Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007
CLEARY/GORDON LAB
1
UTIL V DEONT
UTIL BAD = DESTROYS HMN DIGNITY ................................................................................................................2
UTIL BAD = DECREASES VALUE OF HMN LIFE..................................................................................................5
UTIL BAD = DILUTES QUAL OF LIFE ....................................................................................................................7
UTIL BAD = JUSTIFIES DEATHS OF MILLIONS ...................................................................................................8
UTIL BAD = FOUNDATION FOR WAR ...................................................................................................................9
UTIL BAD = JUSTIFIES SLAVERY.........................................................................................................................11
UTIL BAD = TYRANNY...........................................................................................................................................12
UTIL BAD = 4 REASONS (1/2).................................................................................................................................13
UTIL BAD = ANTHROCENTRIC.............................................................................................................................15
UTIL BAD = IMPOSSIBLE .......................................................................................................................................16
UTIL BAD = SPILLS OVER......................................................................................................................................18
UTIL BAD = JUSTIFIES HOLOCAUST...................................................................................................................19
UTIL BAD = SCHELL INDICT.................................................................................................................................22
DEONT GOOD = BETTER POLICY MAKING .......................................................................................................23
DEONT GOOD = INT HMN RTS..............................................................................................................................24
DEONT GOOD = PRECEDES UTIL (1/2) ................................................................................................................25
DEONT GOOD = OUTWEIGHS UTIL .....................................................................................................................30
DEONT GOOD = PREVENTS TORTURE ...............................................................................................................31
DEONT GOOD = FW INDEPENDENT OF UTIL ....................................................................................................32
DEONT GOOD = MORAL IMPERATIVE ...............................................................................................................33
DEONT GOOD = BEST POLICY OPTION, PREVENTS GENOCIDE ...................................................................35
DEONT GOOD = INCREASES VALUE OF WORLD .............................................................................................36
DEONT GOOD = PREVENTS GENOCIDE/TORTURE ..........................................................................................37
A2: DEONT DISMISSES CONSEQUENCES ...........................................................................................................38
A2: UTIL CAN SOLVE DEONT (1/3).......................................................................................................................39
Util good – Public Policy.............................................................................................................................................42
Util good – Values life.................................................................................................................................................45
Util good – Best Justice ...............................................................................................................................................47
Util good – Solves morality.........................................................................................................................................48
Util good – Utility best FW for individual advocacy 1/2 ............................................................................................50
Util good – Solves cultural relativism .........................................................................................................................52
Util good – solves equality ..........................................................................................................................................53
Util good – Scientifically backed ................................................................................................................................54
Util good – Universially applicative............................................................................................................................55
Consequentialism good – Weigh benefits/consequences.............................................................................................56
Consequentialism good – Evaluating Catastrophic Consequences..............................................................................57
Consequentialism good – Solves morality...................................................................................................................58
Consequentialism good – Solves genocide in policy making......................................................................................60
Nuclear War Outweighs ..............................................................................................................................................61
Consequentialism = Inevitable ....................................................................................................................................64
Deontology bad – Lacks humanity / morality..............................................................................................................65
Deontology Bad – Contridicts itself ............................................................................................................................66
Deontology bad – Justifies killings..............................................................................................................................67
A2: Util and freedom mutally exclusive......................................................................................................................68
A2: Utilitarianism kills human rights. .........................................................................................................................69
A2: Util doesn’t account for separateness ...................................................................................................................70
A2: util= suffering .......................................................................................................................................................71
Survival outweighs in African Morality ......................................................................................................................72
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007
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UTIL V DEONT
UTIL BAD = DESTROYS HMN DIGNITY
The utilitarian viewpoint is flawed. It is impossible for society to be viewed as a single
entity without sacrificing the human dignity of the individual.
Will Kymlicka, 1988 (Prof. of Philosophy at Queen’s U, Press, Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 17, No. 3.,
pp. 172-190, ‘Rawls on Technology and Deontology” JSTOR)
According to Rawls, then, the debate over distribution is essentially a debate over whether we should or
should not define the right as maximizing the good. But is this an accurate characterization of the debate?
Utilitarians do, of course, believe that the right act maximizes happiness, under some
description of that good. And that requirement does have potentially abhorrent
consequences. But do utilitarians believe that it is right because it maximizes happiness? Do they hold
that the maximization of the good defines the right, as teleological theories are said to do? Let us see why
Rawls believes they do. Rawls says that utilitarianism is teleological (that is, defines the right as the
maximization of the good) because it generalizes from what is rational in the one-person case to what is
rational in many-person cases. Since it is rational for me to sacrifice my present happiness to increase my
later happiness if doing so will maximize my happiness overall, it is rational for society to sacrifice my
current happiness to increase someone else's happiness if doing so maximizes social welfare overall. For
utilitarians, utility-maximizing acts are right because they are maximizing. It is because they are maximizing
that they are rational. Rawls objects to this generalization from the one-person to the many person case
because he believes that it ignores the separateness of persons.? Although it is right and proper that I
sacrifice my present happiness for my later happiness if doing so will increase my overall
happiness, it is wrong to demand that I sacrifice my present happiness to increase someone
else's happiness. In the first case, the trade-off occurs within one person's life, and the later
happiness compensates for my current sacrifice. In the second case, the trade-off occurs
across lives, and I am not compensated for my sacrifice by the fact that someone else
benefits. My good has simply been sacrificed, and I have been used as a means to someone
else's 2. John Rawls, A Theory ofJz~stice(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, rg71), p. 31 3. Ibid., p. 27.
Philosophy G Public Affairs happiness. Trade-offs that make sense within a life are wrong and unfair across
lives. Utilitarians obscure this point by ignoring the fact that separate people are involved. They treat
society as though it were an individual, as a single organism, with its own interests, so that
trade-offs between one person and another appear as legitimate trade-offs within the social
organism.
Utilitarians view society as a single entity, which devalues the rights and human dignity of
the individual.
Will Kymlicka, 1988 (Prof. of Philosophy at Queen’s U, Press, Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 17, No. 3.,
pp. 172-190, ‘Rawls on Technology and Deontology” JSTOR)
Scott Gordon echoes this interpretation of utilitarianism when he says that utilitarians adopt the view
"that 'society' is an organic entity and contend that its utility is the proper objective of social
policy." This view, he says, "permits flirtation with the grossest form of anti-individualistic
social philosophy."4 This, then, is Rawls's major example of a "teleological" theory which gives priority
to the good over the right. His rejection of the priority of the good, in this context, is just the corollary of his
affirmation of the separateness of persons: promoting the well-being of the social organism cannot
be the goal from which people's rightful claims are derived, since there is no socialorganism. Since individuals are distinct, they are ends in themselves, not merely agents or
representatives of the well-being of the social organism. This is why Rawls believes that
utilitarianism is teleological, and why he believes that we should reject it in favor of a deontological
doctrine.
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UTIL V DEONT
UTIL BAD = DESTROYS HMN DIGNITY
Utilitarianism belittles the value of a human life, reducing it to nothing more than a
number.
Germain Grisez and Russel Shaw 1988 (Catholic Moral Theologian, Beyond the New Morality: The
Responsibilities of Freedom p. 28)
One arrives at a different judgment of how one ought to proceed in such circumstances if human life is
regarded not as one of the things of relative value which a person has, but as an intrinsic component of the
person, and so as a value which shares in the dignity of the person. In denying that we can choose to kill
one person for the sake of two, we really are denying that two persons are "worth" twice as much as
some other real person. On this view it is simply not possible to make the sort of calculation which
weighs persons against each other (my life is more valuable than John's life, John's life is more valuable
than Mary's and Tom's combined, or vice versa) and thus to determine whose life shall be respected and
whose sacrificed. The value of each human person is incalculable, not in any merely poetic sense, but
simply because it is not susceptible to calculation, measurement, weighing, and balancing. Traditionally this
point has been expressed by the statement that the end does not justify the means. This is a way of saying that
the direct violation of any good intrinsic to the person cannot be justified by the good result which such
a violation may bring about. What is extrinsic to human persons may be used for the good of persons, but
what is intrinsic to persons has a kind of sacredness and may not be violated.
Utilitarianism quantifies the value of a human being and thus destroys the value to life
Germain Grisez and Russel Shaw 1988 (Catholic Moral Theologian, Beyond the New Morality: The
Responsibilities of Freedom p. 26)
If there are no ethical absolutes, human persons, rather than being the norm and source from which other
things receive their value, become simply items or commodities with a relative value-inviolable only up to
the point at which it is expedient to violate them in order to achieve an objective. It would then make no
sense at all to speak of the immeasurable value of the human person. Far from being immeasurable-that is,
beyond calculation-the value of a person would be quite specific and quantifiable, something to be weighed
in the balance against other values.
Utilitarianism belittles the right to life, reducing the value to human life to nothing more
than a number.
Sanford Levy, 2000 (Prof of Philosophy @ Montana State, Morality, Rules, And Consequences: A Critical
Reader, "The Educational Equivalence of Act and Rule Utilitarianism", 2000 p. 28)
At the same time, act utilitarianism is clearly an extremist view from the commonsense perspective
of 'ordinary morality', which consists of the intuitions which most people in our social context share
about right and wrong acts. On the one hand, act utilitarianism is overly permissive because it
doesn't recognize ordinary moral constraints against doing or allowing serious harm
(including death) to others. Because it doesn't recognize these constraints, it denies that
individuals have corresponding fixed rights not to be harmed. To save the lives of five patients
who need different organ transplants, for example. a surgeon will be permitted to seize and
chop up the innocent Chuck to harvest his healthy heart, liver, lungs and so on, if these
organs happen to be matches for the respective patients. 'After all, if everyone counts
equally then it is simply a matter of five versus one. Obviously, it is a horrible result that Chuck
will end up dead; but it would be an even worse result if five people end up dead. So the right
thing to do - according to [act] utilitarianism -is to kill Chuck.'6 There isn't any thought that
Chuck has a 'deontological right' not to be killed for his organs.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007
CLEARY/GORDON LAB
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UTIL V DEONT
UTIL BAD = DESTROYS HMN DIGNITY
Utilitarianism is not a moral ideal. The individual is second to the good of the whole, which
belittles their human value.
Will Kymlicka, 1988 (Prof. of Philosophy at Queen’s U, Press, Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 17, No. 3.,
pp. 172-190, ‘Rawls on Technology and Deontology” JSTOR)
But if that duty is, as seems most plausible, the duty to treat people with equal consideration, then we are
back at the first interpretation of utilitarianism as a way of treating people as equals. And then we need not
double the population, since we have no obligation to conceive those who would constitute the increased
population. If we nonetheless accept that maximizing utility is itself the goal, then it is best
seen as a nonmoral ideal, akin in some ways to an aesthetic ideal. The appropriateness of this can be
seen by looking at the other example Rawls gives of a teleological theory, namely, Nietzsche's.13 In
Nietzsche's theory, the good which the theory seeks to maximize is available only to the special few. Others
are useful only insofar as they promote the good of the special few. In utilitarianism, the value being
maximized is more mundane, something that every individual is capable of partaking in or contributing to
(although the maximizing policy may well result in the sacrifice of the good of many). This means that in
utilitarian teleology, unlike Nietzsche's, every person's preferences must be given some
weight. But in neither case is the fundamental principle to treat people as equals. Rather it is to
maximize the good. And in both cases, it is difficult to see how this can be viewed as a moral principle.
The goal is not to respect people, for whom certain things are needed or wanted, but rather
to respect the good, to which certain people may or may not be useful contributors. If
people have become the means for the maximization of the good, morality has dropped out
of the picture, and a nonmoral ideal is at work. A Nietzschean society may be aesthetically better,
more beautiful, but it is not morally better (a description that I think Nietzsche himself would not have
rejected; his theory was "beyond good and eviln).14 And if utilitarianism is interpreted in this
"teleological" way, it too has ceased to be a moral theory.'5 This form of utilitarianism does
not merit serious consideration as a political morality..
Making decisions based on the evaluation of consequences belittles individual dignity.
Richard Warner, 1995 (Professor of Law at Chicago-Kent College of Law, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies,
“Excluding Reasons: Impossible Comparisons and the Law”, JSTOR)
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UTIL V DEONT
UTIL BAD = DECREASES VALUE OF HMN LIFE
The individual person has an intrinsic value and is an end in himself or herself; the
Utilitarian use of people solely for others is thus immoral.
Alan Gewirth in 91 (prof. of philosophy @ University of Chicago, Ethics, “Can Any Final Ends Be Rational?”,
issue 102, p. 69)
The meaning of "final" will obviously vary according to whether the ends it modifies are subsistent
or desiderative. First, as to subsistent final ends, the finality of persons who are such ends means that
it is always for the sake of these persons that actions ought to be done, so that the persons ought never
to be used only for the sake of other persons. For this principle, Kant's doctrine is the model: "Man
and, in general, every rational being exists as an end in himself and not merely as a means to be
arbitrarily used by this or that will. . . . Such a being is thus an object of respect."' From this, Kant
derives the second main version of his categorical imperative: "Act so that you treat humanity,
whether in your own person or in that of another, always as an end and never as a means only."*
The idea of persons' being treated as ends in themselves is not inherently problematic. One of the
most direct clarificatory counterpoises is provided by Aristotle's doctrine that it is morally right to
treat certain human beings as mere means or "living instruments" (the so-called natural slaves) for
the benefit of other^.^ The thesis of exploitation as intended by Marx, and the totalitarian ideologies
that regard persons as objects to be used for the benefit of the state, are also negative illustrations
of Kant's idea. Put affirmatively, the thesis that each human being should be treated as a final end is
conveyed by the principle of human rights: that all human beings have rights to freedom and wellbeing
as their personal due, as what they are entitled to for their own sakes and not simply as means to the
maximizing of overall good, or for any other separate purpose. What has to be shown is that this
principle is itself rational in that it can be proved or established by the use of reason
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UTIL V DEONT
UTIL BAD = DECREASES VALUE OF HMN LIFE
Consequentialism destroys the value of the person, giving value only to the some arbitrary
consequentialist ideal; only deontology recognizes the individual human as an end in itself.
F. M. Kamm in 92 (Philosophy and Public Affairs, “Non-consequentialism, the person as an end-in-itself, and the
significance of status.”, p. 361)
With these provisos in mind, we might try justifying options by concern for personal autonomy, most often
where significant personal concerns are at state. (But note that autonomy itself may be a significant concern.)
Kagan argues that to try to justify options by concern for autonomy is merely to assert again the definition of
"option”-that is, it is to argue that we should give people a choice (an option) because then they would have
choice (autonomy). But such an argument is not without merit if it draws attention to the intrinsic
significance of being able to choose, especially when significant concerns besides concern for autonomy are
at stake. Ultimately, however, I believe that options are justified by the view that persons are not mere
means to the end of the best state of affairs, but ends-in-themselves, having a point even if they do not
serve the best consequences. (This is stronger than saying their interests must be served as they serve
the greatest good.) This idea of a person as an end-in-itself goes beyond and helps justify autonomy,
understood as permissible choice between personal and impersonal points of view. It is this idea of
persons as ends-in-themselves who deserve autonomy in action that options help capture. (Note that this is a
very different argument for options from the one given by Scheffler.) Further, it need not be that having a
strongly motivating personal point of view makes one an end-in-itself, for those whose reasons are never out
of synchrony with the impartial point of view could be ends-in-themselves, entitled to an option they would
never in fact use. Rather, certain factors that loom large from the personal points of view of those who are
ends-in-themselves can become legitimate reasons for action. Suppose that choice is important because it is
tied to the view of the person as an end-in-itself. Would it not express greater concern for this conception
of the person if we minimized the number of occasions on which people were not permitted to choose,
even if this meant occasionally depriving someone of choice by obliging him to make a big sacrifice that
ensured that others might choose? My view is that permitting this means to minimization, even if it
involved no physical coercion by others and even if no one ever actually had to make the obligatory sacrifice,
would defeat the very ideal of the person as an end-in-itself that was supposedly the object of concern.
For if such an obligation were appropriate, the individual would no longer be someone who was not
"for" the greater good, as he would be available for minimizing interference with the value of choice.
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UTIL V DEONT
UTIL BAD = DILUTES QUAL OF LIFE
Utilitarianism views people as locations of utilities, whose purpose is to bring good to the
whole, even if that entails the lower standard or life for the individual.
Will Kymlicka, 1988 (Prof. of Philosophy at Queen’s U, Press, Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 17, No. 3.,
pp. 172-190, ‘Rawls on Technology and Deontology” JSTOR)
There is, however, another interpretation of utilitarianism, one that seems more in line with Rawls's
characterization of the debate. On this second interpretation, maximizing the good is primary, and we
count individuals equally only because that maximizes value. Our primary duty is not to treat
people as equals, but to bring about valuable states of affairs. Rawls on Teleology and
Deontology As Bernard Williams puts it, people are viewed merely as locations of utilities, or as
causal levers for the "utility network": "the basic bearer of value for Utilitarianism is the
state of affairs. . . . as a Utilitarian agent, I am just the representative of the satisfaction system who
happens to be near certain causal levers at a certain time."Io Utilitarianism, on this view, is primarily
concerned not with persons, but with states of affairs. This second interpretation is not merely a matter of
emphasizing a different facet of the same theoretical structure. Its distinctiveness becomes clear if we look at
some utilitarian discussions of population policy, like those of Jonathan Glover and Derek Parfit. They ask
whether we morally ought to double the population, even if it means reducing each person's welfare by
almost half (since that will still increase overall utility). They think that a policy of doubling the population is
a genuine, if somewhat repugnant, conclusion of utilitarianism. But it need not be if we view utilitarianism as
a theory of treating people as equals. Nonexistent people have no claims-we have no moral duty to them to
bring them into the world. As John Broome says, "one cannot owe anyone a duty to bring her into existence,
because failing in such a duty would not be failing anyone."" So what is the duty here, on the second
interpretation? The duty is to maximize value, to bring about valuable states of affairs, even if
the effect is to make all existing persons worse off than they otherwise would have been. To
put the difference another way, if I fail to bring about the best state of affairs, by failing to consider the
interests of some group of people, for example, then I can be criticized, on both interpretations, for failing to
live up to my moral duty as a utilitarian. But, on the second interpretation, those whose interests are
neglected have no special grievance against me.
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UTIL V DEONT
UTIL BAD = JUSTIFIES DEATHS OF MILLIONS
Adapting the consequentialist viewpoint justifies the deaths of millions of innocents in
order to bring about an ends.
Thomas Donaldson, 1995 (Prof. of Business Ethics at Georgetown U, Ethics and International Affairs,
“International Deontology Defended: A Response to Russell Hardin”, pg. 147-154)
The supposed “unrealism” of deontology also seems to lie behind Hardin’s concerns over nuclear deterrence.
After noting that Kantians typically have condemned the indiscriminate destruction implicit in a policy of
deterrence, he adds that “it therefore seemed [to Kantians] profoundly immoral to destroy cities full of
children merely for the sake of the theory of deterrence.” The word “seemed” is surprising. Shouldn’t most
people, not only Kantians, be appalled by the prospect of destroying cities full of children? To not be
appalled, I submit, is the result of either having been swept away by the morality of consequences or having
studied too much political science. It is noteworthy that the reason we are appalled relies on a Kantian-style
explanation. If we were to adopt an exclusive consequentialist view, if the ends were always capable of
justifying the means, then the death of millions of innocents should be trivial—mere fluff in the face of
moral truth. The idea that there are some things that should not be done is precisely a deontological notion.
The idea that, no matter how powerful a deterrent it may be, the strapping of babies to the front of
tanks is nonetheless wrong, cannot be understood entirely in consequentialist terms. It does not follow
that the policy of nuclear deterrence is wrong from the viewpoint of deontology. Some deontologists accept
nuclear deterrence while others do not. But deontologists insist correctly that not only the assessment of the
consequences, but an assessment of the means used to achieve consequences, must be factored into the moral
evaluation of nuclear deterrence.
