Objections to Utilitarianism

How do we measure and compare happiness or preferences
The epistemological problem:
There is an epistemological problem regarding the fact that utilitarianism tells us we can never really know what the right action is, but that isn’t such a big deal because we can evaluate a person’s intentions based on expected consequences.
The Deeper Problem: How do we compare preferences? If we accept a non-hedonistic view then it becomes much much harder to compare and utilitarianism loses much of its attractiveness due to simplicity.
Utilitarianism is too demanding
Three areas:

• deliberation
• motivation
• action

Deliberation

• utitlitarianism seems to be too demanding in requiring an excessive or impossible amount of deliberation in order to determine the right action as the right action is the one with the best consequences, overall and until the end of time considered as to how it affects every sentient organism on the planet

Motivation

• on a utilitarian account the right motivations are the ones that produce the most happiness
• utilitarianism seems to suggest that one needs to have the motivations of a saint, to always be motivated to maximize utility

Action

• utilitarianism implies that we are always doing the wrong thing because its standard of right action is so high
• utilitarianism seems to imply that the right life is a life of extreme and constant self sacrifice
• in our ordinary way of thinking about actions we tend to think of some actions as superogatory, admirable and praiseworthy but not required, but according to utilitarianism all right actions are required
• Utilitarianism seems to violate a principle that is generally accepted in moral reasoning, that “ought is implies can.”

The Impartiality objection

• Utilitarianism seems to require one to be completely impartial, however many people feel they have special duties to certain people (children, parents, spouses, countrymen, humans, etc).
• One way around this is to argue that  caring for one’s family is generally optifimic if we consider all the consequences and therefore according to utilitarianism caring for one’s family is generally the right thing to do

No Intrinsic Wrongness

• Nothing is absolutely and always wrong, including rape, torture, murder, genocide, slavery, etc.

The Integrity Objection
Here is a simple argument that might capture one’s intuitions regarding the role integrity in ethics: 

1. If utilitarianism is correct then acting with integrity is not morally relevant to the morality of an action.
2. Acting with integrity is morally relevant to the morality of an action.
3. So, Utilitarianism is not correct.

Two examples from Bernard Williams’ Critique of Utilitarianism:
1)   A man is told by an evil dictator that if executes one innocent people then the lives of nine others will be spared and if he refuses all ten will be executed.
2)   A poor scientist who is having trouble supporting himself and his family is offered a lucrative job to make chemical weapons, and the weapons will be made with or without his participation.
In both cases utitlitarianism tells us it is wrong to act with integrity and refuse to kill an innocent person/make chemical weapons.

The Injustice Objection
Examples1 – The Lonesome Stranger: Framing a lonesome stranger for a crime to prevent some harm:
Example2 – The Organ Harvesting Doctor: Imagine a doctor goes around harvesting the organs of homeless people to save the lives of well-loved important people in society.
This objection has a lot to do with rights. Utilitarianism has no real way to account for rights. This is largely by design, Bentham said that rights were non-sense on stilts.
Shaffer Landau’s injustice argument against Utilitarianism:

1. The correct moral theory will never require us to commit serious injustices.
2. Utilitarianism sometimes requires us to commit serious injustices.
3. Therefore, utilitarianism is not the correct moral theory.

How might a utilitarian respond to this argument?
Since the argument is valid so there are really only two options, the utilitarian must either deny that the first premise is true or deny that the second premise is true.
Deny Premise 2
A utilitarian can try to argue that injustice is never optimific. This will usually involve some long-term consequences.
Does this seem plausible?
For this to it must be true not only that there never has been a case where injustice was optimific but that it is not even logically conceivable that injustice could ever be optimific.
This is pretty implausible.
Deny Premise 1
This is what we call “biting the bullet” in philosophy jargon.
The diehard utilitarian will have to bite the bullet on this one and admit that sometimes it is not only permissible but morally required to infringe on someone’s or a group of individual’s rights and perform and injustice upon them.
They can however extol the importance of rights as being generally and almost always optimific.
Mill was an important proponent of certain rights that laid the foundation of the liberal democracy in England and America. (Read Mill’s On Liberty for more on this.)
A note about Utilitarianism and Political Philosophy
Because utilitarianism does not countenance individual rights it is impossible to form a stable society based on utilitarian principles.
Individual rights are the most basic foundation of society. Until you have rights you don’t really have a society.
No political philosopher has ever accepted utilitarianism. This includes but John Rawls and Robert Nozick, the two most famous political philosophers of the 20^th century, despite their widely diverging approaches to political philosophy. Both Rawls and Nozick drew inspiration from Kant and the social contract tradition.