Another Objection to Utilitarianism
I have referred elsewhere to various objections to utilitarianism, such as the harm problem (HP), the predictability problem (PP), the maximization problem (MP), and the unrealized happiness problem (UHP). There is another objection to utilitarianism that has bothered me for a long time. I’ll call it the depersonalization problem (DP).
According to a common articulation of utilitarianism, roughly, for any morally significant act, one should act in such a way as to bring about the greatest cumulative benefit for the greatest possible number of people. I will call this the utilitarian thesis (UT). In other words, according to the UT, one should maximize happiness for as many persons (or even to include non-personal animals) as possible.[1] The achievement of this end justifies whatever means used to obtain it. Thus utilitarianism is a version of consequentialism, which is a category of normative theories holding that for any morally significant act, the consequences of that act make it morally right or wrong. I.e., the end justifies or condemns the means used to obtain it.
On the DP, utilitarianism is flawed because it treats persons as non-persons by taking them as mere tokens of a type. Which type? The type of desire satisfier and pleasure experiencer.[2] For utilitarianism, what matters is the maximization of happiness. Utilitarianism is a monistic hedonistic axiology in that the only intrinsic value it recognizes is pleasure (or desire satisfaction). Individuals are mere tokens or containers in which pleasure production and desire satisfaction occur; on this view, we are useful for the sake of hedonic ends and replaceable for such ends. The UT threatens to strip persons of intrinsic value and give them only instrumental value.
Yet arguably, persons are unique, intrinsically valuable, and unrepeatable. We have inherent dignity even if we don’t maximize the elusive (illusive?) end of the greatest utility for the greatest number. Moreover, we cannot be replaced as persons by some other person.[3] We are not reduceable to instruments for the sake of utility; we are not tools that can be substituted out of the utilitarian game such that some other tool fills the gap without loss. The recognition of the uniqueness of each person is a fundamental aspect of Kant’s insight in the Categorical Imperative – a moral principle which, to my mind, makes Kantian ethics superior to any form of consequentialism.
Rather than elaborating further, I will cite Bill Vallicella, who makes the argument that persons are intrinsically valuable and irreplaceable as persons.
[1] The UT can be modified according to act utilitarianism or to rule utilitarianism. Utilitarianism generally takes happiness to be a matter of desire satisfaction, or perhaps a matter of experiencing pleasure and avoiding pain – which might be two ways of referring to the same thing if descriptive hedonism is true (i.e., if it is a descriptive fact of human psychology that all of our desires are identical or reduceable to the experience of pleasure and avoidance of pain).
[2] These might be two types rather than one, but I will set aside that question for now.
[3] Humans adopt various roles such that they can be replaced by others with respect to the role. For example, the governor of a state can be replaced by another person to serve in that office. Ditto for an athlete on a sports team or an employee in an organization. But this sort of replaceability is relative to some office or role. Persons as such are not replaceable. If you lose a good friend to death, that friend is not replaceable as a person by some other person who becomes your friend at some later time.
Cicero aptly highlights the fundamental singularity of each person:
“If we take this into consideration, we shall see that it is each man’s duty to weigh well what are his own peculiar traits of character, to regulate these properly, and not to wish to try how another man’s would suit him. For the more peculiarly his own a man’s character is, the better it fits him.” (De Officiis, Book I, Line 113)