My view, and a lot of other people here seem to also be getting at this, is that the demandingness objection comes from a misuse of utilitarianism. People want their morality to label things 'permissible' and 'impermissible', and utilitarianism doesn't natively do that. That is, we want boolean-valued morality. The trouble is, Bentham went and gave us a real-valued one. The most common way to get a bool out of that is to label the maximum 'true' and everything else false, but that doesn't give a realistically human-followable result. Some philosophers have worked on 'satisficing consequentialism', which is a project to design a better real-to-bool conversion, but I think the correct answer is to learn to use real-valued morality.
There's some oversimplification above (I suspect people have always understood non-boolean morality in some cases), but I think it captures the essential problem.
It basically depends whether you're a maximising utilitarian or a scalar utilitarian. The former says that you should do the best thing. The latter is less harsh in that it just says that better actions are better without saying that you necessarily have to do the best one.
The main difference between a utility function based approach is that there is no concept of "sufficient effort". Every action gets an (expected) utility attached to it. Sending £10 to an efficient charity is X utilitons above not doing so; but selling everything you own to donate to the charity is (normally) even higher.
So I think the criticism is accurate, in that humans almost never achieve perfection following utility; there's always room for more effort, and there's no distinction between actions that are "allowed" versus "req...
I thought about this question a while ago and have been meaning to write about it sometime. This is a good opportunity.
Terminology: Other commenters are pointing out that there are differing definitions of the word "utilitarianism". I think it is clear that the article in question is talking about utilitarianism as an ethical theory (or rather, a family of ethical theories). As such, utilitarianism is a form of consequentialism, the view that doing "the right thing" is what produces the best state of affairs. Utilitarianism is different...
I'm seeing fundamental disagreement on what "moral" means.
In the Anglo Saxon tradition, what is moral is what you should or ought to do, where should and ought both entail a debt one has the obligation to pay. Note that this doesn't make morality binary; actions are more or less moral depending on how much of the debt you're paying off. I wouldn't be surprised if this varied a lot by culture, and I invite people to detail the similarities and differences in other cultures they are familiar with.
What I hear from some people here is Utilitarian...
"Utilitarianism" for many people includes a few beliefs that add up to this requirement.
Item 3 implies that movement of wealth from someone who has more to someone who has less increases total utility. #1 means that this includes your wealth. #2 means it's obligatory.
Note that I'm not a utilitarian, and I don't believe #1 or #2. Anyone who actually does believe these, please feel free to correct me or rephrase to be more accurate.
I think someone is still a utilitarian if instead of 2 they believe something like
2') One decision is morally better than another if it yields greater expected total utility.
(In particular, I don't think it's necessary for a moral theory to be based on a notion of moral requirement as opposed to one of moral preference.)
If you want to completely optimize your life for creating more global utilons then, yes, utilitarianism requires extreme self-sacrifice. The time you spend playing that video-game or hanging out with friends netted you utility/happiness, but you could have spend that time working and donating the money to an effective charity. That tasty cheese you ate probably made you quite happy, but it didn't maximize utility. Better switch to the bare minimum you need to work the highest-paying job you can manage and give all the money you don't strictly need to an ef...
It's not just people in general that feel that way, but also some moral philosophers. Here are two related link about the demandingness objection to utilitarianism:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demandingness_objection
http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2014/11/why-i-am-not-a-utilitarian/
The way I think of the complication is that these moral decisions are not about answering "what should I do?" but "what can I get myself to do?"
If someone on the street asks you "what is the right thing for me to do today?" you probably should not answer "donate all of your money to charity beyond what you need to survive." This advice will just get ignored. More conventional advice that is less likely to get ignored ultimately does more for the common good.
Moral decisions that you make for yourself are a lot like gi...
For me utilitarianism means maximizing a weighted sum of everyone's utility, but the weights don't have to be equal. If you give yourself a high enough weight, no extreme self-sacrifice is necessary. The reason to be a utilitarian is that if some outcome is not consistent with it, it should be possible to make some people better off without making anyone worse off.