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UTIL V DEONT
UTIL BAD = FOUNDATION FOR WAR
Utilitarianism taken alone allows unjustified war; full weight must be given to
deontological analysis in order to achieve the best policy option.
Eric Heinze in 99 (assistant prof. of polisci @ University of Oklahoma, Human Rights & Human Welfare,
“Waging War for Human Rights: Towards a Moral-Legal Theory of Humanitarian Intervention”,
http://www.du.edu/gsis/hrhw/volumes/2003/heinze-2003.pdf, p. 5)
By itself, this “utilitarianism of rights” test has serious problems when employed as a threshold level of
human suffering that triggers a humanitarian intervention. This is because it suggests that aggregate
human suffering is the only moral concern that should be addressed (Montaldi 1985: 135). If we are to
accept the general presumption against war as enshrined in Article 2 of the UN Charter, we do so because of
war’s inherent destructiveness and its detrimental effect on international security. The use of force, including
humanitarian intervention, will always result in at least some loss of life. The principle of utility ameliorates
this effect of intervention, but once an intervention is employed to halt such widespread suffering, a
pure utilitarian ethos would sanction the pursuit of this primary end (achieving the military and/or
humanitarian objective) without exception, so long as fewer people are killed than are rescued in an
intervention. Not only does this reduce the moral relevance of the individual, it opens up the door for
aggression disguised as humanitarian intervention, as long as there are individuals who are suffering
and dying within a state—even if their suffering is entirely accidental. Taken as part and parcel of the
utilitarian framework, therefore, military intervention must only be sanctioned when it is in response to
violations that are intentionally perpetrated Thus, as Fernando Tesón eloquently explains in his chapter,
“The Liberal Case for Humanitarian Intervention,” the best case for humanitarian intervention contains a
deontological element—that is, a principled concern for the respectful treatment of individuals (not
intentionally or maliciously mistreating them)—as well as a consequentialist one—the utilitarian requirement
that interventions cause more good than harm (Holzgrefe and Keohane: 114). Consider NATO’s
intervention in Kosovo, where a significant number of Serbian civilians were killed by NATO bombs in
the process of coercing the Milosevic regime to stop its ethnic cleansing of Kosovars. Regardless of
whether more lives were saved than lost, in accidentally killing noncombatants, NATO was in essence
accepting the notion that human rights are not absolute. This is despite the fact that such killing was
done in order to save the lives of other innocent civilians. The moral difference between NATO’s killing
and Milosevic’s ethnic cleansing lies in the intent and purpose of the agent, and the ends he hopes to achieve
and the conditions he intends to create beyond the mere frustration of an individual’s ability to enjoy a right
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UTIL V DEONT
UTIL BAD = FOUNDATION FOR WAR
The calculation of utilitarianism is the foundation of war.
Kateb, 1992. (George, Professor of Politics, Princeton, The Inner Ocean, page 11.)
I do not mean to take seriously the idea that utilitarianism is a satisfactory replacement for the theory of rights. The
well-being (or mere preferences) of the majority cannot override the rightful claims of individuals. In a time when
the theory of rights is global it is noteworthy that some moral philosophers disparage the theory of rights. The
political experience of this century should be enough to make them hesitate: it is not clear that, say, some version of
utilitarianism could not justify totalitarian evil. It also could be fairly easy for some utilitarians to justify any war
and any dictatorship, and very easy to justify any kind of ruthless-ness even in societies that pay some attention to
rights. There is no end to the immoral permissions that one or another type of utilitarianism grants. Everything is
permitted, if the calculation is right. No, an advocate of rights cannot take utilitarianism seriously as a competing
general theory of political morality, nor any other competing general theory. Rather, particular principles or
considerations must be given a place. A theory of rights may simply leave many decisions undetermined or have to
admit that rights may have to be overridden (but never for the sake of Social well-being or mere policy preference).
Also, kinds of rights may sometimes conflict, and it is not always possible to end that conflict either by an
elaboration of the theory of rights or by an appeal to some other.
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UTIL V DEONT
UTIL BAD = JUSTIFIES SLAVERY
Utilitarianism justifies slavery.
H. L. A. Hart in 79 (former principal of Oxford University, Tulane Law Review, “The Shell Foundation Lectures,
1978-1979: Utilitarianism and Natural Rights”, April, 53 Tul. L. Rev. 663, l/n)
It is most important that Mill conceived that these fundamental rights described by him as a special kind
of Utility should be respected by society in the case of each individual. The principles at stake, he says,
"protect every individual from being harmed by others," 27 and he adds that "it is by a person's observance of
these [moralities] that his fitness to exist as one of the fellowship of human beings, is tested and decided." 28
Mill therefore recognises an equal distribution as vital where these fundamental rights are concerned: all are
to have them respected. Yet he nowhere demonstrates or even attempts to demonstrate the doctrine that
general utility, as Bentham conceived it, is the basis of such individual rights, since he does not show
that general utility treated as an aggregate would be maximised by an equal distribution to all
individuals in society of these fundamental rights. There is therefore nothing to counter the sceptic who
would argue that if general utility had any meaning it must be [*672] logically possible that the total
net balance of ease, pleasure and happiness of a society over pain or unhappiness might be greater, not
where those fundamental rights were equally distributed to all members alike, but where a minority,
say a small slave population, or even a few individuals, were denied these essentials of human wellbeing
in order that the vast majority should receive increments in the means of pleasure or happiness, each
small in themselves but large in the aggregate. The difficulty for Mill arises from the possibility that a
society might protect the vast majority of its members by rules which made exceptions for a small
oppressed minority. Utilitarian principles as ordinarily understood might be satisfied by this, but a
doctrine of Natural Rights could not be.
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UTIL V DEONT
UTIL BAD = TYRANNY
Utilitarianism allows tyranny and the absolute oppression of the minority, yet identifies
value in a democratic society that increases the welfare of a population; in order to achieve
this society, political morality such as deontology must precede consequentialist
evaluations.
H. L. A. Hart in 79 (former principal of Oxford University, Tulane Law Review, “The Shell Foundation Lectures,
1978-1979: Utilitarianism and Natural Rights”, April, 53 Tul. L. Rev. 663, l/n)
The first fundamental criticism of this central maximising principle is again to be found implicit in John
Stuart Mill's work. It is implicit in his account of Justice already mentioned, but even more importantly in his
influential reflections on Liberty, in the essay of that name. Bentham, it will be recalled, in making his own
slow transition from a Tory supporter of the unreformed British Constitution to radical democrat, though that
Utilitarianism provided entirely adequate reasons for preferring democracy with manhood suffrage to any
other form of government, because only a government dependent on popular election could have sufficient
incentive to work for the general interest rather than the sinister interest of a governing few. So his critique of
constitutional or political structures was rather like that of a business efficiency expert on a grand scale
examining the structure of a firm, and political theorists of our own day have produced some highly
sophisticated versions of this type of quasieconomic approach to political theory. But Mill valued
democracy for quite other reasons: not merely as the protection of the majority against exploitation by the
few and against the inefficiency of governments, but as affording the opportunity to all to develop their
distinctive human capacities for thought, choice and self-direction by partaking in political decisions,
even in the minimal form of voting at intermittent elections. But Mill also thought that the tyranny of the
majority over a minority was as great a danger as the tyranny of a minority government or despotism
against which Bentham thought democracy the best protection. So a political morality which like
Utilitarianism places political power in the hands of the majority is not enough to secure a good, liberal
society. It matters very much what the majority do with the power which is put in their hands; so there
is need for constraints in the form of distinct principles of political morality whether or not they are
translated into law in the form of a Bill of Rights. "The limitations of the power of government over
individuals," said Mill, "loses none of its importance when the [*675] holders of power are regularly
accountable to the community--that is to the strongest party therein."
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UTIL BAD = 4 REASONS (1/2)
Utilitarianism is bad – ignores individual human value,
H. L. A. Hart in 79 (former principal of Oxford University, Tulane Law Review, “The Shell Foundation Lectures,
1978-1979: Utilitarianism and Natural Rights”, April, 53 Tul. L. Rev. 663, l/n)
[*676] (i) The first is this: Classical maximising Utilitarianism, in focusing on the aggregate or total of
pleasure or happiness, ignores not only distributive principles but something of greater moral importance
from which the need for distributive principles arises, namely the simple and obvious fact that humanity is
divided into separate persons. Maximising Utilitarianism ignores this because, in its perspective, separate
individuals are of no intrinsic importance but only important as the points at which fragments of the total
aggregate of pleasure or happiness are located. It is as if we were concerned to collect the greatest possible
amount of water in a number of different receptacles and were indifferent, as long as that were achieved,
how it was distributed among the receptacles, whether they were full, half full or empty. Individual
persons, for maximising Utilitarianism, are therefore merely the locations where what is of value is to be
found. It is for this reason that as long as the totals are thereby increased, one individual's happiness or
pleasure, however innocent he may be, may be sacrificed to procure a greater happiness or pleasure
located in other persons. Such replacements of one person by another are not only allowed but required by
Utilitarianism when unrestrained by distinct distributive principles. (ii) Secondly, Utilitarianism is not, as
sometimes it is said to be, an individualistic and egalitarian doctrine, although in a sense it treats persons as
equals, or of equal worth. For it does this only by, in effect, treating individual persons as having no worth,
since not persons for the Utilitarian, but the experiences of pleasure or satisfaction or happiness which
persons have are the sole items of worth or elements of value. It is of course true and very important that,
according to the Utilitarian maxim, "everybody is to count for one, nobody for more than one," 37 in the
sense that in any application of the greatest happiness calculus the equal preferences or pains or
pleasures, satisfactions or dissatisfactions of different persons are given the same weight, whether they
be Brahmins or Untouchables, Jews or Christians, black or white. But since Utilitarianism has no direct or
intrinsic concern, but only an instrumental concern with the relative levels of total wellbeing enjoyed by
different persons, its form of equal concern and respect for persons embodied in the maxim that
"everybody is to count for one, nobody for more than one," licenses the grossest form of inequality in the
actual treatment of individuals, if [*677] required to maximise aggregate or average welfare. So long as
that condition is satisfied, the situation in which a few enjoy great happiness while many suffer is as good as
one in which happiness is more equally distributed. Of course in comparing the aggregate economic
welfare produced by equal and unequal distribution of resources, account must be taken of factors such
as diminishing marginal utility and also envy. These factors favour an equal distribution of resources but
by no means always favour it conclusively. For there are also factors pointing the other way, such as
administrative and transaction costs, loss of incentives and failure of the standard assumption that all
individuals are equally good pleasure or satisfaction machines and derive the same utility from the same
amount of wealth. (iii) Thirdly, the modern critique of Utilitarianism asserts that there is nothing selfevidently valuable or authoritative as a moral goal in the mere increase in totals of pleasure or happiness
abstracted from all questions of distribution. The collective sum of different persons' pleasures or the net
balance of total happiness of different persons (supposing it makes sense to talk of adding them) is not in
itself a pleasure or happiness which anybody experiences. Society is not an individual experiencing the
aggregate collected pleasures or pains of its members; no person experiences such an aggregate.
(iv) From this point of view maximising Utilitarianism, if it is not restrained by distinct distributive
principles, seems to proceed on a false analogy between the way in which it is rational for a single prudent
individual to order his life and the way in which it is rational for a whole community to order its life through
government. The analogy is this: it is rational for one man as a single individual to sacrifice a present
satisfaction or pleasure for a greater satisfaction later, even if we discount somewhat the value of the later
satisfaction because of its uncertainty. Such sacrifices are amongst the most elementary requirements of
prudence and are commonly accepted as a virtue and of course any form of saving is an example of this
form of rationality. But it is of course a common feature of life even where saving and money are not in
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-------------- (continues from previous page)-------------question. For example I decided some time ago to put aside the then present pleasures of idleness to
write this lecture so as to have later this greater pleasure of appearing before you here. In this case the
later, greater pleasure for the sake of which the lesser, earlier pleasure of idleness is sacrificed is really
enjoyed [*678] by me, the same human being who made the earlier sacrifice. By a misleading analogy
with an individual's prudence, maximising Utilitarianism treats not merely one person's pleasure as
replaceable by some greater pleasure of that same person, but it also treats the pleasure or happiness of
one individual as similarly replaceable by the greater pleasure of other individuals. So it treats the division
between persons as of no more moral significance than the division between times which separates one
individual's earlier pleasure from his later pleasure. But the analogy is false because there is no one person
who sacrifices the lesser pleasure but enjoys the greater pleasure later, and the separate identity of different
persons is accordingly a division quite different from the merely temporal division between different
experiences of a single person, and has a moral claim on our attention of a quite different order.
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UTIL BAD = ANTHROCENTRIC
Utilitarianism is anthocentric.
F. Neil Brady in 85 (assistant prof. of management @ San Diego State University, Journal of Business Ethics, “A
Defense of Utilitarian Policy Processes in Corporate and Public Management”, issue 23-30, p. 24)
Even if the widely recognized procedural difficulties of applying utilitarian theory to decision-making in
public and corporate policy were overcome, it does not follow that a perfected technique which encompasses
all manifestations of human preference will prove satisfactory. Laurence Tribe (1974) has argued that
utilitarian techniques in the law and in public policy systematically suppress certain kinds of values
which express some individuals’ concern for natural objects and non-human life. That is, utilitarianism
as a system of public decision-making tends to suppress the expression of sympathy and other felt
obligations toward animal life and, instead, distorts those feelings by translating them into mere
expressions of human interest. Any obligations or feelings of intrinsic worth, apart from human selfinterest, are comparatively unimportant in the policy game.
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UTIL BAD = IMPOSSIBLE
Consequentialism is impossible because categories or instances of good cannot be measured
against each other.
Germain Grisez and Russel Shaw 1988 (Catholic Moral Theologian, Beyond the New Morality: The
Responsibilities of Freedom p. 24-25)
But, the objection goes, the way of proceeding which we have just described is reasonable-indeed, it is the
morally right way to act in many cases-if the quantity of good in the instance preferred out- weighs the
quantity in the instance treated as a means to the end. Is it not rational and ethically correct to choose the way
of acting which promises to bring about the greater good? This is the line of reasoning recommended by
those who subscribe to the ethical system known as "consequentialism" or "proportional- ism." But their
recommendation is mistaken. Instances of basic human goods are incommensurable: they cannot be
measured against one another as the proportionalist calculus requires. There is a twofold
incommensurability. First, it is impossible to measure different categories of human good against one
another, since the basic human goods are not reducible to one another or to some ultrabasic category
of good underlying all the rest. Comparing categories of good is rather like dividing apples by oranges.
Choices, though, are not between or among categories of goods , but instances of goods, so this
incommensurability is not precisely what renders the calculus impossible. ... Second, however, it is no less
impossible to measure different instances of the same good against one another and determine that one
instance outweighs the others. Each instance, each real possibility for choice, has some appeal not found in
its competitors. Where shall I go on vacation, the mountains or the seashore? I find both possibilities
appealing, but in somewhat different ways, and that is precisely why I must choose between them; if the
seashore had all the appeal of the mountains and its own besides, there would be no choice to make-it would
simply tumble spontaneously and without choice for the clearly superior alternative.
Consequentialism is impossible because each choice results in a unique outcome making it
impossible to weigh options.
Germain Grisez and Russel Shaw 1988 (Catholic Moral Theologian, Beyond the New Morality: The
Responsibilities of Freedom p. 24-25)
Artificial as the example is, it makes the crucial point that whenever we have a real choice to make, it is
because we are confronted with various possibilities, each embodying a diverse mix of human goods.
Consequentialism or proportionalism requires that one weigh and measure the good as represented in
the various possibilities and opt for the instance promising more good. But each of the several
possibilities comprises, not merely so much (on an imaginary scale) of a certain human good, but a
unique "package" of instances of various goods whose very uniqueness makes it impossible to measure
it against other, similarly unique "packages" competing to be chosen.
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Acceptance of utilitarian arguments in one area creates a gateway for the acceptance of
morally repugnant actions in other areas of life to achieve an ends.
Germain Grisez and Russel Shaw 1988 (Catholic Moral Theologian, Beyond the New Morality: The
Responsibilities of Freedom p. 28)
This points to yet another possible element to explain the prevalence of the attitude we are describing:
the nuclear deterrent strategy of the United States and other countries. It is a central element of
this strategy that, if pressed to the wall in war, the United States and other nuclear nations would
rain down nuclear bombs on enemy cities. Leaving aside the question whether such a course of action
would make sense (although it would in fact be senseless), the strategy is built on the presumption
that the United States and the other nations involved would really do what they say they are
prepared to do. Otherwise the deterrent would not be credible. For years then, Americans and the
people of other nations which have nuclear deterrents have been living with the knowledge and intention
that this is how their countries would, in certain circumstances, act. In subtle but real ways this fact-of
nuclear deterrent strategy and all it implies-has helped to undermine the foundations of moral
perception and moral thought in our society. This is a broad statement, and one whose truth it is
impossible to demonstrate. Yet it stands to reason that this appalling fact has, like a sort of moral
disease, infected national life, deadened ethical sensitivity, and poisoned many aspects of our society. It
has accustomed us to the idea that it is morally right to will evil for the sake of good. We do not
propose a solution. We only suggest that the nuclear deterrent strategy represents a frighteningly
logical application of the principle that the end does justify the means. Having willingly although
regretfully accepted this principle in one critical area of national life, we can hardly expect to be
immune from its influence in many others.
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Philosophies of utilitarianism allowed the Germans to employ acts of murder, torture, and
mutilation upon anyone assumed to be a ‘threat’ to the state.
Arthur L. Kaplan, 2005 (The Emanuel and Robert Hart Professor of Bioethics and Chair of the Department of
Medical Ethics and Director, Center for Bioethics, University of Pennsylvania, Journal of the American Academy of
Psychiatry and the Law Online, Too Hard to Face, http://www.jaapl.org/cgi/content/full/33/3/394)
Crude utilitarianism is a position that sometimes rears its head in contemporary bioethics debates. For example,
some argue that we ought not to spend scarce social resources on certain groups within our society, such as
the elderly, so that other groups, such as children, may have greater benefits. Those who want to invoke the
Nazi analogy may be able to show that this form of crude utilitarian thinking does motivate some of the policies or
actions taken by contemporary biomedical scientists and health care professionals, but they should do so with great
caution. In closely reviewing the statements that accompany the six major moral rationales for murder,
torture, and mutilation conducted in the camps—freedom was a possible benefit, only the condemned were
used, expiation was a possible benefit, a lack of moral expertise, the need to preserve the state in conditions of
total war, and the morality of sacrificing a few to benefit many—it becomes clear that the conduct of those
who worked in the concentration camps was sometimes guided by moral rationales. It is also clear that all of
these moral arguments were nested within a biomedical interpretation of the danger facing Germany.
Physicians used utilitarian morals to justify lethal experiments for the greater good of the
German state. Their skewed view of what was for ‘the greater good’ led them to eliminate
various minority groups.
Arthur L. Kaplan, 2005 (The Emanuel and Robert Hart Professor of Bioethics and Chair of the Dept of Medical
Ethics and Director, Center for Bioethics, UPenn, Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law
Online, Too Hard to Face, http://www.jaapl.org/cgi/content/full/33/3/394)
Physicians could justify their actions, whether direct involvement with euthanasia and lethal
experiments, or, merely support for Hitler and the Reich, on the grounds that the Jew, the homosexual,
the congenitally handicapped, and the Slav posed a threat, a biological threat, a genetic threat, to the
existence and future of the Reich. The appropriate response to such a threat was to eliminate it, just as
a physician must eliminate a burst appendix by means of surgery or a dangerous bacterium by using
penicillin.5 Viewing specific ethnic groups and populations as threatening the health of the German
state permitted, and in the view of those on trial demanded, the involvement of medicine in mass
genocide, sterilization, and lethal experimentation. The biomedical paradigm provided the theoretical
basis for allowing those sworn to the Hippocratic principle of nonmaleficence to kill in the name of the
state.
