Pure Utilitarianism, Part II
1. Pure utilitarianism is act utilitarianism, and it can succeed only by making interpersonal utility comparisons, assisted by its disinterested benevolence and intimate knowledge of each individual.
2. How does utilitarianism respect people’s autonomy? By presupposing that people know what they want and merely enabling them to achieve their ends. The ends themselves are not judged by any outsider including the impartial spectator, though they can be judged insofar as they themselves are means to the ultimate end which is happiness. Generally, utilitarianism rains truth on the good and evil alike (Mt 5:45), though if a utilitarian is in a position to deceive an evil person and thwart his plans, he can legitimately do so.
Is there a contradiction between this deference to autonomy and utilitarianism’s social approach to ethics? Not at all. The latter means that each individual’s desires and well-being are given equal weight in moral calculations. The former means that value judgments are taken as ultimate givens. Both principles can without trouble co-exist.
3. A prudent person tries to figure out not the right thing to do but the best thing to do. If doing the “right” thing is interpreted as doing what is permissible, then there are numerous right things to do in any given situation. If it is interpreted as doing your duty all things considered, then this duty is ultimately an outcome of rule utilitarian calculations.
4. Teaching the truth about the actual means-actual ends connections is itself a means towards securing general happiness. Are there other means? Assuredly; for example, producing a means is conducive to happiness. One could produce such a means for another out of charity, having sized up the utility of sacrificing his own good for the sake of his beneficiary. But, of course, that won’t work as a general way toward abundance of means. Prosperity results from capital accumulation, insofar as capital goods are means to or way stations within production processes of consumer goods. But in order to induce this process of saving and investment, all that is necessary is to teach people economics, which explains how people can use each other most efficiently in striving to achieve their own private goals. Again, we see that teaching the truth is the most crucial task of anyone who wishes to measure up to the strictures of utilitarian ethics.
5. Since the work of prudence consists of finding the most profitable course of action, one must also consider whether he has the ability to use a particular means for the satisfaction of an end he has. In other words, the considerations of power are included in prudence.
6. Is one required by pure utilitarianism to jump on a grenade to save his buddies? Since disinterested benevolence is assumed, the answer is yes, unless more sophisticated calculations show otherwise. Once again, this blithe conclusion is a sign not of the absurdity of pure utilitarianism but of its being only 1/4 of the general theory of ethics. Note that pure utilitarianism will calculate the consequences in every case anew; rule utilitarianism (which is only 1/2 of the total ethical theory) will ask whether a rule in which a soldier is supposed to sacrifice his life for the sake of the lives of N of his fellow soldiers is a good one. (E.g., you may be harmed by taking a risk that in your trench you will be closest to the grenade and will therefore incur a duty of dying to save others; but you benefit by enjoying the possibility that you will not be closest to the grenade and will be saved by another soldier. If on average 10 soldiers are saved per 1 soldier who sacrifices himself, the odds are in your favor that you will survive a grenade.)
7. Disinterested benevolence is the form charity, the greatest of all virtues, takes for NTs.