes me happy. I think that’s a perfectly reasonable response.

My point was about aggregate happiness, the summ of all happinesses. I think that’s a very strange animal, and it’s weird why anyone would care about it.

Individuals will of course care about their own happiness, but there are many other values that they might also care about.

Try: knowledge, beauty, love, truth, honor, achievement, spiritual attainment, friendship, integrity, fidelity, creativity, exploration, adventure, charity, kindness, health, wisdom, etc., etc., etc.

You might want to argue that these things are worthwhile only because they contribute to happiness. But I won’t believe you.

“Maximizing the amount of happiness in the world strikes me as only slightly more appealing than maximizing the square footage of surface painted purple.”

What other end than happiness should human beings possibly strive to obtain? People might disagree about which means most effectively achieve that end (for instance, whether the purchase of expensive, nonessential consumer items really makes people happier) but to disagree that happiness ought to be what we aim to maximize — that I just don’t understand.

Anyway, I think the proper emphasis for social principles is questions of coordination. If acting according to a certain principle is too HARD, even if not impossible, enough people will be deterred to often cause a breakdown in the desired pattern of coordination. Compliance matters to stability. And the margin matters to compliance. So I guess I’m defending, at least for broad social principles, ought implies can without too much trouble.

1. Ought implies can. Certainly, but nothing about the neurological or behavioral data implies “can’t” about anything with regard to utilitarianism. We can reason like utilitarians, and we can even act on that reasoning (that reasoning can influence our behavior). Perhaps in certain contexts we don’t automatically do so, but then again our automatic judgements/behaviors in many contexts are downright unacceptable (consider racism and other forms of discrimination as examples). What is automatic, and what is possible (and even internalizable) are not coextensive. Nothing about the data implies that utilitarianism is impossible, or even all that difficult.

2. Authority. Your second point loses its force when the first one does. It is true that, at least for American psych/neuro experimental subjects, utilitarianism isn’t the default way of thinking in impersonal situations. However, neither are many of the rules of various religious, social, and civil institutions, which many see as authoritative without any difficulty. The point is, inconsistency with our innate dispositions doesn’t necessarily make some trait or behavior pattern difficult to acquire, or difficult to see as authoritative. Just ask vegetarians.

I agree that, “This is how we reason morally, therefore this is what we ought to do” is a non-sequitur. However, I think it remains that the way we reason morally puts a pretty hard constraint on what moral theory we can accept, for “ought implies can” sorts of reasons, among others. I do think that Greene’s experiments are data against utilitarianism.

First, something has to fix the range of theories that count as a moral theories, and that something is going to have to be something like our actual dispositions of moral judgment. Utilitarianism either fails to codify our moral judgments (as Greene conclusively shows), or it is just adjusted ad hoc to fit the curve of our moral judgments, but any theory can do that.

Second, a moral theory is supposed to be authoritative and to guide action. If the theory prescribes actions that are not consonant with our capacities of moral judgment and our moral motivational dispositions, then real moral agents will not find these prescriptions authoritative, and won’t be motivated to comply with them. If we think it would be immoral to do what “morality” prescribes, then that’s most likely a problem with the theory of morality, not us.

I happen to think that utilitarianism is a vulgar absurdity, and it is mysterious to me why it is even taken seriously. Maximizing the amount of happiness in the world strikes me as only slightly more appealing than maximizing the square footage of surface painted purple. Why one would fixate on this at the expense of every other morally relevant consideration is totally inexpicable to me. Yet very smart people whom I admire continue to fixate away.

While this does show that we don’t think like good utilitarians, it certainly doesn’t argue against utilitarian ethical theories. I certainly wouldn’t want to make any theoretical decisions about how we ought to act in those situations based on people’s intuitions. Greene himself argues that the argument from the science of moral reasoning to ethical theory is a non sequitur, and I agree.