*A dialogue on the incompleteness of consequentialism

Setting

Saturday around lunchtime. Carlos stops by his old friend Davy’s house to say hello on his way up to the city.

Introduction

Davy: Well who is this standing on my doorstep? Didn’t expect to see your face today!

Carlos: Surprise! I’m on my way to the city and thought I’d stop by to say hello. Mmm it smells like coffee in here, as usual.

Davy: Well you’re in luck, I was just about to make you a cup. Come on in! It’s just me and the cat in here.

Carlos: Where’s the fam?

Davy: Running errands. Jake scratched his glasses so they all went to order a new pair. They’ll all be back any time. I’m supposed to be making lunch and doing these dishes, but instead I’ve mostly just been staring at the wall.

Carlos: One man’s “staring at the wall” is another man’s “thinking deep thoughts”.

Davy: I wish! Sadly I’m incapable of deep thoughts today. My brain’s pretty well fried. We had a Little League game this morning, and later we have a birthday party, so it’s wall to wall over here with kid stuff. What’s up with you? What’s going on in the city? Pub crawl?

Carlos: Haha, not quite. I signed up for a shift at the food bank this afternoon. I think I’ll either be handing out groceries or maybe making deliveries. Though sometimes they have me in the warehouse moving boxes.

Davy: Wow that’s so cool! You’ve been doing that a lot lately.

Carlos: Yeah I try to do two shifts per month, though honestly I could probably do more. I’d like to do more.

Davy: Damn I’m in the presence of a saint!

Carlos: Yeah right, Mother Teresa over here. No I just want to do all the good I can while I’ve got the time. Afterall I don’t have kids yet.

Davy: For sure, once you have kids you definitely won’t be doing all the good you can do.

Carlos: That’s not what I meant. People with children can do a different kind of good than people who don’t have kids. But you’re still doing all the good you can, just by raising your kids right. You provide for your family, you work hard, you spend tons of quality time with your kids; that’s how you do the most good.

Davy: Thanks for saying that. But really, I know I’m not doing as much good as I could, even by parenting well. If I really wanted to “do all the good I can” in the world, I’d have to neglect my children in favor of activities that would do a lot more good than parenting. Instead of spending every evening playing with my children (which benefits roughly four people: myself, my two kids, and my wife), I could, for example, spend every evening at the food bank, where I could probably benefit hundreds or even thousands of people over the years. That would be maximizing goodness. What I do doesn’t even come close.

Carlos: I don’t know about that. When I look at your family and the love you all share, all I see is goodness. Those four people you benefit matter a lot! Think about the richness of the happiness and fulfillment you create in this household, and the ripple effects that could have on the world. You are building something within these walls that is likely deeper than any good you could do outside of them, and that will reverberate throughout these boys’ lives.

Davy: Yes but think of the ripple effects I could create if I fed a thousand hungry people instead of serving only four. If we’re talking about ripple effects, it’s tough to deny that my scope in this house is much more limited compared to the ripple effects I could create by serving people outside of it, even if the good happening inside the house is deep and rich. I know I’m doing good here, but I’m not doing the most good I could do.

Carlos: Well I think you are.

Davy: And I think your shirt would disagree with you. “The greatest good for the greatest number.” That’s a very clean ethical system. But let’s be real, if that’s the ethical standard we must meet, most parents would fall far short. We prioritize our loved ones over the greater good, and so fail to meet the standard. According to your shirt, I’m living in sin. Here’s your coffee, by the way.

Carlos: Oh thank you! Now I have to ask you a tough question: are you getting triggered by my shirt?

Davy: Who me? Of course not. It’s a lovely shirt.

Carlos: Good, because this is just a slogan anyhow. It’s not supposed to encompass a whole ethical system, but just give you a whiff of one. It tries to express something simple and beautiful and intuitive: we should do as much good as possible in the world. Call it happiness, well-being, fulfillment, a full belly, shelter, peace, whatever a person needs in order to be happy. We who are capable of doing so should work to spread as much of that good around as we can. For me, that means helping as many persons-in-need as possible, especially those persons who lack the very basic necessities like food and shelter, since without those things happiness is impossible. But we don’t all need to walk an identical path to live ethically. When you raise those boys the way you do, when you love them and play with them and nurture them, you maximize goodness in your own way.

