Util Bad

Alec Kerrigan Jupiter High School

Util is infinitely regressive

A focus on utilitarian ends creates an infinite regress. Only by recognizing means does actions have any value.
Bernard Williams, Prof. of Philosophy, Berkeley, CONSEQUENTIAUSM AND ITS CRITICS, ed. by Samuel Scheffler, 1988, p. 20. No one can hold that everything, of whatever category, that has value, has it in virtue of its consequences. If that were so, one would just go on for ever, and there would be an obviously hopeless regress. That regress would be hopeless even if one takes the view, which is not an absurd view, that although men set themselves ends and work towards them, it is very often not really the supposed end, but the effort towards it on which they set value - that they travel, not really, in order to arrive (for as soon as they arrive they set out for somewhere else), but rather they choose somewhere to arrive, in order to travel

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Util Bad
Alec Kerrigan Jupiter High School

Util turns itself

Utilitarian focus on results assumes that the means mean nothing and that means will do their job without fail. Without a realization of means can we actually achieve any moral ends.
Geoffrey Thomas, Prof. of Philosophy, Birkbeck College, AN INTRODUCTION TO ETHICS, 1993, p. 76. The criticism rests essentially on the idea that certain rules of behavior, and hence assurance of peoples reliability in following them, maximize welfare. These rules are below the level of abstraction of the actutilitarian principle itself; they are rules of promise-keeping and truth-telling (with whatever exceptions one needs to include in order to make the rules plausibly welfare-maximizing). But, the claim is, these rules count for nothing in society of act-utilitarians because, for an act-utilitarian, every situation is to be assessed on its merits. If a situation requires me to break my promise or to lie in order to maximize welfare, that is what I must do as an actutilitarian. That is, rules of promise-keeping and truth telling do not apply in such a society. Therefore, in the absence of mutual trust, welfare is not maximized.

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Util Bad
Alec Kerrigan Jupiter High School

Util is immeasurable
There is no real way of measuring happiness
Jonathan Glover, Philosopher, 1990 UTILITARIANISM AND ITS CRITICS, 3 Some of the objections to utilitarianism are practical. It is said to be unworkable. We can predict only some of the consequences of actions. We have no way of measureing happiness. We cannot say, for instance, that the birth of a child gives the parents three hundred and seven times the happiness they would get from a holiday in France. There are further difficulties about comparing the happiness of different people. The weighing of consequences seems more often a matter of vague intuition than of scientific calculation.

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Util Bad
Alec Kerrigan Jupiter High School

Util invalid
Utilitarianism is based on an over-simplified version of the world, invalidating it
Samuel Scheffler, Prof. of Philosophy, UC Berkeley, THE REJECTION OF CONSEQUENTIALISM, 1994, p. 3. Classical utilitarianism, which ranks states of affairs according to the amount of total satisfaction they contain, is the most familiar consequentialist view. But classical utilitarianism is widely thought to be too crude a theory. Although its defenders point with approval to its simplicity, critics charge that this simplicity is achieved at too high a cost. They argue that utilitarianism relies on implausible assumptions about human motivation, incorporates a strained and superficial view of the human good, and ignores a host of important considerations about justice, fairness, and the character of human agency. More generally, they accuse utilitarianism of relentless insensitivity to the nature of a person, and suggest that it has forfeited any serious claim to account for the complex and varied considerations that intrude on the moral life, and which give rise to the severest tests of our decency. Indeed, utilitarianism has gained a reputation for moral clumsiness that is unparalleled among ethical theories. Bernard Williams, writing that the simplemindedness of utilitarianism disqualifies it totally, suggests that [t]he day cannot be too far off in which we hear no more of it.

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Util Bad
Alec Kerrigan Jupiter High School

Util makes actions amoral

Utilitarianism takes away morality from actions for the sake of result
Jonathan Glover, Philosopher, 1990 UTILITARIANISM AND ITS CRITICS, 4 Other objections have been to the way utilitarians seem to accept that the end justifies the means. It is a form of consequentialism: the view that acts are never right or wrong in themselves, but only because of their consequences. But can it be right that whether or not to torture a child should be decided by cool calculation of consequences? What sort of people would we become if we adopted this attitude?

