Objections to Utilitarianism and Responses

“Bernard Williams…concluded a lengthy attack on utilitarianism by remarking: ‘The day cannot be too far off in which we hear no more of it.’ It is now more than forty years since Williams made that comment, but we continue to hear plenty about utilitarianism.”
- Peter Singer & Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek ¹

Utilitarianism is a very controversial moral theory. Critics have raised many objections against it, and its defenders have responded with attempts to defuse these objections.

In the following, we explain and address the most influential objections to utilitarianism.

General Ways of Responding to Objections to Utilitarianism

Many objections rest on the idea that utilitarianism has counterintuitive implications. We can see these implications by considering concrete examples or thought experiments. For instance, in our article on the rights objection, we consider the Transplant case:

Transplant: Imagine a hypothetical scenario in which there are five patients, each of whom will soon die unless they receive an appropriate transplanted organ⁠—a heart, two kidneys, a liver, and lungs. A healthy patient, Chuck, comes into the hospital for a routine check-up and the doctor finds that Chuck is a perfect match as a donor for all five patients. Should the doctor kill Chuck and use his organs to save the five others?

At first glance, it seems that utilitarianism has to answer the question with “Yes, the doctor should kill Chuck”. It is better that five people survive than that just one person does. But on commonsense morality and virtually every other moral theory, the answer is “No, do not kill Chuck”. On most views, killing Chuck would be morally monstrous. This apparent counterintuitive implication of utilitarianism is taken as an argument against its being the correct moral theory.

Proponents of utilitarianism can respond to its counterintuitive implications in cases like Transplant in four separate ways.

First, they can accommodate the intuition that seems to conflict with the utilitarian recommendation by emphasizing that a sophisticated, as opposed to naive, application of utilitarian principles avoids the counterintuitive implication. We usually lack detailed information about the future consequences of our actions. This suggests that usually it would be naive for us to act in a way deemed very wrong on commonsense morality, under the impression this will bring about the best outcome. A sophisticated utilitarian—in line with multi-level utilitarianism—recognizes the limitations to our foresight and acts in accordance with commonsense heuristics, other than in exceptional circumstances.

Second, utilitarians can attempt to debunk the moral intuition invoked by a particular case by pointing out that it resulted from an unreliable process.² If a debunking argument succeeds, the respective moral intuition should not be given much weight in our moral reasoning. As an illustration, consider that in most Western societies Christianity was the dominant religion for over one thousand years, which explains why moral intuitions grounded in Christian morality are still widespread. For instance, many devout Christians have strong moral intuitions about sexual intercourse, which non-Christians do not typically share, such as the intuition that it is wrong to have sex before marriage or that is wrong for two men to have sex. The discourse among academics in moral philosophy generally disregards such religiously-contingent moral intuitions. Many philosophers, including most utilitarians, would therefore not give much weight to the Christian’s intuitions about sexual intercourse.

Third, proponents of utilitarianism can attack the available alternatives—such as deontological or virtue ethical theories—to show that they, too, have implications no less counterintuitive than those of utilitarianism.

A fourth strategy is to tolerate the intuition, which is sometimes called “biting the bullet”. This is to accept that utilitarianism has counterintuitive implications but to hold on to the theory because all-things-considered it is still more plausible than its rivals. The costs of accepting a counterintuitive implication, it is argued, can be outweighed by the force of the arguments in favor of utilitarianism. Moreover, it is impossible to have any non-ad-hoc theory that accords with all of our intuitive moral judgements. Our intuitions are often inconsistent and they are subject to change over time, which makes it impossible to find consistent and plausible principles that reflect all of them. So it requires judgment to determine which intuitions and theoretical commitments are non-negotiable, and which we should be willing to compromise on in pursuit of “reflective equilibrium”, or the most plausible and coherent overall combination of moral judgments and principles.

Specific Objections Against Utilitarianism

In separate articles, we discuss the following critiques of utilitarianism:

Resources and Further Reading

• Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek & Peter Singer (2017). Utilitarianism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Chapter 4: Objections.
• J. J. C. Smart & Bernard Williams (1973). Utilitarianism: For and Against. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.