As far as I understand it, the text quoted here is implicitly relying on the social imperative "be as moral as possible". This is where the "obligatory" comes from. The problem here is that the imperative "be as moral as possible" gets increasingly more difficult as more actions acquire moral weight. If one has internalized this imperative (which is realistic given the weight of societal pressure behind it), utilitarianism puts an unbearable moral weight on one's metaphorical shoulders.
Of course, in reality, utilitarianism imp...
What does the whole concept of talking about morality or human motivation using the terms of utilitarianism and consequentialism mean? It means restricting oneself to using the terms and rules that are used to derive new sentences using those terms that are used in the moral philosophy of utilitarianism and consequentialism. Once you restrict your vocabulary and the rules that are used to form sentences using this vocabulary, you usually restrict what conclusions you can derive using the terms that are in this vocabulary.
If you think in terms of consequen...
Utilitarianism doesn't have anywhere to place a non arbitrary level of obligation except at zero and maximum effort. The zero is significant, because it means utilitarianism can't bootstrap obligation .... I think that is the real problem, not demandingness.
As others have stated, obligation isn't really part of utilitarianism. However, if you really wanted to use that term, one possible way to incorporate it is to ask what would the xth percentile of people do in this situation (where the people are ranked in terms of expected utility) given that everyone has the same information and use that as a boundary to the label "obligation."
As an aside, there is a thought experiment called the "veil of ignorance." Although it is not, strictly speaking, called utilitarianism, you can view it that wa...
I think you have to look at utilitarianism in a question of, "What does the best good for the greatest amount of people that is both effective and efficient?" That means that sacrifice may be a means to an end in order to achieve that greatest good for the greatest amount of people. The sacrifice is that actions that disproportionately disadvantage, objectify, or exploit people should not be taken. Those that benefit the greatest number should. Utilitarianism is all about greatest good. I don't think moral decisions have much place anywhere outsi...
Utilitarianism is a normative ethical theory. Normative ethical theories tell you what to do (or, in the case of virtue ethics, tell you what kind of person to be). In the specific case of utilitarianism, it holds that the right thing to do (i.e. what you ought to do) is maximize world utility. In the current world, there are many people who could sacrifice a lot to generate even more world utility. Utilitarianism holds that they should do so, therefore it is demanding.
As I understand it, and in my just-made-up-now terminology, there are two different kinds of utilitarianism, Normative, and Descriptive. In Normative, you try to figure out the best possible action and you must do that action. In Descriptive, you don't have to always do the best possible action if you don't want to, but you're still trying to make the most good out of what you're doing. For example, consider the following hypothetical actions:
Get a high-paying job and donate all of my earnings except the bare minimum necessary to survive to effective
The word "utilitarianism" technically means something like, "an algorithm for determining whether any given action should or should not be undertaken, given some predetermined utility function". However, when most people think of utilitarianism, they usually have a very specific utility function in mind. Taken together, the algorithm and the function do indeed imply certain "ethical obligations", which are somewhat tautologically defined as "doing whatever maximizes this utility function".
In general, the word "u...
an algorithm for determining whether any given action should or should not be undertaken, given some predetermined utility function
That's not how the term "utilitarianism" is used in philosophy. The utility function has to be agent neutral. So a utility function where your welfare counts 10x as much as everyone else's wouldn't be utilitarian.
I thought about this question a while ago and have been meaning to write about it sometime. This is a good opportunity.
Terminology: Other commenters are pointing out that there are differing definitions of the word "utilitarianism". I think it is clear that the article in question is talking about utilitarianism as an ethical theory (or rather, a family of ethical theories). As such, utilitarianism is a form of consequentialism, the view that doing "the right thing" is what produces the best state of affairs. Utilitarianism is different from other forms of consequentialism in that the thing people consider good/valuable/worth achieving is directly tied to conscious beings. An example of a non-utilitarian consequentialist theory would be the belief that knowledge is the most important thing, and that we should all strive to advance science (at all costs).