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Utilitarianism works on an “end justifies the means” mentality. This practice justifies the
holocaust, Stalin’s slaughtering of millions to attain a communist state, slavery, and
practices that subjugate minorities.
Kerby Anderson, 2004 (National Director of Probe Ministries International, , Probe Ministries, Utilitarianism:
The Greatest Good for the Greatest Number,
http://www.probe.org/theology-and-philosophy/worldview--philosophy/utilitarianism-the-greatest-good-for-thegreatest-number.html)
One problem with utilitarianism is that it leads to an "end justifies the means" mentality. If any worthwhile
end can justify the means to attain it, a true ethical foundation is lost. But we all know that the end does not
justify the means. If that were so, then Hitler could justify the Holocaust because the end was to purify the
human race. Stalin could justify his slaughter of millions because he was trying to achieve a communist
utopia. The end never justifies the means. The means must justify themselves. A particular act cannot be
judged as good simply because it may lead to a good consequence. The means must be judged by some
objective and consistent standard of morality. Second, utilitarianism cannot protect the rights of minorities if
the goal is the greatest good for the greatest number. Americans in the eighteenth century could justify
slavery on the basis that it provided a good consequence for a majority of Americans. Certainly the majority
benefited from cheap slave labor even though the lives of black slaves were much worse. A third problem
with utilitarianism is predicting the consequences. If morality is based on results, then we would have to have
omniscience in order to accurately predict the consequence of any action. But at best we can only guess at the
future, and often these educated guesses are wrong. A fourth problem with utilitarianism is that
consequences themselves must be judged. When results occur, we must still ask whether they are good or bad
results. Utilitarianism provides no objective and consistent foundation to judge results because results are the
mechanism used to judge the action itself.
UTIL BAD = JUSTIFIES HOLOCAUST
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Genocide can be justified if it is in the interest of the majority
Irrational Knowledge, 2006. (Practical Ethics - A Critical Review, August 13, 2006.
http://www.irrationalknowledge.com/08-13-2006/practical-ethics-a-critical-review/)
Utilitarianism fails the test for beauty and goodness because it could potentially justify genocide
on an ethnic or religious minority. Realize that nothing is intrinsically good or bad according to Singer's
principle of the equal consideration of interests. Instead, an action is deemed good or bad based on
how many people hold a given interest. If most people have an interest in favor of genocide, then
utilitarianism says that genocide is the good. To paraphrase Benjamin Franklin, utilitarianism is two
wolves and a lamb voting about what to have for dinner. Of course, there are utilitarian protections that
make genocide more difficult than simply holding a vote. Strongly held interests count for more than
weakly held interests (page 21), and the principle of declining marginal utility (page 24) further elevates
the interests of the threatened minority group. But declining marginal utility is not a substitute for an
unalienable right to life; it still places a finite value on a life, which can then be "outvoted" by the majority.
A utilitarian justification of genocide is difficult, but by no means impossible. Even if the interests of
a member of the minority group count ten times as much as that of the oppressors, it just means that the
minority group must make up less than 10% of the population for genocide to be justified. If the minority
group starts to internalize the hatred directed towards them, their interests to keep living will weaken,
making genocide even more likely. For those with a background in modal logic, there is a possible world
in which Singer's utilitarianism justifies genocide. Singer tacitly recognizes this; on page 94 he explains
that the type of utilitarianism that results from maximizing interests is called preference utilitarianism, and
on page 99 he says "if we are preference utilitarians we must allow that a desire to go on living can be
outweighed by other desires."
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UTIL BAD = SCHELL INDICT
EVEN SCHELL, THEIR OWN AUTHOR SAYS THAT IT DOESN’T TAKE
PRECEDENCE OVER EVERYTHING NOR THAT ANY ACTION IS JUSTIFIED SO
LONG AS IT SUPPORTS PREVENTION OF EXTINCTION.
Cheshier, 2001. (David M., Assistant Professor of Communications, Director of Debate at Georgia State
University, “IS IT MORE IMPORTANT TO PROTECT HUMAN RIGHTS OR AVERT WAR?”, p. 1-2,
debate.uvm.edu.)
These are powerful words, with an obvious utility in debates where nuclear risks are being assessed. Of
course one must be careful not to misuse Schell's argument. He cannot be saying that any risk a policy
decision might culminate in eventual nuclear usage has to weighted as a 100% certain extinction risk. Such a
claim is on the face of it unsustainable since any and every conceivable action might entail an
infinitesimally small heightening of nuclear risk. To treat Schell as implying this would produce genuine
decisional paralysis ("if I put my left shoe on first, then there's a 0.0000000.1% chance of nuclear war, which
is infinite; but if I put my right shoe on first..."). Schell implicitly recognizes this by acknowledging that
from his argument "it does not follow that any action is permitted as long as it serves the end of
preventing extinction" (130). And in a literal mathematical sense Schell's formulation seems to provide
little guidance when it comes to comparing relative nuclear risks (since it implies that a 1% chance of nuclear
war should count as infinitely large as a 99% chance,when surely we would prefer the former to the latter).
The calculation does have direct relevance to debates where rights are counterposed to nuclear risks,
and Schell devotes a section of his essay to thinking through the ethical issues arising from his position.
He spends some time refuting, for example, the argument of Karl Jaspers that because there are some
principles and circumstances warranting self-sacrifice ("some things worth dying for"), total self-destruction
is not necessarily implausible or unreasonable (with Jaspers we have an eloquent articulation of what was
once called the "better dead than Red" argument). Schell finds this point of view unsustainable.
But Schell does not reject all ethical considerations, nor does he subordinate everything to survival.
Rather, he defends a more nuanced ethical position of relevance to those defending rights against war.
Conceding that there is "nothing in the teachings of either Socrates or Christ that could justify the extinction
of mankind," he also adds that "neither is there anything that would justify the commission of crimes in order
to prevent extinction" (134). And, by way of an analogy to the death camps of World War II, Schell makes
clear that even a preeminent concern with survival does not "take precedence over the obligation to
treat others decently" (136).
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DEONT GOOD = BETTER POLICY MAKING
Policy makers cannot depend solely on economics, but need to apply ethics to make
efficient policies
Pinstrup-Andersen, Per. 2005. (Ethics and economic policy for the food system. General Sessions, 01DEC-05, American Journal of Agricultural Economics.)
Economists seldom address ethical questions as they infringe on economic theory or economic
behavior. They (and I) find this subject complex and elusive in comparison with the relative precision and
objectivity of economic analysis.
However, if ethics is influencing our analyses but ignored, is the precision and objectivity just an
illusion? Are we in fact being normative when we claim to be positive or are we, as suggested by Gilbert
(p. xvi), ignoring social ethics and, as a consequence, contributing to a situation in which we know "the
price of everything and the value of nothing?" The economists' focus on efficiency and the Pareto
Principle has made us less relevant to policy makers, whose main concerns are who gains, who
loses, by how much, and can or should the losers be compensated. By focusing on the
distribution of gains and losses and replacing the Pareto Principle with estimates of whether a big
enough economic surplus could be generated so that gainers could compensate losers, the socalled new welfare economics (which is no longer new) was a step toward more relevancy for policy
makers (Just, Hueth, and Schmitz). Another major step toward relevancy was made by the more recent
emphasis on political economy and institutional economics. But are we trading off scientific validity for
relevancy? Robbins (p. 9) seems to think so, when he states that "claims of welfare economics to be
scientific are highly dubious."
But if Aristotle saw economics as a branch of ethics and Adam Smith was a moral philosopher, when did
we, as implied by Stigler, replace ethics with precision and objectivity? Or, when did we as economists
move away from philosophy toward statistics and engineering and are we on our way back to a more
comprehensive political economy approach, in which both quantitative and qualitative variables are taken
into account? I believe we are. Does that make us less scientific, as argued by Robbins?
I am not questioning whether the quantification of economic relationships is important. It is. In the case of
food policy analysis, it is critically important that the causal relationship between policy options
and expected impact on the population groups of interest is quantitatively estimated. But not at the
expense of reality, context, and ethical considerations, much of which can be described only in qualitative
terms. Economic analyses that ignore everything that cannot be quantified and included in our
models are not likely to advance our understanding of economic and policy relationships. Neither
will they be relevant for solving real world problems. The predictive ability is likely to be low and,
if the results are used by policy makers, the outcome may be different from what was expected.
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DEONT GOOD = INT HMN RTS
Deontology is essential for the maintenance of international human rights because it
restricts the practice of justifying the actions of the government by the ends achieved,
creating what is essentially a humane international order.
Thomas Donaldson, 1995 (Prof. of Business Ethics at Georgetown U, Ethics and International Affairs,
“International Deontology Defended: A Response to Russell Hardin”, pg. 147-154)
It may appear that I am defending Kantian deontology as a comprehensive moral language to use in
interpreting international events. But I mean not to assert that Kantian deontology is sufficient, only that it is
necessary. Such a perspective contributes fundamental, often neglected, insights. First it provides a moral
grounding for any rights-based approach to international affairs. This includes not only the general
interpretation of international policy through broad notions of human rights, but also the application of
specific rights such as those found in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Indeed, most
contemporary rights-based theories are deontological theories. Rights are principles that assign claims or
entitlements to someone against someone and are usually interpreted as “trumping” or taking precedence
over consequential claims made in the name of collective welfare.4 Hence, both in their similarity of form (as
a principle universally applicable to relevantly similar situations) and in their similarity of function (as taking
precedence over collective, consequential considerations), rights satisfy two key Kantian-deontological
criteria.
Second, Kantianism entails clear restrictions on the general behavior of states. Of greatest importance
is the fact that these restrictions alert us to the danger of letting the ends justify the means. Whatever
the flaws of the Kantian deontological tradition, and no matter what verdict we finally reach on the
comprehensiveness of deontological moral logic, the insistence on principle over mere calculation of
future consequences stands as deontology’s practical raison d’etre. Deontology may not be sufficient,
but it is necessary for a humane international order.
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DEONT GOOD = PRECEDES UTIL (1/2)
Certain premises have an intrinsic moral value that comes before consequences of actions.
Evaluating consequences first puts our fate and the fate of the masses in the hands of
belligerent others.
Igor Primoratz in 05 (Principal Research Fellow @ Center for Applied Philosophy amd Public Ethics, The
Philosophical Forum, Volume 36, No. 1, “Civilian Immunity in War”, Spring, p. 44-46)
Consequentialist thinkers usually present their view on civilian immunity against the background of a
critique of attempts of philosophers and legal thinkers to account for civilian immunity in deontological
terms. Having satisfied themselves that those attempts have been unsuccessful, they put forward the claim
that civilian immunity has nothing to do with civilians’ acts or omissions, guilt or innocence,
responsibility or lack of it, but is merely a useful convention. It is useful since it rules out targeting a large
group of human beings, and thus helps reduce greatly the overall killing, mayhem, and destruction in war.
The consequentialist view of civilian immunity is exposed to two objections: the protection it offers to
civilians is too weak, and the ground provided for it indicates a misunderstanding of the moral issue
involved. The protection is too weak because civilian immunity is understood as but a useful convention.
This makes it doubly weak. First, if it is merely a useful convention, if all its moral force is due to its
utility, then it will have no such force in cases where it has no utility. This is a familiar flaw of
consequentialism. It denies that moral rules have any intrinsic moral significance, and explains their binding
force solely in terms of the good consequences of acting in accordance with them. Therefore it cannot give
us any good consequentialist reason to adhere to a moral rule in cases where adhering to it will not
have the good consequences it usually has, and where better consequences will be attained by going
against the rule.6 This means that we should respect civilian immunity when, and only when, doing so will
have the good consequences adduced as its ground: when it will indeed reduce the overall killing, maiming,
and destruction. On the other hand, whenever we have good reasons to believe that, by targeting civilians, we
shall make a significant contribution to our war effort, thus shortening the war and reducing the overall
killing and mayhem, that is what we may and indeed ought to do. Civilian immunity is thus made hostage
to the vagaries of war, instead of providing civilians with iron-clad protection against them. This is not
a purely theoretical concern. As Kai Nielsen has pointed out, systematic attacks on civilians in the course
of a war of national liberation can make an indispensable contribution to the successful prosecution of such a
war. That was indeed the case in Algeria and South Vietnam, and may well have been the case in Angola and
Mozambique as well. Then again, if civilian immunity is merely a useful convention, that weakens it by
making it hostage to the stance taken by enemy political and military leadership. They may or may not
choose to respect the immunity of our civilians. If they do not, on the consequentialist view of this
immunity, we are not bound to respect the immunity of their civilians. Being a convention, it binds only
if, or as long as, it is accepted by both parties to the conflict. As an important statement of this view puts it,
“for convention-dependent obligations, what one’s opponent does, what ‘everyone is doing,’ etc., are facts of
great moral importance. Such facts help to determine within what convention, if any, one is operating, and
thus they help one discover what his moral duties are.”8 To be sure, even if no such convention is in place,
but we have reason to believe we can help bring about its acceptance by unilaterally acting in accordance
with it and thereby encouraging the enemy to do the same, we should do that. But if we have no good reason
to believe that, or if we have tried that approach and it has failed, our military are free to kill and maim
enemy civilians whenever they feel they need to do that. Thus our moral choice is determined, be it
directly or ultimately, by the moral (or immoral) choice of enemy political and military leaders. So is
the fate of enemy civilians. The fact that they are civilians, in itself, counts for nothing. This brings me
to the second objection: The consequentialist misses what anyone else, and in particular any civilian in
wartime, would consider the crux of the matter. Faced with the prospect of being killed or maimed by
enemy fire, a civilian would not make her case in terms of disutility of killing or maiming civilians in
war in general, or of killing or maiming her then and there. She would rather point out that she is a
civilian, not a soldier; a bystander, not a participant; an innocent, not a guilty party. She would point out that
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----------CONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS PAGE---------------she has done nothing to deserve, or become liable to, such a fate. She would present these personal
facts as considerations whose moral significance is intrinsic and decisive, rather than instrumental and
fortuitous, mediated by a useful convention (which, in different circumstances, might enjoin limiting war by
targeting only civilians). And her argument, couched in personal terms, would seem to be more to the
point than the impersonal calculation of good and bad consequences by means of which the
consequentialist would settle the matter.
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DEONT GOOD = PRECEDES UTIL
Recognizing rights and putting them before a utilitarian calculus is the only rational and
moral option.
H. L. A. Hart in 79 (former principal of Oxford University, Tulane Law Review, “The Shell Foundation Lectures,
1978-1979: Utilitarianism and Natural Rights”, April, 53 Tul. L. Rev. 663, l/n)
Accordingly, the contemporary modern philosophers of whom I have spoken, and preeminently Rawls in his
Theory of Justice, have argued that any morally adequate political philosophy must recognise that there
must be, in any morally tolerable form of social life, certain protections for the freedom and basic
interests of individuals which constitute an essential framework of individual rights. Though the pursuit of
the general welfare is indeed a legitimate and indeed necessary concern of governments, it is something
to be pursued only within certain constraints imposed by recognition of such rights.
The modern philosophical defence put forward for the recognition of basic human rights does not wear the
same metaphysical or conceptual dress as the earlier doctrines of the seventeenth and eighteenth-century
Rights of Man, which men were said to have in a state of nature or to be endowed with by their creator.
Nonetheless, the most complete and articulate version of this modern critique of Utilitarianism has many
affinities with the theories of social contract which in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries accompanied
the doctrine of natural rights. Thus Rawls has argued in A Theory of Justice that though any rational person
must know that in order to live even a minimally tolerable life he must live within a political society
with an ordered government, no rational person bargaining with others on a footing of [*679]
equality could agree to regard himself as bound to obey the laws of any government if his freedom and
basic interests, what Mill called "the groundwork of human existence," were not given protection and
treated as having priority over mere increases in aggregate welfare even if the protection cannot be
absolute.
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DEONT GOOD = PRECIDES UTIL
Rights precede other concerns; their protection is key to moral legitimacy and any form of
morality that does not put them first suffers moral indeterminacy and deficiency.
Alan Gewirth in 86 (prof. of philosophy @ University of Chicago, Oxford University Press, “Why Rights are
Indespensible”, p. 343-344)
Nevertheless, human rights, as explicated above, are basic to morality, in that they are the necessary
even if not the sufficient condition of all moral values. For all moral precepts deal, directly or
indirectly, with how persons ought to act, especially towards one another. Where the precepts deal
only indirectly with actions, as in the case of the virtues, there is still an important reference to
action, since virtues are dispositions to act in certain ways. Now, since the human rights are rights to
the necessary goods of action and successful action in general, it follows that without the objects of the
human rights the actions with which morality is concerned are either impossible or deficient, and the
abilities and conditions needed for the actions are not securely possessed. Without rights to these
objects, the individual's personal dignity as an agent who can justifiably claim these goods on his own
behalf is seriously threatened. And without social recognition of these rights-and, regarding the most
important rights, their legal enforcement- the individual's possession of the necessary goods of
action and successful action is rendered precarious. In addition, as we have seen, the universality
of human rights provides the essential basis for linking together each individual's possession of the
necessary goods of action in a context of social solidarity. For all these reasons, recognition and
protection of human rights is a necessary condition of the moral legitimacy of societies. The human
rights can account for the value both of supererogatory actions and of the moral virtues. Although
supererogatory actions go beyond the duties required by rights, the direction of this 'beyond' is
itself indicated by the human rights, in one of two ways. Supererogatory actions may aim at
assuring that other persons' freedom and well-being will be promoted or protected in certain dire
circumstances where the agent puts his own freedom and well-being at risk, as in saintly or heroic
actions. Alternatively, supererogatory actions may provide benefits that reflect the same civility and
mutuality of consideration as are required by the human rights, but go beyond the needs of
freedom and well-being, as, for example, in actions of generosity or courtesy. Moral virtues add to
morally right actions the important qualifications that persons who have the virtues tend to do what
is morally right from deep-seated habitual motivations, with knowledge that it is right and because it
is right. But since actions in accord with human rights are morally the most important kinds of actions
because they promote or tend to support other persons' freedom and well-being, the human rights
underlie the moral virtues and serve to explain why they are morally valuable. Attempted accounts of
the moral virtues that do not ground them in human rights can be shown to suffer from moral
indeterminacy.27
DEONT GOOD = PRECEDES UTIL
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We have a prima facia duty to certain entities due to special relationships with those
entities, preceding consequentialist concerns. These relationships justify action based on
claims of morality and precede Utilitarian values.
