Criticisms of Deontology and

Utilitarianism
Kathleen Connelly
PHIL 13 Summer Session I 2021
Week 2 Day 1
 ! Deontology recap
! Criticisms of deontology
! Short break
Today’s Lecture ! Utilitarianism recap
! Criticisms of utilitarianism
! Some general takeaways
 ! We read David Velleman’s paper arguing that we should
think of moral concepts in terms of what kinds of actions
persons—the beings capable of moral action—take
when they are truly autonomous

Quick Recap: ! The hallmarks of deontology:

Deontology ! Aims at identifying the maxims by which we should act

! Says these maxims will be universally applicable to all
persons
! Says these maxims will involve respecting ourselves and
our fellow persons
 ! Usefully, this reading by Shafer-Landau also starts off
with a recap of deontology!

Quick Recap of ! He goes a little less in-depth than Velleman does, and

Deontology he emphasizes some different things, but the info he

provides might be useful for getting a second
perspective on the same basic idea
 ! Shafer-Landau’s first point: deontology is vague about
what we’re required to do
! His second point: it advises an eye-for-an-eye system of
punishment that seems unfounded
! His third point: it requires that we be autonomous, but it
seems that we might not be, or might not always be
Why Not ! His fourth point: it can’t explain the way that moral luck

Deontology? seems to impact the rightness or wrongness of our

actions
! His fifth point: it requires us to determine who really
counts as rational, which seems difficult
! A related point I’m separating out here: it can’t explain
why we should act morally towards beings who aren’t
rational
 ! For present purposes, I’m going to set aside parts of
some of these objections

! In particular, #2-4 have to do a lot more with how we

Do These should blame or praise people—or how we should

Criticisms ascribe responsibility for actions after the fact—than

with how we should choose how to act in the first place
Work? ! Obviously these questions are related!
! But we’re going to return to questions about free will
and moral responsibility later in the course
 ! Relatedly, I’m not sure #2-4 are necessarily objections
to deontology in particular, even if they might be
objections to Kant’s thought more broadly

! Take #2: the idea that we should punish people by

doing to them what they’ve done to others
Do These ! This doesn’t really follow from anything we’ve said
Criticisms about deontology!

Work? ! Of course, deontology is ultimately going to have

something to say about our punishing actions, just as it
has something to say about all our actions

! But, by itself, it doesn’t specifically say anything about

what we deserve when we do wrong—it just tells us
which actions are wrong
 ! Other of these criticisms, however, seem more worth
thinking about

! Per #1, deontology can be vague about what exactly

does and doesn’t count as respecting others

! This vagueness can be dangerous!

Do These ! Kant himself, for instance, thought that masturbation,
Criticisms homosexuality, and sex outside of marriage all counted
as being disrespectful of oneself and others
Work? ! For one thing, this seems just completely false
! But for another, deontology makes it very hard to see
how to argue about whether it’s true, because it’s hard to
see how we’re supposed to know what does and doesn’t
count as respect
! Additionally, per #5: It also seems right that deontology
will require us to make fine-grained judgments about
who does and doesn’t count as a person, meaning a
being capable of acting on moral reasons

! This is hard and weird, because this kind of rationality

seems to come in degrees!

! Babies are totally incapable of rational moral action;

small children are a little more capable; teenagers
much more so, but still less than most adults

! At what age are we rational enough to be worthy of the

respect deontology says is owed to all persons?
! This isn’t just a theoretical question, but one that has
gotten deontology into real trouble!

! In the past, people used deontology to argue that

people of color didn’t have the same rights as white
people because they weren’t as rational and thus
weren’t fully human

! Today, similar arguments are often made about mentally

disabled people—including in the assigned reading,
unfortunately!

! Many disabled people who are fully capable of rational

moral action are wrongly judged not to be—with the
result that they are judged to lack certain rights
! If you have been following the news around Britney
Spears at all, you may be familiar with these ideas!
! Of course, when Shafer-Landau makes this mistaken
generalization about disabled people’s rationality, he
does not conclude that it means that disabled people
should be treated worse than non-disabled people

! In fact, he does it for the opposite reason: to point out

that, even if someone isn’t capable of any rational moral
action, it seems bad that deontology suggests they
therefore don’t morally matter

