Post #4 Ethics – Criticisms of Utilitarianism

     Utilitarianism is a common moral theory, used by government's and others who oversee a population of people such that their community might thrive. However, in a moral system purposed towards the pleasure of the majority, there are bound to be problems found within the system that need to be acknowledged before ruin.

    Robert Nozick is one of the most notable objectors to hedonistic utilitarianism, though more of an opponent to the hedonism part than the utilitarianism part (though it is important to note that Nozick didn't necessarily believe pleasure wasn't of intrinsic value, just that it wasn't the only intrinsically valuable thing). Nozick was the creator of one of the most difficult challenges hedonism faces today: the Experience Machine. In Nozick's Experience Machine, imagine that a machine exists that, when activated, will give the user all the experience they could want, meaning if they want all the experiences of pleasure, then that they shall receive. The question that remains is whether one should "plug in" and activate the machine or not, knowing that your time in the machine isn't a temporary stay, but one that lasts years or even decades. 

    Should one follow hedonism, the answer should be a resound "Of course!", but it is obviously not that simple. Despite this being a sure-fire way for one to get every pleasure imaginable in the most efficient and reliable way possible, Nozick believes in three reasons as to why absolutely nobody would dare to "plug in" to the machine. Nozick's first reason is that we want to be doing things, not just experiencing them. To know the experience of climbing to the top of Mount Everest would be quite different from actually climbing to the top of Mount Everest, as to have the experience doesn't mean you have actually done it. People want to have an actual effect on the world upon actually doing things, and that seems to matter intrinsically to Nozick. His next reason, however, is one of the suicide of character one would commit upon plugging into the machine. One's moral character, according to Nozick, is formed and shaped through the choices one makes, but when a person plugs into the experience machine, they have resigned to making no decisions at all, leading us to have no notion of the type of character that person has, which should disturb us, hence character must matter intrinsically as well. Nozick's last reason for not plugging in is that it would appear to limit one to a man-made reality, with no connection to a higher or spiritual reality, as we would be constrained to that which can be created by ourselves exclusively, which, while not important to all as Nozick amends, is important to some, meaning that leaving ourselves open to a higher/spiritual reality must be of some intrinsic value.

    Another objection, separate from Nozick and his experience machine, is that of the distribution of body parts problem. Suppose you are a doctors treating five patients. Four need organ transplants, with one needing a heart, one needing eyes, one needing a kidney, and one needing a liver.The fifth patient is a man nobody likes and is perfectly healthy, only visiting the doctor to get his flu vaccine. You have the option to replace the man's vaccine shot with an anesthetic that will kill the man quietly and painlessly, preserving his organs for harvesting, and no one will miss him should he die. The question here is do you replace the shot? Following the theory of utilitarianism, one should obviously replace the shot with the anesthetic, as the amount of pleasure from the action would certainly outweigh the pain of it. However, we cannot expect to endorse the killing of one individual for the good of others - that would quite obviously be an act of murder. Here, it can be seen how utilitarianism can lead to the committing of immoral acts under the guise of producing the highest amount of good.

    Utilitarianism, though a theory which can do a lot of good, as its basis, also obviously has lots of flaws and is not perfect in its execution. In my next post, I will focus on another of the most well-known moral theories, as well as go back in time with Aristotle's virtue ethics.