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Show Chapter XII. Classical Utilitarianism and the Free Rider 514 on the usefulness of these rules of thumb, or publicly stipulate conformity to them under most circumstances, the success of this enterprise once again awaits a solution to the prior question of how they are to agree on anything at all. But there is an independent problem, even if we suppose that explicit public certification of this kind is unnecessary. It might be, for example, that prior to the full realization of the ideal Utilitarian society, people have been acting on those rules of thumb which generally have best consequences and just naturally continue to act in this manner when all have explicitly become Act-Utilitarians. The difficulty is then generated by the task of combining the notion of rules of thumb for conduct with consistent and public Utilitarian reasoning. For part of what distinguishes the rules of thumb an Act-Utilitarian may consistently adopt (under non-ideal conditions) from those which a putative Rule-Utilitarian adopts31 is that for an Act-Utilitarian, conformity to the former on any particular occasion requires a decision to do so, based on consideration of whether doing so will have best consequences under those circumstances. But under ideal conditions, the decision to conform to the rule(s) of thumb relevant to the occasion has, and must be publicly recognized to have, the same status as the decision to perform any action, whether it conforms to such a rule or not: an action is to be performed only if it has best consequences. But under conditions in which everyone acknowledges everyone else as adhering to this principle of action, general conformity to rules of thumb can no longer be automatically assumed, for the conditions under which such general conformity had best consequences no longer obtain. That is, it is no longer true that the non-Utilitarian majority conforms to these rules of thumb, and that violating them would "do more harm by weakening current [non-Utilitarian] morality than good by improving its quality."32 A community composed only of consistent Act-Utilitarians will conform to such rules only when doing so has best consequences independently of these now irrelevant considerations, and this fact will itself be publicly acknowledged. Consequently, expectations based on previous conformity to rules of thumb under non-ideal conditions must be suspended until it is determined which acts maximize utility under ideal ones. But again, since there is no way of determining the identity of these acts in advance of the expectations aroused by doing them, there is no probability favoring their being performed at all. So it will not do simply to suppose that some act x is expected, then calculate its utility, as Gibbard and Lewis seem to want to do. This is, as Hodgson would say, to engage in mere bootstrap pulling. 31 32 "Putative" is used advisedly, in view of Lyon's (op. cit. Note 11, above) analysis. Op. cit. Note 1, above. © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
