DOES THE END JUSTIFY THE MEANS?

NARRATOR Franchelle Dom

Can philosophy guide us in making difficult political and moral decisions? Is it right, for example, to build a huge dam for a power plant, deep in the rainforest of Borneo, in Malaysia?

ARNE NAESS, Centre for Development and the Environment, University of Oslo

I think we should have a very broad outlook, very broad outlook, what’s going on in the Third World. Is it really so that they look forward to be like us? That they look forward to have our technology or high standard of living and so on?”

So there we have a great job, in cooperation with a minority in the Third World. So to reject these grandiose, enormous and very harmful projects.

NARRATOR

If the benefits are large enough, can any political decision be justified? The prime minister of Malaysia has defended the dam project against environmentalist critics, saying: “you in the west cannot control the development of our country. We have a plan to transform Malaysia into a fully industrialized nation before the year 2020. The Bakun dam is part of that plan.

PRIME MINISTER MAHATHIR

You want us to be preserved like in a museum. You want to keep the good life for your self and you want us to be held back at the different sort of life that we have.

NARRATOR

The project is already under way, and the multinational company ABB is eagerly awaiting approval of a large contract. Thirty villages would be evacuated, 10,000 people moved, and more than 150,000 acres of rain-forest destroyed. Opponents of the dam argue that these transformations of the environment will do irreparable harm. Defenders counter that such costs will be far outweighed by benefits such as economic growth for the entire nation. This sort of balancing of costs against benefits has roots in an ethical theory called utilitarianism.

PETER SINGER, Centre for Human Bioethics, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia

I think the most important thing about being a utilitarian is that you judge actions in accordance with their consequences. Things are not just right or wrong in themselves, irrespective of the difference they make in the world. And I think that it’s important that we make a difference in the world, and not that we stick by some abstract principle which might say, for example, always tell the truth, but then might have disastrous consequences for everyone. And I see no point in sticking by a principle without paying attention to the consequences of what you’re doing. So that’ s the first and the most important aspect for me of being a utilitarian.

NARRATOR

The utilitarian movement was founded in the late 18th Century by the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham. He came from a family of lawyers and was trained to be a lawyer, but he didn’t practice the profession. Instead, he dedicated himself to the reform of the British legal system and social policy. Bentham’s central proposal was deceptively simple. He wrote; “nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do.” Bentham proposed designing all laws and social policies with one goal: maximize the amount of pleasure in society, and minimize the amount of pain. Show no favouritism to individuals, but seek only to bring about the greatest happiness for the greatest number. Oxford philosopher Ross Harrison has written a book about Bentham.

ROSS HARRISON, King’s College, University of Cambridge

The importance of Bentham is that he really worked out a utilitarian theory...so it wasn’t the starting point but he developed what that actually was and applied it to lots of different areas. You’ve got psychological theory, you’ve got value theory, you put them together and get a theory of politics, of law, of society. And it’s that whole development that makes Bentham important.

NARRATOR

Bentham was a child of the Enlightenment. Although he dealt with emotionally-charged issues, he proposed resolving them entirely through reason. He totally opposed maintaining policies simply on the grounds of custom or traditional authority.

ROSS HARRISON

The big Enlightenment thing is a questioning operation. It’s to say “But why?” Why are these the right things to do? They all are things that have happened. They’ve got custom. But if we ask for reason rather than custom why we should do these things, then we’ve got to think of a new way of justifying or establishing them. And we’ve got to, as it were, produce straight new foundations…not take authority, not take the facts written in some book, sacred or otherwise. I mean it might be Aristotle, it might be the Bible, not take authority, not take the book, not take the custom or anything like that. We’ve got to try and take some reason.

NARRATOR

If we reason, as Bentham suggested, how will we come out on a decision such as whether or not to build the Bakun dam? How can we calculate which course will truly lead to the greatest happiness for the greatest number?

PETER SINGER

I think the only way to reason is to try to predict the effects as far as possible, on everyone involved, now and future, and not only human beings but also non-human sentient beings, animals who may live in the forests destroyed by the project, and try to estimate whether the benefits will be clearly greater than the consequences.

