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Acceptance and the Problem of Slippery-Slope Insensitivity in Rule-Utilitarianism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 May 2010

L. A. Whitt
L. A. Whitt
Affiliation:
University of Illinois at Urbana—Champaign
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Extract

Slippery slopes crop up with startling frequency when controversial moral issues are debated. Generally, those who mount this line of argument appeal to some grim, highly undesirable state of affairs which would—they allege—inevitably ensue were society to sanction certain activities. Their reasoning is often fallacious, offering little more than an easy out for those reluctant to address problematic moral issues with the care and honesty they demand.

Type
Articles
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 23 , Issue 4 , December 1984 , pp. 649 - 660
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1984

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References

1 Cf. Barry, V., Applying Ethics (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing, 1982), 162Google Scholar.

2 Ibid., 222.

3 Govier, T., “What's Wrong with Slippery Slope Arguments?”, Canadian Journal of Philosophy 12/2 (06 1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Ibid., 315. The slope arguments with which this paper are concerned are of this non-fallacious variety.

5 Ibid., 316.

6 Trianosky, G., “Rule Utilitarianism and the Slippery Slope”, Journal of Philosophy 75/8 (08 1978)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 The partial analysis of acceptance which Trianosky finds most plausible, and upon which he relies, is culled from Brandt and Hare. According to it, agents are said to accept a moral code only if they are sufficiently motivated to try to apply and act in accordance with the code, experience discomfort or guilt if they violate it, and are disturbed when in the presence of anyone who violates it. Cf. ibid.. 416.

8 Ibid., 424.

9 A practically or psychologically impossible moral code is a code such that its acceptance is psychologically or practically impossible for actual moral agents.

10 Here I draw on the essentials of Trianosky's example, although my formulation of the argument differs somewhat from his. Cf. , Trianosky, “Rule-Utilitarianism”, 418Google Scholar.

11 I am indebted to a referee of this journal for suggesting this way of viewing the matter.

12 , Trianosky, “Rule-Utilitarianism”, 415Google Scholar.

13 Ibid., 415.

14 At one point he comes close to appreciating that slope arguments address transitional concerns: “I cannot see that we would necessarily have good reasons to act on—or even to press for the acceptance of—the recommendations of a code which, though it would maximize utility if accepted in toto, cannot be so accepted because of important psychological facts about the relations among various motives, attitudes, and beliefs of moral agents” (ibid., 420). He never develops this insight, however.

15 Criticism of P's otherworldly and self-defeating nature is by now standard. (Proponents of rule-utilitarianism have themselves raised it… notably Brandt who, admitting that IRU “savors a bit of the Utopian”, has attempted to fashion an alternative to P which will solve the problem of determining a set of rules “for an imperfect society”. Cf. Brandt, R., “Toward a Credible Form of Utilitarianism”, in Castaneda, H.-N. and Nakhnikian, G., eds., Morality and the Language of Conduct (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1965), 126–130Google Scholar. David Lyons, for example, has developed a non-general coherence argument against IRU which parallels the general coherence argument raised by rule-utilitarians against act-utilitarianism. It attributes the self-defeating quality of IRU to its lack of, or indeterminancy with respect to, minimizing conditions. IRU will be self-defeating when it is not generally accepted—which is the normal state ofaffairs. (See his Forms and Limits of Utilitarianism [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965], especially 136–160.)Google Scholar

16 Rawls, J., A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), 455Google Scholar.

17 Trianosky also rejects the learnability requirement, suggesting that we might want to pick a code that was not learnable in its entirety by everyone. This suggestion rests on the plausibility of the idea that morality involves a sort of “excellent activity”. Like certain games, some of its rules may be so complex that most ordinary “players” would be unable to learn them. Thus it may not be an activity in which all can perfect themselves.

This “argument” strikes me as wholly unsuccessful. It is far from clear that the more complex tournament rules of golf, or even chess, are such that they are quite beyond the intellectual grasp of most ordinary players. These players may find the games harder to play and more difficult to win or to play well because the rules are no longer so simple, but surely this does not show that such rules are not within the realm ofthe educationally possible for ordinary players. However, let us suppose forthe sake of argument that Trianosky is correct and ordinary players are unable not merely to master, but simply to learn these more complex rules. We might even grant that here, with respect to learnability, we have a positive rather than a negative analogy between morality and chess or golf. Could a moral code which violates this requirement be such that (a) it maximizes utility and (b) we might want to choose it?

With respect to (b) I think it can be said that ordinary moral “players” would not choose acode which was, forthem, educationally impossible. The “we” Trianosky has in mind can only refer to those extraordinary “players” whose intellectual capacities are such that they alone can learn the more complex provisions of the code. Necessarily, they will be in the minority. But then it becomes very hard to see how such a code could maximize utility, especially on an IRU approach where the rules of the code are assessed as functions of the utility of their general acceptance.

18 Trianosky, “Rule-Utilitarianism”, 422.

19 Ibid., 423.

20 Ibid., 422.

21 Ibid., 419.

22 It may well be that the addition of such a requirement has done more to P than simply to sensitize it to slippery-slope claims. It may, that is, introduce non-utilitarian factors much as Brandt's modification of IRU does (cf. Brandt, “Toward a Credible Form of Utilitarianism”).

23 , Trianosky, “Rule-Utilitarianism”, 421Google Scholar.

24 Ibid., 417.