bernard williams utilitarianism for and against pdf

Whether in action or inaction, our status as causal lever pullers remains the same. And if it cannot matter morally that some benefit (or harm) be done to me, then neither can it matter morally that it be done by me. This blindness to particular agencies renders ‘that a benefit be done to me’ morally irrelevant. The value of a state of affairs does not track the particular agentive source constituting a partial link in the causal chain of events preceding a given state of affairs. This amounts to an impartial abstraction from distinct individual agencies like ‘me’ and ‘you’.

We are mere points of “causal intervention,” as Williams puts it.

In other words, Utilitarianism is committed to negative responsibility because it doesn’t take into account our separateness as. He takes it that, according to Utilitarianism, the evaluation of states of affairs need only make reference to an agent insofar as that agent is linked in the causal chain of events that brings about a given state of affairs. Williams thinks this must flow from the Utilitarian commitment to fundamentally valuing states of affairs. Negative responsibility denies that an agent is specially responsible for her actions over those of others. That is, an agent is not only responsible for the actions she performs she also has a further responsibility for her omissions of action. The major culprit of faulty Utilitarian reasoning, Williams holds, is its implication of negative responsibility. Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society. However, he thinks its justification is flawed.īernard Williams (1929–2003) was a. Williams takes it that Utilitarianism yields the correct answer in evaluating Jim’s performance as morally right. Photo courtesy Britannica What to do? Say Jim decides to save the nineteen by killing the one. If no action is taken, twenty Indians will die instead. The transaction therefore, is kill one Indian to save nineteen. Jim coincidentally stumbles upon the scene and Pedro offers him a proposition: Kill one of these Indians, and I will let the rest go free. Pedro has lined up a row of twenty Indians he wants to kill. Although the totality of Williams’ work is fascinating, the focus of the paper will concern his notion of ‘integrity’ and how he thinks it levels an objection against Utilitarianism. Williams invites us to consider the case of Jim, Pedro, and the Indians. Ultimately, he denies the legitimacy of any moral systematicity, and further considers such to be rather undesirable. Both he thinks comprise “morality”, a particular malformation of broader ethical thought. Bernard Williams’ moral philosophy is largely critical of what he views as the two fundamental schools of moral thought, on the one hand and on the other.

Bernard williams utilitarianism for and against pdf