In regard to the question, there are two interesting points that are immediately worth pointing out:
1) Utilitarianism (and any sort of consequentialism), if it is indeed demanding, is only demanding in certain empirical situations. If the world is already perfect, you don't have to do anything! 2) For every consequentialist view, there are empirical situations where achieving the best consequences is extremely demanding. Just imagine that the desired state of affairs is really hard to attain.
So my first reply to people who criticise utilitarianism for it being too demanding is the following: Yes, it's very unfortunate that the world is so messed up, but it's not the fault of the utilitarians!
Further, the quoted statement in bold speaks of certain actions being "not just admirable, but morally obligatory". I find this framing misleading. I believe that people should taboo words like "morally obligatory" in ethical discussions. It makes it seem like there is some external moral standard that humans are supposed to obey, but what would it be, and more importantly, why should we care? In my disclaimer on terminology, I wrote that I'm referring to utilitarianism as an ethical theory. I don't intend this to mean that utilitarians are committed to the claim that there are universally valid "ethical truths". I would define "utilitarian" as: "Someone who would voluntarily take a pill that turns them into a robot that goes on to perfectly maximize expected utility". With "utility" being defined as "world-states that are good for sentient individuals", with "good" being defined in non-moral terms, depending on which branch of utilitarianism one subscribes to (could be that e.g. preference-fulfillment is important to you, or contentment, or sum of happiness minus suffering). According to this interpretation, a utilitarian would not be committed to the view that non-utilitarian people are "making a mistake" -- perhaps they just care about different things!
According to the meta ethical view I just sketched, which is meta ethical anti-realism, the demandingness of utilitarianism loses its scariness. If something is requested of you against your will, you're going to object all the more if the request is more demanding. However, if you have a particular goal in life and find out that the circumstances are unfortunately quite dire, so achieving your goal will be very hard, your objection will be directed towards the state of the world, not towards your own goal (hopefully anyway, sometimes people irrationally do the other thing).
Yes, utilitarianism ranks actions according to how much expected utility they produce, and only one action will be "best". However, it would be very misleading to apply moral terms like "only the best action is right, all the others are wrong". Unlike deontology, where all you need to do is to not violate a set of rules, utilitarianism should be thought of as an open-ended game where you can score points, and all you try is to score the most points. Yes, there is just one best path of action, but it can still make a huge difference whether you e.g. take the fifteenth best action or the nineteenth. For utilitarians, moral praise is merely instrumental: They want to blame and praise people in a way that produces the best outcome. This includes praising people for things that are less than perfect, for instance.
So in part, the demandingness objection against utiltiarianism relies on an uncharitable interpretation/definition of "utilitarianism", which commits utilitarians to believe in moral realism. (I consider this interpretation uncharitable because I think the entire concept of "moral realism" is, like libertarian free will, a confused idea that cannot be defined in clear terms without losing at least part of the connotations we intuitively considered important.
Another reason why I think the demandingness objection is a bad objection is because people usually apply it in a naive, short-sighted way. The author of the quote in question did so, for instance: "It also appears to imply that donating all your money to charity beyond what you need to survive (…)" This is wrong. It only implies donating all your money to charity beyond what you need to be maximally productive in the long run. Empirical studies show that being poor decreases the quality of your decision-making. Further, putting too much pressure on yourself often leads to burnout, which leads to a significant loss of productivity in the long run. I find that people tend to overestimate how demanding a typical utilitarian life is. But they are right insofar as there could be situations where trying to achieve the utilitarian goal results in significant self-sacrifice. Such situations are definitely logically possible, but I think they are much more rare than people think.
The reason this is the case is because people tend to conflate "trying to act like a perfectly rational, super-productive utilitarian robot would act" and "trying to maximise expected utility given all your personal constraints". Utilitarianism implies the latter, not the former. Utilitarianism refers to desiring a specific overall outcome, not to a specific decision-procedure for every action you are taking. It is perfectly in line with utilitarianism to come to a conclusion such as: "My personality happens to be such that thinking about all the suffering in the world every day is just too much for me, I literally couldn't keep it up for more than two months. I want to make a budget for charity once every year, I donate what's in that budget, and for the rest of the time, I try to not worry much about it." If it is indeed the case that doing things differently will lead to this person giving up the entire endeavour of donating money, then this is literally the best thing to do for this person. Humans need some degree of happiness and luxury if they want to remain productive and clear-headed in the long run.