! This brings us to the second half of criticism #5:

deontology can’t explain why we should act morally
towards non-rational beings

! It might be controversial which adult human beings are

in this category, but it definitely includes babies and
many animals!
! Here again, moving away from Kant and just thinking
about deontology in general might give us a way out
! In particular, deontology just says that we must respect
our fellow rational beings
! It doesn’t say that this is the only kind of respect we
might show to other beings—so perhaps deontology
could allow that there is a separate kind of respect we
show to the environment, or to all creatures, or
something like that
! It also doesn’t say that respect is the only moral attitude
we can have—so perhaps even if we only show respect
to our fellow rational beings, we show something like
care towards animals and babies
! These are just ideas, though, which deontologists would
have to flesh out a little more!
! Of these, I think that in general the vagueness worry is
the big one to look out for with deontology
! The personhood worry is also pretty big, but it only comes
up in some cases—I don’t, for instance, expect it to come
up in a big way when thinking about Turnitin
! Also, the personhood worry is easier “to see coming”—it’s
easy to notice yourself falling into that trap

! Deontology makes it deceptively easy to bake into your

view your own assumptions about what actions do and
don’t count as respectful
! A big place this debate is playing out right now:
philosophical conversations about sex work!
! When using deontology as a model, bear in mind things
like the universalizability principle to try to spell out, at
least for yourself, why the treatment you have in mind really
counts as disrespectful treatment
! Another way to do this is to think about some action that
definitely counts as respectful or disrespectful, and then
clearly explain why the case you have in mind is similar to
or different than that other action
! Have as your goal to explain your view in a way that makes
it easy for someone to identify why they disagree with you
! In your own mind, try to identify where your own line of
justification runs out—where you hit the “I don’t know why
this is wrong, but I really really think it is!” point—and think
of your paper as an attempt to make it easy for a reader to
help you answer your own questions, not as an attempt to
convince a reader you think is wrong
Short Break!
 ! Last week we read JCC Smart’s article defending
utilitarianism

! Utilitarianism is the basic idea that what morally matters

Quick Recap: is maximizing utility—in other words, doing that which
brings about the most pleasure for the most beings and
Utilitarianism the least pain

! This week, we read Bernard Williams’s response to this

argument, in the same book!
 ! Williams’s first point: utilitarianism seems to alienate us
from our actions—it can’t recognize the importance of
what Williams calls our projects or commitments

! A closely related point I am separating out as a second

point: it can’t describe why certain moral decisions
seem difficult to us
Why Not ! A third point Williams makes: utilitarianism can require
Utilitarianism? us to accommodate even irrational displeasures

! A fourth point: It replaces moral unclarity with technical

difficulty—it’s hard to figure out what would maximize
people’s pleasure

! A fifth point: It licenses and might even require

manipulation
 ! Point #1 is really cool, but a little complicated!

Do These ! It also, I think, gets more into questions about whom we

ought to find responsible for certain actions (Williams,
Criticisms after all, puts it in terms of negative responsibility),

Work? rather than about which actions we should take

! So I’m going to set it aside for now

! Additionally, #4 is a point that Smart responds to, I think,
pretty thoroughly in his chapter

! #4 says that utilitarians need to figure out everyone’s

preferences in order to figure out how to act

! But, as Smart points out, almost any ethical theory is

going to require us to do a lot of research in order to
deploy it perfectly—it’s not fair to say this is just a
problem for utilitarians
! We will briefly, however, discuss #2: the idea that
utilitarianism can’t explain what’s difficult about certain
actions

! Williams points out that we often find ourselves pulled

in different directions when deciding what to do, such
that even after we make the decision we feel like there’s
been a real cost

! This doesn’t make tons of sense on utilitarianism, which

says that the only thing that matters to our decision-
making is whether we’re maximizing utility
! This can seem like a weird kind of objection to make!
! Importantly,Williams isn’t saying that utilitarianism
goes wrong in these cases because it suggests the
wrong course of action—he agrees, at least in one of the
cases he gives, with the course of action utilitarianism
recommends

! Instead, he’s saying that it can’t explain why we feel

conflicted about that action—that it suggests this course
of action should be easy, when really we find it hard
! One way a utilitarian could respond: they could say that
it our inner conflict is irrational, and that we should
ignore our irrational preferences

! But Williams points out that, while utilitarianism could

try to just stipulate that it only takes rational preferences
into consideration, it needs a theory about what
people’s rational preferences are

! This seems like a very big ask—and also seems like it

could backfire in other cases!

! It seems like to some extent we can’t help but have

irrational preferences, since we aren’t perfectly rational
beings—which means utilitarianism seems like it
wouldn’t end up making many people very happy at all
! This brings us to this third point: utilitarianism can
require us to accommodate irrational preferences

! Williams’s example: a society where the majority so

detests a small minority that it turns out it would
maximize pleasure to just deport that entire small
minority in order to make the majority feel better

! This seems really morally bad!

