Chapter 6: Scenarios That Only Utilitarianism Can Address
This section shall argue that there are a series of areas that pose devastating problems for other theories. Only utilitarianism can provide satisfactory answers to a wide range of difficult questions. This counts in favor of utilitarianism, showing philosophical issues that other theories don’t give right answers to, but utilitarianism does.
David Lewis (1986) famously argued that we should posit that possible worlds concretely exist, because doing so allows us to explain a variety of concepts like causation, possibility, and properties. While one can dispute the specific arguments of Lewis, it makes sense to posit philosophical entities if we get enough bang for our buck, so to speak. The aim of this chapter is to argue that a wide variety of difficult philosophical issues--much like those that Lewis set out to address--can be effortlessly explained by utilitarianism. This gives us reason to commit to the truth of utilitarianism and abandon other theories which are explanatorily inadequate across these cases.
Part 1: Political Authority
Huemer (2013), has argued persuasively that government action looks suspiciously like theft. After all, governments take our money without consent. That tends to be how most people define theft. However, despite this, the notion that taxation is good if it produces greater overall benefits is quite intuitive. Thus, utilitarianism gives the best account of why political authority is not necessarily objectionable. If the government takes money to spend it to save the life of someone else, that is overall good.
Huemer considers a case wherein a person often kidnaps people and puts them in their basement whenever they commit a crime, while demanding payments from people. This would clearly be unjust. However, a government is structurally similar, demanding payment without consent and imprisoning people. What would be the morally relevant difference between those two cases? The utilitarian can supply an adequate account: bands of roving vigilantes does not bring about good outcomes, while a state (plausibly) does. Theft causes harm in a way that taxation does not.
One might object that the legitimacy of political authority comes from implicit consent. However, Huemer explains why this does not work. For consent to be valid, people have to be able to opt out reasonably, explicit dissent has to trump implicit consent, consent has to be voluntary, and obligations have to be both mutual and conditional. Political authority lacks any of these features. One cannot easily opt out of government. Huemer quotes Hume, who said, “We may as well assert that a man, by remaining in a vessel, freely consents to the dominion of the master; though he was carried on board while asleep, and must leap into the ocean, and perish, the moment he leaves her.”
Part 2: Birth
Imagine you were deciding whether or not to take an action. This action would cause a person to endure immense suffering—far more suffering than would occur as the result of a random assault. This person literally cannot consent. This action probably would bring about more happiness than suffering, but it forces upon them immense suffering to which they don’t consent. In fact, you know that there’s a high chance that this action will result in a rights violation, if not many rights violations.
If you do not take the action, there is no chance that you will violate the person’s rights. In fact, absent this action, their rights can’t be violated at all. In fact, you know that the action will have a 100% chance of causing them to die. There’s also a reasonable chance (statistics differ about this), that it will cause them to be sexually assaulted.
Should you take the action? On most moral systems, the answer would seem to be obviously no. After all, you condemn someone to certain death, cause them immense suffering, and they don’t even consent. How is that justified?
Well, the action I was talking about was giving birth. After all, those who are born are certain to die at some point. They’re likely to have immense suffering (though probably more happiness). The suffering that you inflict upon someone by giving birth to them is far greater than the suffering that you inflict upon someone if you brutally beat them.
So utilitarianism seems to naturally—unlike other theories—provide an account of why giving birth is not morally abhorrent. This is another fact that supports it. This case has been supported by (Hereth & Ferrucci, 2021).
Maybe a person thinks that most children will have more total suffering than pleasure in their lives. If that’s true, then utilitarianism would condemn it. However, that doesn’t seem unintuitive. It does seem like it would be bad to have a child who would live a bad life. Other theories have the harmful consequence of condemning giving birth, even if the people will live good lives overall.
Part 3: Degrees of wrongness
Suppose one is deciding between two actions. Action 1 would have a 50% chance of increasing someone’s suffering by 10 units and action two would have a 100% chance of increasing their suffering by 4 units. It seems clear that one should take action 2. After all, the person is better off in expectation.
However, non utilitarian theories have trouble accounting for this. If there is a wrongness of violating rights that exists over and above the harm that was caused, then assuming that we say that the badness of violating rights is equivalent to 8 units of suffering, action 1 would be better (½ chance of 18 is less bad than certainty of 12).