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Util Bad
Alec Kerrigan Jupiter High School

Util demoralizes
Utilitarian framework actually makes turns us into tools and takes away moral intent
Philip Pettit, Prof. of Philosophy at Australia National Univ., A COMPANION TO ETHICS, ed. by Peter Singer, 1991, p. 234. The idea behind this charge is that any consequentialist moral theory requires agents to change their deliberate habits in an objectionable fashion. They will have to calculate about every choice, it is said, identifying the different prognoses for every option, the value associated with each prognosis and the upshot of those various values for the value of the option. Doing this, they will be unable to recognize the tights of others as considerations that ought to constrain them without further thought of the consequences; they will be unable to acknowledge the special claims of those near and dear to them, claims that ought normally to brook no calculation: and they will be unable to mark distinctions between permissible options, obligatory options and options of supererogatory virtue. They will become moralistic computers, insensitive to all such nuances. F.H. Bradley made the point nicely in the last century, in Ethical Studies (j). 107). So far as my lights go, this is to make possible, to justify, even to encourage, an incessant practical casuistry; and that, it need scarcely be added, is the death of morality.

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Util Bad
Alec Kerrigan Jupiter High School

Util Dehums
Util allows to ignore any human identity of those deemed worthless in the big picture by our societal norms
Lilly-Marlene Russow, THE HASTINGS CENTER REPORT, May, 1990, p. S4. Despite its obvious appeal, classical utilitarianism has been subject to important criticisms. First, the method of summing up or averaging the good or harm for all concerned is often seen as failing to respect those affected as separate and distinct individuals. For instance, utilitarian theories seem to condone secretly killing someone who contributes no good to society, friends, or family in order to transplant her organs into four or five worthy but dying people. Moreover, hedonism seems too narrow as a full account of the good; after all, many people freely forgo pleasure to obtain other things they deem worthy of pursuit.

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Util Bad
Alec Kerrigan Jupiter High School

Util turns individual rights

Utilitarian calculus destroys any kind of individual rights
Baruch Brody, Prof. of Ethics at Rice University, ETHICS AND ITS APPLICATIONS, 1983, p. 19. The second objection, then, is that consquentialism does not take into account the existence of individual rights in deciding on moral issues. Similar examples would include any situation involving the tight to life, the tight to bodily integrity, the right to privacy, and so forth. The traditional morality supports the view that, generally, others may not infringe upon an individuals tights, even when some social gain could be realized from such infringement. Consequentialism, because it fails to make provisions for individual tights, is unable to do justice to this aspect of morality.

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Util Bad
Alec Kerrigan Jupiter High School

Util Turns Life

Utilitarianism ideology is hypocritical. It claims to respect life yet fails to recognize what life actually is.
James Moreland and Norman Geisler, Profs. of Philosophy, Biola Univ. and Liberty Univ., THE LIFE AND DEATH DEBATE, 1990, p.52. Regarding persons, the (utilitarian) view fails to treat persons as entities with intrinsic value simply as human beings, and it tends to reduce to value of human beings to their social utility or to a view of humans as bundles of pleasant mental and physical states or capacities. But, it can be argued, humans are substances which have mental and physical states, they are not merely a bundle of states themselves, and judgments of value are grounded on humans as substances with inherent moral worth, not on the presence or absence of certain states or capacities.

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Util Bad
Alec Kerrigan Jupiter High School

Util Turns Life

Utilitarianism doesnt truly care about life. It is based on bias assumptions of what life is worth and justifies genocide if desires believe it is required.
James S. Fishkin, Associate Professor of Political Science, Yale University, COLUMBIA LAW REVIEW, January, 1984, p. 265. Perhaps Hare is tight that it is difficult to imagine an individual Nazi whose preferences are so intense in favor of the Holocaust that they outweigh, in a strict utilitarian calculation, all the misery they would require. But the utilitarian vulnerability to this kind of case does not require such a horrendous individual utility monster. The problem cannot be dispatched so easily because the desires of numerous individuals must be taken into account. If there are enough Nazis with hatred of even moderate intensity, a strict utilitarian calculation about total preference satisfaction in the society may conceivably support horrendous or tyrannous policies directed against the Jews or other minority groups -- once the numbers and intensities on both sides are summed up throughout the society.

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