NARRATOR

What will be the consequences of building the dam? Will it make a majority of the Malaysian people happier by giving them a higher standard of living? If happiness is measured in economic terms the answer is probably yes. But not everybody in Malaysia dreams of a modern life in the city.

MALAYAN MAN

We’ve seen how people live in the city. They make little money and cannot support their families. Here, we live from the soil. And we have everything we want.

NARRATOR

Can we sacrifice the happiness of one group for the benefit of the larger society? 1s the total balance of pain and pleasure the only thing that counts? Bentham founded University College London. At his bequest, his body is preserved there.

ROSS HARRISON

And one thing people know about him and find surprising is Bentham’s desire to preserve himself as a physical body, a so called “auto icon”, in the University College of London.

Bentham himself is actually there in a sort of telephone box with a glass front and there is a body inside which is Bentham’s body. It’ s not actually his head. He tried to get his head preserved by studying New Zealand headshrinkers and preservation. They thought it looked so ghastly they took it off after ten years and put a sort of wax head on top. But you actually got the skeleton there dressed in Bentham’s clothes.

You get celebrational dinners sometimes at University College and they bring Bentham along to the dinner. So you’ve got the chance to come to dinner and Bentham will be there as well.

NARRATOR

The second great figure in the utilitarian movement was the 19th century English philosopher John Stuart Mill. Mill’s father was a friend and follower of Bentham, and he put his son through a rigorous education, starting with Greek at age three, Latin at age seven, and a strong does of utilitarian theory.

ROSS HARRISON

When Mill was a young man he got together some likeminded people. The all believed strongly in Bentham. They were all very young men trying to solve the world. And they met together in Bentham’s house. James Mill lived next door—and they were a little society promoting Bentham’s ideas. The called themselves The Utilitarians.

NARRATOR

But at the age of 20, Mill suffered a nervous breakdown. As he later wrote: “the habit of analysis has a tendency to wear away the feelings.” As he recovered, he set about righting the balance in his life.

ROSS HARRISON

Mill, I think through all his life was a very open character. He wanted to combine lots of different kinds of thought.

He was putting together the best of the 18th century, the best of the 19th century. So he’s a compromising thinker and with respect, say, if you cold sort of press it on to the mental crisis, the thought “If I just try to aim at the greatest happiness for the greatest number, “at least as conceived by Bentham.

I myself am not going to be happy. There’s more to life than that.” And as he conceived it, the more to life was poetry.

NARRATOR

As he recovered, Mill also diverged from the ideas of Bentham. For Bentham, there was only one standard of value. Whether it’s called pleasure, happiness, or utility, it can be quantified. Mill complicates the picture by arguing that there are higher and lower pleasures. Quality matters. In his words: “it is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied, than a fool satisfied.” Through the years, many philosophers have been attracted to the basic idea of utilitarianism, to weigh the good against the bad. But they’ve looked for ways to add finesse to Bentham’s simple quantitative approach.

JONATHAN GLOVER, Centre of Medical Law and Ethics, King’s College, London

I find it very hard to answer as to whether I’m a utilitarian. If you take traditional definitions of utilitarianism, that all that matters is pleasure and the absence of pain, no, I’m certainly not a utilitarian.

But utilitarians have characteristically responded to criticism not by rejecting criticisms but by embracing them with a kind of bear hug. By making their theory more and more complex to accommodate the different criticisms that are made. If you make consequentialism sufficiently pluralistic and still call it utilitarianism, then you could say that I was an utilitarian.

NARRATOR

In most peoples view, finding any objective measure of pleasure and pain is a difficult problem. The problem becomes vastly more difficult when you try to compare one person’s pleasures or pains with those of another.

JONATHAN GLOVER

There certainly is a problem about comparing the happiness of different people. I think it would be a bit absurd to say that my holiday in Italy made me 2.54 times as happy as your holiday in Ireland made you.