The non utilitarian may object that the badness of the act depends on how much harm is done. They might say that the first action is a more serious rights violation. Suppose the formula they give is that the badness of a rights violation = twice the amount of suffering caused by that rights violation.
This leads them open to a few issues. First, this rules out all harms that don’t cause any suffering. Thus, this account can’t hold that harmless rights violations are bad. Second, it doesn't seem to go well with the idea of rights. Rights violations seem to add bad things to the act done, independent of suffering caused.
Maybe the deontologist can work out a complex arithmetic to avoid this issue. However, this is an issue that is easy to solve for utilitarians, yet which requires complexity for deontologists and others who champion rights/
Part 4: Surgeries
Suppose you stumble across a person who has just been wounded. They need to be rushed to the hospital if they are to survive. If they are rushed to the hospital, they will very likely survive. The person is currently unconscious and has not consented to being rushed to the hospital. Thus, on non utilitarian accounts, it’s difficult to provide an adequate account of why it’s morally permissible to rush a person to the hospital. They did not consent, and the rationale is purely about making them better off.
One might object that the relevant question is whether they would consent if they were conscious. However, this seems to misidentify the correct action in this scenario. Consider another situation in which the person injured is a child. It seems obvious in this case that the person should be rushed to the hospital. This is true even if the child wouldn’t consent if conscious.
One might object that the relevant question is whether they’d consent rationally. Yet as Parfit (2011) argues, what we could rationally consent to is the state of affairs that makes things go best. This is intuitive in this case. Whether the child could rationally consent to the action would seem to depend on whether it would be good for the child.
It’s not inconceivable that a non-utilitarian could work out a justification in this case. Yet this case is a clear example of one in which utilitarianism easily gets the correct result, while other theories need additional ad hoc stipulations.
Part 5: Children
Consequentialism provides the only adequate account of how we should treat children. Several actions being done to children are widely regarded as justifiable, yet are not for adults.
Compelling them to do minimal forced labor (chores).
Compelling them to spend hours a day at school, even if they vehemently dissent and would like to not be at school.
Forcing them to learn things like multiplication, even if they don’t want to.
Forcing them to go to bed when their parents think will make things go best, rather than when they want to.
Not allowing them to leave their house, however much they protest.
Disciplining them in ways that cause them to cry, for example putting them on time-out.
Controlling the food they eat, who they spend time with, what they do, and where they are at all times.
However, lots of other actions are justifiable to do with adults, yet not with children.
Having sex with them if they verbally consent.
Not feeding them (i.e. one shouldn’t be arrested if they don’t feed a homeless person nearby. They should, however, if they don’t feed their children. Not feeding ones children is morally worse than beating their children, while the same is not true of unrelated adults.)
Employing them in damaging manual labor.
Consequentialism provides the best account of these obligations. Each of these obligations makes things go best, which is why they apply. Non consequentialist accounts have trouble with these cases.
One might object that children can’t consent to many of these things, which makes up the difference. However, consent fails to provide an explanation. It would be strange to say, for example, that the reason you can prohibit someone from leaving your house is because they don’t consent to leaving your house. Children are frequently forced to do things without consent, like learn multiplication, go to school, and even not put their fingers in electrical sockets. Thus, any satisfactory account has to explain why their inability to consent only bars them from consenting to some of those things.
Part 6: War
Consequentialism also provides the best account of when war is justified. Usually, it’s immoral to kill innocent people. However, in war there is an exception.
Lazar (2016) provides an account of when war is justified. I will argue that utilitarianism provides a good account of when war is justified. On utilitarianism, war is justified if it maximizes desirability of mental states of sentient beings. If it makes sentient beings' lives better overall, then war is justified.
Lazar lays out several principles for when war is justified.
“1. Just Cause: the war is an attempt to avert the right kind of injury.”
This diverges slightly from utilitarianism in two ways, which make the utilitarian account clearly better. First, the utilitarian account does not take into account intentions. If an actor achieves a desirable end, even if their aim was ignoble, the war would be good overall. For example, if the U.S. decision to intervene in world war two was driven by bad motivations, that would not mean that U.S. intervention decreasing the length of the holocaust and war wouldn’t make the war good overall.
