The Big Picture
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courage, responsibility, and wisdom. The virtue- ethical versions of Bill and
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Ted would have simply said, “Be excellent.”
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Virtue sounds like a good thing to strive toward. Like consequentialism
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and deontology, it’s an ostensibly attractive moral stance. Sadly, all of these
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attractive approaches end up offering different advice in important cases.
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How should we decide what ethical system to abide by?
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That’s a trick question. Knowing how we “should” decide something re-
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quires that we already have some normative stance, a way of judging differ-
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ent approaches. Let’s instead contemplate how we possibly could go about
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choosing an ethical system at all.
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There are many distinct ways of talking that can each capture some im-
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portant truth about reality. Not all vocabularies capture truth; some are
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simply incorrect. Our goal is to describe the world in useful ways, where
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“useful” is always relative to some stated purpose. In the case of scientific
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theories, “useful” means things like “able to make accurate predictions on
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the basis of minimal input,” and “providing insight into the behavior of a
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system.”
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Morality adds an evaluative component to how we talk about the world.
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This or that person or behavior is bad or good, right or wrong, admirable or
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reprehensible. The criteria for usefulness that help us choose between alter-
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native scientific theories are insufficient when it comes to constructing
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moral principles. The point of moral reasoning is not to help us make pre-
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dictions or provide insight into a person’s behavior.
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Happily, there are other senses of usefulness besides “helping us fit the
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data.” Each of us comes into the meta- ethical game with a preexisting set of
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commitments. We have desires, we have feelings, we have things that we
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care about. There are things that naturally attract us, and those that repel
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us. Long before we have ever started thinking reflectively about what our
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ethical stance should be, we already have some kind of nascent moral sen-
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sibility.
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Primatologist Frans de Waal has done studies to probe the origins of
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empathy, fairness, and cooperation in primates. In one famous experiment,
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he and collaborator Sarah Brosnan placed two capuchin monkeys in sepa-
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rate cages, each able to see the other one. When the monkeys performed a
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simple task, they were rewarded with a slice of cucumber. The capuchins
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were quite content with this setup, doing the task over and over, enjoying
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their cucumber. The experimenters then began rewarding one of the mon-
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keys with grapes— a sweeter food than cucumbers, preferable in every way.
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The monkey who didn’t get the grapes, who was previously perfectly con-
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tent with cucumbers, saw what was going on and refused to do the assigned
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task, outraged at the inequity of the new regime. Recent work by Brosnan’s
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group with chimpanzees shows cases where even the chimp who gets the
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grapes is unhappy— their sense of fairness is insulted. Some of our most
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advanced moral commitments have very old evolutionary roots.
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One approach to moral philosophy is to think of it as simply a method
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for making sense of those commitments: making sure that we are true to
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our own self- proclaimed morals, that our justifications for our actions are
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internally consistent, and that we take into account the values of other
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people where appropriate. Rather than fitting data in a scientific sense, we
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can choose our ethical theories by how well they conform to our own exist-
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ing sentiments. A moral framework is “useful” to a poetic naturalist to the
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extent that it reflects and systematizes our moral commitments in a logi-
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cally coherent way.
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A nice feature of this perspective is that it is resolutely practical: it is
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what people actually do when they try to think carefully about morality.
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We have a feeling for what distinguishes right from wrong, and we try to
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make it systematic. We talk to other people to learn how they feel, and take
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that into account when developing the rules for functioning in society.
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It can also be terrifying. You’re telling me that judging right from wrong
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is just a matter of our personal feelings and preferences, grounded in noth-
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ing more substantial than our own views, with nothing external to back it
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up? That there are no objectively true moral facts out there in the world?
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Yes. But admitting that morality is constructed, rather than found lying
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on the street, doesn’t mean that there is no such thing as morality. All hell
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has not broken loose.
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The idea that moral guidelines are things invented by human beings based
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on their subjective judgments and beliefs, rather than being grounded in
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anything external, is known as moral constructivism. (When I say “human
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beings” in this context, feel free to substitute “conscious creatures.” I’m not
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trying to discriminate against animals, aliens, or hypothetical artificial in-
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telligences.) Constructivism is a bit different from “relativism.” A moral
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relativist thinks that morality is grounded in the practices of particular
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cultures or individuals, and therefore cannot be judged from outside. Rela-
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tivism is sometimes derided as an overly quietist stance— it doesn’t permit
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legitimate critique of one system by another.
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A moral constructivist, by contrast, acknowledges that morality origi-
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nates in individuals and societies, but accepts that those individuals and
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societies will treat the resulting set of beliefs as “right,” and will judge others
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accordingly. Moral constructivists have no qualms about telling other peo-
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ple that they’re doing the wrong thing. Furthermore, the fact that morals
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are constructed doesn’t mean that they are arbitrary. Ethical systems are
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invented by human beings, but we can all have productive conversations
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about how they could be improved, just as we do with all sorts of things
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that human beings put together.