David McNaughton and Piers Rawling in 98 (profs. Of philosophy @ Keele University and the University of
Missouri-St. Louis, Ratio, “On Defending Deontology”, issue 11, p. 42-43)
We begin with duties of special relationship. In a telling paragraph, Ross contrasts his view with
consequentialism thus: [Consequentialism] says, in effect, that the only morally significant relation in
which my neighbours stand to me is that of being possible beneficiaries by my action. They do stand in
this relation to me, and this relation is morally significant. But they may also stand to me in the
relation of promisee to promiser, of creditor to debtor, of wife to husband, of child to parent, of friend
to friend, of fellow countryman to fellow countryman, and the like; and each of these relations is the
foundation of a prima facie duty (1965, p.19). The various relationships in which we stand to other
people generate a variety of agent-relative reasons: one can be required, say, to keep a promise,
even if by breaking it promise-keeping as whole would thereby be increased. On the direct-act
consequentialist view, on the other hand, if promises should be kept, that can only be because
promise-keeping is valuable, and hence should, ceteris paribus, be maximized. Accepting Ross’s
view of duties of special relationship entails that what is right is not solely determined by
considerations of agent-neutral value. At this point, the consequentialist may rightly claim that no
account has been given of why certain relationships are morally basic in a way that does not permit
their violation whenever such violation would increase value. But it is hard to see how this is a
complaint, unless it is also a complaint that the consequentialist has not explained why morality’s sole
concern is the increase of value – on the consequentialist view, it is apparently taken to be selfevident that all moral reasons ultimately rest on considerations of agent-neutral value. Justification
has to stop somewhere, and it is not clear that the intuitionist’s stopping place is less defensible than
that of the consequentialist. The thought that others have direct moral claims on us that are not
explicable in terms of agent-neutral value is a familiar one in everyday moral thinking. Intuitionism
accepts this thought at face value and thereby rejects the consequentialist perspective. In addition
to agent-relative reasons generated by duties of special relationship, of course, Ross also takes as basic
those generated by constraints. He is silent, however, on the subject of whether his line on the
former can be extended to cover the latter. There is an obvious disanalogy between constraints
and duties of special relationship: constraints do not depend on the specific nature of the relationships
we have. I should not treat anyone in the way that constraints forbid, whether I have a relationship
with them or not. Note, however, that the usual objection that is raised to justifying constraints – how
could it ever be that we are required not to maximize the good? – has already been met. For Ross’s
account of duties of special relationship has already shown that we can make sense of this once we get
away from the consequentialist picture of value determining what is right. Fulfilling the duties which
stem from special relationships may require us not to maximize the good. Others can have direct moral
claims on us, claims that are not routed via thoughts about the maximization of the good. So we can
already make formal sense of the thought that other agents have a claim on us not to be treated in
certain ways; a claim we standardly express by saying that they have a right not to be harmed,
tortured or killed.
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DEONT GOOD = OUTWEIGHS UTIL
Rights come first – they have an intrinsic value that outweighs utilitarian imperatives.
David McNaughton and Piers Rawling in 98 (profs. Of philosophy @ Keele University and the University of
Missouri-St. Louis, Ratio, “On Defending Deontology”, issue 11, p. 48-49)
Nagel effectively accepts the consequentialist view that a system of moral rules can only be defended by
showing that their adoption brings about some good that could not otherwise be realized, and then
seeks to show that deontology is such a system. The claim is not, of course, that agent-relative
reasons rest directly on considerations of value in a manner obviously susceptible to the CVC;
rather, the grounding is indirect – the notion is that worlds in which there are agent-relative reasons
are better than worlds in which there are not. Nagel argues that an agent relative morality, qua moral
system, is intrinsically valuable. Thus we concur with Hooker (1994), then, pace Howard-Snyder
(1993), that rule consequentialism is not a 'rubber duck'. Thus rights (the obverse of constraints)
have value, and are, therefore, part of the basic structure of moral theory. ‘A right is an agent-relative,
not an agent-neutral, value’, says Nagel (1995, p.88). This is precisely because it is supposed to resist
the CVC (one is forbidden to violate a right even to minimize the total number of such violations). So
Nagel faces the Scheffler problem: ‘How could it be wrong to harm one person to prevent greater
harm to others? How are we to understand the value that rights assign to certain kinds of human
inviolability, which makes this consequence morally intelligible?’ (p.89, our emphasis – note the
presumption inherent in the question). The answer ‘focuses on the status conferred on all human
beings by the design of a morality which includes agent-relative constraints’ (p.89). That status is one
of being inviolable (which is not, of course, to say that one will not be violated, but that one may not
be violated – even to minimize the total number of such violations). A system of morality that includes
inviolability encapsulates a good that its rivals cannot capture. For, ‘not only is it an evil for a person
to be harmed in certain ways, but for it to be permissible to harm the person in those ways is an
additional and independent evil’ (p.91). So there is a sense in which we are better off if there are
rights (they are a ‘kind of generally disseminated intrinsic good’ (p.93)). Hence there are rights. In
short, we are inviolable because inviolability is intrinsically valuable.
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DEONT GOOD = PREVENTS TORTURE
Recognizing moral impartives is necessary to prevent the worst forms of torture.
Henry Shue in 71 (prof. of ethics and public life @ Cornell, Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 7, No. 2.
(Winter), “Torture”, p. 132)
Terroristic torture, as we may call this dominant type, cannot satisfy the constraint of possible compliance,
because its purpose (intimidation of persons other than the victim of the torture) cannot be
accomplished and may not even be capable of being influenced by the victim of the torture. The victim's
suffering-indeed, the victim-is being used entirely as a means to an end over which the victim has no
control. Terroristic torture is a pure case-the purest possible case of the violation of the Kantian
principle that no person may be used only as a means. The victim is simply a site at which great pain
occurs so that others may know about it and be frightened by the prospect. The torturers have no
particular reason not to make the suffering as great and as extended as possible. Quite possibly the
more terrible the torture, the more intimidating it will be-this is certainly likely to be believed to be so.
AND torture is morally worse than slavery.
Henry Shue in 71 (prof. of ethics and public life @ Cornell, Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 7, No. 2.
(Winter), “Torture”, p. 124)
Torture is indeed contrary to every relevant international law, including the laws of war. No other
practice except slavery is so universally and unanimously condemned in law and human convention.
Yet, unlike slavery, which is still most definitely practiced but affects relatively few people, torture is
widespread and growing. According to Amnesty International, scores of governments are now using
some torture-including governments which are widely viewed as fairly civilized-and a number of
governments are heavily dependent upon torture for their very surviva1.
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DEONT GOOD = FW INDEPENDENT OF UTIL
A defense of deontology’s assumptions regarding the moral value of certain acts is
unnecessary; its framework for evaluation has a value independent of utilitarianism.
David McNaughton and Piers Rawling in 98 (profs. Of philosophy @ Keele University and the University of
Missouri-St. Louis, Ratio, “On Defending Deontology”, issue 11, p. 44)
These observations do not constitute, of course, an argument for deontology. It is simply supposed that the
prohibition on treating people in certain ways is basic. This is a demand that the existence of other agents
makes upon us. The deontological intuition can be spelled out in greater detail and illustrated, but it cannot,
on our view, be justified, in the sense of being deduced from or supported by some more basic intuition.
Every moral theory, as Mill justly remarked, will have its fundamental principles. Deontology has a
greater number of basic principles than consequentialism, and that might be a ground of complaint,
but that it has them at all cannot be held to its discredit. Ross’s main contention, then, is remarkably
simple. He claims that the deontic cannot, and need not, be justified by appeal to yet more basic
considerations. And, in particular, he insists that the deontic is largely independent of the evaluative:
thoughts about what is required, forbidden, or permitted, are not identical to, reducible to, or
derivable from, thoughts about what will produce the most good.
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DEONT GOOD = MORAL IMPERATIVE
We must act in accordance with the generic rights of others; the fulfillment of these rights
is a precursor to any action and their protection a moral imperative.
Alan Gewirth in 86 (prof. of philosophy @ University of Chicago, Oxford University Press, “Why Rights are
Indespensible”, p. 338-340)
In Reason and Morality I have developed in considerable detail an argument for a principle that
provides a determinate ground for moral, and especially human, rights: a ground that derives from the
necessary conditions of action and successful action in general. The argument undertakes to establish
two main theses. The first is that every agent logically must accept that he has rights to freedom and
well-being, which are the generic features and necessary conditions of action and generally successful
action. (I omit here the requisite analyses of the concepts of freedom and well-being that bear on
such purposive action). The second thesis is that every agent logically must also accept that all other
actual or prospective agents have the same rights he claims for himself, so that in this way the
existence of universal and equal moral rights, and hence of human rights, must be accepted within
the whole context of action or practice.22 I also call them generic rights, because they are rights to
the generic features of action and successful action in general. From these two theses, there follows
a supreme moral principle that every agent logically must also accept. I call it the Principle of Generic
Consistency (PGC), and its main precept, addressed to every actual or prospettive agent, is: Act in
accord with the generic rights of your recipients as well as of yourself. It is this principle that grounds
the specific human rights to freedom and well-being in the spheres both of individual action and of
social institutions. For reasons of space, I must here confine myself to a brief outline of the
argument. Reduced to its barest essentials, the argument for the first main thesis is as follows.
Since freedom and well-being are the necessary conditions of action and successful action in general,
every agent must regard these conditions as necessary goods for himself, since without them he would
not be able to act for his purposes, either at all or with general chances of success. Hence, every agent
has to accept (I) 'I must have freedom and well-being.' This 'must' is practical-prescriptive in that it signifies the
agent's advocacy of his having the necessary goods of action. Now, by virtue of accepting (I), every agent
also has to accept (2) 'I have rights to freedom and well-being.' For, if he rejects (2), then, because of the
correlativity of claim-rights and strict 'oughts', he also has to reject (3) 'All other persons ought at least to
refrain from removing or interfering with my freedom and well-being.' By rejecting (3), he has to accept (4)
'Other persons may (i.e. It is permissible that other persons) remove or interfere with my freedom and wellbeing.' And by accepting (4), he also has to accept (5) 'I may not (i.e. It is permissible that I do not) have
freedom and well-being.' But (5) contradicts (I). Since every agent must accept (I), he must reject (5). And
since ( 5 ) follows from the denial of (2), every agent must reject that denial, so that he must accept (2) 'I have
rights to freedom and well-being.' This, in outline, is my argument for the first main thesis stated above.
I shall give an even briefer summary of my argument for the second main thesis, that every agent
logically must accept that all other actual or prospective agents also have rights to freedom and
well-being. This generalization is an application of the logical principle of universalizability. Since
every agent must hold that he has the generic rights because he is a prospective purposive agent, he
also logically must hold that all prospective purposive agents have the generic rights. And from this
generalization the PGC directly follows. Many questions may be and have been raised about this
argument. I have dealt with them elsewhere.23 In the present context I shall confine myself to two
observations. Firstly, if the above argument is sound, it shows that, contrary to the justificatory objection,
belief in moral, and especially human, rights is not only warranted but logically mandatory for all
actual or prospective agents because of the argument's justification or proof of the principle that
grounds the rights. Secondly, the argument establishes a decision procedure for ascertaining what moral
rights persons have, since all justified moral rights consist in one or another segment, individual or
institutional, of the rights to freedom and well-being. For example, the right to have promises to oneself kept is
an instance of a 'nonsubtractive right' to well-being, because broken promises tend -to diminish the promisees'
capabilities of successful action in the particular circumstances affected by the promise. Similarly, the right to
an education is an example of an 'additive right' to well-being, because it serves to increase one's capabilities
for successful purpose-fulfilling actions. Political and economic rights, including rights to civil liberties and to
relief of large-scale starvation, are justified on the basis of 'indirect', i.e. institutional, applications of the PGC.
Thus, as I have tried to show elsewhere, the general moral theory which has the above argument as its
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centrepiece provides determinate contents for the concepts of freedom and well-being and for the human
rights to these goods of agency. A further argument also yields criteria for resolving conflicts of rights, where
one right is overridden by another.24 Hence, a theory upholding moral human rights can avoid the appeals to
intuition which the justificatory objection held to be inevitable.
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DEONT GOOD = BEST POLICY OPTION, PREVENTS GENOCIDE
A deontological approach to international policy is imperative for the selection of the best
policy option; Utilitarianism fails to recognize the difference between intended and
accidental death and fails to recognize the value of humans, allowing genocide.
Eric Heinze in 99 (assistant prof. of polisci @ University of Oklahoma, Human Rights & Human Welfare,
“Waging War for Human Rights: Towards a Moral-Legal Theory of Humanitarian Intervention”,
http://www.du.edu/gsis/hrhw/volumes/2003/heinze-2003.pdf, p. 6-7)
Another practical implication of this understanding of humanitarian intervention has to do with its
deontological element—proscription of the intentional, malicious murder and abuse of innocents that is
instrumental to achieving an end. A deontological approach ensures that there is always an identifiable,
responsible agent against whom the use of force may be directed. This view permits intervention when
authorities knowingly and willingly cause great harm to their citizens, through for example, outright killing,
ethnic cleansing, mass expulsion, or intentional starvation. Further, to the extent that the authorities
knowingly tolerate such abuse or fail to take steps to curb it—such as Milosevic’s “toleration” of atrocities
committed by Serb paramilitaries—they are the legitimate subjects of intervention. The same could be
said for the government of Ethiopia in 1984, as Rony Brauman has portrayed it in his chapter in Hard
Choices. According to Brauman, Ethiopia’s policy of land collectivization and its irrational taxation
system—in addition to the wanton destruction of crops, confiscation of livestock, and forcible recruitment
of manpower into the army to fight a civil war—was done knowingly and maliciously, and could have been
subject to forcible intervention (Moore: 182-183). Of equal relevance for the deontological element of
humanitarian intervention are the instances of human suffering that eschew the use of force. We generally
would not consider unleashing a war against a state that failed to install a tsunami early-warning system, for
example, even if it could have afforded to do so and thousands subsequently perished. Such an instance
would be appropriate for humanitarian aid (and perhaps even legal liability) but not humanitarian
intervention as defined here. This is an important distinction that the contributors to Hard Choices fail to
make. Had this same government summarily starved or executed its own citizens to preserve their rule or
create an ethnically pure state, there would be an extremely strong case for intervention. The moral
difference lies in the perpetrator’s treatment of his victims as entirely disposable means to an end (Montaldi
1985: 137-140). It is certainly possible for governments to endeavor to achieve sinister ends by
“mismanaging” such crises, in which case they would presumably reject outside assistance, thereby
provoking suspicion toward their behavior and making the case stronger for forcible intervention. These
are critically important empirical considerations that are vital to any theory of humanitarian intervention.
Nevertheless, one can reasonably regard outright murder as morally worse than accidental death, despite
their empirical reducibility to “instances of death.” In this way, human welfare is more than simply aggregate
human rights enjoyment; it is to be treated as deserving of respect in the original Kantian sense of regarding
human beings as ends and not means.
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DEONT GOOD = INCREASES VALUE OF WORLD
The idea that rights must precede utilitarian values increases the value of humans and thus
increases the value of the world; this is necessary to give a meaning to the service of
humanity.
F. M. Kamm in 92 (Philosophy and Public Affairs, “Non-consequentialism, the person as an end-in-itself, and the
significance of status.”, p. 390)
If we are inviolable in a certain way, we are more important creatures than violable ones; such a
higher status is itself a benefit to us. Indeed, we are creatures whose interests as recipients of such
ordinary benefits as welfare are more worth serving. The world is, in a sense, a better place, as it has
more important creatures in it.3' In this sense the inviolable status (against being harmed in a
certain way) of any potential victim can be taken to be an agent-neutral value. This is a nonconsequential value. It does not follow (causally or noncausally) upon any act, but is already present in
the status that persons have. Ensuring it provides the background against which we may then seek
their welfare or pursue other values. It is not our duty to bring about the agent-neutral value, but only
to respect the constraints that express its presence. Kagan claims that the only sense in which we can
show disrespect for people is by using them in an unjustified way. Hence, if it is justified to kill one to
save five, we will not be showing disrespect for the one if we so use him. But there is another
sense of disrespect tied to the fact that we owe people more respect than animals, even though we
also should not treat animals in an unjustified way. And this other sense of disrespect is, I believe,
tied to the failure to heed the greater inviolability of persons.
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DEONT GOOD = PREVENTS GENOCIDE/TORTURE
Deontology is essential in establishing limits on the behavior of the state in order to avoid
the consideration of genocide and torture as tools of political power.
Thomas Donaldson, 1995 (Prof. of Business Ethics at Georgetown U, Ethics and International Affairs,
“International Deontology Defended: A Response to Russell Hardin”, pg. 147-154)
Of the consequentialists, I regard Hardin as the most articulate spokesperson. He combines formidable
philosophical skills with political erudition. Both talents, unfortunately, make his mistaken conclusions on
the matter of international deontology surprising. As I will show, agreeing with Hardin to banish
deontological justifications from international discussion amounts to abandoning the power of
deontology to interpret political intent and to establish hard limits on political behavior. States may
not be human individuals, but they often behave with foresight and must be accountable to certain
moral principles. Genocide and torture are not to be weighed up by states on the scale of future
consequences; rather, states simply must not engage in them. The moral language of deontology may
not be sufficient for the moral interpretation of international affairs, but it turns out to be necessary.
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A2: DEONT DISMISSES CONSEQUENCES
Deontology does not dismiss the evaluation of consequences; good consequences are merely
derived from the categorical imperative.
Thomas Donaldson, 1995 (Prof. of Business Ethics at Georgetown U, Ethics and International Affairs,
“International Deontology Defended: A Response to Russell Hardin”, pg. 147-154)
When discussing nuclear deterrence or intervention it is common to exaggerate the nonconsequential nature
of Kantianism. It is a false but all-too common myth that Kant believed that consequences were
irrelevant to the evaluation of moral action. In his practical writings Kant explicitly states that each of us
has a duty to maximize the happiness of other individuals, a statement that echoes Mill’s famous principle of
utility. But Kant’s duty to promote beneficial consequences is understood to be derived from an even
higher order principle, namely, the categorical imperative that requires all of us to act in a way that
respects the intrinsic value of other rational beings. Kant does not dismiss
consequences. He simply wants them in their proper place.
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A2: UTIL CAN SOLVE DEONT (1/3)
Trying to reconcile human rights and utilitarianism results in cultural relativism.
Heard in 1997 (Andrew, professor of political science at Simon Fraser University, The Challenges of Utilitarianism
and Relativism <http://www.sfu.ca/~aheard/417/util.html>)
Perhaps the most telling critique of attempts to reconcile utilitarianism with human rights is
that the solutions proposed may end up leading not to universal human rights but to
cultural relativism. Whether one refers to constrained utilitarianism or rule utilitarianism, the
basic premise is that certain fundamental norms are said to frame utilitarian calculations,
and these norms may be human rights. Utilitarianism is, in my view, a society-centred notion of
policy choices - in another words the calculations for Canadians can only be made by Canadians,
or for Fijians by Fijians. In order to accommodate universal human rights, one has to assert
that each society must logically deduce that human rights benefits are as essential to their
own. Thus, universalism might only be ascribed to human rights if each society recognizes
their inherent value, or if they are necessary to the functioning of a complex human society.
John Stuart Mill laid the groundwork for such a possibility, in his arguments that certain basic rights
or liberties are essential for utilitarianism to function; freedom of expression and representative
government, for example, are necessary for a society to debate and determine what the greatest
happiness for the greatest number entails. However, this position is debateable, and one could
argue that a benign sovereign may determine the greatest happiness without the trappings of
representative democracy; traditional societies and even Marxist societies in the transitional
socialist phase might be viewed in this light.
Moreover, there still remains the nagging question of what norms each society will end up
adopting as the rules that must be considered. The very real possibility exists that societies
will differ on just what benefits their citizens should enjoy in order to enhance the greatest
happiness. Notions of equality will be expressed in very different benefits and
circumstances for citizens of a non-theistic, liberal society than they will be in a traditional Islamic
or Hindu society. In the end, rule or constrained utilitarianism may simply lead one down the
path to cultural relativism, where each society determines for itself what basic norms must
be protected and what sort of benefits may or may not be traded off in determining the
greatest good for that society.
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A2: UTIL CAN SOLVE DEONT (2/3)
Cultural relativism allows for rights to be denied to repressed groups.
Heard in 1997 (Andrew, professor of political science at Simon Fraser University, The Challenges of
Utilitarianism and Relativism < http://www.sfu.ca/~aheard/417/util.html>)
Human rights face a serious challenge to their universality from cultural relativism. Since morality is
inextricably linked to the general cultural values of a society, it is very difficult to argue that the
moral standards arising from one society can be imposed on another. In its most extreme form,
cultural relativism leads to the conclusion that each culture is equally valid and the ethical
norms of any society are just as legitimate as those found in another society. Cultural
relativism, therefore, poses a serious hurdle to global human rights standards: with the
variety of political, religious, economic, and cultural values across the world, how can one
set of 'human rights' bind all societies? The challenge raised by cultural relativism
undermines the two dimensions of universalism: that all humans possess human rights,
and that all humans enjoy roughly the same benefits from those rights.
