*A dialogue on parental love and the incompleteness of utilitarianism

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 this house is deep and rich.

Carlos: That depth is an important factor here! The depth is a big part of the scope. If we are measuring happiness, which by the way is a very difficult thing to do, we have to take into account the depth and richness of the happiness you create. You can’t just ignore that factor and say that your scope is limited. You could be instilling in your children a joy, a sense of self, a well-being that lasts for their entire lives. They could go on to pass that same joy onto their children. That is a golden thread of happiness that extends beyond your own lifetime, and you created it. You really are doing good in the world, even if the number of people you directly serve is on the low end.

Davy: Think about this though: the time I spent at the little league game, and the time I’m going to spend at the birthday party, imagine if instead I spent that entire time delivering food to hungry families. Think of the good I could do with that time. Think of the positive ripple effects that could reverberate through the lives of all those people I could serve instead of serving my kids. Even the money I’m spending on Jake’s glasses, though necessary for his happiness, could go a lot further if I used it to buy meals for families that can’t afford groceries. And those well-fed children, who used to be hungry, could enjoy some pretty deep happiness with those full bellies. They could go on to live fulfilling lives, and pass god-knows-how-much joy onto countless people in multiple directions. If I dedicate my life to feeding the hungry, I could shoot golden threads of happiness all over the place!

Carlos: And leave your children home alone to weep in the dark, while you play the role of heroic martyr? Yeah sounds like a very happy life.

Davy: The point is: 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.”¹ 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 joy, 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. This is utilitarianism.² And 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 create so much 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 duty of care I owe to my family trumps (or at the very least conflicts with) the duty to maximize global well-being. 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. 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. That makes it sounds like we all need to martyr ourselves at all times in order to live ethically. 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. We can discuss whether or not the standard (when put into practice) requires martyrdom, but the standard itself is pretty clear: do the most good you can. Therefore, utilitarianism cannot make sense of parenting! Parenting is an act which routinely (or perhaps always) falls short in this regard. Parents do NOT do the most good they possibly can, because they focus most of their attention on their families, which severely limits the amount of good they do in the world. 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.

Carlos: It does a lot more than make intuitive sense. It captures an urgent and non-negotiable moral need: serve the poor, offer help to people who are suffering, feed the hungry, provide shelter to those with none, embrace the stranger and the migrant and the refugee, clothe the naked. You make it all sound very abstract when you talk about “maximizing the good”, but it need not be. This is the ethics of altruism. Are you saying that it is actually wrong to dedicate my time to serving the poor? Is it morally incorrect to focus on maximizing the good?

Davy: Of course not! I’m not saying that at all. I am not arguing that utilitarianism is false or immoral or fatally flawed, but only that it can’t properly explain parental love. When I say that I consciously choose to serve my two children instead of a hundred strangers, I’m not trying to argue that helping strangers doesn’t matter, or that it’s wrong to do so. I’m not trying to argue that I live a more or less ethical life than someone who spends their time serving the poor. I’m saying that when we look only at parental love, the standard which commands me to maximize good in the world doesn’t make sense. Parenting must be judged by a different standard, unless we wish to argue that parenting is immoral.

Carlos: Which we obviously do not wish to do.

Davy: Thank you, we can agree on that.

Carlos: I just want you to understand that for me, serving the poor isn’t a cold, hermetically sealed calculation about “aggregate utility”. It’s about helping real people in the real world. If you talk about it as if it’s an equation it becomes easier to dismiss it, and to lose sight of what it really means to deliver two weeks worth of groceries to a family in need.

Davy: I hear you! Of course it’s ethical and urgent and noble to serve those in need. An ethics which feeds and nourishes our innate altruism, harnesses it and turns it into concrete action, is so worthwhile that it goes without saying.

Carlos: I wish it went without saying. But sadly in this world we need to say it constantly lest people forget.

Davy: I have no desire to make people forget altruism, quite the opposite. But can we just focus on my real point here for a second? Yes utilitarianism is excellent for all the reasons just discussed. But that doesn’t help it understand parenting any better, and that’s what I want to talk about. 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.³ 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. When I said earlier that the duty to love one’s children might sometimes trump the duty to maximize the good, this is what I was getting at. Parental love doesn’t just boil down to utilitarianism. Parental love is a duty separate from our utilitarian duty. Perhaps we must honor both to whatever extent we can, but they do not collapse into one another.

