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Satisficing Consequentialism Still Doesn't Satisfy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 October 2019

Joe Slater Open the ORCID record for Joe Slater [Opens in a new window]
Joe Slater*
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University of Glasgow
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*Corresponding author. Email: joe.slater@glasgow.ac.uk
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Abstract

Satisficing consequentialism is an unpopular theory. Because it permits gratuitous sub-optimal behaviour, it strikes many as wildly implausible. It has been widely rejected as a tenable moral theory for more than twenty years. In this article, I rehearse the arguments behind this unpopularity, before examining an attempt to redeem satisficing. Richard Yetter Chappell has recently defended a form of ‘effort satisficing consequentialism’. By incorporating an ‘effort ceiling’ – a limit on the amount of willpower a situation requires – and requiring that agents produce at least as much good as they could given how much effort they are exerting, Chappell avoids the obvious objections. However, I demonstrate that the revised theory is susceptible to a different objection, and that the resulting view requires that any supererogatory behaviour must be efficient, which fails to match typical moral verdicts.

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Utilitas , Volume 32 , Issue 1 , March 2020 , pp. 108 - 117
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019

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References

1 Chappell, Richard Yetter, ‘Willpower Satisficing’, Noûs 53 (2019), pp. 251–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Slote, Michael, ‘Satisficing Consequentialism’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, suppl. vol. 58 (1984), pp. 139–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Slote, ‘Satisficing Consequentialism’, p. 142.

4 Even non-consequentialists might endorse some form of ‘strategic satisficing’. Christine Swanton, for instance, suggests that strategies to satisfice rather than pursue the good directly do seem rational, e.g. Swanton, Christine, ‘Satisficing and Virtue’, The Journal of Philosophy 90 (1993), pp. 33–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Mulgan, Tim, The Demands of Consequentialism (Oxford, 2001), p. 128Google Scholar.

6 Slote, ‘Satisficing’, p. 149

7 Slote, ‘Satisficing’, pp. 150–1.

8 Slote, ‘Satisficing’, p. 156.

9 Bradley, Ben, ‘Against Satisficing Consequentialism’, Utilitas 18 (2006), pp. 97–108, at 101CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Bradley describes how each of the six interpretations are understood, and how each of them cannot respond adequately to the objection (‘Against Satisficing’, pp. 101–4). I will not repeat these explanations here.

11 Tim Mulgan, ‘Slote's Satisficing Consequentialism’, Ratio 6, pp. 121–34, at 125.

12 Elsewhere, Mulgan offers even more alarming examples, suggesting that satisficers are committed, in some circumstances, to condoning murder (Mulgan, Tim, ‘How Satisficers Get Away With Murder’, International Journal of Philosophical Studies 9 (2001), pp. 41–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

13 de Lazari-Radek and Singer note that this conclusion ‘may be just as hard to accept as the maximizing conclusion’ delivered by act consequentialism (e.g. de Lazari-Radek, Katarzyna and Singer, Peter, The Point of View of the Universe: Sidgwick and Contemporary Ethics (Oxford, 2014), p. 143CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

14 This problem for demandingness objections is discussed by David Sobel (‘The Impotence of the Demandingness Objection’, Philosophers’ Imprint 7, pp. 1–17), and leads him to deny that the demandingness objection against act consequentialism has any force.

15 For further discussion of this conception, see McElwee (McElwee, Brian, ‘What is Demandingness?’, in van Ackeren, M. and Kuhler, M. (eds.), The Limits of Moral Obligation: Moral Demandingness and Ought Implies Can (New York, 2016), pp. 19–35Google Scholar), who is favourable, and Cohen, who briefly discusses but dismisses it (Cohen, G. A., ‘If You're an Egalitarian, How Come You're So Rich?’, The Journal of Ethics 4 (2000), pp. 1–26, at 24CrossRefGoogle Scholar). Dana Nelkin also defends the view that the moral status of an action (the degree of praiseworthiness/blameworthiness) is dependent upon its difficulty (Nelkin, Dana, ‘Difficulty and Degrees of Moral Praiseworthiness and Blameworthiness’, Noûs 50 (2016), pp. 356–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

16 Henceforth WSC.

17 Chappell, ‘Willpower Satisficing’, p. 256. Specifically Chappell makes use of the accounts given by Arpaly (Arpaly, Nomy, Unprincipled Virtue: An Inquiry Into Moral Agency (Oxford, 2003)Google Scholar) and Strawson (Strawson, Peter, ‘Freedom and Resentment’, Proceedings of the British Academy 48 (1962), pp. 1–15Google Scholar). I will not discuss the intricacies of these accounts here.

18 Chappell, ‘Willpower Satisficing’, p. 257.

19 Chappell, ‘Willpower Satisficing’, p. 255.

20 Mulgan, Demands of Consequentialism, p. 138.

21 Mulgan, Demands of Consequentialism, p. 138.

22 In one sense I am not interested in whether it should be categorised in this way – if it's right, it's right! But in terms of what explains the moral properties of acts – as suggested in Watson, Gary, ‘On the Primacy of Character’, in Flanagan, O. and Rorty, A. (eds.), Identity, Character and Morality: Essays in Moral Psychology, (Cambridge, MA, 1997), pp. 449–69Google Scholar – this does seem appropriate.

23 Shelly Kagan, The Limits of Morality (Oxford, 1989), p. 16.

24 Even many effective altruists accept this verdict. Pummer, for instance, defends the claim that it is wrong to do much less good than one can when costs are equal, but accepts that in various circumstances it is permissible to do some less good (e.g. Pummer, Theron, ‘All or Nothing, but If Not All, Next Best or Nothing’, Journal of Philosophy 116 (2019), pp. 278–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

25 Joe Horton, ‘The All or Nothing Problem’, The Journal of Philosophy 114, pp. 94–104, at 94.

26 Scheffler, Samuel, The Rejection of Consequentialism (Oxford, 1982)Google Scholar.

27 Maximisers like de Lazari-Radek and Singer would disagree (e.g. Lazari-Radek, Katarzyna de and Singer, Peter, ‘Doing our Best for Hedonistic Utilitarianism’, Ethics & Politics 18 (2016), pp. 187–207, at 197Google Scholar), but they reject the move to satisficing consequentialism anyway.

28 Pummer, Theron, ‘Whether and Where to Give’, Philosophy & Public Affairs 44 (2016), pp. 77–95, at 93CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 I am grateful to two anonymous reviewers and the editors at Utilitas for helpful suggestions on a previous version of this article. A short version of this article was presented at the 2019 Joint Session at Durham, so thanks also to the organisers for the opportunity to present it at that venue, and for the questions of the audience. Big thanks also to Lizzy Ventham for reading a typo-ridden and rambling version, and suggesting many much-needed cuts.