! It’s not clear how utilitarianism can both avoid this kind
of problem and avoid the problems associated with
ruling out irrational preferences altogether

! It would need to find a different way of determining

which preferences do and do not count
! This transitions nicely into point #5—utilitarianism
allows or maybe requires us to manipulate others if we
know what will make them happy better than they do

! This seems morally bad!

! Williams mostly considers this as a problem for a
government acting in a utilitarian way

! But it seems to me that it would also apply to

individuals—utilitarianism suggests that you’re justified
in manipulating your friends, romantic partners, family
members, and even strangers if you happen to know
better than they do what will make them happy
! This relates to the version of #4 that I think is fair to say of
utilitarianism—that, when applying utilitarianism, it is
tempting to act as if we are experts at what will make others
happy
! After all, think about the case studies we’ve considered so
far in which utilitarian reasoning applies: we’ve had to
stipulate which option will make most people happiest in
order to even get the thought experiment off the ground
! There’s nothing wrong with making these kinds of
stipulations—we have to stipulate some things in order to
do philosophy!

! But utilitarianism makes it particularly easy to accidentally

slide from simply stipulating someone’s preferences for the
sake of argument (good) to believing that one really knows
what others’ preferences are without asking them (bad)
! This tendency has gotten utilitarianism into trouble in
much the same way that the tendency to wrongly judge
who is really rational has gotten deontology into
trouble!

! Especially in the past but still to this day, racist

assumptions that black people felt less pain than white
people led to horrible decisions about things like
whom to subject to medical experimentation

! Similarly, the assumption that disabled people enjoy

their lives less than non-disabled people do has led
utilitarians to argue that disabled people’s lives are less
worth saving—despite plenty of survey data showing
that disabled people are just as happy with their lives as
anyone
! When working with utilitarianism, spell out exactly what
your reasons are for assuming that one option will bring
more pleasure to more people than another

! This doesn’t have to mean checking actual survey

data—this isn’t a research course!

! Instead, it means clearly admitting when you haven’t

consulted actual survey data, instead of treating your
own assumptions as objectively true
 ! One kind of criticism: pointing out intuitions that clash
with the theory

! As we said before, this doesn’t by itself spell doom for a

Some Patterns philosophical view: intuitions are fallible!
to Notice ! However, it is something a philosophical view should try
to account for, because most of our views are based on
intuitions in the first place
 ! Another (related) kind of criticism: Pointing out that the
theory contradicts other theories that we think are pretty
plausible
Some Patterns ! This too doesn’t spell doom for a theory—sometimes it
to Notice turns out that our old theories were the wrong ones!

! But this is a high bar to clear when the old theory is

really persuasive
 ! A third kind of criticism: Pointing out that the theory is
internally inconsistent, failing to live up to its own claims

! This kind of criticism is pretty deadly: it’s hard to

believe in a theory that contradicts itself

! However, sometimes the theory can be easily modified

Some Patterns to get rid of the contradiction

to Notice ! Other times we might not be able to get rid of the

contradiction, but we might decide it doesn’t bother us
too much, since it doesn’t arise in the contexts where
we’re most interested in applying the theory
! This can sound sort of weird and irrational, but we do it all
the time—in physics, for instance!
 ! This isn’t meant to be an exhaustive list of kinds of
criticisms—don’t worry about trying to fit every
criticism you encounter into one box or another!

! But it can be a good way to think about the kinds of

Some Patterns criticism we’ll see leveled at different theories in this
to Notice course

! It can also be a good way to think about criticisms you

might want to make of some of these theories—or
criticisms someone might make of your view!
 ! Couldn’t you make a deontological version of
utilitarianism—where the maxim you follow is just
An Aside: “Maximize utility for everyone?”

Something You ! There are secretly three questions here:

Might Wonder
! Could you create an ethical theory that says this?
! Would that ethical theory count as both deontological and
utilitarian?
 ! Answer to the first question: yes!
An Aside: ! Answer to the second question: I don’t really know,
Something You because it involves getting into the nitty-gritty of just
how many of the hallmarks of “deontology” and
Might Wonder “utilitarianism” a theory has to have in order to count!
 ! Also: I, personally, do not really care!
! Some philosophers do really care, and that’s good,
because we need people to do the job of carefully
thinking through the implications of all our different
An Aside: technical terms

Something You ! But, for our purposes in this class, we don’t need to stress
out about the kind of question that is “does this theory
Might Wonder technically count as deontological or utilitarian?”

! What matters is that you could identify that there are

elements of that theory that are deontological and
elements of it that are utilitarian
! I will say also that I think each theory can make it
tempting to commit certain kinds of mistakes

! Importantly, these mistakes aren’t baked into the

theories—it’s perfectly possible to avoid them!

! But it’s good to keep in mind what mistakes they make it

easier to accidentally commit