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. This is because utilitarianism doesn’t only explain altruistic acts toward strangers; it encompasses all of human life. The work you do as a parent may benefit fewer people than the work I do at the shelter, but it is still critical human work that makes the world better off. 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.

Carlos: Oh joy, a semantic argument.

Davy: Don’t speak that filthy word to me! I’m making a real point here. 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: parental love is only valuable 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, nor on the happiness it brings to the parent. It is a thing of value regardless of the consequences. My love for my kids, my commitment to them, and the ethical nature of this commitment are not conditional on outcome. My actions are not targeted toward some eventual goal that will someday allow me to look back and 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, no matter whether I feel joy or exhaustion or fulfillment or frustration. 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. What exactly makes it a thing of value, if we must judge its value based on some factor besides consequences? 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: You can’t do that!

Davy: Why not? This is a conversation. I can do what I damned well please.

Carlos: But it’s lazy to ignore this question!

Davy: I’m not ignoring it, I’m postponing it. Maybe we can tackle this question over some drinks this weekend. I don’t want us to get distracted by a new topic when we already have enough on our plate here. There’s a problem with utilitarianism: it can’t make proper sense of parental love. I think we should make sure we fully understand that problem first. Then later we can discuss how to make proper sense of parental love. Might I add: that’s how it works in medicine. Doctors knew what cancer was long before they knew how to cure it. Should we hold off on diagnosing cancer until we have a cure for it?

Carlos: So utilitarianism is a cancer now?

Davy: Oh stop, you know what I’m trying to say.

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: 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? In your telling, utilitarianism begrudgingly allows me to spend time with my family so that I can get my battery recharged. 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 objection.

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: Following that same thread, there isn’t one single most ethical act that applies to all persons at all times. You have a household to run, and I don’t. I don’t have kids, so maybe it makes most sense for me to volunteer at the food bank every week; it makes sense for me to focus on serving strangers. Not only does your family need you, but you know what they need, so you can bring them a lot of happiness easily, perhaps more happiness than you could bring to strangers. So the decision that is ethical for me is less ethical for you. 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 a few 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 it 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 “periodically acceptable” to love our kids (if it keeps us emotionally stable so we can otherwise focus on maximizing the good elsewhere), or it can hold its nose and tolerate parental love (we are permitted to do it, though it isn’t the action that would truly maximize the good), 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. It cannot locate what requires that love and makes it valuable, if we refuse to use consequences as a measuring stick. 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. It’s either a tool that helps us maximize the good, or (even worse) a burden that periodically prevents us from doing so.

Carlos: Well we’ll see about that, won’t we? I’ve got a suspicion that even though you claim that parental love is good for reasons that have nothing to do with its consequences, all along you know in your heart that the consequences of real parental love are truly good! 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 maximize the good. You might turn out to be a utilitarian all along!

Davy: Ha, you’re adorable! But the joke’s on you: I never said I wasn’t a utilitarian. Remember I’m not trying to reject utilitarianism, but only limit its scope, show how it’s incomplete. Utilitarianism still has a major place in my life: as one of many duties I must honor.

Carlos: So he WAS a utilitarian all along, just as I suspected! I guess I know what shirt to buy you for your birthday.

Davy: Maybe make it a halter top, since I’m only partially utilitarian.

Carlos: Seriously though, does that even make sense? I’m not sure utilitarianism works as “one of many duties.”

Davy: I understand your skepticism, but let’s save that question for another discussion as well. Just like the question of what exactly makes parental love inherently ethical, the question “how is utilitarianism supposed to function when it is just one duty among many” is outside our purview for today. We can tackle that question another time.

Carlos: How many questions are you planning on postponing for the future?

Davy: As many as it takes for you to stay on topic! We need to figure out if utilitarianism can understand, justify, and motivate parental love in a way that isn’t obviously problematic. I don’t think it can, and you do. I think it has a blind spot, and you don’t. This disagreement must be our first step, the only step we should focus on right now. So please tell me what utilitarianism means to you, and let’s see if it can withstand my objection.

Part 1 (DRAFT)

Carlos: Utilitarianism, to me, is much more than an ethical standard. It is a commitment, and one that I take seriously. Here is my commitment: do the most good I can do. It sounds simple, and perhaps it is. But one thing it isn’t is passive. The words demand action. I don’t wait for an ethical dilemma to arise before I apply the standard. The standard shapes the way I live my whole life. I must get out there and DO something. Make the world better off than how I found it. Find something in need of repair and fix it. Find a person in need of something and provide it to them. Alleviate suffering, serve my fellow man, tip the scales toward goodness in all that I do.