There are several aspects of the cultural relativist challenges to all humans holding human
rights. One fundamental question is whether all societies would agree on who is meant by
'humans' to which rights apply. However, different societies will draw different conclusions
about who is 'human', and thus entitled to the protection of human rights. A number of
cultures and religions have at times in their past viewed certain, or even all, outside groups
as essentially sub-human barbarians who could never enjoy the status or rights of a
member of that culture. Several societies have held that a member could lose whatever
rights they held by some act of heresy or communication with the undesirables. But the
issues of who is human or who can hold rights re-emerges in modern contexts in debates
over the right to life of a foetus, deformed newborn, unwanted female baby, a murderer,
comatose patient, and - in some societies - even those who renounce their religion.
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Cultural relativism puts rights at the complete discretion of individual states.
Ayton-Shenker in 1995 (Diana, author who has written extensively on culture and politics and worked
with the United Nations, and taught at colleges and universities in New York and Paris; The Challenge of
Human Rights and Cultural Diversity, <http://www.un.org/rights/dpi1627e.htm>)
Cultural relativism is the assertion that human values, far from being universal, vary a great
deal according to different cultural perspectives. Some would apply this relativism to the
promotion, protection, interpretation and application of human rights which could be
interpreted differently within different cultural, ethnic and religious traditions. In other words,
according to this view, human rights are culturally relative rather than universal.
Taken to its extreme, this relativism would pose a dangerous threat to the effectiveness of
international law and the international system of human rights that has been painstakingly
contructed over the decades. If cultural tradition alone governs State compliance with
international standards, then widespread disregard, abuse and violation of human rights
would be given legitimacy.
Accordingly, the promotion and protection of human rights perceived as culturally relative
would only be subject to State discretion, rather than international legal imperative. By
rejecting or disregarding their legal obligation to promote and protect universal human
rights, States advocating cultural relativism could raise their own cultural norms and
particularities above international law and standards.
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Util good – Public Policy
Utilitarianism is vital to any policymaking paradigm.
Bentley in 2000 (Kristina A., has an MA in political theory from Rhodes University and completed a PhD in the
Department of Government at the University of Manchester in 2001. From 1996–1998, Dr Bentley was a lecturer in
political theory in the Department of Political Studies and International Relations at Rhodes University. Her areas of
research interest are theories and concepts of rights, the rights of vulnerable persons, rights and multiculturalism,
and the enforceability of social and economic rights; Suggesting a “Separate” Approach to Utility and Rights:
Deontological Specification and Teleological Enforcement of Human Rights, Sapientia, September, <
http://www.abdn.ac.uk/pir/postgrad/vol1_issue3/issue3_article1.pdf>)
Firstly, utilitarianism is an impersonal doctrine leaving no room for subjective considerations such as loyalty,
personal relationships, or commitments - it assumes perfectly “free-floating” individuals. This is of course
completely inappropriate to decisions about personal morality, as “[p]eople have, and upon reflection we think they
should have, principled commitments and personal attachments of various sorts” (Goodin, 1995: 8). However, quite
the reverse may be said of the moral decisions of public officials, and indeed individuals acting in their public
capacity as citizens. Of course, in such instances these individuals are not “free-floating” but rather have a
whole raft of baggage of personal attachments, commitments, principles and prejudices. In their public
capacities, however, we think it only right and proper that they should stow that baggage as best they can ...
[because] ... [i]t is the essence of public service as such that public servants should serve the public at large.
Public servants must not play favourites (Goodin, 1995: 9).
The second vice of utilitarianism that is transformed into a virtue at the level of public policy is that it is “a
coldly calculating doctrine” and once again while this is repugnant in personal ethical matters, the opposite 6
is true of normative matters at the public level. This is because public officials have responsibilities
(voluntarily undertaken and which are thought to give rise to moral obligations) and those responsibilities
imply that they are obliged “not to let their hearts rule their heads” as “it is the height of irresponsibility to
proceed careless of the consequences” (Goodin, 1995: 9). This especially so when it is considered that the
consequences in such a case will impact on the whole society which the public official has undertaken to serve.
This relates to the third criticism of utilitarianism as a consequentialist doctrine, which considers that “the
effects of an action are everything” (Goodin, 1995: 9) and that it is outcomes which ought to dictate a
particular course of action. However, while this may run counter to the personal ethics of an individual, it seems
that this is the only way in which decisions of public policy ought to be made, as public officials cannot
possibly (nor should they) take into account all of the personal ethics and beliefs of the people affected by a
particular decision. They should however, in all instances, take heed of the possible consequences of
particular course of action.
Finally there is the criticism that “there is something necessarily crass about whatever utilitarians take as
their maximand” and consequently it is difficult for utilitarianism to take account of any “‘higher’ concerns”
(Goodin, 1995: 10-11). Once again, however, while this would “diminish private life” quite the reverse is true of the
sort of considerations relevant to public life. Public officials are obliged to inquire into the usefulness of
particular courses of action for the society taken as a whole and make their decisions accordingly.
Furthermore, “it seems transparently wrong for public officials to impose ... sacrifices upon any who refuse to
undertake them voluntarily” even though personal sacrifices are perfectly morally acceptable, and sometimes
even may be morally required in so far as personal ethics are concerned (Goodin, 1995: 11).iii
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Utilitarianism should be the deciding factor in determining what is important in public
debate.
Bentley in 2000 (Kristina A., has an MA in political theory from Rhodes University and completed a PhD in the
Department of Government at the University of Manchester in 2001. From 1996–1998, Dr Bentley was a lecturer in
political theory in the Department of Political Studies and International Relations at Rhodes University. Her areas of
research interest are theories and concepts of rights, the rights of vulnerable persons, rights and multiculturalism,
and the enforceability of social and economic rights; Suggesting a “Separate” Approach to Utility and Rights:
Deontological Specification and Teleological Enforcement of Human Rights, Sapientia, September, <
http://www.abdn.ac.uk/pir/postgrad/vol1_issue3/issue3_article1.pdf>)
In addition to the above four vices of utilitarianism which are transformed into virtues at the level of public
deliberation, Goodin argues that “the public, rather than private application of utilitarian precepts helps us
evade some of the most standard practical and practicality objections to the doctrine” (Goodin, 1995: 18- 19).
Primary among these sorts of objection is that utilitarianism cannot be implemented, as it requires us to
make impossible comparisons of utility among individuals, and of course in addition to the problem that this
is impossible to determine with any certainty, it may not even be desirable to do so. Furthermore, even where
utilitarianism proves indeterminate, it sets the terms of ... public debate. It tells us what sorts of
considerations ought to weigh with us, often while allowing that how heavily each of them actually weighs is
legitimately open to dispute. (Goodin, 1995: 21).
Any legitimate government has to follow the general will by acting in the public goodgovernment policy must be utilitarian
Hill in 1998 (R.A., Ph.D, Department of Anthropology, Virginia State University, Government,
Justice and Human Rights, < http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Poli/PoliHill.htm>)
Rousseau writes that a "legitimate" government should obey the general will. The formation of laws,
administration of laws, and dispensation of justice in the courts should all conform to this general will. The
wills of subsections of the populace are only particular; one does not reach the general will until one takes into
account the will of the largest possible group (the more inclusive the group the more just the will): in the case of
citizens of a country the general will is made up of the combined will of all the citizenry. (1) Rousseau answers the
question, "How does one know that one is following the general will?" by writing that the most general will is
always aligned with the public interest, which is characterized by fairness. If the rulers want to follow the
general will, they have only to act justly in order to accomplish it (1987, p. 371). Again justice is introduced.
Rousseau maintains that a legitimate government follows the general will, whose earmark is justice. The
social compact, which establishes this just government, ensures that all citizens are equitably and impartially
treated - no actions guided by the general will are individual or unfair. At such time that the general will, the
collective will of the citizenry, should be overruled by the "executor of the laws," the government ceases to
exist (1955, p. 64). Rousseau, then, feels that legitimate government is tied very closely to justice: the legitimate
government is guided by the general will, which is just; when the government is no longer guided by the just general
will, it is no longer legitimate. Justice is introduced into government as a quality of the general will and of the
actions resulting therefrom. "What is most necessary, and perhaps most difficult, in government, is rigid integrity in
doing strict justice to all..." (1987, p. 375).
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Util good – Public Policy
Utilitarians are supporters of legal and political rights because of the effectiveness in practice
Ian Montgomerie, 2000. (Software Engineer, A Utilitarian FAQ, July 1, 2000,
http://www.ianmontgomerie.com/manifesto/utilitarianfaq.html#WHYACCEPT)
The real reason for "our commitment to rights" (the commitment of modern Westerners at any rate - rights were
not always such a strong idea) is that they have been prescriptively useful. Legal and political rights in the real
world have had very positive results. Unfortunately, rights have often been supported on the grounds that they are
inherently right in themselves. Their success in the real world has tended to reinforce that perspective, even
though people would not have found it very appealing if the concept made everyone worse off. Humans have a
great history of taking concepts that are prescriptively useful, and coming to believe that those concepts are
inherently right (rather than useful because they promote welfare). This may be, in part, because humans tend to
believe in something more strongly if they think it is inherently right, than if they think it is merely useful in practice.
There is, in fact, a natural tendency among many people to believe that whatever conventional wisdom holds to
be good is good because of some inherent correctness, rather than because it is "merely" very useful in
promoting the welfare of people.
Utilitarians tend to be strong supporters of legal and political rights. This is because, rather than wasting
time trying to determine which rights are to be preferred based on their inherent merits, Utilitarians recognize that
many rights are very effective at promoting welfare. In the real world, things like crime, abuse of power, and
intolerance are very real problems and legally protected rights are effective and efficient safeguards against them.
It is important to recognize that those who criticize Utilitarianism for not having a sufficient regard for rights are
either doing so on entirely theoretical grounds, or are missing how useful rights are in practice. Rights are
certainly not so lacking in justification that they cannot stand on evidence, but must appeal to being moral
requirements in themselves.
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Util good – Values life
Utilitarians do not believe that people come with arbitrary structures- they believe that each person acts
and thinks alike, and all have similar needs
Ian Montgomerie, 2000. (Software Engineer, A Utilitarian FAQ, July 1, 2000,
http://www.ianmontgomerie.com/manifesto/utilitarianfaq.html#WHYACCEPT)
This particular objection is often raised from the perspective of economic theory. Various theoretical results based
on certain preference structures suggest that it can be quite difficult to compare arbitrary sorts of preferences.
Theorists investigating such issues are looking for a rigorous and exact comparison between the full preferences
of different individuals. Finding the "weighting" of preferences so that one person's preferences can be
quantitatively compared to those of another is a daunting task. It's not insoluble in theory, but it's certainly not the
kind of thing that you would want to try in practice. Fortunately for Utilitarianism, there is no need to try it in
practice. Real humans do not come with arbitrary structures of preferences, we come with goals and desires that
are reliably similar in important ways. We are all part of the same species, with very similar brains and thus similar
minds. Our differences are outweighed by our similarities.
Real preferences can often be compared in a sensible, straightforward manner. The basics such as food,
shelter, and good health, for example, are of similar importance to most people. We can be confident that the
effect of factors such as these on the welfare of different people is substantial, and similar. We can even safely
assume that people benefit to a similar extent from money, at least up to a reasonable amount which allows
comfortable living. This is not to say that all people actually do benefit equally. The point is that the benefits to
different people are similar enough that we can assume they are the same, and not be too far off. Not all goods
can be compared in such a way, and that is also important. We have no reasonable basis to compare how much
welfare benefit different people gain from activities such as going to the opera (or a rock concert), walking in a
pristine forest, or living in a society which promotes their religious beliefs. Although we might be able to establish
the benefits of these to specific individuals, given extensive testing, it is not practically possible to compare them
across the population in general.
The fact that welfare benefits for different people can be compared easily for some goods, but not for others, has
important policy implications for Utilitarians. A government can reliably estimate the welfare benefits of such
basics as food, shelter, health, and a minimal income. This gives it an effective basis on which to design policies
to supply, regulate, or redistribute such goods. It cannot effectively redistribute arbitrary goods, however, because
there is too much room for people to misrepresent their interests. If the government cannot reasonably know what
the welfare benefits of a good are except by asking, and the people it asks are not reliable because they are
promoting their own interests, that will not lead to effective redistribution of the good. These practical concerns
indicate that governments should focus on redistributing basic goods and money, rather than on trying to manage
the distribution of a wide variety of goods. In fact, the government should support policies such as free speech,
and free choice in the realm of hard-to-compare goods. Free speech allows accurate information about the
welfare benefits of goods to be distributed. Free choice allows consumers to promote their own interests when it
comes to the many goods which cannot be effectively redistributed.
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"Utility" is nothing more than a measurement of a person's well-being. Utilitarians regard people as
valuable and important.
Ian Montgomerie, 2000. (Software Engineer, A Utilitarian FAQ, July 1, 2000,
http://www.ianmontgomerie.com/manifesto/utilitarianfaq.html#WHYACCEPT)
Many people focus on the Utilitarian credo to "maximize utility", an overall quantity, and come to the impression
that Utilitarians think utility is a "thing" which is important independently of people. Utilitarianism has been
accused of treating people as "vessels of utility", as if they were only important because they contained utility. A
bit of reflection quickly shows the error of this criticism. "Utility", or welfare, is nothing more than a measurement
of a person's well-being. When Utilitarians talk of utility, this is a conceptual shorthand for the well-being of people
- their satisfaction of preferences, achievement of goals, and so on. Utility is the exact opposite of a concept
valuable "in itself", independent of individual people - it is a measure of what is good for individual people. Utility is
valuable precisely because it is not independent of the well-being of people, it is that very well-being. It can
sometimes be easy to forget this for people not used to using an abstract concept to represent a complex reality.
Regardless of the fact that Utilitarians talk of utility in abstract terms, as a single thing, utility is not a thing. It is a
concept referring to the well-being of all. People are not "vessels of utility", worthwhile only because they possess
utility. Utility is a measure of the good of people, who are what Utilitarianism regards as valuable and important.
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Util good – Best Justice
Morality is not based on consequences, but on the concept of justice which is apart of utility
Eugene Lee in 2000. (University Scholars Program, National University of Singapore, An Introduction to Utilitarianism. 6
November 2000. http://www.victorianweb.org/ philosophy/utilitarianism.html)
Critics of utilitarianism argue that unlike the suppositions of the utilitarians, morality is not based on consequences of
actions. Instead, it is based on the fundamental concept of justice. Mill sees the concept of justice as a case for
utilitarianism. Thus, he uses the concept of justice, explained in terms of utility, to address the main argument against
utilitarianism. Mill offers two counter arguments. First, he argues that social utility governs all moral elements in the
notion of justice. The two essential elements in the notion of justice are: punishment, and the violation of another's
rights. Punishment results from a combination of revenge and collective social sympathy. As a single entity, revenge
has no moral component, and collective social sympathy is equal to social utility. Violation of rights is also derived
from utility, as rights are claims that one has on society to protect us. Thus, social utility is the only reason society should
protect us. Consequently, both elements of justice are based on utility. Mill's second argument is that if justice were
foundational, then justice would not be ambiguous. According to Mill, there are disputes in the notion of justice when
examining theories of punishment, fair distribution of wealth, and fair taxation. Only by appealing to utility can these
disputes be resolved. Mill concludes that justice is a genuine concept, but it must be seen as based on utility.
Utilitarianism promotes justice and exactly as far as its benefits justify.
Ian Montgomerie, 2000. (Software Engineer, A Utilitarian FAQ, July 1, 2000,
http://www.ianmontgomerie.com/manifesto/utilitarianfaq.html#WHYACCEPT)
There are two senses in which "justice" can be used. The first is that of a system which ensures results that are
morally good and "deserved" according to ethical theory. The second is that of a system which enforces law
effectively in practice. In the sense of ethical theory, Utilitarians argue that utility maximization provides the
optimal tradeoff between the values of different people. A concept of what people "deserve" which is not derived
from the values of the people requires placing an objective, inherent value in some concept of justice. That would
be fundamentally contrary to the basis of Utilitarianism, and Utilitarians argue that there is no good reason to
claim that some form of justice is inherently good independently of the welfare of people. Such a concept of
justice would require that, under some circumstances, justice should be promoted even if it was not in fact what
anyone involved wants. People do seem to feel that justice should be considered valuable in itself, but this is
because justice has tended to be practically useful. The practical usefulness of justice means that beliefs that it is
a good thing thrive, since they tend to lead to outcomes which further their spread. The prevalence of modern
belief in justice should be understood not as evidence that justice is good in itself, but as evidence that belief in
justice has produced good results in practice. Utilitarianism establishes why justice is a good thing (it often
promotes welfare), and then promotes it exactly as far as its benefits justify.
Promoting justice is an effective way of maximizing utility
Ian Montgomerie, 2000. (Software Engineer, A Utilitarian FAQ, July 1, 2000,
http://www.ianmontgomerie.com/manifesto/utilitarianfaq.html#WHYACCEPT)
Utilitarianism also indicates that justice is useful in practice, to deter and rectify various forms of undesirable,
welfare-reducing behavior. Utilitarianism leads to a strong commitment to an effective justice system, and argues
that promoting justice in the real world is an effective way of maximizing utility. This is especially true because it is
not practically feasible to attempt to directly apply Utilitarian principles to every decision. The social order
recommended by Utilitarianism must be able to deal effectively with a non-Utilitarian majority, and with every
failure and abuse to which humanity will inevitably subject it. A consistently enforced and fair set of laws and
system of government are effective at maximizing utility under such circumstances. Utilitarians often suggest a
sort of justice system that many people find quite attractive, and which does not differ radically from that present
in modern society. Utilitarianism does not recommend sacrificing the real world justice system to hopes that
individuals will come up with more expedient behavior on their own. While perfect Utilitarians would not need to
bother with a justice system, actual people will often respond to a highly permissive system by abusing it for
personal gain.
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Utilitarianism doesn’t deny the importance of motives for action-immoral behaviors will be condemned
because they are associated with negative consequences
Ian Montgomerie, 2000. (Software Engineer, A Utilitarian FAQ, July 1, 2000,
http://www.ianmontgomerie.com/manifesto/utilitarianfaq.html#WHYACCEPT)
There are two senses in which the motive behind an action can be important - theoretical and practical.
Utilitarianism recognizes that motivations have great practical importance. Even if the direct effects of two actions
are the same, the motivations behind it can make a great deal of difference in how we should respond to the
action. In theory, however, absolutely all effects of an action can be considered. Two acts which have the same
consequences for welfare cannot be distinguished as better or worse than each other, because all of their direct
and indirect results taken together are equivalent. When Utilitarian theory says that a "bad" motivation is not
morally inferior to a "good" motivation, it is necessarily because the "bad" motivation does not produce any
consequences whatsoever that would make it more harmful.
Utilitarians recognize that motives are important in practice because they are important to future behavior. Future
behavior is an indirect and difficult to predict consequence of the present. This means that if a given motivation is
known to be a good predictor of future undesirable behavior, that knowledge should be taken advantage of. When
that motivation is seen in action, it provides an excellent opportunity to criticize and discourage it. Such an
opportunity may often outweigh the importance of the immediate consequences of the action, even if they are
positive. As an example, if someone publicly helps another only because they want to grab the spotlight for
political advantage, the opportunity to condemn such a negative motivation may outweigh the short term benefits
of the act. It may be beneficial to discourage using others for political advantage in general, even if the
consequences of some such actions happen to be positive. In reality we cannot always be certain about specific
consequences, but we can know that certain motivations are usually associated with negative consequences.