Second, the utilitarian account is proportional. Rather than saying that wars can only be justified to avert the right kind of injury, it would say that wars can only be justified if the benefits of the war outweigh the costs. Thus, even if the injury were very great, if the costs of the war were greater, war would not be justified. This is rather intuitive, if combatting a genocide going on in China would result in nuclear anhiliation of the world, it would not be desirable. Similarly, it says that the bar for justifying a more modest intervention is much lower. This is also intuitive, if the cost to prevent several hundred thousand deaths would be a drone strike that would cost a few hundred lives, intervening would be good. Rather than drawing arbitrary lines for how great the atrocity has to be to justify an intervention, utilitarianism rightly holds that analysis should compare the benefits and costs of expected intervention.
When justifying this principle, Lazar appeals to the immense harms of war. However, analyzing the harms of war to justify treading lightly when it comes to war appeals to consequentialism, because it uses the negative consequences as a justification for being hesitant about going to war.
Next, Lazar says “Legitimate Authority: the war is fought by an entity that has the authority to fight such wars.”
The utilitarian account is once again better here. First, as I argued in part 1 of the chapter, utilitarianism provides the only adequate account of political authority. Second, it seems clear that the authority of the entity going to war is not relevant for evaluating the desirability of a war. If an illegitimate criminal enterprise went to war against the Nazi’s, thereby quickly ending the holocaust, even though the illegitimate criminal enterprise wouldn’t be legitimate, the war would still be desirable. Third, this standard is clearly ad hoc. Utilitarianism provides the best grounding of the arbitrary list of requirements for war to be justified.
Lazar next says “Right Intention: that entity intends to achieve the just cause, rather than using it as an excuse to achieve some wrongful end.”
Intention is irrelevant, as I argued above. It’s also unclear how we ascribe intentions to a government. Different people in the government no doubt have different intentions relating to war. There is no single intention behind the decision to intervene.
Lazar’s fourth criterion is “Reasonable Prospects of Success: the war is sufficiently likely to achieve its aims.”
Once again, consequentialism provides a better account. First, even if a war isn’t likely to achieve its aims, if it ends up producing good outcomes, consequentialism explains why it’s justified. If the decision to intervene intends to bring democracy to a region, fails to do so, but ends up saving the world, that intervention would be good overall. Second, even if a war is unlikely to achieve its aims, if its aims are sufficiently important, the war can still be justified. If a war has a 3% chance of saving the world, it would be justified, despite being unlikely to succeed. Third, a war only gains justification from being likely to achieve its aims if those aims are desirable. Fourth, consequentialism provides an adequate account of why likelihood of success matters. Better consequences are brought about by wars that are likely to produce good outcomes.
Fifth, Lazar says “Proportionality: the morally weighted goods achieved by the war outweigh the morally weighted bads that it will cause.”
This is true, yet perfectly in accordance with the consequentialist account. This criterion is essentially that war is justified only if the expected benefits outweigh the costs, which is identical to the utilitarian account of when war is justified.
Sixth, Lazar says “Last Resort (Necessity): there is no other less harmful way to achieve the just cause.”
This criteria is ambiguous. If the claims is merely that war should only be done if it’s the best option, and if other options are better they should be done instead, that’s clearly true, and it’s accounted for by utilitarianism. However, the mere existence of less harmful ways of achieving the aim of war wouldn’t affect the morality of the war. If intervening would be desirable, but sanctions would be even more desirable, that’s a reason to choose sanctions if one has the option of selecting either sanctions or war. However, if one does not have the option of imposing sanctions, the existence of potentially desirable sanctions wouldn’t affect the desirability of going to war.
Lazar goes on to provide necessary criteria for the conduct practiced in war to be justified, even if the war itself is justified.
“Discrimination: belligerents must always distinguish between military objectives and civilians, and intentionally attack only military objectives.”
This is a good heuristic, but the utilitarian account is better. If intentionally targeting one enemy civilian would end a war and save millions of lives, doing so would be justified.
Additionally, this criteria seems to draw a line between intentionally targeting civilians and targeting them as collateral. Utilitarianism adequately explains why that distinction is morally irrelevant. If given the choice between killing 100 enemy civilians as collateral damage or 10 intentionally, utilitarianism explains why killing the 10 would be preferable.
Second, Lazar says “Proportionality: foreseen but unintended harms must be proportionate to the military advantage achieved.”
