“The important issues that utilitarianism raises should be discussed in contexts more rewarding than that of utilitarianism itself. The day cannot be too far off in which we hear no more of it.”
—Bernard Williams in 1973
This prediction of his was obviously quite far off. Williams kept hearing about utilitarianism until his dying days. It is still alive and well, tragically unlike Williams. One of Williams objections to utilitarianism is the following— which will be addressed in this post.
He wrote “(1) George, who has just taken his Ph.D. in chemistry, finds it extremely difficult to get a job. He is not very robust in health, which cuts down the number of jobs he might be able to do satisfactorily. His wife has to go out to work to keep them, which itself causes a great deal of strain, since they have small children and there are severe problems about looking after them. The results of all this, especially on the children, are damaging. An older chemist, who knows about this situation, says that he can get George a decently paid job in a certain laboratory, which pursues research into chemical and biological warfare. George says that he cannot accept this, since he is opposed to chemical and biological warfare. The older man replies that he is not too keen on it himself, come to that, but after all George’s refusal is not going to make the job or the laboratory go away; what is more, he happens to know that if George refuses the job, it will certainly go to a contemporary of George’s who is not inhibited by any such scruples and is likely if appointed to push along the research with greater zeal than George would. Indeed, it is not merely concern for George and his family, but (to speak frankly and in confidence) some alarm about this other man’s excess of zeal, which has led the older man to offer to use his influence to get George the job . . . George’s wife, to whom he is deeply attached, has views (the details of which need not concern us) from which it follows that at least there is nothing particularly wrong with research into CBW. What should he do?”
Perhaps it is a side effect of thinking about many of the other thought experiments, but this one did not strike me as counterintuitive at all. Suppose that George’s contemporary would bring about 5 more deaths than George would, if George had worked at the job. While it might seem somewhat counterintuitive to say that George ought to take the job, it seems much less unintuitive when we think about it from the perspective of the victims. Imagine being one of the five people killed, as a result of George’s inactions. Surely, it would seem reasonable to say that George has a duty to take the job, to prevent your death from being brought about. It only seems counterintuitive when the people saved are unnamed, faceless people, rather than someone who we care about. Surely what Oscar Shindler did was morally right, despite sending weapons to the Germans, because it prevented large numbers of innocent jews from being killed. Additionally, if we take seriously the principle that Williams has espoused, we run into some wacky results. Suppose that everyone in South America would die a horrible painful death, unless a vegan ate a cheeseburger, or even worked at a cheeseburger restaurant. It would be reasonable to say that the vegan would be obligated to work at the restaurant, for the overwhelming greater good.
Additionally, consider two states of the world. In each state of the world we have a thousand Georges. However, for each of them, if they don’t take the job, the number of people killed will be one one thousandth of the world's population. If we say that George should not take the job, then we endorse a state of affairs where every human dies. If we say George should take the job, we burden a thousand people, but prevent the world ending. If this principle would end the world, and be worse for everyone, including George, it seems reasonable to suppose that George is acting wrongly.
Consider a parallel case. George is deciding whether or not to mow the lawn of a neighbor. George, an ardent supporter of animal rights, thinks mowing the lawn is somewhat immoral. However, he knows that if he doesn’t mow the lawn, Fred will be hired. Fred has a curious habit of bringing a shotgun to mow the lawn. While he’s mowing the lawn, he makes sure to shoot twenty passerby’s, throw acid into the face of twenty other passerby’s, sexually assault twenty other passerby’s, beat twenty other passerby’s with a cane, and engage in vandalism, treason, assault, assault with a deadly weapon, violation of traffic laws, consumption of every single title one drug, looting, violation of intellectual property rights, illegal possession of a firearm, sale of heroin to minors, and discrimination on the basis of race. In this case George clearly has an obligation to take the job, even though he finds it ethically objectionable.
A final objection can be given. Suppose that George has to choose between two jobs, designing chemical weapons and being a bartender. In this case, there is no overzealous older contemporary—if George takes the bartending job someone else will fill in for George designing chemical weapons who will be just as good at the job as George and just as zealous. However, an additional consideration is present. George knows that if he takes the job as a bartender it will enrage a random terrorist who will kill dozens of people. In this case, it seems clear he shouldn’t take the bar tender job—it will kill lots of people. Choosing it while knowing this fact is no more justified than working voluntarily for a genocidal organization.
This case seems structurally analogous to the first case. In this scenario if George takes the job at the chemical plant many people won’t die. If he takes the other option many people will die. The only difference is that in one case the deaths are caused by George’s job and in the other case they’re caused by George not taking another job. However, in both cases George’s actions are guaranteed to result in lots of people’s deaths. There seems to be moral parity between these cases.
By all accounts, Williams was a brilliant thinker. However, he was badly off when it came to utilitarianism and made bad arguments.