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Utilitarianism can preserve morality because immoral actions have bad consequences
Bentley in 2000 (Kristina A., has an MA in political theory from Rhodes University and completed a PhD in the Department of
Government at the University of Manchester in 2001. From 1996–1998, Dr Bentley was a lecturer in political theory in the Department of
Political Studies and International Relations at Rhodes University. Her areas of research interest are theories and concepts of rights, the rights of
vulnerable persons, rights and multiculturalism, and the enforceability of social and economic rights; Suggesting a “Separate” Approach
to Utility and Rights: Deontological Specification and Teleological Enforcement of Human Rights, Sapientia,
September, < http://www.abdn.ac.uk/pir/postgrad/vol1_issue3/issue3_article1.pdf>)
Secondly, it is objected that utilitarianism might give rise to policies that are morally outrageous (examples
which Goodin uses are feeding Christians to lions, distributing the body parts of one person among many others and
hanging an innocent person to appease a mob), but of course if utilitarianism is an exclusively public philosophy,
it “spares us the burdens associated with maximising at the margins in each and every case” (Goodin, 1995:
22). This is the case because public policies by their very nature have to be durable, and a policy which
allowed any of the above things to occur would necessarily be an unstable one, because of the fear it would
engender. The worry over who is to be next to be fed to the lions, forced to donate their organs, or wrongly
executed would quickly undermine the utility of such a policy and lead to its replacement. Consequently
“[u]tilitarianism, employed as a public philosophy, must by its nature adopt institutions and practices and
policies suited to recurring situations and standard individuals” (Goodin, 1995: 23).
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ALL ACTIONS ARE DISCRIMINATED BY THEIR OUTCOME AS BEING GOOD OR BAD ACTIONS.
THE ULTIMATE GOAL IS TO ACHIEVE UTILITY – THE ULTIMATE HAPPINESS.
Mill, 1863. (John Stuart, Lord Rector of University of St. Andrews, “Utalitarianism.”)
It is true that similar confusion and uncertainty, and in some cases similar discordance, exist respecting the first
principles of all the sciences, not excepting that which is deemed the most certain of them, mathematics; without
much impairing, generally indeed without impairing at all, the trustworthiness of the conclusions of those sciences.
An apparent anomaly, the explanation of which is, that the detailed doctrines of a science are not usually deduced
from, nor depend for their evidence upon, what are called its first principles. Were it not so, there would be no
science more precarious, or whose conclusions were more insufficiently made out, than algebra; which derives none
of its certainty from what are commonly taught to learners as its elements, since these, as laid down by some of its
most eminent teachers, are as full of fictions as English law, and of mysteries as theology. The truths which are
ultimately accepted as the first principles of a science, are really the last results of metaphysical analysis, practised
on the elementary notions with which the science is conversant; and their relation to the science is not that of
foundations to an edifice, but of roots to a tree, which may perform their office equally well though they be never
dug down to and exposed to light. But though in science the particular truths precede the general theory, the contrary
might be expected to be the case with a practical art, such as morals or legislation. All action is for the sake of some
end, and rules of action, it seems natural to suppose, must take their whole character and colour from the end to
which they are subservient. When we engage in a pursuit, a clear and precise conception of what we are pursuing
would seem to be the first thing we need, instead of the last we are to look forward to. A test of right and wrong
must be the means, one would think, of ascertaining what is right or wrong, and not a consequence of having already
ascertained it.
The difficulty is not avoided by having recourse to the popular theory of a natural faculty, a sense or instinct,
informing us of right and wrong. For — besides that the existence of such — a moral instinct is itself one of the
matters in dispute — those believers in it who have any pretensions to philosophy, have been obliged to abandon the
idea that it discerns what is right or wrong in the particular case in hand, as our other senses discern the sight or
sound actually present. Our moral faculty, according to all those of its interpreters who are entitled to the name of
thinkers, supplies us only with the general principles of moral judgments; it is a branch of our reason, not of our
sensitive faculty; and must be looked to for the abstract doctrines of morality, not for perception of it in the concrete.
The intuitive, no less than what may be termed the inductive, school of ethics, insists on the necessity of general
laws. They both agree that the morality of an individual action is not a question of direct perception, but of the
application of a law to an individual case. They recognise also, to a great extent, the same moral laws; but differ as
to their evidence, and the source from which they derive their authority. According to the one opinion, the principles
of morals are evident a priori, requiring nothing to command assent, except that the meaning of the terms be
understood. According to the other doctrine, right and wrong, as well as truth and falsehood, are questions of
observation and experience. But both hold equally that morality must be deduced from principles; and the intuitive
school affirm as strongly as the inductive, that there is a science of morals. Yet they seldom attempt to make out a
list of the a priori principles which are to serve as the premises of the science; still more rarely do they make any
effort to reduce those various principles to one first principle, or common ground of obligation. They either assume
the ordinary precepts of morals as of a priori authority, or they lay down as the common groundwork of those
maxims, some generality much less obviously authoritative than the maxims themselves, and which has never
succeeded in gaining popular acceptance. Yet to support their pretensions there ought either to be some one
fundamental principle or law, at the root of all morality, or if there be several, there should be a determinate order of
precedence among them; and the one principle, or the rule for deciding between the various principles when they
conflict, ought to be self-evident.
To inquire how far the bad effects of this deficiency have been mitigated in practice, or to what extent the moral
beliefs of mankind have been vitiated or made uncertain by the absence of any distinct recognition of an ultimate
standard, would imply a complete survey and criticism, of past and present ethical doctrine. It would, however, be
easy to show that whatever steadiness or consistency these moral beliefs have, attained, has been mainly due to the
tacit influence of a standard not recognised. Although the non-existence of an acknowledged first principle has made
ethics not so much a guide as a consecration of men's actual sentiments, still, as men's sentiments, both of favour
and of aversion, are greatly influenced by what they suppose to be the effects of things upon their happiness, the
principle of utility, or as Bentham latterly called it, the greatest happiness principle, has had a large share in forming
the moral doctrines even of those who most scornfully reject its authority. Nor is there any school of thought which
refuses to admit that the influence of actions on happiness is a most material and even predominant consideration in
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many of the details of morals, however unwilling to acknowledge it as the fundamental principle of morality, and
the source of moral obligation. I might go much further, and say that to all those a priori moralists who deem it
necessary to argue at all, utilitarian arguments are indispensable. It is not my present purpose to criticise these
thinkers; but I cannot help referring, for illustration, to a systematic treatise by one of the most illustrious of them,
the Metaphysics of Ethics, by Kant. This remarkable man, whose system of thought will long remain one of the
landmarks in the history of philosophical speculation, does, in the treatise in question, lay down a universal first
principle as the origin and ground of moral obligation; it is this: "So act, that the rule on which thou actest would
admit of being adopted as a law by all rational beings." But when he begins to deduce from this precept any of the
actual duties of morality, he fails, almost grotesquely, to show that there would be any contradiction, any logical
(not to say physical) impossibility, in the adoption by all rational beings of the most outrageously immoral rules of
conduct. All he shows is that the consequences of their universal adoption would be such as no one would choose to
incur.
On the present occasion, I shall, without further discussion of the other theories, attempt to contribute something
towards the understanding and appreciation of the Utilitarian or Happiness theory, and towards such proof as it is
susceptible of. It is evident that this cannot be proof in the ordinary and popular meaning of the term. Questions of
ultimate ends are not amenable to direct proof. Whatever can be proved to be good, must be so by being shown to be
a means to something admitted to be good without proof. The medical art is proved to be good by its conducing to
health; but how is it possible to prove that health is good? The art of music is good, for the reason, among others,
that it produces pleasure; but what proof is it possible to give that pleasure is good? If, then, it is asserted that there
is a comprehensive formula, including all things which are in themselves good, and that whatever else is good, is not
so as an end, but as a mean, the formula may be accepted or rejected, but is not a subject of what is commonly
understood by proof. We are not, however, to infer that its acceptance or rejection must depend on blind impulse, or
arbitrary choice. There is a larger meaning of the word proof, in which this question is as amenable to it as any other
of the disputed questions of philosophy. The subject is within the cognisance of the rational faculty; and neither does
that faculty deal with it solely in the way of intuition. Considerations may be presented capable of determining the
intellect either to give or withhold its assent to the doctrine; and this is equivalent to proof.
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Util good – Solves cultural relativism
Utilitarianism does not abide by “moral intuitions” because morality varies across societies, time,
and individuals- Utilitarianism is a normative ideal that does not base its philosophy on ethical
intuition
Ian Montgomerie, 2000. (Software Engineer, A Utilitarian FAQ, July 1, 2000,
http://www.ianmontgomerie.com/manifesto/utilitarianfaq.html#WHYACCEPT)
The most obvious argument against "our moral intuitions" (and that is the exact phrase used by countless
philosophers), is that they are not "ours". Popular conceptions of morality vary dramatically across
societies, across time, and between individuals. There are some underlying common features, but what is
or is not morally intuitive varies dramatically according to who you ask. When someone talks about "moral
intuition", they are probably speaking for their own moral intuition, but regardless of what they think they
are probably not speaking for the majority of humanity across the ages. One thing about a normative ideal
is that it is consistent - its nature does not depend on who you are, where you live, or what you were
raised to believe. Most arguments from moral intuition implicitly assert that the arguer's moral intuitions
are either universal, or are somehow superior to the differing intuitions of others, but they have no basis
to support either of those claims. Trying to build an objective, normative ethical philosophy on a
foundation of subjective intuition is not productive.
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Util good – solves equality
Utilitarianism is concerned with maximizing the overall welfare of people and equitable distribution of
wealth
Ian Montgomerie, 2000. (Software Engineer, A Utilitarian FAQ, July 1, 2000,
http://www.ianmontgomerie.com/manifesto/utilitarianfaq.html#WHYACCEPT)
Utilitarianism in practice has fairly significant egalitarian implications, because a very uneven
distribution of resources is unlikely to be utility-maximizing. For more information on this, see the question
"Does Utilitarianism favor the redistribution of wealth?" in this FAQ. Utilitarianism is concerned with
maximizing the overall welfare of people, and a reasonably equitable distribution of wealth appears to be
a good way of doing this in practice. It is certainly true, however, that Utilitarianism will promote inequality
when doing so is utility maximizing. To promote equality at the expense of utility is to say that equality is
in itself inherently good, and that in some circumstances it is permissible to increase equality even when
that is not what the people themselves value. The Utilitarian response to this criticism is that, while people
often feel a concern for equality in itself, this is because that has become a part of the prescriptive
morality of modern cultures. Equality is usually beneficial in practice, and so beliefs that equality is a good
thing have thrived. The prevalence of modern belief in equality should be understood not as evidence that
equality is good in itself, but as evidence that belief in equality has produced good results in practice.
Utilitarianism establishes why equality is a good thing (it often promotes welfare), and then promotes it
exactly as far as its benefits justify.
It should be noted that the people who criticize Utilitarianism for not promoting equality usually
place much more importance on equality than the average person. Many of the modern Egalitarian
philosophers who criticize Utilitarianism for being insufficiently egalitarian believe that welfare should be
sacrificed to equality in fairly dramatic ways. A school of thought started by John Rawls, for example,
believes that inequality is only permissible when it increases the welfare of the least well off member of
society. Such a philosophy argues that it is better to have a society where everyone is poor, than to have
a society where a few are very poor but most are very well off. Most people do not agree with such ideas.
Philosophies which would tend to produce policies more egalitarian than Utilitarian policies tend to call for
strategies that would produce very high equality at a significant cost in wealth. One of the hallmarks of
Utilitarianism is that it sanctions any effective method for welfare maximization. This means that
Utilitarianism is compatible with using a highly productive market economy to generate wealth, and then
redistributing it in an efficient and effective manner. Highly egalitarian philosophies other than
Utilitarianism often specify rather extreme methods of how equality is to be achieved, such as the
compensatory resource distribution of Rawls or the formation of cooperatives under Marxism. These are
often not very compatible with market mechanisms, and thus would have substantial problems of
inefficiency.
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Util good – Scientifically backed
Ethics are irrelevant, our theory is backed by scientific data
Ian Montgomerie, 2000. (Software Engineer, A Utilitarian FAQ, July 1, 2000,
http://www.ianmontgomerie.com/manifesto/utilitarianfaq.html#WHYACCEPT)
The most devastating criticism of intuition comes from science, not from philosophy. Philosophy tends to view
moral intuitions as some sort of fundamental evidence that constitutes morality, indicating what is right and good
for humans to do. In reality, however, such intuitions are the product of biological and cultural evolution.
Whenever a certain mental trait granted a survival advantage to those possessing it, that trait became more
common. Whenever a certain belief granted a competitive advantage to those believing it, that belief spread. This
has long been obvious in general, but recently the specifics are becoming equally obvious. Time and again,
scientists in fields from evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology to psychology and economics keep
discovering that human behavioral tendencies and cultural norms correspond to the predictions of evolutionary
selection. Our moral intuitions are prescriptive - but not in any moral sense. They prescribe behaviors which
promote fitness, in the sense of "survival of the fittest". They do so precisely because they are the result of a
process of evolutionary selection (biologically, and culturally) which gave the advantage to intuitions which
promoted fitness. The unsettling truth is that the legacy of moral intuition that history has left us cannot conform to
any moral ideal which is not equivalent to that which, in practice, best promotes its own survival. Humans have
the capabilities of general purpose reasoning which enable us to break from the tyranny of our evolutionary
legacy, but only if we choose to use it effectively. In the modern world, reason has shown the power to thrive as
never before, serving to promote ideas based on their truth rather than their ability to ensure their own survival.
Utilitarianism applies this power to morality, allowing us to discover what is right, rather than what idea of right is
most selected for. To make that discovery, we must be entirely willing to reject our intuitions. Indeed, we have
good reason to - evolution selects for norms, tendencies, and other determinants of intuition so long as they work
well in most situations. Human intuitions are expected to break down in uncommon situations, and to sometimes
contradict each other, because this is part and parcel of "bounded rationality" - using the cheapest, most effective
decision strategies in the real world. Unlike a proper normative standard, low level human reasoning is not
rationally consistent because that is a waste of resources for everyday reasoning.
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Util good – Universially applicative
Utilitarianism provides an ethical theory that applies to every situation in a well defined
manner
Ian Montgomerie, 2000. (Software Engineer, A Utilitarian FAQ, July 1, 2000,
http://www.ianmontgomerie.com/manifesto/utilitarianfaq.html#WHYACCEPT)
A third reason to support Utilitarianism is because of its strong support. The Utilitarian approach to morality can
actually be derived from a small set of axioms, such as Bayesian reasoning and Pareto Optimality. These are
technical ideas that not everybody accepts, but Utilitarians can point to a small set of reasonable founding
assumptions and say "if you accept these, then our philosophy provably follows from them". Because of the power
of the concepts it is founded on, Utilitarianism provides an ethical theory that applies to every situation in a well
defined manner. Utilitarianism is not easy to apply in practice, but when one gets down to it other philosophies are
not either. In fact, most non-Utilitarian philosophies can't even be consistently applied in theory. Philosophies based
on the idea of natural rights, for example, have never managed to come up with a complete specification of what to
do when different rights conflict with each other. They give some guidance about what to do in relatively ordinary
situations, but not how to resolve every possible conflict. Utilitarian theory can provide an answer in any situation,
so that we only have to worry about the practical problems that come from applying the ethical theory.
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Consequentialism good – Weigh benefits/consequences
The duties proclaimed by the affirmative are accommodated by the consequentialist framework; it is simply
recognized that these duties exist due to their benefits to society, and must thus be weighed against other
concerns consequentially.
Jeffrey Lipshaw in 05 (adjunct prof. @ Indiana University School of Law, 36 Cumberland Law Review 321,
“DUTY AND CONSEQUENCE: A NON-CONFLATING THEORY OF PROMISE AND CONTRACT”, ln)
The source of our normative judgments about things like opportunism requires careful consideration. Modern
philosophical consequentialism (of which utilitarianism and welfare economics [*333] are subsets) is properly
traced back to Hume, who clearly considered opportunism to be at the core of human nature and would not be the
least surprised that moral notions had grown up around it. Indeed, according to Hume, the obligation of promising,
apart from any legal consideration, is one "of those three laws [the others being the stability of possession, and its
transference by consent], that the peace and security of human society entirely depend; nor is there any possibility of
establishing a good correspondence among men, where they are neglected." 40 Hume's view of the obligation of
promise, much less contract, is wholly non-deontological. The obligation of promise is not natural (i.e., to will an
obligation to another contravenes one's natural self-interest). But over time, it becomes apparent that the mere
stability of possession and its transference by consent is not enough to ensure harmony. Hence, "promises have no
natural obligation, and are mere artificial contrivances for the convenience and advantage of society." 41 Hume
demonstrates this by the example of a promise extracted by force or duress: A man, dangerously wounded, who
promises a competent sum to a surgeon to cure him, wou'd certainly be bound to performance; tho' the case be not so
much different from that of one, who promises a sum to a robber, as to produce so great a difference in our
sentiments of morality, if these sentiments were not built entirely on public interest and convenience. 42 The
acknowledged mutual benefit of the honoring of promises--a sort of ritual incantation of a particular set of words,
signs, or symbols--produces a "sentiment of morals that concurs with interest, and becomes a new obligation upon
mankind." 43 Note, moreover, that this is apart from any legal consequence: "After these signs are instituted,
whoever uses them is immediately bound by his interest to execute his engagements, and must never expect to be
trusted any more, if he refuse to perform what he promised." 44 Hence, opportunism is an issue that arises in
connection with the moral issue of promise before it ever becomes conflated with the legal act of contract. It is
therefore hardly a new insight that non-contractual (as well as contractual) obligations can be explained empirically
and [*334] consequentially and without resort to deontology. Eric Posner's thesis of social norms, that reputation is
a commodity to maximize one's rational self-interest, is Hume's thesis merely restated in the modern lingo of law
and economics. What Posner's work presupposes (which Hume, to his credit, does not) is the source of his
normative judgment about utility. 45
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Consequentialism good – Evaluating Catastrophic Consequences
When catastrophic consequences are being weighed with rights, the only moral option is to adopt a
consequentialist framework.
Tim Stelzig in 98 (prof. of philosophy @ West Virginia University, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Vol.
146, No. 3, “Deontology, Governmental Action, and the Distributive Exemption: How the Trolley Problem Shapes
the Relationship Between Rights and Policy”, March, p. 902-903)
Yet, as Blackstone also realizes, the "local or occasional necessities of the state" sometimes demand that rights
be "modified, narrowed, or enlarged."Bluntly put, sometimes the public good wins out. Rights clearly must
give way in catastrophic cases, where harms of colossal proportion will be suffered unless some right is
violated. For example, if stopping a terrorist from launching a salvo of nuclear missiles against China required
killing several innocent hostages, it would be undeniably" morally permissible-though nevertheless unfortunateto sacrifice the hostages for the greater good. Even a healthy respect for the hostages' rights cannot suffer
consequences of such magnitude. Catastrophic cases" do not fundamentally challenge the notion that rights
protect us from being sacrificed for the public good. Such cases merely reveal that rights have thresholds."
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Consequentialism good – Solves morality
Consequentialist decision making is the moral imperative; any other form of evaluation constitutes a moral
evasion, all morals that do not coincide with the theory are corrupt, and the theory respects the value of the
individual.