We can’t make precise interpersonal comparisons. But still I think, as any parent knows, you can sometimes again make rough and ready comparisons. A parent who has to decide whether to spend some money on giving one child a holiday or sending another child to a better school, does in fact make some kind of intuitive comparison about which will matter more in the life of particular person. We may often get it wrong. We certainly can’t do it precisely. But I think again it’s too naive to think that we can’t do it at all, which is what the strong case against utilitarianism sometimes suggests.

NARRATOR

The Swedish philosopher Torbjorn Tannsjo views utilitarianism as a kind of research project. The basic idea is clear and simple, but the details need to be worked out in different and complex ways. When asked whether he considers himself a utilitarian, tannsjo replies:

TORBJORN TANNSJO

There are many questions that it does not answer, but the moral truth points in that direction. My belief is that utilitarianism gives a more adequate answer than any other moral theory.

There are lots of ways to criticise utilitarianism. It implies certain consequences which are considered to be in opposition to our daily morality, when taken to extremes.

One reason for criticism is that utilitarianism asserts that “the end justifies that means.” There are no actions which are forbidden in themselves. For instance, if one was to kill a person and it is proved that the consequences are better than if one was to refuse the killing then, according to utilitarianism, the killing is the right thing to do. Another reason for criticism is that utilitarianism seems to demand a great deal from us. It demands that we shall act so as to get the best consequences.

NARRATOR

Utilitarianism requires that we predict the future consequences of our actions. This is difficult in the real world. In Malaysia, there has been a recession. The economy can no longer support a large-scale project such as the Bakun dam. The future of the proiect is in doubt.

TORBJORN TANNSJO

Utilitarianism demands a lot of empirical knowledge to reach even a plausible opinion. This makes you humble. I have sometimes made up my mind on medical ethical questions, but only after years of study of the question at issue.

CHARLES TAYLOR, McGill University

There is something about utilitarianism, about its way of proceeding which invariably undercounts the difficulties. And that’ s because the downside is invariably much more complex and difficult to trace than the upside. I mean, take this business of moving people.

What, of course, can’t be properly costed is their entire embedding in their way of life, the way in which that gives them a sense of morale and of importance in their lives, all the skills that are going to totally be made irrelevant that they now have which will be, you know, totally wiped out. Skills which are now producing important things. All that is not only extremely important to cost but at a certain moment, you just throw up your hands.

How do you ever cost that? So invariably this attempt, even with the best will in the world and even in its own terms is going to leave out something that is absolutely relevant. Consequently these projects, very often, just even in their own terms, are catastrophically badly calculated.

The downside is always bigger than it was thought to be and very often the thing turns out to be a great negative. And, of course, it’s also irreversible so it’s a formula for social catastrophe.

NARRATOR

At the turn the 20th century, Cambridge philosopher George Edward Moore presented a theory called Ideal Utilitarianism. He argued that there are other intrinsic goods besides pleasure. Art and love, for example, are also goods that the utilitarian should maximize. Moore’s ideas were a source of inspiration to a group of intellectuals in London known as the Bloomsbury group. Leading members of the group such as the writer Virginia Woolf…her sister Vanessa Bell…the economist John Maynard Keynes…and the writer Vita Sackville-West…extended Moore’s ideas. They asserted that only certain refined states of consciousness have intrinsic value. But are there values that apply both in London and in the rainforest of Borneo? What about nature? Does it have a value of it’s own, an intrinsic value, or is it just a means to human happiness?

JONATHAN CLOVER

Utilitarianism comes out very strongly on one side of a quite deep debate about environmental issues.

NARRATOR

The Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess, by contrast, holds that nature has a value of its own.

ARNE NAESS

I personally feel also that a mountain has a dignity, especially one mountain here in Norway, a certain dignity that could be violated. You cannot do so and so on the top of these mountains. You cannot have any kind of building and so on, it’s against the dignity. But there would be individual differences where you draw the line between living and not living. For me this mountain is a living entity.

NARRATOR

Does Naess go too far when he claims that a mountain has a moral standing of its own and that we should respect its dignity?

