My previous post concerned a significant problem with basic act-utilitarianism.
Actions do not come out of nowhere. They have causes - beliefs and desires. If an agent is supposed to always act so as to maximize utility, then an agent can only desire to maximize utility. One cannot talk rationally about what an agent should do without including implications about the causes of those actions. To claim that a person ought to have done something else, but insist on holding all of the causes of intentional action constant - is to talk nonsense.
Consequently, to say that an agent should always perform that act that maximizes utility is to say that the causes of one's actions should be those that will always cause an agent to choose to maximize utility, and nothing else. This means that the agent can have only one concern - one goal - which is to maximize utility.
This account has important implications for the free will debate which we will get to in a future post.
If the agent has any concern other than a concern with maximizing utility, then there will be circumstances where that other concern will override the concern to maximize utility, motivating the agent to do something other than maximize utility. It may motivate the agent to gather stones or avoid personal pain.
In other words, in a classical act-utilitarian, all other desires (e.g., the aversion to pain), desire for sex, preferences for having the environment within a particular temperature range, concern for their child) are temptations to do what ought not to be done.
This problem turns out to be a problem with all absolutist moral theories.
For the purposes of this discussion, I understand an absolutist moral theory to be any theory that takes any principle and claims it to be inviolable. It is a rule never to be broken. For example, anybody who holds the view that lying is always wrong, or that one must always repay their debts, or one must always perform that act which maximizes utility, are all absolutist moral theories.
In practice, the only way in which a principle can be absolute is if the desire (or aversion, for that which must always be avoided) respecting that act-type is so strong that no other desire can ever compete against it. The only way that one can always obey a prohibition on lying is if there is nothing else - absolutely nothing - that the agent can value more strongly than the aversion to lying.
As I mentioned earlier, if the agent has any desire other in addition to this desire to perform the that which is absolutely required or prohibited, then there will be some set of circumstances where the second desire will motivate the agent to violate the moral principle.
For example, imagine an agent who has an aversion to lying which is taken as a moral absolute - lying is never to be done. Assume the agent also has an aversion to pain. Then there will be some situation where the lie is so insignificant and the pain so severe that an agent will lie.
Moral absolutism in any form does not permit agents to have an effective second desire.
The situation is worse for any form of absolutism that has more than one absolute principle. If there are two or more principles, then there are potential situations where the desires that would motivate the agent to respect each principle would conflict with each other. In cases where they conflict, the agent will have to thwart one of the desires (that is to say, violate one of the principles) in order to fulfill the other. In other words, the agent will be required to violate a principle that the moral absolutist says can never legitimately be violated.
The proto-moral community we have created in these postings is a community where there are no moral absolutes. Moral principles are treated as preferences, which give way when they are outweighed by stronger concerns. In the same way that an agent will sometimes endure pain to either gather or scatter stones, or (if the pain is to severe) give up gathering or scattering stones because it is too painful, there are cases where the moral prohibition against causing pain to others will be overridden by other concerns.
In our community, for example, people generally have many and strong reasons to promote an aversion to causing pain. However, this aversion to causing pain will be one desire among many. Consequently there will be potential situations where the pain is sufficiently small and the potential for either gathering and scattering stones is so great or the threat of personal pain is so great that the agent will violate the prohibition on causing pain to others in order to gather or scatter those stones or avoid that pain.
Society can regulate the strength of this prohibition - making it weaker or stronger depending on the degree to which it is condemned. However, society is powerless to make it an absolute prohibition - something that will always outweigh all other concerns.
Moral absolutism, in other words, is not an option.
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