Kai Nielsen in 72 (prof. emeritus of philosophy @ University of Calgary, Ethics, Volume 82, “Against Moral
Conservatism”, p. 229-230)
Alan Donagan, arguing rather as Anscombe argues, maintains that "to use any innocent man ill for the sake of some
public good is directly to degrade him to being a mere means" and to do this is of course to violate a principle
essential to morality, that is, that human beings should never merely be treated as means but should be treated as
ends in themselves (as persons worthy of respect).ll But, as my above remarks show, it need not be the case, and in
the above situation it is not the case, that in killing such an innocent man we are treating him merely as a means. The
action is universalizable, all alternative actions which would save his life are duly considered, the blasting out is
.done only as a last and desperate resort with the minimum of harshness and indifference to his suffering and the
like. It indeed sounds ironical to talk this way, given what is done to him. But if such a terrible situation were to
arise, there would always be more or less humane ways of going about one's grim task. And in acting in the more
humane ways toward the fat man, as we do what we must do and would have done to ourselves were the roles
reversed, we show a respect for his person.12 In so treating the fat man-not just to further the public good but to
prevent the certain death of a whole group of people (that is to prevent an even greater evil than his being killed in
this way)-the claims of justice are not overidden either, for each individual involved, if he is reasoning correctly,
should realize that if he were so stuck rather than the fat man, he should in such situations be blasted out. Thus, there
is no question of being unfair. Surely we must choose between evils here, but is there anything more reasonable,
more morally appropriate, than choosing the lesser evil when doing or allowing some evil cannot be avoided? That
is, where there is no avoiding both and where our actions can determine whether a greater or lesser evil obtains,
should we not plainly always opt for the lesser evil? And is it not obviously a greater evil that all those other
innocent people should suffer and die than that the fat man should suffer and die? Blowing up the fat man is indeed
monstrous. But letting him remain stuck while the whole group drowns is still more monstrous. The consequentialist
is on strong moral ground here, and, if his reflective moral convictions do not square either with certain unrehearsed
or with certain reflective particular moral convictions of human beings, so much the worse for such commonsense
moral convictions. One could even usefully and relevantly adapt here-though for a quite different purpoge-an
argument of Donagan's. Consequentialism of the kind I have been arguing for provides so persuasive "a theoretical
basis for common morality that when it contradicts some moral intuition, it is natural to suspect that intuition, not
theory, is corrupt." Given the comprehensiveness, plausibility, and overall rationality of consequentialism, it is not
unreasonable to override even a deeply felt moral conviction if it does not square with such a theory, though, if it
made no sense or overrode the bulk of or even a great many of our considered moral convictions, that would be
another matter indeed. Anticonsequentialists often point to the inhumanity of people who will sanction such killing
of the innocent, but cannot the compliment be returned by speaking of the even greater inhumanity, conjoined with
evasiveness, of those who will allow even more death and far greater misery and then excuse themselves on the
ground that they did not intend the death and misery but merely forbore to prevent it? In such a context, such
reasoning and such forbearing to prevent seems to me to constitute a moral evasion. I say it is evasive because rather
than steeling himself to do what in normal circumstances would be a horrible and vile act but in this circumstance is
a harsh moral necessity, he allows, when he has the power to prevent it, a situation which is still many times worse.
He tries to keep his 'moral purity' and avoid 'dirty hands' at the price of utter moral failure and what Kierkegaard
called 'doublemindedness.' It is understandable that people should act in this morally evasive way but this does not
make it right.
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Consequentialism good – Solves morality
Only consequentialist thought can explain moral reasoning, which is necessary for any application of moral
principles.
Walter Sinnot-Armstrong in 92 (prof. of philosophy @ Yale University, Philosophical Perspectives, 6, Ethics, “An
Argument for Consequentialism”, p.398)
The most common way to choose among moral theories is to test how well they cohere with our intuitions or
considered judgments about what is morally, right and wrong, about the nature or ideal of a person, and about the
purpose(s) of morality.' Another kind of intuition is often overlooked. We also have intuitions about principles of
practical and moral reasoning, such as those captured by deontic logic. In order to be principles of reasoning other
than substance, these principles must be consistent with all substantive moral theories. But consistency is not
enough. We want the deeper kind of coherence that comes only with explanation. A moral theory that simply reports
the principles behind common moral reasoning but cannot explain why these principles are so common or so
plausible is inferior in this respect to another moral theory which not only includes the principles but also explains
why they are true. Why is the explanatory theory better? Because we want a moral theory to help us understand
moral reasoning, and such understanding is gained only when our principles are explained. Without such
understanding, our intuitions do not seem justified, and we cannot know whether or how to extend our principles to
new situations. These are reasons to prefer a moral theory that explains our principles of moral reasoning. This
preference for explanation provides a new method for choosing among competing moral theories. I will illustrate
and apply this method in this paper. First, I will argue that a certain principle holds for reasons for action in general
and for moral reasons in particular. Next, I will argue that this principle of moral reasoning cannot be explained by
deontological moral theories or by traditional forms of consequentialism. Finally, I will outline a new kind of
consequentialism that provides a natural explanation of this principle of moral reasoning. Its explanatory power is a
reason to prefer this new version of consequentialism.
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Consequentialism good – Solves genocide in policy making
Consequentialist policy-making leads to deterrence of genocide.
Eric Blumenson in 06 (prof. of law @ Suffolk University Law School, 44 Columbia Journal of Transnational Law
801, “The Challenge of a Global Standard of Justice: Peace, Pluralism, and Punishment at the International Criminal
Court”, ln)
The consequentialist argument is that an appropriately structured punishment will best produce a net social benefit,
in excess of the opportunity costs, inmate's suffering, and other losses it will impose. This is an empirical claim
about the utility of punishment that may hold true generally but be false at a particular time or place. If the total
consequences of a particular prosecution would ultimately be dire rather than beneficial, the consequentialist
argument for prosecution would seem to fail. 73 Yet consequentialists are among the strongest advocates for a policy
of "prosecution regardless." They must believe either that predicted dire consequences are so often exaggerated that
maximum utility can be obtained by uniformly dismissing such predictions; 74 or [*825] more likely, that the
immediate consequences, although dire, will be ultimately outweighed by long-term benefits. However, there is a
major difficulty, arguably not insurmountable, with identifying and calculating the costs and benefits. In most
domestic systems, the expected benefit will usually involve a reduction in crime, due to the deterrent, normreinforcing, incapacitative, or rehabilitative impact of incarcerating offenders. For the ICC, this is also an
expectation. Many people argue that if genocide and crimes against humanity are reliably prosecuted and punished,
a deterrent effect should follow - if not for some megalomaniacal leaders, at least for the subordinates who would
otherwise carry out their orders.
Only consequentialism can justify the actions necessary to reach some moral end.
Walter Sinnot-Armstrong in 92 (prof. of philosophy @ Yale University, Philosophical Perspectives, 6, Ethics, “An
Argument for Consequentialism”, p. 415-416)
All of this leads to necessary enabler consequentialism or NEC. NEC claims that all moral reasons for acts are
provided by facts that the acts are necessary enablers for preventing harm or promoting good. All moral reasons on
this theory are consequential reasons, but there are two kinds. Some moral reasons are prevention reasons, because
they are facts that an act is a necessary enabler for preventing harm or loss. For example, if giving Alice food is
necessary and enables me to prevent her from starving, then that fact is a moral reason to give her food. In this case,
I would not cause her death even 416 / Walter Sinnott-Armstrong if I let her starve, but other moral prevention
reasons are reasons to avoid causing harm. For example, if turning my car to the left is necessary and enables me to
avoid killing Bobby, that is a moral reason to turn my car to the left. The other kind of moral reason is a promotion
reason. This kind of reason occurs when doing something is necessary and enables me to promote (or maximize)
some good. For example, I have a moral reason to throw a surprise party for Susan if this is necessary and enables
me to make her happy. Because of substitutability, these moral reasons for actions also yield moral reasons against
contrary actions. There are then also moral reasons not to do what will cause harm or ensure a failure to prevent
harm or to promote good. What makes these facts moral reasons is that they can make an otherwise immoral act
moral. If I have a moral reason to feed my child, then it might be immoral to give my only food to Alice, who is a
stranger. But this would not be immoral if giving Alice food is necessary and enables me to prevent 'Alice from
starving, as long as my child will not starve also. Similarly, it is normally immoral to lie to Susan, but a lie can be
moral if it is necessary and enables me to keep my party for Susan a surprise, and if this is also necessary and
enables me to make her happy. Thus, NEC fits nicely into the above theory of moral reasons. NEC can provide a
natural explanation of moral substitutability for both kinds of moral reasons. I have a prevention moral reason to
give someone food when doing so is necessary and enables me to prevent that person from starving. Suppose that
buying food is a necessary enabler for giving the person food, and getting in my car is a necessary enabler for
buying food. Moral substitutability warrants the conclusion that I have a moral reason to get in my car. And this act
of getting in my car does have the property of being a necessary enabler for preventing starvation. Thus, the
necessary enabler has the same property that provided the moral reason to give the food in the first place. This
explains why substitutability holds for moral prevention reasons. The other kind of moral reason covers necessary
enablers for promoting good. In my example above, if a surprise party is a necessary enabler for making Susan
happy, and letting people know about the party is a necessary enabler for having the party, then letting people know
is a necessary enabler for making Susan happy. The very fact that provides a moral reason to have the party also
provides a moral reason to let people know about it. Thus, NEC can explain why moral substitutability holds for
every kind of moral reason that it includes. Similar explanations work for moral reasons not to do certain acts, and
this explanatory power is a reason to favor NEC.17
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Nuclear War Outweighs
Nuclear War will always outweigh- the risk of extinction means it is prohibited absolutely
George Kateb, 1992. (The Inner Ocean: Individualism and Democratic Culture, Cornell University Press, 1992.pgs.
111-112)
Schell's work attempts to force on us an acknowledgment that sounds far-fetched and even ludicrous, an
acknowledgment that the possibility of extinction is carried by any use of nuclear weapons, no matter how
limited or how seemingly rational or seemingly morally justified. He himself acknowledges that there is a difference
between possibility and certainty. But in a matter that is more than a matter, more than one practical matter in a vast
series of practical matters, in the "matter" of extinction, we are obliged to treat a possibility--a genuine
possibility-as a certainty. Humanity is not to take any step that contains even the slightest risk of extinction.
The doctrine of no-use is based on the possibility of extinction. Schell's perspective transforms the subject. He takes us away from the arid
stretches of strategy and asks us to feel continuously, if we can, and feel keenly if only for an instant now and then, how utterly distinct the
nuclear world is. Nuclear discourse must vividly register that distinctiveness. It is of no moral account that extinction may be
only a slight possibility. No one can say how great the possibility is, but no one has yet credibly denied that by
some sequence or other a particular use of nuclear weapons may lead to human and natural extinction. If it is
not impossible it must be treated as certain: the loss signified by extinction nullifies all calculations of
probability as it nullifies all calculations of costs and benefits.
Abstractly put, the connections between any use of nuclear weapons and human and natural extinction are
several. Most obviously, a sizable exchange of strategic nuclear weapons can, by a chain of events in nature, lead
to the earth's uninhabitability, to "nuclear winter," or to Schell "republic of insects and grass." But the consideration of extinction
cannot rest with the possibility of a sizable exchange of strategic weapons. It cannot rest with the imperative that a sizable exchange must not take
place.
A so-called tactical or "theater" use, or a so-called limited use, is also prohibited absolutely, because of the
possibility of immediate escalation into a sizable exchange or because, even if there were not an immediate
escalation, the possibility of extinction would reside in the precedent for future use set by any use whatever in a world
in which more than one power possesses nuclear weapons. Add other consequences: the contagious effect on nonnuclear powers who may feel
compelled by a mixture of fear and vanity to try to acquire their own weapons, thus increasing the possibility of use by increasing the number of
nuclear powers; and the unleashed emotions of indignation, retribution, and revenge which, if not acted on immediately in the form of escalation,
can be counted on to seek expression later.
Other than full strategic uses are not confined, no matter how small the explosive power: each would be a
cancerous transformation of the world. All nuclear roads lead to the possibility of extinction. It is true by
definition, but let us make it explicit: the doctrine of no-use excludes any first or retaliatory or later use, whether
sizable or not. No-use is the imperative derived from the possibility of extinction.
By containing the possibility of extinction, any use is tantamount to a declaration of war against humanity. It is
not merely a war crime or a single crime against humanity. Such a war is waged by the user of nuclear
weapons against every human individual as individual (present and future), not as citizen of this or that country. It is not only a war
against the country that is the target. To respond with nuclear' weapons, where possible, only increases the chances of extinction and can never,
therefore, be allowed. The use of nuclear weapons establishes the right of any person or group, acting officially or not, violently or not, to try to
punish those responsible for the use. The aim of the punishment is to deter later uses and thus to try to reduce the possibility of extinction, if, by
chance, the particular use in question did not directly lead to extinction. The form of the punishment cannot be specified. Of course the chaos
ensuing from a sizable exchange could make punishment irrelevant. The important point, however, is to see that those who use nuclear
weapons are qualitatively worse than criminals, and at the least forfeit their offices.
John Locke, a principal individualist political theorist, says that in a state of nature every individual retains the right to punish transgressors or
assist in the effort to punish them, whether or not one is a direct victim. Transgressors convert an otherwise tolerable condition into a state of
nature which is a state of war in which all are threatened. Analogously, the use of nuclear weapons, by containing in an
immediate or delayed manner the possibility of extinction, is in Locke's phrase "a trespass against the whole
species" and places the users in a state of war with all people. And people, the accumulation of individuals,
must be understood as of course always indefeasibly retaining the right of selfpreservation, and hence as
morally allowed, perhaps enjoined, to take the appropriate preserving steps.
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Nuclear war outweighs
Nuclear war must be thought of in consequential terms because of its large magnitude, and immoral acts need
to be justified to prevent it.
William H. Shaw in 1984 (socialist professor and former Chair of the Philosophy Department at San Jose State
University., Ethics, Vol. 94, No. 2. (Jan., 1984), pp. 248-260., http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=00141704%28198401%2994%3A2%3C248%3ANDAD%3E2.0.CO%3B2-7
)
Of all the moral issues that face us today, however, nuclear policy is the one that, because of the complex factual
issues and number of persons likely to be affected, most cries out to be handled in consequentialist terms. Although
it is clearly good even on utilitarian grounds that we have a repugnance to making threats of immoral behavior, even
where P6 would condone it, the limits of a narrowly deontological perspective are soon obvious. For one thing, such
discussions do not easily integrate finely grained factual issues or questions of probability, such as the chances of a
nuclear accident, into their overall moral assessments. Much hangs on the real, historical and political (as opposed to
merely game-theoretically supposed), consequences of the contemporary practice of deterrencenuclear proliferationand on assessing accurately the feasibility of alternatives to the current arms race. A moral theory with significant
consequentialist strands would seem to be necessary to give these sorts of considerations their due.
Deontological approaches to nuclear questions have no doubt appeared attractive to many as a result of the poor
quality of what passes for utilitarian reasoning in this area. Utilitarianism has unfortunately come to be identified
with the so-called strategic reasoning associated with military planners and benighted bureaucrats, the narrowness
and jaundiced assumptions of which make it a very mad logic indeed.'' Utilitarians will have to reexamine their
factual premises and move their analyses out of the narrow confines of game theory if they are to assist in the ethical
reappraisal of nuclear policy, to which our troubled times have given rise and to which this essay has attempted to
contribute.
Even if it is imperative to act based on morality, extreme consequences, such as nuclear catstrophe, still
override deontological concerns.
Eric Blumenson in 06 (prof. of law @ Suffolk University Law School, 44 Columbia Journal of Transnational Law
801, “The Challenge of a Global Standard of Justice: Peace, Pluralism, and Punishment at the International Criminal
Court”, ln)
Both of the above theories quickly lead to extreme applications that very few would accept. A white lie about
someone's whereabouts is surely required when telling the truth would facilitate his murder, contra Kant's
deontological absolutism. And the minimize-injustice view, which licenses the authorities to unjustly kill one so that
two putative murder victims survive, forsakes human rights in the name of rights. Here is a third possibility which
does not force us to such unacceptable conclusions. This view does recognize the inviolable status of individuals,
but it also incorporates the common intuition that this status has a limit. That limit is the catastrophic exception. Put
in different words, a person's right to justice, and the ICC's duty to deliver it, are of great weight, but they are not
absolute and can be overridden in extreme circumstances. This position is often labeled threshold deontology - the
threshold is that level of aggregate harm (or, alternatively, aggregate injustice) at which deontological rights and
duties are overridden. 147 Below that threshold, a person's human rights cannot be impinged, even if doing so would
produce great benefits or avert serious harms to others. But violating someone's rights is justified when the
aggregate harm that would result reaches the catastrophic threshold. 148 This view gets much of its force from the
intuitive responses most people have to extreme scenarios such as the ticking bomb hypothetical, where torturing a
terrorist's child is the only way to reveal the location of a nuclear bomb in time to defuse it. That intuition distills
into the view that, in the words of Michael Moore, "a very high threshold of bad consequences ... must be threatened
before something as awful as torturing an innocent person can be justified." 149
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Nuclear war outweighs
Preventing nuclear war is a deontological imperative because of the huge stakes and no accurate method of
figuring out the future.
Robert E. Goodin in 1985 (D.Phil. in Politics at Oxford,Ethics, Vol. 95, No. 3, Special Issue: Symposium on Ethics
and Nuclear Deterrence. (Apr., 1985), pp. 641-658. “Nuclear Disarmament as a Moral Certainty”,
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0014-1704%28198504%2995%3A3%3C641%3ANDAAMC%3E2.0.CO%3B2-L
)
That the logic of nuclear deterrence is incorrigibly probabilistic is widely acknowledged. Strategists and social scientists
describe as its "fundamental premise" the proposition that "nuclear weapons make probable the rejection [by one's opponents] of armed
aggression as a potential policy alternative" (emphasis added). Moral philosophers also fully acknowledge the nature of the gamble. In the words
of Bernard Williams, "The morality of deterrence is, I think, legitimately one in which you think principally about those steps which make it less
lightly that the weapons get used" (emphasis added).
My argument is that all such notions of probability and likelihood are simply inappropriate in these circumstances. Maybe such concepts are not
even meaningful at all when applied to situations involving reflective human agents rather than mere random processes. But in any case it is clear
that, where probabilities of nuclear war are concerned, we just do not know enough about the shape of the underlying distribution to justify
employing any of the standard techniques for estimating probabilities. That we can have no reliable probability estimates is in itself quite enough
to render probabilistic reasoning about such affairs wildly inappropriate.
Certainly we have no solid objective statistics, based on frequency counts or such like. The balance of terror has kept the peace for the past thirtyfive years, to be sure. But thirty-five years is just too short a run on which to base our probability judgments, given the unacceptability of even
very small probabilities of such a very great horror. Besides, nuclear war is just not the sort of thing whose probabilities we dare to estimate by
trial-and-error procedures-the first error may well mark the learner's own end.'
Nor do we have any well-validated scientific theories (about, e.g., the genesis and escalation of international conflicts) from which we might hope
to derive reliable estimates of the probability of a breakdown in deterrence which would lead to a large-scale nuclear war. We suffer not from a
lack of such theories but rather from a surfeit of them; and none can prove itself decisively superior to all the others.'
Nor, finally, do we have any particularly good reason to place any great faith in subjective probability estimates. Of
course, we can always bully people into stating their "best guess" as to the chances of anything occurring; we can
even bully them into rendering those probability estimates consistent. But when such estimates are as groundless as
those concerning the chances of nuclear deterrence collapsing into nuclear war are, we should not set any great store
by them. Ellsberg says, "It's no use bullying me into taking action . . . by flattering my 'best judgment.' I know how
little that's based Alas, most people do not. Psychological evidence suggests not only that "individuals are poor
probability assessors" but also, "and perhaps more important, that they underestimate their poorness by assessing
probabilities too tightly."1° Knowing this-and knowing all the severe distortions to which judgments under
uncertainty are prone1'-it would be sheer folly for us to predicate any profoundly important policy choices on such
fallible subjective probability estimates.
The upshot is that it is altogether inappropriate to engage in probabilistic reasoning about the chances of a
breakdown in the balance of terror that leads to a large-scale nuclear war. Objective statistics are unavailable;
theories are too numerous and too divergent; subjective estimates are known to be too unreliable." The problem is
not just that we cannot estimate point probabilities with any great precision-that we cannot say whether the
probability of nuclear war this century is 10 percent or 15 percent. Nor is it even just that we cannot make the sorts
of order-of-magnitude judgments that would allow us to make ordinal judgments about relative probabilities. We are
in a worse situation still. We cannot even say with confidence in what direction any particular strategic innovation
pushes the probability of all-out nuclear war. Some theories maintain that that risk is increased by cruise missiles or
spacebased defenses or nuclear proliferation. Others hold the opposite.13 Neither logic nor experience enables us to
choose confidently between these theories, and only a fool would trust unaided hunches with so much at stake.