Utilitarianism explains why this is false. First, it explains why there’s no morally relevant difference between a foreseen but unintended harm and an intended harm. It would be better to kill 10 people intentionally than 15 people in a way that’s foreseen yet not intended. Second, it explains why harm to civilians that doesn’t achieve a military advantage can still be desirable. If, for example, bombing of 15 civilians prevented 500 extra civilian deaths, even if no military advantage was achieved, the bombing would still be justified. Third, utilitarianism provides an account of why the harms and benefits should be proportional in war.
Third, Lazar says “Necessity: the least harmful means feasible must be used.”
Utilitarianism can account for why the least harm should be caused. However, it also accounts for why it can be good for an action to happen even if it’s not the least harmful. Even if there’s a better option than bombing people, if bombing people makes the world better, utilitarianism explains why it’s still justified.
Part 7: Pollution
Some types of pollution should clearly be prohibited. Slaper (2013) argues that the Montreal Protocol, for example, prevented millions of cases of skin cancer per year. It did this at a relatively low cost. Most would agree that if a policy produced minimal economic harm and prevented millions of cases of cancer every year, it would be good overall.
However, some types of pollution clearly shouldn’t be polluted. When a person lights a candle, the ash goes into the air, affecting people for miles around. When people exhale they release a bit of CO2, without the consent of anyone else. This forces gasses to enter other people’s lungs without their knowledge or consent. Generally, deontological accounts would say that forcing substances into people’s bodies without their consent would be a rights violation, while perhaps making an ad hoc exception for gas. Thus, deontological accounts have trouble accounting for it not being a violation of rights to exhale--forcing substances into people’s bodies without their consent. Consequentialism provides the best account of when pollution is justified.
Any time someone pollutes, they affect people who do not consent. Pollutants are breathed in by those who do not consent. However, it only makes sense to ban pollutants that are actually harmful. Consequentialism best accounts for this fact.
It seems clear that a pollutant should be banned only if it’s harmful. PFAS serve as a prime example of this. Lewis (2015) argues that PFAS pollutants are quite common, affecting vast numbers of people. Whether or not it makes sense to ban or regulate PFAS seems to hinge on whether or not they are harmful. If it turned out that PFAS were not harmful, there would be no rationale for banning them. Other theories have difficulty accounting for why pollutants being harmful are the necessary and sufficient conditions for a pollutant to be ban-worthy. Indeed, the importance of banning a pollutant scales proportionally to how much harm the pollutant does.
Views that claim that the badness of a pollutant isn’t proportional to the harm that is caused by the pollution have a puzzling situation. Suppose we are deciding between one unit of pollution A or 1000 units of pollution B. Each unit of pollution A is 1000 times more harmful than a unit of pollution B. Surely we should be indifferent between the thousand units of pollution B and the single unit of pollution A. Consequentialism naturally accounts for this fact. However, if there’s some threshold at which a rights violation is caused, then if A is above the threshold, it would be worse than the thousand units of B. This is because the single unit of A is a single rights violation, so that’s an additional feature counting against it. However, none of the thousand unit B pollution units are enough to be a rights violation, particularly if we assume that they’re done by a thousand different people.
If our reasons to prevent a pollution are not proportional to the harm caused, and instead there is some categorical threshold at which a right is violated, then that creates odd jumps where slight changes in harm cause dramatic differences in the disvalue of a type of pollution. Consequentialism also explains naturally why it’s ordinarily not a rights violation to exhale, light a candle, or pollute in other harmless ways, despite it forcing foreign substances into the lungs of other people.
Part 8: Daily Life
Suppose one was making a decision of whether to press a button. Pressing the button would have a 50% chance of saving someone, a 50% chance of killing someone, and would certainly give them five dollars. Most moral systems, including deontology in particular, would hold that one should not press the button.
However, (Mogenson and Macaskill, 2021) argue that this situation is analogous to nearly everything that happens in one’s daily life. Every time a person gets in a car they affect the distribution of future people, by changing very slightly the time in which lots of other people have sex. They also change traffic distributions, potentially reducing and potentially increasing the number of people who die in traffic accidents. Thus, everytime a person gets in a car, there is a decent chance they’ll cause an extra death, a high chance of changing the distribution of lots of future people, and a decent chance they’ll prevent an extra death. Given that most such actions produce fairly minor benefits, it is quite analogous to the scenario described above about the button.
