Well this is the last of it. I probably won’t resume normal blogging until the end of November so I might put up another essay in the meantime.
On the face of it, utilitarianism is a good moral theory. It has an obvious advantage over deontological theories, namely that it recognises that we have duties to the moral objects not because they are rational, but because they are sentient. Many of the objections to utilitarianism are not particularly compelling: we cannot value reality apart from experience because we only have contact with reality through our experiences; we can visit our sick friends for whatever reason we choose because what really matters is their happiness; we can enjoy our relationships as long as we take time to assist the disadvantaged as well. Utilitarianism also has its weak points: it robs us of our moral autonomy, it is unfair and it refuses to acknowledge the importance of individuals. As noted above, a satisficing utilitarianism that also aimed at distributing pleasure more evenly would address the first two problems. Although such a system would have problems of its own, these may very well be soluble. The third problem appears much more difficult to solve and demonstrates that normative ethics is not just a forum for people to argue over how poorly certain theories conform to their intuitions, but an active and interesting area of research.