The whole thing is also extremely person-dependent. For some people, "trying to maximise expected utility given all your personal constraints" will look more like "trying to act like a perfectly rational, super-productive utilitarian robot would act" than for other people. Some people are just naturally better at achieving a goal than other people, this depends on both the goals and on the personality traits and assets of the person in question.
Finally, let's ask whether "trying to maximise expected utility given all your personal constraints" will, on average, given real-world circumstances, prove to be demanding or not. I suggest to define "demanding" as follows: goal A is more demanding than goal B if people who try to rationally achieve A have a lower average happiness across a time period than people who try to rationally achieve goal B. If you were to empirically measure this, I would suggest contacting people at random times during day or night to ask them to report how they are feeling at this very moment. When it comes to momentary happiness, it is trivial that trying to maximise your momentary happiness will lead to you being happier than trying to be utilitarian. Utilitarians might object, citing the paradox of hedonism: When people only focus on their own personal happiness, their life will soon feel sad. However, this would be making the exact same mistake I discussed earlier. If it is truly the case that explicitly focusing on your personal happiness makes you miserable, then of course the rational thing to do for a person with this goal would be to self-modify and convince yourself to follow a different goal.
There is a distinction between the experiencing self and the remembering self, which is why it would be a completely different question to ask people "how happy are you with your life on the whole". For instance, I read somewhere that mothers (compared to women without children) tend to be less happy in the average moment, but more happy with their life as a whole. What is it that you care about more? I would assume that people are happy with their life on the whole if they know what they want in life, if they think they made good choices regarding the goals that they have, and if they got closer to their goals more and more. At least for the first part of this, knowing what you want in life, utilitarianism does very well.
Chist Hallquist wrote the following in an article (if you know the article please, please don't bring it up, I don't want to discuss the article in general):
"For example, utilitarianism apparently endorses killing a single innocent person and harvesting their organs if it will save five other people. It also appears to imply that donating all your money to charity beyond what you need to survive isn’t just admirable but morally obligatory. "
The non-bold part is not what is confusing me. But where does the "obligatory" part come in. I don't really how its obvious what, if any, ethical obligations utilitarianism implies. given a set of basic assumptions utilitarianism lets you argue whether one action is more moral than another. But I don’t see how its obvious which, if any, moral benchmarks utilitarianism sets for “obligatory.” I can see how certain frameworks on top of utilitarianism imply certain moral requirements. But I do not see how the bolded quote is a criticism of the basic theory of utilitarianism.
However this criticism comes up all the time. Honestly the best explanation I could come up with was that people were being unfair to utilitarianism and not thinking through their statements. But the above quote is by HallQ who is intelligent and thoughtful. So now I am genuinely very curious.
Do you think utilitarianism really require such extreme self sacrifice and if so why? And if it does not require this why do so many people say it does? I am very confused and would appreciate help working this out.
edit:
I am having trouble asking this question clearly. Since utilitarianism is probably best thought of as a cluster of beliefs. So its not clear what asking "does utilitarianism imply X" actually means. Still I made this post since I am confused. Many thoughtful people identity as utilitarian (for example Ozy and theunitofcaring) yet do not think people have extreme obligations. However I can think of examples where people do not seem to understand the implications of their ethical frameowrks. For example many Jewish people endorse the message of the following story:
Rabbi Hilel was asked to explain the Torah while standing on one foot and responded "What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation of this--go and study it!"
The story is presumably apocryphal but it is repeated all the time by Jewish people. However its hard to see how the story makes even a semblance of sense. The torah includes huge amounts of material that violates the "golden Rule" very badly. So people who think this story gives even a moderately accurate picture of the Torah's message are mistaken imo.