Given that any act which changes the traffic by even a few milliseconds will affect which of the sperm out of any ejaculation will fertilize an egg, each time you drive a car you causally change the future people that will exist. Your actions are thus causally responsible for every action that will be taken by the new people you cause to exist. Mogenson and Macaskill argue that consequentialism is the only way to account for why it’s not wrong to drive a car in most situations, in the most thorough treatment of the subject, while responding to a variety of objections to the position.
Part 9: Intellectual Property Rights
Intellectual property rights offer another illuminating example of a case in which utilitarianism outshines its rivals at providing the philosophical basis for a widely accepted concept. Intellectual property rights are the types of property rights involved in copyright and patent law, wherein people have control over how their ideas are used. Utilitarianism provides a very natural explanation of why people would have rights to their ideas. Giving people control over how their ideas are used makes it more profitable to have new, important ideas, by making them harder to steal, which spurs important and sometimes life-saving innovation.
In fact, utilitarianism explains quite simply why it makes sense to have the type of intellectual property rights law that we do. There are two competing roles for intellectual property rights law. The first is making it profitable to innovate, creating incentives for people to innovate in the future. The second opposite role is making the innovations accessible. If patents last too long, the price of the innovated goods will be too high for too long, resulting in people not purchasing the patented good. This is the basic reason why monopolies are inefficient.
Our current system, which seems at least potentially just, is that patents are had for a limited period of time before they expire. This is hard to reconcile with the notion of rights. Surely there’s no fact of the matter about how long one deserves intellectual property for an invention--which happens to be 20 years. It seems like deontological accounts would have to be all or nothing. Either people deserve indefinite property rights--a conclusion which is deeply unintuitive--or they deserve no property rights, which is also deeply unintuitive.
Virtue ethics also seems out of place here. Is there really some robust, virtue based account of what length of time intellectual property rights should last? It’s not clear what the account would look like. Thus, intellectual property rights are another case that fits most neatly into a utilitarian conception.
As Moore and Himma (2018) note “In terms of “justification,” modern Anglo-American systems of intellectual property are typically modeled as incentive-based and utilitarian.”
Rejoinder to Personality Theorists
Moore and Himma go on to describe the other ways of justifying intellectual property. First, they say
“Personality theorists such as Hegel maintain that individuals have moral claims to their own talents, feelings, character traits, and experiences. We are self-owners in this sense. Control over physical and intellectual objects is essential for self-actualization—by expanding our selves outward beyond our own minds and mixing these selves with tangible and intangible items, we both define ourselves and obtain control over our goals and projects. For Hegel, the external actualization of the human will requires property (Hegel 1821). Property rights are important in two ways according to this view. First, by controlling and manipulating objects, both tangible and intangible, our will takes form in the world and we obtain a measure of freedom. Individuals may use their physical and intellectual property rights, for example, to shield their private lives from public scrutiny and to facilitate life-long project pursuit. Second, in some cases our personality becomes fused with an object—thus moral claims to control feelings, character traits, and experiences may be expanded to intangible works (Humboldt 1792; Kohler 1969).
“3.1.1 Problems for Personality-Based Justifications of Intellectual Property
“There are at least four problems with this view (Hughes 1988; Palmer 2005; Schroeder 2006). First, it is not clear that we own our feelings, character traits, and experiences. While it is true that we have possession of these things or that they are a part of each of us, an argument is needed to establish the relevant moral claims.
“Second, even if it could be established that individuals own or have moral claims to their personality, it does not automatically follow that such claims are expanded when personalities become infused in tangible or intangible works. Rather than establishing property claims to such works, perhaps we should view this as an abandonment of personality—similar to the sloughing off of hair and skin cells. Moreover, misrepresenting an intellectual work (assuming there are no moral rights to these expressions) might change the perception of an author’s personality, but it would not in fact change their personality.
“Third, assuming that moral claims to personality could be expanded to tangible or intangible items, we would still need an argument justifying property rights. Personality-based moral claims may warrant nothing more than use rights or prohibitions against alteration. Finally, there are many intellectual innovations in which there is no evidence of a creator’s personality—a list of customers or a new safety-pin design, for instance (Hughes 1988). Given these challenges, personality-based theories may not provide a strong moral foundation for legal systems of intellectual property.