Davy: Ok maybe I do feel a bit triggered by the shirt. As a parent, I feel morally obligated NOT to dedicate my full time and resources toward serving strangers, the way that you do. The good I do for my family is pretty much the full extent of the good that I do, but it’s not the full extent of the good I could do. I know I could do a lot more if I didn’t spend so much time parenting. So despite what you claim, I am not maximizing the good, even if my boys are happy. I could pretend that I do, in order to make myself feel good, but it wouldn’t be true. The truth is I consciously choose NOT to maximize the good because I feel morally obligated to serve this family instead. It is a duty that, for me, trumps (or at the very least conflicts with) the duty to maximize goodness. I purposefully prioritize the happiness of two individuals over the happiness of hundreds of strangers, because to fail to do so would be morally catastrophic for me. So no, I’m not maximizing the good, and I can feel your shirt judging me for it.

Carlos: I can take it off if that would help.

Davy: Please don’t!

Carlos: So what are you saying, that it’s unethical to love your kids?

Davy: No, quite the opposite! I believe it is the height of ethical behavior to love one’s children. I am saying that any ethical system which requires us to maximize the good will consider parenting to be unethical. And since parenting is both the height of ethical behavior and a fundamental part of a healthy human life, such an ethics would have an incomplete understanding of both ethical behavior and human life itself.

Carlos: I don’t love that you’re basing your critique off the slogan on this shirt. This slogan does not even begin to accurately represent all the complexity and depth of the utilitarian tradition, a tradition that I take seriously. This is just what I wear when I volunteer; it doesn’t encompass my entire ethical worldview. Let’s not attack a straw man version of utilitarianism that says that the only way to act ethically is to provide the most good to the greatest number of people at all times. My ethics is much more nuanced than that.

Davy: I know that. I’m not really arguing against a slogan. I understand that real utilitarianism is a rich and nuanced tradition. But despite this nuance, at heart it is still an ethical system which commands us to do as much good as we can in the world. It measures the goodness of actions based on how close those actions come to maximizing the good, and judges actions based on how far they fall short of that standard.¹ Therefore, utilitarianism cannot make sense of parenting! Parenting is an act which routinely (or perhaps always) falls short of maximizing the good, yet despite this it is an ethical act. How can this be? Since utilitarianism cannot explain this, I would argue that it misses something critical about how real humans live their lives, how we view our moral obligations, and what makes an action actually ethical.

Carlos: There is a lot to unpack here. First, you cannot bring up one single tricky example (parenting) and expect to somehow disqualify or render incoherent all of utilitarianism. Utilitarianism makes so much sense in so many ways to so many people, matches so many of our intuitions, provides us with such useful tools for navigating difficult ethical dilemmas; it will not be dismantled so easily. It’s flexible. It can accommodate objections like yours, or show the objection to be flawed. One objection will never take down utilitarianism. The roots of this ethical system run too deep. You’re trying to chop down a redwood tree with a hatchet. You’re trying to blow up the Death Star with one missile.

Davy: It only took one missile to blow up the Death Star.

Carlos: Technically it took two proton torpedoes.

Davy: Look, I have no interest in dismantling (or blowing up) utilitarianism, nor do I have an interest in dumb Star Wars metaphors. I am merely pointing out that in this one regard (parenting), utilitarianism does not provide a satisfactory answer. Please don’t infer from my argument that I believe utilitarianism is therefore fatally flawed, or that we need to trash the entire system. I agree that utilitarianism makes a ton of intuitive sense. But if it really fails to understand parenting, perhaps utilitarianism is… well, incomplete. Though it might succeed as a duty that all humans must reckon with (the duty to maximize the good), perhaps where utilitarianism fails is in its desire to be the ONLY system guiding human morality, to systematize all human decisions under the banner of utilitarianism. I am not trying to destroy utilitarianism, but only to limit its scope, to argue that it doesn’t capture the full picture of human morality.

Carlos: Your argument hinges on the claim that utilitarianism fails to understand the goodness of parenting, but that claim is false. Like you, I believe that good parenting is morally required, and I believe this not in spite of my utilitarian ethics, but because of it! Not only does utilitarianism understand the love you feel for your children, but it also justifies it, even requires it. This is because good parenting does maximize the good. As a utilitarian, I look at your life and see clearly that you are living a good and moral life. Real utilitarianism understands the moral worth of your actions as a parent.

