The scalar approach to utilitarianism
In Henry R. West (ed.) The Blackwell guide to Mill's Utilitarianism, Malden, 2006
Abstract
Consequentialists defend the view that the rightness of an action is determined by its consequences. However, they fail to explain why rightness and wrongness are not matters of degree. This article aims to demonstrate how an account of scalar morality could justify consequentialism. The author distinguishes between scalar and all-or-nothing theories of rightness and wrongness. By taking the former approach, one can argue that morality is concerned with goodness and badness, rather than rightness and wrongness, enabling a more coherent consequentialist position. Therefore, wrongness does not entail blameworthiness, and rightness does not entail having a moral obligation. Instead, morality provides a scale of reasons for action, with better actions having stronger reasons associated with them. – AI-generated abstract
Quotes from this work
Since, according to maximizing utilitarianism, any act that fails to maximize is wrong, there appears to be no place for actions that are morally admirable but not required, and agents will often be required to perform acts of great self-sacrifice. This gives rise to the common charge that maximizing utilitarianism is too demanding. […] How should a utilitarian respond to this line of criticism? One perfectly respectable response is simply to deny the claims at the heart of it. We might insist that morality really is very demanding, in precisely the way utilitarianism says it is. But doesn’t this fly in the face of common sense? Well, perhaps it does, but so what? Until relatively recently, moral “common sense” viewed women as having an inferior moral status to men, and some racs as having an inferior status to others. These judgments were not restricted to the philosophically unsophisticated. Such illustrious philosophers as Aristotle and Hume accepted positions of this nature. Many utilitarians (myself included) believe that the interests of sentient non-human animals should be given equal consideration in moral decisions with the interests of humans. This claims certainly conflicts with the “common sense” of many (probably most) humans, and many (perhaps most) philosophers. It should not, on that account alone, be rejected.