Davy: And goodness = human happiness?

Carlos: For the sake of simplicity, yes goodness means human happiness. And no I’m not trying to settle a question that philosophers have been debating for 2,000 years. But if we’re going to stay on topic (which I know is important for you), we can’t wade into the debate over what constitutes the nature of the good. Nor do I wish at this time to discuss the happiness of non-humans.⁴ I’m going to focus only on our species, if that’s ok with you.

Davy: Let the record show that we will not be discussing bunnies.

Carlos: I personally do believe that goodness = happiness, and that the only way to live an ethical life is to promote this goodness to my fullest abilities. That’s the simplest way to explain my ethics.

Davy: You’re right that we don’t want to venture out on too many tangents, but I would like to know at least a little about why you believe so strongly in this particular ethical code.

Carlos: That’s a tough question. I suppose I realized the truth of utilitarianism after examining some of my other deeply held beliefs. Utilitarianism seems a conclusion that follows naturally from what I already know to be true of the world. Here are some things I know for certain:

• All persons are equal
• Consequences matter
• Every person desires happiness

These convictions motivate my understanding of what “goodness” means, and underpin my commitment to do the most good I can do. First, equality. When I say that all persons are equal, I obviously don’t mean everyone is exactly the same. Instead, I mean each person’s well-being counts the same as every other person’s well-being. “Everybody to count for one, nobody for more
than one.”⁵ This is the sort of radical equality I’m talking about, the kind that matters when we are deliberating over who we should care about, the kind that matters in ethics. Regardless of race, wealth, stature, gender, ability, or any other feature, no one person’s well-being should count for any more than any other person’s well-being. I know this isn’t how our actual society views happiness, since our culture and media obviously care much more about the happiness of any given pop star or oligarch compared to the happiness of a homeless mother or farm laborer. But I’m not talking about culture or politics; I’m talking about an ethical standard that guides my own personal behavior, and the personal behavior of millions of other utilitarians. I want every person’s life to go as well as possible.⁶ And I cannot think of a reason why any one person’s happiness should be more important than another’s.

Davy: Just wait til you have a kid.

Carlos: I hear you, but let’s hold off on that for now. For now, as a basic standard, I’m starting from a place where all persons have equal ethical worth. And let’s be real, outside of your own personal world-view, your child’s happiness does in fact count exactly the same as every other person’s happiness. You will have trouble seeing that—and rightfully so since you’re the child’s father—but outside of this household, that child is just one equal in a sea of equals.

Davy: Yes but my worldview as a parent is the entire basis of this conversation! The whole point here is that utilitarianism doesn’t understand what parents see when they look at their children. If utilitarianism expects parents to see their kids as equally impor—

Carlos: Davy please! Let me at least build the standard first. I promise you, you can try to demolish it later.

Davy: …Sorry, sorry, go ahead.

Carlos: Since every person’s happiness is equally important, the most ethical attitude one can have toward mankind is generalized benevolence: the desire for all of humankind to find happiness.⁷ Or at least for every person to have the best possible life, a life with limited pains and plentiful pleasures, a fulfilling life. There are a lot of ways to say it, but you get the idea. Every person’s happiness matters, even strangers who I’ve never met. The world is a tough place, and many many people live very hard lives. I know I can’t cure the whole world or end suffering forever. But I can try my best. Part of the utilitarian commitment, perhaps the most critical part, is this belief in the equality of all persons, because it extends that commitment—that benevolence, that duty—beyond one’s own doorstep, beyond one’s community of friends and neighbors, and spreads it across the entire globe.

Davy: This commitment to benevolence makes it sound like a part of virtue ethics.

Carlos: Yes benevolence is a virtue, and to a virtue ethicist it is one among many. For utilitarianism, benevolence practically IS the moral standard. It’s the governing principle. We must be impartially committed to the happiness of others. This is what I meant earlier when I said utilitarianism is the ethics of altruism. (altruism content)

Davy: So your own happiness doesn’t matter.