Davy: If it could be definitively shown that my actions do not maximize goodness, would utilitarianism still consider my life ethical?

Carlos: I think you’d have a tough time definitively showing that parenting fails to maximize the good.

Davy: But what if I could show it? Wouldn’t you then be required, as a utilitarian, to say that parenting is unethical according to your system, if it clearly did NOT maximize the good?

Carlos: I’m not going to fall into your little trap and agree with that. Even as a utilitarian, I don’t have to agree that moral analysis should be as binary as all that. As if something as complex as parenting could be labeled as “right” or “wrong” based off a snappy one-liner. And besides, as I’ve been saying, I think it can be shown that good parenting definitively DOES maximize the good. Imagine a society where people didn’t dedicate time and energy and love to their children. Wouldn’t that be a worse society than the one we live in? Good parenting creates happy and well-adjusted humans. By dedicating your time and energy to your kids, you can raise them to be empathetic and kind. That makes the world better off! Not to mention that good parenting helps our species to survive, which I assume even you can admit is a good outcome. And think of the emotional joy you experience from parenting. Now picture the billions of parents experiencing that same joy, that same fulfillment and sense of purpose. That is the good being maximized! You see? It isn’t difficult to show how utilitarianism justifies parental love: parenting maximizes the good, and is therefore ethical according to utilitarianism. Case closed, we don’t even have to discuss it further.

Davy: So parental love isn’t inherently ethical, but is instead only contingently ethical? It is only ethical because it maximizes the good? This is what I mean when I say that utilitarianism doesn’t properly understand parental love. Utilitarianism views parental love through the same lens that it uses to analyze any other human action: its goodness is solely a function of the good it creates in the world. Seems like, according to this way of thinking, if parenting ever failed to maximize the good, it would stop being the most ethical choice. And even if it could be shown that parenting does in fact maximize the good, I think utilitarianism still values it for an incomplete reason. Because even if it does maximize the good, utilitarianism only values parenting as a function of its capacity for maximizing the good. This is instrumental goodness, not inherent goodness. So either utilitarianism deems parenting to be unethical because it fails to maximize the good, or sees it as ethical merely because it is a conduit for maximization. I’m not saying that there is nothing valuable in parenting’s capacity for creating goodness in the world. I’m just saying that utilitarianism sees parenting as valuable ONLY for this reason. It fails to see parental love the way it really is, the way real parents view it.

Carlos: And how is that?

Davy: As a burning, all-consuming need. It is the centerpiece of a life well-lived, an act that if done correctly represents one’s greatest achievement. And the value of this achievement does not hinge on its impact on the wider world. In fact it’s a duty that conflicts with (and very often trumps) other obligations, including the obligation to maximize good in the world. In other words, it is a thing of value regardless of the consequences. My love for my kids, my commitment to them, is not conditional on outcome. It is not targeted toward some eventual goal that will someday allow me to measure the value of the parenting I’m doing today. It is valuable now, today, no matter what happens tomorrow, no matter that I could be maximizing the good some other way. I love them, and that is right. The logic of utilitarianism can only make sense of this love by reducing it to something else. In this way, utilitarianism robs that love of something beautiful and precious, a defining feature that matters in the real world.

Carlos: I see what you’re trying to do. Utilitarianism must be ridiculous because of its myopic view on the ethics of parenting. Hemmed in by its own implacable logic, utilitarianism can only see value in something if it maximizes the good. Therefore it is a flawed system of ethics, since parenting is in fact ethical, independent of its capacity for maximizing goodness.

Davy: Nailed it.

Carlos: Well then allow me to turn this back on you. If parenting is ethical for reasons that have nothing to do with maximizing the good, you better state what they are. You better develop a system of non-utilitarian ethics that justifies parenting. You’ve done a lovely job of describing how parenting feels, how it appears to us, the experience of parenting. But you haven’t grounded it as an ethical duty. What is it about parental love that imbues it with such powerful ethical authority? What are the limits of this duty? Please explain exactly why parenting is inherently ethical.

Davy: Good question! But if it’s ok with you, I’d… rather not.

Carlos: What?