“3.1.2 The Personality Theorist’s Rejoinder
“Even if we acknowledge the force of these objections, there does seem to be something intuitively appealing about personality-based theories of intellectual property rights. Suppose, for example, that Mr. Friday buys a painting at a garage sale—a long-lost Crusoe original. Friday takes the painting home and alters the painting with a marker, drawing horns and mustaches on the figures in the painting. The additions are so clever and fit so nicely into the painting that Friday hangs it in a window on a busy street. There are at least two ethical worries to consider in this case. First, the alterations by Friday may cause unjustified economic damage to Crusoe. Second, and independent of the economic considerations, Friday’s actions may damage Crusoe’s reputation. The integrity of the painting has been violated without the consent of the author, perhaps causing long-term damage to his reputation and community standing. If these claims are sensible, then it appears that we are acknowledging personality-based moral “strings” attaching to certain intellectual works. By producing intellectual works, authors and inventors put themselves on display, so-to-speak, and incur certain risks. Intellectual property rights afford authors and inventors a measure of control over this risk. To put the point a different way, it is the moral claims that attach to personality, reputation, and the physical embodiments of these individual goods that justify legal rules covering damage to reputation and certain sorts of economic losses.
“Moreover, personality-based theories of intellectual property often appeal to other moral considerations. Hegel’s personality-based justification of intellectual property rights included an incentive-based component as well—he asserts that protecting the sciences promotes them, benefiting society (Hegel 1821). Perhaps the best way to protect these intuitively attractive personality-based claims to intangible works is to adopt a more comprehensive system designed to promote progress and social utility.”
The original objections provided to the view carry a good amount of force, and make the original Hegelian view, sans utilitarian justification, wholly untenable. The example given about Mr. Friday appeals to reputational harm; this is implicitly a utilitarian justification, for reputational harm is harm. The appeal to incentive based components is, once again, a utilitarian justification.
Rejoinder to Lockean Theories
Moore and Himma (2018) provide another, Lockean account, writing
“3.3 Lockean Justifications of Intellectual Property
“A different strategy for justifying intellectual property rights begins with the claim that individuals are entitled to control the fruits of their labor (Locke 1690; Hettinger 1989; Becker 1993; Gordon 1993; Moore 1998b; Hughes 1988; Palmer 2005; Himma 2005a, 2006, 2008, 2013; Merges 2011). In general, the intuition is that the person who clears unowned land, cultivates crops, builds a house, or creates a new invention obtains property rights by engaging in these activities. Laboring, producing, thinking, and persevering are voluntary, and individuals who engage in these activities are entitled to what they produce. Subject to certain restrictions, rights are generated when individuals mix their labor with an unowned object. Restrictions or limits on acquisition include a labor requirement, a non-waste requirement, and the “enough and as good” proviso (Locke 1690). Labor, for Locke, is best understood as metaphor for productive activities needed to sustain and promote human flourshing (Mossoff 2012). The non-waste requirement invalidates a property claim if the appropriator takes more than she can consume or use without spoilage. Unlike the labor metaphor, spoilage for Locke means rotting or the destruction of an existing good useful for sustaining human life. Finally, the “enough and as good” proviso is best illustrated by an example Locke gives. When someone takes a drink of water from a river it is as if he takes nothing at all. His fellows are, all things considered, unaffected by this acquisition.
“Consider a more formal version of Locke’s famous argument. Individuals own their own bodies and labor—i.e., they are self-owners. When an individual labors on an unowned object, her labor becomes infused in the object and for the most part, the labor and the object cannot be separated. It follows that once a person’s labor is joined with an unowned object, assuming that individuals exclusively own their body and labor, rights to control are generated. The idea is that there is an expansion of rights: we each own our labor and when that labor is mixed with objects in the commons, our rights are expanded to include these goods.
“In terms of intellectual property, the act of creation or discovery typically takes time, effort, and skill. Intellectual works don’t spoil like apples, so there is no “non-waste” concerns. Moreover, the creation or discovery seemingly leaves “enough and as good.” Creating a poem, for example, and holding it as a secret does not preclude others from creating their own poems.”
