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Show Chapter XII. Classical Utilitarianism and the Free Rider 508 The extent of each person's benevolence is, we will suppose, constrained by his own adoption of the Utilitarian doctrine. That is, in estimating the sum of social utility to be achieved by any action, each person counts his own happiness as equal in weight to that of anyone else.17 We must also imagine the pre-ideal society, as a variant of the ideal society, to be stable, well ordered, and otherwise successfully operated in the absence of the publicity of its basic social principle of utility. We must, above all, assume it to be reasonably well coordinated: in performing the act with the best consequences, each member takes into account the probable behavior of others and the necessity of insuring against conflicting or self-defeating acts. Thus we can assume, with Sidgwick, that in general the members of this society concur in following certain commonsense moral precepts and rules of thumb on Act-Utilitarian grounds. This is to stipulate that Act-Utilitarian deliberation will, in the absence of the publicity condition, generate these precepts as conventions. Now since everyone is an Act-Utilitarian and hence reasons similarly with regard to the consequences of actions, each person will have no trouble in predicting or assessing the outcome of the behavior of others when deciding what to do. For, although they do not assume that each acts from Utilitarian convictions, they do consider one another's behavior and its overt consequences. To each member of this society, the others behave as if they were Act-Utilitarians in the minimal sense that their actions have, and are recognized by others to have, best consequences under the circumstances. It is important to emphasize that this state of things does not provide sufficient evidence to any member for thinking that everyone else is an ActUtilitarian. For to act as if one were is often to adopt prima facie non-Utilitarian moral conventions when they have the best consequences - which, in view of the benefits of coordination, will be a good part of the time. This means that one will be unable to distinguish Act-Utilitarians from, for example, highly efficient Intuitionists, on the basis of behavior alone. To identify them as ActUtilitarians, we must know their intentions and their reasons for acting. But since this pre-ideal society runs smoothly and acceptably in the absence of the publicity condition, members of it will, by hypothesis, rarely be called upon to justify or explain their actions overtly; the practices and conduct of each will mesh harmoniously with those of others. So the opportunity to discover the moral convictions on which they are based will be rare indeed, if not nonexistent. The situation bears comparison with a society in which traditional social roles and practices are, like the benevolent motive, so deeply embedded in the history of the society that talk of reasons and justification for them is otiose. Persons are conceived as inextricably dependent on these roles and practices in a way that practically vitiates the very possibility of calling I add this proviso in order to avoid the problems inherent in the notion of perfect altruism. 17 © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