Davy: I think that would take us on a tangent that leads to a totally different conversation. For now, I wish only to rely on my intuition. My intuition tells me that there is something wrong with utilitarianism’s justification for parental love, and I’d like to focus on what’s wrong before I try to invent a solution for it.

Carlos: So even though you haven’t come up with your own way to justify parental love, you feel qualified to attack utilitarianism, a system that has a very clear justification for it?

Davy: Just because it has a justification, doesn’t make it a correct one.

Carlos: So basically you’re trying to puncture holes in one of the most widely-held and trusted ethical systems on earth, using nothing more than a raw and untested intuition. Well… isn’t that just typical.

Davy: What can I say, I’m an agnostic. I poke holes in theories. That’s my job. That doesn’t mean I have the ability (or desire) to replace those flawed theories with other ones. It’s an irritating quality.

Carlos: So when you said earlier, and I quote, “Parenting is an act which routinely (or perhaps always) falls short of maximizing the good, yet despite this it is an ethical act,” that’s just your intuition talking? You haven’t actually worked out why parenting must be an inherently ethical act.

Davy: Nope.

Carlos: Don’t you think it’s a little presumptuous to throw intuitions around as if they’re moral facts?

Davy: I know that intuition can easily lead us astray. So for now, let’s call it an untested hypothesis: utilitarianism does not properly understand parental love. Its way of justifying it, motivating it, allowing it, requiring it (whatever you want to call the utilitarian mandate) doesn’t make sense to real humans in the real world. You and I can test and probe and dissect this hypothesis, and maybe we’ll uncover some critical flaw that proves it false. If, in the end, the intuition holds up, then I suppose the next task, the next conversation, will be dedicated to developing an answer to your question, the question that the hypothesis implies: what is it that makes parenting inherently ethical? But first I’d like to start by laying out my hypothesis more fully.

Carlos: Well in that case, I’d like to start by painting a fuller portrait of utilitarianism and what it means to me. If we hope to orchestrate a battle between your hypothesis and my ethics, I don’t want any straw men involved.

Davy: It’s not a battle! This is not a life or death struggle. I just happen to think that utilitarianism is incomplete, that it can’t explain every facet of human existence, that’s all. It has blind spots.

Carlos: I think you’ll find that utilitarianism is more flexible than you imagine. Utilitarianism can justify parenting in other ways besides claiming that it maximizes the good. For example, let’s say you don’t believe that parenting maximizes the good, but you do believe that serving the poor does. But playing with your children still brings you joy and fulfillment in a way that service cannot. Utilitarianism will allow you spend quality time with your children so that you can recharge your battery, which will then allow you to focus more of your time on service to the poor, without burning yourself out. So even if parenting isn’t the maximizing act, utilitarianism can make room for it.

Davy: Make room for it, eh? That’s an interesting way to put it.

Carlos: Don’t take a scalpel to my words. We’re just talking; I’m not going to say things perfectly.

Davy: Sorry, I don’t mean to nitpick. But are we trying to merely accommodate parental love, or are we trying to understand it as a moral duty? The idea that the best utilitarianism can do is “make room” for parental love doesn’t inspire much hope that it can actually understand that love for what it is.

Carlos: I’m only saying that even if you don’t personally see parenting as the path toward maximizing the good, utilitarianism can still justify it! But if that doesn’t do it for you, there are other ways utilitarianism can tackle your objections.

Davy: Please go on. What are some other ways utilitarianism can make room for, I mean justify, parenting?

Carlos: We could say, for example, that it is impractical to closely analyze every little decision we make each moment of our lives, and instead it makes more sense for us to follow handy rules of thumb that, when generally followed, tend to maximize the good. Rules like “keep your promises”, “don’t steal”, and of course “love your children” are generally beneficial guidelines to follow, even if perhaps on rare occasions it would make better utilitarian sense to violate the rule. In this way, a utilitarian could advise you to be a loving parent, even if you feel like you could sometimes create more good by doing something else instead.

Davy: And I’m sure utilitarianism would also recommend that I parent well because it is generally beneficial for society if that practice is encouraged and promoted. If other parents see me parenting well, they may be more inclined to do the same, and so it is beneficial for all if we all try to (publicly) follow the rule of thumb.