This view, however, has significant explanatory hurdles. First, it’s not clear why mixing one's labor with land would give them ownership of it. When Locke refers to labor as being mixed with land, he is describing laboring on a piece of land. However, it’s unclear why laboring on a piece of land, in ways that cultivate the land, give one ownership over the land. Mixing ones labor with the land is not even clearly coherent (Waldron, 1983). As Waldron notes (p.40) the notion of mixing land with labor just seems to be a category error--objects can be mixed together, like batter and eggs, but what would it even mean to mix ones labor with land. If mixing labor with land is just a poetic way of describing laboring on land, it’s not clear why it grants any ownership over the land.
Additionally, there seem to be clear counterexamples to this principle. Here, I’ll list several.
Suppose that a person created a computer program that generated the world. This would not make it just to enter the world, and then take everyone’s property, claiming that they had created the land, mixing their labor with it.
Suppose one send probes rapidly throughout all of space, cultivating some of it. This would not give them total ownership of space.
Fishers, who mixed their labor with the sea, even if they made the sea more sustainable, would not subsequently own the sea.
Suppose one labors immensely to create a liquid that they dump into a river. Even though they labored to create something that is now literally mixed with the river, they would not thereby own the river.
Additionally, the Lockean notion requires natural rights--both of self ownership and of property. The existence of such rights were disputed in chapter one.
The Lockean notion has another significant explanatory hurdle. It must explain why the type of labor mixing that occurs when one engages in intellectual property production confers ownership. In this case, there is no land, so it’s not clear what the labor is being mixed with, and why that confers intellectual property rights.
Finally--and this objection applies to both the Hegellian account and the Lockean accounts--it can't explain the limited nature of intellectual property. For example, the person who coined particular words--even if they labored greatly in coining them--would not have total control over the use of those words. Similarly, this Lockean account is not able to explain why intellectual property rights eventually expire. The utilitarian account offers the most natural explanation for this.
Part 10: Pet Ownership
Pet ownership has a series of features that closely resemble general slavery. Ownership of pets involves holding pets in captivation, unable to exercise their will. This point has been advanced forcefully by Francione & Charlton (2016). However, despite this curious keeping of animals as property, pet ownership that treats pets well does not seem to be wrong.
It does seem as though pet ownership is wrong iff it ends up mistreating the animals. If the pets end up being treated well, pet ownership doesn’t make the animals worse off. This fact is easily explained by utilitarianism, which holds that all things, including pet ownership, are only good if they contribute positively to well-being. The fact that our intuitions about pet ownership match this shows that utilitarianism adequately explains our treatment of pets.
One might object by arguing that pets are not morally salient, which explains why it’s not wrong to “own” a pet. This response, however, doesn’t adequately explain our intuitions about the ownership of pets. If one were mistreating pets, nearly all people have the intuition that that would be wrong. Thus, the moral data that needs to be explained is that it’s okay to treat pets in any way iff that ends up being good for the welfare of the pets. Additionally, as chapter seven argued, a view that discounts animals is likely to be untenable.
Part 11: Consent
Utilitarianism explains a variety of features of sexual consent. Consider the following features of consent.
It’s considered wrong to have uninformed consent. This is very different from other domains. It isn’t, for example, wrong to sell pizza to a visibly drunk person, but it is to have sex with a visibly drunk person. However, if a person has sex without informed consent they’re significantly harmed, which explains why one has to be informed before having sex.
The types of people who can give morally salient consent to a sex act are people who are of an age where they’d be expected to benefit from it. Sex with a four-year-old would harm them, sex with a fourteen-year-old is more questionable, and sex with an eighteen-year-old is likely to be beneficial, which explains why the age of consent is what it is. The relevant feature is clearly not age itself--if humans had a hundred-year heavenly incubation period before birth that they forgot about, that wouldn’t affect the permissibility of sex. Similarly, humans didn’t sleep at all and matured twice as fast, it would make sense to lower the age of sex. Finally, when we reflect on the permissibility of sex, it’s very clear that the age of the participants, while instrumentally relevant, is not what is fundamentally important in the interaction.
Sex between consenting adults is generally recoognized to be permissible. Utilitarianism explains why it’s permissible for two gay people to have sex.
Utilitarianism explains why it’s typically wrong for people to engage in necrophilia and bestial acts. Bestiality tends to cause harm to the animals, and necrophilia causes harm to the living, who fear their bodies will be defiled after death.
Utilitarianism explains, by appealing to harm, why it’s wrong to sexually assault or harass people, and why sexual assault is considerably worse than sexual harassment.
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Presenting Chapter 6 of My Book in Progress