Carlos: It does, but only as one person’s happiness, no more or less important than any other’s. Mill called it a disinterested spectator. Though to be honest, I am very interested. I’m impartial and benevolent, but I am very engaged, not disinterested

Davy: Sounds like the ethics of robots rather than humans. A benevolent and disinterested spectator is more of a robot than a man, since all men experience bias, emotion, love, fear, connection, etc. how can we try to build a huma ethics from such an inhuman footing (disinterested spectator)? None of us is disinterested in our own lives, except maybe the chronically depressed. Perhaps a god could be, since the god is so far above human morality and doings that he could take such a scientific approach, the way we might analyze one ant colony attacking another, without feeling intense grief at the loss of life. A disinterested spectator could calculate the results of all actions, and dispassionately decree I should abandon my children and dedicate my full time to service of the poor. The robot would not only feel no sadness or loss in making this decree, but would (according to its ethical robot logic) consider both right and ethically mandatory.

Carlos: Well that took a pretty extreme turn. Do I even need to point out that if an ethical code required all humans to abandon their babies, the species would collapse? I think you might be misreading the mandate. (how else can he respond? this will be addressed later when we justify parenting)

Davy: bring up extreme examples (torturing a child to bring joy to a whole city

Carlos: I hate examples like that (point to classic examples, like Bernard Williams and Tim Mulgan). Not only will I never face such a dilemma, but really we can use those types of extreme scenarios to invalidate any human ethical system. Oh you love your kids? Well would you nuke the whole world to save your kids? Would you destroy all life on earth if it meant your kids could live happily on another planet? Oh you wouldn’t? Well I guess you don’t really love your kids. Etc!

Carlos: the ideal is not robotic or morbid, but beautiful. Motiviates me to serve the less fortunate.

Davy: Wait, wait. Hold on. If you are a disinterested spectator, then isn’t it incorrect to focus all your attention on the poor? Shouldn’t you be more impartial than that?

Carlos: Geez, you are taking everything so literally. But actually I’m glad you asked that. As I mentioned earlier (when I first brought up equality), consequences matter. If my goal is to create as much happiness as possible, how can I accomplish that? How can I measure my success? I measure it obvious happiness: in full bellies, in cabinets stocked with groceries.

Carlos: I want to live an ethical life. More than that, I want for every moment in my life to a be a moment when I am living an ethical life. Not a life that is ethical only when summed up at the end—when we add up all my good deeds and subtract all my evil ones—but a life that is ethical in each individual moment. If you randomly choose a freeze frame from my life, I want you to see a picture of a man acting ethically in that instant. I want every action I take to tangibly increase the happiness, fulfillment, and well-being of all who are affected.

Davy: That is a beautiful and elegant goal, but it sounds impossibly demanding. I though you were going to explain how the utilitarian standard can be adapted to fit real life. Sounds like you expect your every action to exhibit saintly behavior.

Carlos: Nobody said ethics is supposed to be easy. If I were a perfect being, my every action would increase those things to a greater extent than any alternative action could. But I know I’m not perfect, nor am I omniscient. All I can do is work to improve as many lives as possible, to give people what they need, to serve whoever and whenever I can. But though the standard is demanding, it is not impossible. Listen: though I want every snapshot of my life to show a man acting ethically, the snapshot approach can easily be misleading. For example, if you took a snapshot of us having this conversation, you could conclude that, according to my own ethical code, I am not living ethically in this moment, since instead of having this conversation I could instead be volunteering at the homeless shelter. But I already plan to do that very thing this afternoon. And this conversation, this invigorating, intellectually stimulating conversation with a dear friend…

Davy: Aw, shucks.

Carlos: … This conversation fills me with energy, provides me with motivation and strength that will help me give it my all this afternoon. It fills my cup, so that I might fill others’ cups. In this way, I am living ethically in this moment. So though I wish for every snapshot to show a man living ethically, a snapshot never tells the full story. Instead my every action is part of a series of actions that arc toward maximization of the good. Actions that don’t appear to maximize happiness are in fact contributing to that very goal, may even be necessary toward accomplishing that goal. Not to mention that this conversation, this friendship, is increasing your happiness, and perhaps will even inspire you to do more good in the world.

Davy: I can see how one could use such logic to claim that utilitarianism justifies a very wide range of actions.

Carlos: Utilitarianism is an ethics that is designed to make sense in the real world, for real humans. Yes the ideal code is demanding, but in practice it allows us to be human, because only through being human can we hope to accomplish the goal of the code: to maximize happiness. If the code so narrowly defined what it meant to “do good” that the only action which qualified was total and complete personal sacrifice at all times, we would, in the end, actually fail to accomplish the goal! Our bodies would collapse, our spirits would collapse, our species could even collapse. What kind of happiness could exist in such a world? If a car’s ideal goal is to drive far and fast, we don’t accuse the car of failing that goal every time it refuels or gets a tune-up, or every time it pulls out of the driveway at slow speed. These actions contribute to the car’s goal. Failing to perform those necessary tasks will cause the vehicle to fail, or crash. So ask the car, in the moment it is refueling, if it is living according to its code, and the answer will be yes, because refueling is a required condition that makes driving possible. So it is with parenting.