Carlos: I detect some sarcasm in your tone, but yes the words you spoke make sense. And there are other ways utilitarianism can justify good parenting. We could say that goodness is a spectrum rather than a zero sum game. Perhaps parenting isn’t the MOST ethical act one could take, but it is still closer to the good side of the spectrum than the bad. A utilitarian might therefore consider that to be sufficient justification to perform the action. That’s what I meant earlier when I said that morality need not be so binary. It’s silly to argue that we must always at all times choose the one single ethical act, and cast all other possible alternatives into the pit because they fail to maximize the good.

Davy: Yes, but…

Carlos: Here’s another one: perhaps you can best serve those that you know most intimately. You know how to promote happiness in your own household; you know what the people in that household need. Perhaps you do more good by parenting your kids than you could by trying to help strangers. I don’t have kids, so maybe it makes most sense for me to volunteer at the food bank every week, but that decision makes less sense for you. There isn’t one single most ethical act that applies to all persons at all times. Each life is different, and utilitarianism is built to make sense of that.

Davy: That’s well and good, but…

Carlos: The point is this: utilitarianism is a flexible system. It can answer your objection in any number of ways. I’ve only touched on them briefly, but it’s important for you to acknowledge the power of utilitarianism to swallow up objections like yours. Its flexibility is part of what makes such a workable system. If your hypothesis is going to claim victory in the end, it will first need to survive all the different weapons utilitarianism has at its disposal. It will need to run the gauntlet.

Davy: Challenge accepted! I believe that in the end we will see that, no matter how utilitarianism attempts to justify parental love, it will fail to do so in a way that makes sense with our everyday, lived and breathed experience of love. It won’t make sense on a human level. Utilitarianism can find excuses for why it’s “ok” to love our kids (it keeps us emotionally stable so we can focus on maximizing the good elsewhere), or it can hold its nose and tolerate parental love (we may do it, even though it is the “less good” option), or it can label it a handy rule of thumb (the world would be worse if we ALL stopped loving our kids, therefore we should all adhere to the rule), or it can claim that somehow it does maximize well-being (which assigns it value if and only if it does actually maximize the good; this is contingent, instrumental moral value, not inherent value). But it cannot find something within love itself that makes it worthy, makes it required, something valuable completely apart from its relation to maximization of the good. It can, in its own way, justify it and even simulate it, but it can’t really make sense of it as it really is. Parents already know in their hearts that this kind of love is good and right for its own sake. And if parental love is in fact intrinsically ethical, utilitarianism is incomplete in the sense that it cannot understand this most fundamental of human duties, outside of its own narrow utilitarian calculus. Love will always be contingently ethical, a tool, or (even worse) a burden that periodically prevents us from focusing on maximizing the good.

Carlos: Well we’ll see about that, won’t we? It could also be that you’re just saying “the consequences of parental love are good”, but saying it in your own special way. When you use language like “burning need” and “centerpiece of life” and “intrinsic goodness”, it’s possible you’re just describing how it feels to participate in an action that does in fact produce a ton of good. You might turn out to be a utilitarian all along!

Davy: Haha, could be! Well how about you tell me what utilitarianism means to you, then I’ll lay out my objection. Then we’ll run it through the gauntlet and see if utilitarianism can find a way to answer the objection. If it can’t, that will point us to the next task: figuring out what makes parental love inherently good.

Carlos: And if utilitarianism can handle your objection, I know what shirt to buy you for your birthday.

Notes

1. Though utilitarians from Sidgwick to the present day have noted that when deciding whether to praise or blame someone for a given action, the real deciding factor is not the goodness or badness of the action itself but rather the usefulness of the praise or blame. If the act of praising or blaming fails to maximize utility, then a utilitarian shouldn’t bother to do so, even if she considers a certain action praiseworthy or blameworthy. Sidgwick: “From a Utilitarian point of view, as has been before said, we must mean by calling a quality, ‘deserving of praise,’ that it is expedient to praise it, with a view to its future production: accordingly, in distributing our praise of human qualities, on utilitarian principles, we have to consider primarily not the usefulness of the quality, but the usefulness of the praise.” Henry Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics, 7th ed. (Hackett, 1981 [1907]), 428. ↩︎

References and Further Reading

Sidgwick, Henry. The Methods of Ethics, 7th ed. Hackett, 1981 [1907].