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Philosopher Sharon Street distinguishes between Kantian constructiv-
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ism, after Immanuel Kant, and Humean constructivism, after David
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Hume. These are two enormously influential thinkers who tended to come
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at problems from very different perspectives, perhaps in part due to their
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differing personalities. Kant, whose strict personal schedule was such that
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residents of Königsberg were known to set their timepieces by his daily
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walks, was part of a long tradition within philosophy of trying make every-
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thing precise, rigorous, and certain. He would brook no fuzziness in his
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ethical philosophy. Kant was the deontologist par excellence, and he
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founded his views on morality on the categorical imperative: act in such a
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way that your actions could become a universal law. At one point Kant
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seemed to suggest that it would be wrong to lie to a murderer who was at
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your door in order to protect their potential victim, because lying shouldn’t
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be a universal law. Scholars debate whether Kant really thought that it was
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always wrong to lie, but one certainly gets the impression of strict deonto-
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logical rectitude in his thought.
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Hume, meanwhile, was much more at home in a world of skepticism,
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empiricism, and uncertainty. He rejected absolute moral principles, and
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instead of an objective imperative he proudly proclaimed that “Reason is,
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and ought only to be, the slave of the passions.” Reason, that is, can help
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us get what we want; but what we actually do want is defined by our pas-
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sions. Hume was dubious of the natural philosophical tendency to make
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things look just a bit tidier and more exact than they really are.
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A Kantian constructivist accepts that morality is constructed by human
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beings, but believes that every rational person would construct the same
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moral framework, if only they thought about it clearly enough. A Humean
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constructivist takes one more step: morality is constructed, and different
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people might very well construct different moral frameworks for them-
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selves.
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Hume was right. We have no objective guidance on how to distinguish
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right from wrong: not from God, not from nature, not from the pure force
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of reason itself. Alive in the world, individual and contingent, we are bur-
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dened and blessed with all of the talents and inclinations and instincts that
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evolution and our upbringings have bequeathed to us. Those are the raw
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materials from which morals are constructed. Judging what is good and
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what is not is a quintessentially human act, and we need to face up to that
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reality. Morality exists only insofar as we make it so, and other people might
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not pass judgments in the same way that we do.
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Constructing Goodness
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So then, fellow humans. What kind of morality shall we construct?
There is no unique answer to this question that applies equally
well to all persons. But that shouldn’t stop each of us from doing the
best we can to expand and articulate our own moral impulses into system-
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atic positions.
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Perhaps the most well- known approach to ethics is the consequentialist
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theory of utilitarianism. It imagines that there is some quantifiable aspect
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of human existence, which we can label “utility,” such that increasing it is
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good, decreasing it is bad, and maximizing it would be best of all. The issue
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then becomes how we should define utility. A simple answer is “happiness”
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or “pleasure,” but that can seem a bit superficial and self- centered. Other
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options include “ well- being” and “preference satisfaction.” What matters is
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that there is something we can, in principle, quantify into a number (the
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total amount of utility in the world), and then we can work to make that
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number as big as possible.
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This kind of utilitarianism runs into a number of well- known problems.
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The attractive idea of “quantifying utility” becomes slippery when we try
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to put it into practice. What does it really mean to say that one person has
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0.64 times the well- being of another person? How do we combine well-
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beings— is one person with a utility of 23 better or worse than two people
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with utilities of 18 each? As Derek Parfit has pointed out, if you believe that
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there is some positive utility in the very existence of a somewhat- satisfied
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human being, it follows that having a huge number of somewhat- satisfied
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people has more utility than a relatively smaller number of exquisitely
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happy people. It seems counter to our moral intuitions to think that util-
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ity can be increased just by making more people, even if they are less
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happy ones.
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Another challenge for utilitarianism was offered by philosopher Robert
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Nozick: the “utility monster,” a hypothetical being with incredibly refined
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sensibilities and an enormous capacity for pleasure. At face value, standard
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utilitarianism might lead us to think that the most moral actions are those
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that keep the utility monster happy, no matter how sad that might make
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the rest of us, because the monster is so incredibly good at being happy.
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Relatedly, we could imagine technology progressing to the point where we
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could place people in machines that would render them immobile, but gen-
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erate in their brains maximal feelings of happiness or preference satisfac-
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tion or a feeling of flourishing or whatever other utility measure we dreamed
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up. Should we work toward a world where everyone is hooked up to such
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machines?
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Finally, the utilitarian calculus tends to not discriminate between util-
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ity of ourselves and those we know and love, versus the utility associated
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with anyone else in the world, or at any other time in history. For the major-
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ity of people in the developed world, utilitarianism would seem to insist
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that we give away a large fraction of our wealth to the cause of ridding the
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world of disease and poverty. That may be a laudable goal, but it reminds us
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that utilitarianism can be an exceedingly demanding taskmaster.
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Utilitarianism doesn’t always do a good job of embodying our moral
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sentiments. There are some things we tend to think are just wrong, even if
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they increase the net happiness of the world, like going around and secretly
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murdering people who are lonely and unhappy. There are other things we
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think are laudable, even if happiness is slightly decreased thereby. Utilitar-
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ians know about such examples, and are able to adjust the rules to make
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them seem less problematic. The basic issue remains: the notion of attach-
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ing a single value of “utility” to every action, and working to increase it, is a
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hard one to pull off in practice.
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Deontological approaches run into their own problems. Psychologists
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have suggested that moral reasoning in general, and deontological reason-
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ing in particular, functions primarily to rationalize opinions that we reach
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