Davy: It sounds like there is a dichotomy baked into this: there’s the ideal code which states plainly what we are commanded to do, and then there’s the real world which makes it impossible to follow that code literally. So we warp the meaning of the code to fit real life, and so claim that we are indeed following the code by doing so.

Carlos: Perhaps that is simply the way it must be with codes. God commands us never to kill, but then makes exceptions for when our city is under attack. The speed limit is 65, but everyone drives faster than that. But utilitarianism is different in its own way. We don’t simply make exceptions to the code and claim that’s ok. Instead, the “exceptions” are actually part of how we accomplish the code! We will fail to maximize happiness if we all burn out. We will fail to maximize happiness if we fail to raise our children properly. The world will be less happy if nobody takes the time to build friendships and loving relationships. So no, we aren’t “warping” the code to fit real life. Instead the code tells us to maximize happiness, and we do, to the best of our human ability. Humas have limitations, and failing to take those into account will inevitably lead to us failing to achieve the goal we set out to accomplish. (consider inserting Railton footnote below). If humans were all-powerful, omniscient beings that never needed to eat or rest or build loving relationships, never wrestled with despair or craved companionship, never hungered for self-actualization or sought solace through artistic expression, then application of the utilitarian code would look different. But in our world, we can only maximize happiness the way humans can. I’m not trying to say that most people are already doing the most they could be doing to serve the less fortunate. I don’t believe that. There is vast, VAST room for improvement in that regard. All I’m saying for now is that if we read the code in such as way as to make it genuinely impossible for humans to live it, I think we’ve misread it. Luckily utilitarianism has flexibility built right into, because it doesn’t tell us what it means to maximize happiness, it just tells us to reach for that goal. So while I don’t believe that morality is only meant to be lived by saints, I go further: if we all relentlessly sacrifice ourselves and take no regard of the psychological trauma that follows from such a lifestyle, we undermine the very conditions that make it possible for us to sustainably achieve the utilitarian standard long-term. So “maximize happiness” doesn’t mean we must burn ourselves out so that we all die at age 30, friendless and childless and exhausted, because, as a human being, I can actually do a much more thorough job of maximizing happiness through a long, healthy life full to the brim with diverse experiences. That is how I live the code.

My own self-interest dictates the rule as well: If I were hungry and without options, I would want someone to act benevolently toward me, and so I act benevolently toward those I am able to serve. This is the Golden Rule of Jesus of Nazareth, put into direct and tangible action. (First hint that utilitarianism involves reason: both my altruism and my egoism call for this same ethic.

Railton in Scheffler 94: morality confronts us an alien set of demands that takes no account of our actual real life concerns. This if we follow these demands, we become alienated from our projects, perhaps even from our humanity. 98-99: human relationships, loyalties, group ties, and friendships are what make life worthwhile, though utilitarianism might easily deem them to be expendable if they don’t maximize general happiness. Carlos believes that only by allowing for these things can we gain the strength to serve the world without bruning out, and only through these things can we perpetuate the species, which is necessary for maximizing happiness. “Morality is made for man, not man for morality.” Moralities that don’t conform to this dictum are alienated in the same way Feuerbach sees god as an alienated version of man (we create a system, then declare that all men must conform to the system, as if it were divinely created; actually it was made by man). 127-128: imagining man as a selfless pure hearted saint is actually a product of our society, not a reflection of what man really is; it imagines a presocial perfectly rational man. This has never existed, and is itself a product of our current imagination. We must not build an ethics based on the capabilities of this made up guy. But that doesn’t mean we discard consequentialism. It means we must craft one based on who we really are: primates who have evolved into humans, mammals that nurture an raise their young, social beings who care deeply about personal projects and relationships. Ethics will never change these realities, so we must change ethics to fit them. Within that framework, some version of utilitarianism can thrive, but only one bounded in by those realities. Carlos calls this utilitarianism, Davy calls it pluralism.

