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Show Chapter XII. Classical Utilitarianism and the Free Rider 500 Sidgwick distinguishes between those strategies of action and decision appropriate to Utilitarians living in an ideal social community, and those appropriate in the actual one.5 In the ideal case, Sidgwick tries to solve the free rider problem by postulating a single, universal other-directed personal motive that motivates and justifies the behavior, including the free rider behavior, of all agents. Instrumental reasoning justifies an individual citizen's decision to break the rules when so doing conduces to social utility, so agents may well break the rules with some frequency. In this case, breaking the rules is quite rightly equated with publicly announcing that one is breaking the rules, for all such violations are publicly accessible. But because all such violations are justified on Utilitarian grounds, social stability remains intact. However, I argue below that this makes not only genuine free riding, but also the consistent and well-ordered social rules on which free riding depends, impossible in theory. In an ideal community of enlightened Utilitarians, Sidgwick claims, no one would be justified in acting secretly in some way not sanctioned by the accepted moral rules. For even in seeming free-rider cases in which it appeared that one was justified on grounds of utility in exempting oneself from such a rule, this would simply mean that certain qualifications should be added to the rule to cover the exigencies of that type of situation, and thus that these qualifications would apply in all cases relevantly similar to one's own: It is evident, that if these reasons are valid for any person, they are valid for all persons; in fact, that they establish the expediency of a new rule...more complicated than the old one; a rule which the Utilitarian, as such, should desire to be universally obeyed.6 ...If therefore we were all enlightened Utilitarians, it would be impossible for anyone to justify himself in making false statements while admitting it to be inexpedient for persons similarly conditioned to make them; as he would have no grounds for believing that persons similarly conditioned would act differently from himself7 [italics added]. This last clause is ambiguous but significant. On one reading, it would say that a Utilitarian in some situation would expect other Utilitarians to act similarly when "similarly conditioned" because all Utilitarians would react in the same way under some particular set of conditions, that is, that all would reason similarly and thus act similarly. Here "similarly conditioned" would have to mean similar in all respects relevant to the making of one particular decision: similar in personal makeup as well as in circumstances. This is not an unacceptable interpretation of the passage, but it implicitly ascribes to 5 Sidgwick, op. cit. Note 1, Book 4, chap. 5, sec. 3. Ibid., p. 485. 7 Ibid., p. 488. 6 © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