TORBJORN TANNSJO

It’s an interesting thought, but in the end I think he makes a serious mistake. The conclusion of his drastic ideas is that humanity will have to be surrendered.

If one takes into account these aesthetic values, we are very far from Bentham’s traditional version of utilitarianism.

NARRATOR

In the 1970s Naess founded the so-called deep ecology movement to help in the struggle against building dams and power plants on the rivers of Norway.

ARNE NAESS

It is mainly to make people aware of things, aware of certain values. So it’s communications with the people. Communications with the majority, of course. The Prime Minister of Norway at the time later reflected on the struggles, the issues, and the difficulty in trying to predict future energy needs.

GRO HARLEM BRUNDTLAND, Former Prime Minister in Norway

Looking back at the 70’s and 80’s it is obvious that the forecasts of rising energy demands were not completely justified. It underlines the difficulties of making energy prognoses. But that is just what you can see afterwards, when you know how things have developed.

ARNE NAESS

When it comes to life, I think that it’s not enough with what you call the number one point of the deep ecology movement, namely that each living being has a value in itself. We have also to add a second point about diversity. Manifold richness...there’s something there that I think is a very deep-going intuition you have, also in life that you wish to conform but you also delight in difference.

PETER SINGER

I don’t think that diversity is a value in itself…and the problem with the stress that ecologists put on diversity is that it’s very unclear what counts as greater diversity. For example, if you allow raw sewage to flow into a previously pristine river, you would greatly increase the number of microbes who exist in that river. And so in one sense you enormously increase the diversity living in that river. But most ecologists don’t value this kind of diversity. So really they owe us an explanation of precisely what kind of diversity it is that they value. And when you look at it, it usually turns out to be something that you can understand in other terms like the aesthetic value of a richly diverse forest or maybe the greater stability you get from the richly diverse forest but not diversity in itself.

And what about the many life-forms in the Malaysian jungle? They, too, are affected by the decision about the dam. Are they only means to human happiness, or do they count in a utilitarian appraisal? Interestingly, Bentham thought they should.

TORBJORN TANNSJO

Bentham’s theories about animals being able to sense pain and pleasure was the main and revolutionary question. If this is the case, then animals are completely included in the moral community. it is still a revolutionary standpoint if one listens to Peter Singer and other utilitarian thinkers who propagate this view.

PETER SINGER

If you recognise that other animals are sentient beings, then they have interests. For example, I have an interest in not feeling pain. You then have to ask yourself, well does the fact that the animal is a dog or a pig or a giraffe or a chimpanzee mean that the pain suffered by that animal is less significant than the pain suffered by a member of the species Homo Sapiens? And I think you only have to ask yourself that question to see that the answer is no. I mean how can it make a difference to the wrongness of pain just because of the species to which the being who suffers pain belongs? That does not make any more sense to me than saying that the pain of a European is more important than the pain of an African which is clearly nonsense.

NARRATOR

What is the answer? Should one build the dam or not? One might expect utilitarianism to favour the dam, to weigh benefits over costs. Instead it suggests reasons pro and con. And perhaps that’s its chief value—to call attention to gains and sacrifices on all sides, and to propose that we try to weigh them.

ROSS HARRISON

Real life politics isn’t usually that easy. Real life politics usually involves advantages to some and sufferings to others. And utilitarianism, rightly or wrongly, as one of its harsher aspects has an account of such sacrifice or when such sacrifice is justified…when it’s right to sacrifice the interests of one person for the sake of others.

That’s the big argument always in favour of the other view—of the rights view, which is the claim that it would always be wrong to sacrifice one person for the sake of others. But I think that’s an inevitable part of...when we’re living together, with politics.

And therefore it’s much better it seems to me to have a theory such as utilitarianism that doesn’t just back off the idea and says we can never sacrifice the interests of some for the sake of others. But rather in a reasoned and thoughtful way tries to work out when it’s right to sacrifice the interests of some instead of others. In other words it takes that problem on and tries to resolve it, rather than say we’ll never touch it.

Sist endret: fredag, 19. mars 2021, 14:58