Altrusim content: Snoeyenbos and Humber disagree that utilitarianism is altruism because “altruists do not consider themselves in the benefit to harm calculation,” but instead only focus on increasing the happiness of others. From “Utilitarianism and Business Ethics,” in A Companion to Business Ethics, ed. Robert E. Frederick (Blackwell Publishing, 2002), 18. But utilitarianism is certainly closer to altruism than it is to egoism. It is altruism that inclines a person toward thinking about the needs and pleasures of others in the first place; it motivates the utility calculation itself. One could argue that without altruism there would be no utilitarians at all, but only naked egoists (see Thomas Nagel Possibility of Altruism ch 1 for discussion of whether this is true, or whether it is the logic of the ethical theory itself (rather than our own innate altruism) which binds us to act morally). Once a person can admit that her own happiness, weighed alongside all the suffering and need in the world, shrinks in importance almost to the point of irrelevance, the distance between utilitarianism and altruism shrinks with it. This is Davy’s position. it requires utilitarianism, by its own logic, to become almost an exact copy of pure altruism. Carlos disagree: if we all behave like that, we will fail to maximize happiness.

Notes

1. The slogan is a rephrase of Jeremy Bentham’s famous line, “[I]t is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong,” from A Fragment on Government [1776], ed. F.C. Montague (Oxford University Press, 1891), 93. ↩︎
2. In this dialogue, “utilitarianism” will always refer to the personal, individual, ethical theory of utilitarianism, and never the political philosophy called utilitarianism. The discussion will center on personal choice only, not public policy; the agent will always be a person, and never a government or a people. ↩︎
3. As Charles Taylor puts it, “The modern dispute about utilitarianism is not about whether it occupies some of the space of moral reason, but whether it fills the whole space.” From “The Diversity of Goods,” in Utilitarianism and Beyond, ed. Amartya Sen and Bernard Williams (Cambridge University Press, 1982), 134. A few years earlier, Anthony Quinton put it this way: “[I]t is now widely conceded that at least a large and central segment of rational moral thinking is utilitarian in character. The crucial issue is … whether the principle of utility must be supplemented by a principle, or principles, of comparable generality if it is to make good its claim to be a rational reconstruction of moral thinking.” From Utilitarian Ethics (Macmillan Press, 1973), 110. ↩︎
4. See Peter Singer, Animal Liberation Now (Penguin Random House, 2023). ↩︎
5. Attributed to Jeremy Bentham, this formulation comes from John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism [1863], chap. 5. When Henry Sidgwick quotes this same line, he declares that it’s the only principle which needs no special justification; it’s just that obvious. See: The Methods of Ethics, 7th ed. [1907] (Hackett Publishing, 1981), 417. ↩︎
6. William MacAskill, Darius Meissner, and Richard Yetter Chappell, “Introduction to Utilitarianism,” in An Introduction to Utilitarianism, ed. Richard Yetter Chappell, Darius Meissner, and William MacAskill, accessed February 24, 2026, https://www.utilitarianism.net/introduction-to-utilitarianism. ↩︎
7. J.J.C. Smart, “An Outline of a System of Utilitarian Ethics,” in Utilitarianism For and Against, ed. J.J.C. Smart and Bernard Williams (Cambridge University Press, 1973), 7. ↩︎

References and Further Reading

Bentham, Jeremy. A Fragment on Government [1776]. Edited by F. C. Montague. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1891.

Chappell, Richard Yetter, Darius Meissner, and William MacAskill, eds. An Introduction to Utilitarianism. Accessed February 24, 2026. https://www.utilitarianism.net.

Mill, John Stuart. Utilitarianism [1863]. Many editions.

Quinton, Anthony. Utilitarian Ethics. Macmillan Press, 1973.

Sen, Amartya, and Bernard Williams, eds. Utilitarianism and Beyond. Cambridge University Press, 1982.

Sidgwick, Henry. The Methods of Ethics [1907]. Hackett Publishing, 1981.

Singer, Peter. Animal Liberation Now. Penguin Random House, 2023.

Smart, J.J.C., and Bernard Williams, eds. Utilitarianism For and Against. Cambridge University Press, 1973.

Snoeyenbos, Milton, and James Humber. “Utilitarianism and Business Ethics.” In A Companion to Business Ethics, edited by Robert E. Frederick. Blackwell Publishing, 2002.

Taylor, Charles. “The Diversity of Goods.” In Utilitarianism and Beyond, edited by Amartya Sen and Bernard Williams. Cambridge University Press, 1982.