The most that can be claimed for deterrence is that it will probably work to prevent war. So if probabilistic reasoning
is inappropriate in these circumstances, deterrence is too. In short, my complaint against nuclear deterrence is that it
amounts to playing the odds without knowing the odds. That constitutes recklessness par excellence. It would be the
height of irresponsibility for anyone to wager the family home on rolls of such radically unpredictable dice. Where
millions of lives are at stake, that judgment must surely apply even more harshly.
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Consequentialism = Inevitable
Deontology inevitably runs into a necessity for consequentialist principles regarding the right to life that are
unanswerable by assertions of “moral duty”.
Eric Blumenson in 06 (prof. of law @ Suffolk University Law School, 44 Columbia Journal of Transnational Law
801, “The Challenge of a Global Standard of Justice: Peace, Pluralism, and Punishment at the International Criminal
Court”, ln)
For deontologists, the issue becomes especially complicated when treating retributive justice as an absolute
requirement would destroy other moral rights they regard as equally absolute. If ICC charges against LRA leaders
would prolong the war as the Acholi leaders claim, the result would be not simply deaths, but killings perpetrated in
violation of a non-negotiable right to life. Should the ICC not indict, thereby perpetrating an injustice in order to
avoid a greater injustice? War crimes prosecutions are prone to such dilemmas. Sometimes prosecuting some
individuals would result in many more escaping punishment. 129 Sometimes obtaining [*843] indictments may
induce a criminal regime to cling to power, leaving that country's population consigned to suffer continued
violations of their most fundamental human rights. Dworkin famously described such rights as "trumps," because
they demarcate areas in which the individual is inviolable, and thus trump even a majority's competing preferences
or interests. 130 These rights and moral duties are not supposed to be subject to trade-offs - but in the above cases,
observing one non-negotiable right or duty will sacrifice another. Each cannot trump the other, so how should one
assess this collision of absolutist moral demands? Embracing a moral imperative to bring criminals to justice does
not answer this question, unless accompanied by reasons why this moral command should have priority over the
others.
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Deontology bad – Lacks humanity / morality
The idea that moral duties must absolutely come before consequences lacks a basic sense of morality and
humanity.
Eric Blumenson in 06 (prof. of law @ Suffolk University Law School, 44 Columbia Journal of Transnational Law
801, “The Challenge of a Global Standard of Justice: Peace, Pluralism, and Punishment at the International Criminal
Court”, ln)
The central problem with these rigid rules is, of course, their absolutism: They take what seem to be important moral
considerations entirely off the table. 138 If we take there to be a [*846] retributive duty to bring criminals to justice,
they posit that the ICC has an absolute duty to assure prosecution, rendering irrelevant any undesired destructive
impact it would have. It does not matter if that impact is catastrophic, or fully foreseeable, or wholly set in motion
by the prosecution. Kant believed this, and is famous for a parallel deontological claim - that one is obligated not to
lie, even when it means divulging the whereabouts of someone to an enemy bent on killing him. 139 Most people
would no doubt regard this as the view of a fanatic, or of someone lacking basic humanity. The challenge is how to
properly respond to such dangers yet still recognize the obligations of justice in a principled way. Consider two
alternatives to the purist view, each of which treats obligations of justice as a priority, but one that can be overridden
by other moral considerations.
Deontology cannot justify the performance of actions required to achieve an ultimate moral duty without
resorting to consequentialism.
Walter Sinnot-Armstrong in 92 (prof. of philosophy @ Yale University, Philosophical Perspectives, 6, Ethics, “An
Argument for Consequentialism”, p. 413)
Of course, there are many other versions of deontology. I cannot discuss them all. Nonetheless, these examples
suggest that it is the very nature of deontological reasons that makes deontological theories unable to explain moral
substitutability. This comes out clearly if we start from the other side and ask which properties create the moral
reasons that are derived by moral substitutability. What gives me a moral reason to start the mower is the
consequences of starting the mower. Specifically, it has the consequence that I am able to mow the grass. This
reason cannot derive from the same property as my moral reason to mow the lawn unless what gives me a moral
reason to mow the lawn is its consequences. Thus, any non-consequentialist moral theory will have to posit two
distinct kinds of moral reasons: one for starting the mower and another for mowing the grass. Once these kinds of
reasons are separated, we need to understand the connection between them. But this connection cannot be explained
by the substantive principles of the theory. That is why all deontological theories must lack the explanatory
coherence which is a general test of adequacy for all theories.
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Deontology Bad – Contridicts itself
Deontology is flawed – it is impossible to construct a deontological framework without extensive contradiction
and total regulation of action.
Tim Stelzig in 98 (prof. of philosophy @ West Virginia University, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Vol.
146, No. 3, “Deontology, Governmental Action, and the Distributive Exemption: How the Trolley Problem Shapes
the Relationship Between Rights and Policy”, March, p. 922)
The structure of deontic norms is equivalent to that of agentrelative injunctions of the form of 'You must not do
x.''~'As an agentrelative restriction, the point is not that Xnot occur, but that you, indexed to each, not do x.Io0
Given this structure, if rights are to have any practical meaning, the variable's referent must be given substantive
content.lOl Otherwise, one will not know which facts should be given accord and will not know how to act properly.
Given this structure, deontology cannot be thought plausibly to exhaust morality. The reason is that the world is
virtually saturated with normativity. If deontological maxims were exhaustive of morality, each identifiable situation
to which morality applies would have to be governed by a separate deontological maxim. Normativity would be
replete with trumping commands, governing even the most picayune situations. This notion is implausible for at
least three reasons. Such a view raises an "epistemological problem," a "conflicts problem," and an "insufficiency
problem."
Deontological impacts cannot be measured to determine questions of policy, while deontology itself is filled
with paradoxes.
Jeffrey Lipshaw in 05 (adjunct prof. @ Indiana University School of Law, 36 Cumberland Law Review 321,
“DUTY AND CONSEQUENCE: A NON-CONFLATING THEORY OF PROMISE AND CONTRACT”, ln)
Academic law, particularly in its explanatory and normative role for commercial relationships, aspires to science
and, as such, abhors deontology. Two primary reasons for this exist. First, consequences are measurable, at least in
theory. There is no "methodological purchase" in deontology. 10 Second, deontology is fraught with paradox. For
every duty, there is a seemingly polar opposite consideration. Consideration of duty entails bright lines and gray
areas, law and equity, fixed rules and intuitive application. Recognition of the paradox of deontology is as old as our
thinking about right and wrong. The theology of the prophet Micah was based on the inability of human reason to
reconcile justice and mercy. But Micah's resolution was bereft of philosophy or science, and left the untying of the
knot to God. 11 The paradoxes of deontology (much less the paradox posed by our apparent inability to reconcile
deontology and consequentialism) are particularly frustrating to anyone who wants to set forth a unified theory. 12
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Deontology bad – Justifies killings
Deontology justifies killing in the name of moral intentions.
PETER SINGER in 1978 (Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University, Doing Evil to Achieve Good: Moral
Choice in Conflict Situations., ed. Richard McCormick and Paul Ramesy. Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1978.
267, “Do Consequences Count? Rethinking the Doctrine of Double Effect JSTOR)
Traditional Roman Catholic thought makes an important distinction between what one directly intends and what one
merely foresees as a consequence of one's actions. Suppose a doctor is faced with a pregnant woman who announces
her intention of committing suicide unless she can obtain an abortion. From his past knowledge of the patient, the
doctor believes she will carry out the threat. Traditional Roman Catholic morality nevertheless prohibits the abortion
because it regards the act as the direct killing of an innocent human being, which is always wrong. Neither the goal
of saving the woman's life, nor the fact that if the woman kills herself the fetus will also die, can justify the abortion,
for the traditional view is that the end cannot justify the means.
On the other hand, according to the traditional Roman Catholic view, a doctor confronted with a pregnant patient
who has cancer of the uterus may remove the uterus. He knows, of course, that this will result in the death of the
fetus, but here the death of the fetus is not directly intended, either for its own sake or as a means to an end. It is an
unwanted side effect of removing the cancerous uterus.
These two cases illustrate the distinction between the directly intended effect of our actions and the foreseen but
unwanted side effects of what we do. This distinction is the basis of the doctrine of double effect, which holds that
while there are some things we are never justified in doing directly, we may permit them to occur as a side effect of
some other action that we do for a sufficient or proportionate reason. As the cases show, the doctrine claims that
there is a crucial moral difference between actions the consequences of which are, apparently, identical. For if the
doctor performs an abortion on the woman who will otherwise commit suicide, he will save her life, while if he does
not, both she and the fetus will die; and exactly the same is true of the choice to remove the cancerous uterus. The
idea that so slender a distinction as that between what we intend to do and what we foresee as the result of our
actions could make so decisive a moral difference between acts whose consequences appear to be identical, has led
many non- Catholics to regard the doctrine of double effect as a paradigm example of spurious moral casuistry, the
kind of reasoning that has given the word "jesuitical" its condemnatory overtones.
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A2: Util and freedom mutally exclusive
Utilitarianism recognizes the value of individual freedom; it simply places a calculus of the harm dealt by
freedom in some cases before that freedom.
Roger Scruton in 06 (phd in philosophy, Wall Street Journal, “Thoroughly Modern Mill”, May 19, pg. A.10)
Mill's rebellion against utilitarianism did not prevent him from writing a qualified defense of it, and his
"Utilitarianism" is acknowledged today as one of the few readable accounts of a moral disorder that would have died
out two centuries ago, had people not discovered that the utilitarian can excuse every crime. Lenin and Hitler were
pious utilitarians, as were Stalin and Mao, as are most members of the Mafia. As Mill recognized, the "greatest
happiness principle" must be qualified by some guarantee of individual rights, if it is not to excuse the tyrant. In
response to his own wavering discipleship, therefore, he wrote "On Liberty," perhaps his most influential, though by
no means his best, production. At the time, Benthamite ways of thinking were influencing jurisprudence, and
arguments based on the "general good" and the "good of society" appealed to the conservative imagination of the
Victorian middle classes. It seemed right to control the forms of public worship, to forbid the expression of heretical
opinions, or to criminalize adultery, for the sake of a "public morality" which exists for the general good. If
individual freedom suffers, then that, according to the utilitarians, is the price we must pay. According to Mill's
argument, that way of thinking has everything upside down. The law does not exist to uphold majority morality
against the individual, but to protect the individual against tyranny -- including the "tyranny of the majority." Of
course, if the exercise of individual freedom threatens harm to others, it is legitimate to curtail it -- for in such
circumstances one person's gain in freedom is another person's loss of it. But when there is no proof of harm to
another, the law must protect the individual's right to act and speak as he chooses.
Utilitarianism is not exclusionary; rather, exclusion reflects the society applying utilitarianism.
F. Neil Brady in 85 (assistant prof. of management @ San Diego State University, Journal of Business Ethics, “A
Defense of Utilitarian Policy Processes in Corporate and Public Management”, issue 23-30, p. 24)
In short, there is a kind of myopia that occurs in both corporate and public processes, but it is a narrowness of vision
which discourages the expression of extreme or unpopular preferences and solicits, instead, moderate, current, or
common preferences. That is, expressions of preference at the periphery get washed out, not just selected
preferences such as sympathies for whales. Furthermore, even if this were true, nothing that Tribe has said can
convincingly connect this flaw to utilitarian procedures per se. Utilitarian theory in principle allows for the weighing
of all preferences – ‘high’ or ‘low’, retrospective or prospective. And although policy processes do seem to
undervalue peripheral interests, such a phenomenon may be due as much to human socialization, for example, as to
a given decision-making procedure.
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A2: Utilitarianism kills human rights.
It is the because of consequences that human rights must be upheld-utilitarianism is not
mutually exclusive with human rights
Taranovsky in 2003 (Dmytro, Utilitarianism, <http://web.mit.edu/dmytro/www/Utilitarianism.htm>)
Some people argue that utilitarianism is contrary to human rights. The support for human rights is
based on our feelings and deep beliefs that human rights are good. These feelings do not arise in a
vacuum. They are acquired because, as history repeatedly shows, violations of human rights have
horrible consequences. Censorship, more likely than not, prevents indispensible changes in societies
that practice it. The benefits of torture are insignificant compared to the suffering it inflicts and the
damage to benevolence of the society. Because of fallibility of human nature and the special nature of
fundamental rights, abridgements of human rights cause unacceptable danger to the society. For
example, allowing the government to conduct a lottery for forcible organ donations would present
unacceptable danger for abuse as the government can kill any person by faking the lottery results. It is such
abuses in the past, senseless government sponsored murders for alleged public good that cause a
subconscious aversion to such lottery. Thus, the utilitarian benefits of human rights coincide with the
main reasons why the feelings on human rights have developed. Unlike reliance on feelings,
utilitarianism places human rights on a strong logical foundation. The intuitions for human rights are
fragile, and many societies lack them; even in the United States today, government sponsored homicide
of certain helpless "undesirable" people, i.e. death penalty, is considered acceptable. Moreover, wrong
intuitions can create fictitious rights, like the right of parents to beat their children, or, in the past, the
right of slave owners to their lawfully acquired property, slaves. Therefore, utilitarianism protects and
enhances human rights.
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A2: Util doesn’t account for separateness
A2: Util doesn’t account for separateness – util is egalitarian.
Bentley in 2000 (Kristina A., has an MA in political theory from Rhodes University and completed a PhD in the
Department of Government at the University of Manchester in 2001. From 1996–1998, Dr Bentley was a lecturer in
political theory in the Department of Political Studies and International Relations at Rhodes University. Her areas of
research interest are theories and concepts of rights, the rights of vulnerable persons, rights and multiculturalism,
and the enforceability of social and economic rights; Suggesting a “Separate” Approach to Utility and Rights:
Deontological Specification and Teleological Enforcement of Human Rights, Sapientia, September, <
http://www.abdn.ac.uk/pir/postgrad/vol1_issue3/issue3_article1.pdf>)
Thirdly, and most significantly for rights, there is the objection that utilitarians do not account for the
“‘separateness’ of persons” (Goodin, 1995: 23). However, this is to discount the utilitarian conviction that
every individual is “a distinct locus of value” counting equally with everyone else, and furthermore
utilitarianism assumes that people are roughly similar in their capacity for pleasure and pain. Therefore,
empirical assumptions of broad similarity among people and generally diminishing marginal utility across all
resources lead utilitarians to embrace policies and practices and institutions that are broadly egalitarian in
form. That ensures that there will be a strong utilitarian presumption against exploiting some people for the
benefit of others (Goodin, 1995: 23). Goodin therefore advocates what he refers to as “government house
utilitarianism” as being “a uniquely defensible public policy” (Goodin, 1995: 27) as it in this sphere that
utilitarianism is particularly appropriate to decision making and solving the sorts of problems which public
officials inevitably encounter. This relates to rights in the sense that public officials are charged with the often
onerous tasks of carrying out and enforcing the duties associated with rights. While this position will be
discussed in more detail in section 6.2 below, it is worth mentioning here that many of the hard choices which
officials have to make arise out of questions of conflicts of rights at this level. It may well prove to be the case
the that the optimal, if not the maximal, way of making such decisions for any given society involve the sort of
utilitarian private vices and public virtues which Goodin identifies. Therefore, the idea of “satisficing” rather
than maximising utilitarianism which is discussed in the following section is worth considering as it may be
provide a way of indicating the level at which the teleological compromise should be struck in any given case
involving a conflict of rights.
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A2: util= suffering
In some instances, Utilitarians are willing to let some suffer in order to promote the welfare of others; but
this notion is not unlike any other philosophy-your suffering arguments are non-unique
Ian Montgomerie, 2000. (Software Engineer, A Utilitarian FAQ, July 1, 2000,
http://www.ianmontgomerie.com/manifesto/utilitarianfaq.html#WHYACCEPT)
It is quite true that Utilitarianism would sanction any "horrible" act if a sufficiently large number of people wanted it
to happen. For any given act which causes some finite decrease in welfare, there exists some number of people
whose desire for that act would, all together, cause them to gain enough welfare to justify the act. This has been
used in a great many thought experiments designed to criticize Utilitarianism for supporting some seemingly
repugnant deed because enough people wanted it to happen. One common example is the Roman Coliseum and
its gory battles to the death. The Roman public quite enjoyed the spectacle, and there exists some large but finite
number of Romans whose welfare gains from watching the games would seem sufficient to justify them.
One rebuttal to this is that in practice, it may be beneficial in the long run to prevent many "horrible" acts to work
against the perception that they are necessary. Something such as the violent Roman games, for example, would
likely have significant negative psychological side effects on the viewers, plus of course the suffering of those
actually fighting in the arena. In the long term, a utility maximizing strategy could involve trying to get rid of the
institution and focus the public on less destructive forms of entertainment - which would probably require denying
people the pleasure of watching the games in the short term. Also, it is often necessary to engage in a great deal
of hand waving to make a horrible action truly utility maximizing when all alternatives are considered. In the case
of a public with a strong desire for blood sports, for example, they could be satisfied by volunteers. Sufficient
payment can induce people to take great risks very willingly. Sending slaves to die in the games may make sense
if you fundamentally don't care about the lives of slaves, but not if you regard the welfare of all people as
important enough to pay for. In the real world, things like slavery can be effective from the perspective of a selfinterested person who is not the slave, but they are virtually never the welfare maximizing alternative.
While some specific "horrible" acts might not be advocated by Utilitarians in practice, however, one can
always come up with an example sufficiently contrived that there would be no Utilitarian objections to it.
The real question in such extreme examples, apart from the obvious one of how reliable our real-world
intuitions are in such unreal situations, is exactly how much that differs from non-Utilitarian philosophies.
Utilitarianism is explicit about being willing to let some suffer in order to promote the welfare of others, but
virtually every other philosophy is willing to support the same thing. The difference is that they are less
obvious about it, being horrified at the deliberate sacrifice of another but supporting behavior which
amounts to the same thing. See the next question in this FAQ, "Utilitarians would sanction things like
sacrificing a healthy man to use his organs to save five sick men", for more details on this. In general, all
ethical philosophies must trade off the welfare of some for the welfare of others (or ignore it entirely),
because it is not possible to satisfy the welfare of everybody at once. Given that, it is virtually impossible
to prevent situations where a horrible thing ends up happening to some people because preventing it
would violate some other moral rule, or would require others to sacrifice too much of their well-being.
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Survival outweighs in African Morality
FOR AFRICANS THE SHORT-TERM AND LONG-TERM SURVIVAL TAKES
PRECEDENCE OVER WHAT WE CALL ‘MORALITY.’ THIS IS AN AFRICAN
SOURCE
Malindi, 2005. (Grace M.E., Ph.D., Department of Agriculture Extension Services, 14-16th April, 2005, “A PAPER
PRESENTED AT THE DURBAN CONFERENCE International Conference on HIV/AIDS and Food and Nutrition
Security”, Ministry of Agriculture, Malawi, IFPRI.Org.)
Bota et al., (2001) attest to the fact that institutional development in the rural areas such as markets, trading centers
and community schools has introduced unintended consequences of providing havens for sexual promiscuity. It was
also observed that, some women especially those in the female-headed category sell out sex to meet their basic
needs. Thus, the need for immediate survival takes precedence over morality and longer -term survival and
prevention strategies. It has also been shown that work requirements and demands by the marketing and banking
systems make extension workers and farmers spend prolonged periods away from their spouses. This also increases
their chance of engaging in extra-marital sex. For example, farmers have to travel long distances and wait for a
number of days to witness their tobacco being sold, or access money after sales.