Bernard Williams’ moral intuitions differ from mine considerably. He gives cases that are presented as objections to utilitarianism, when it just seems obvious that we should accept the utilitarian conclusion. In his extensive dialogue with Smart, giving another objection, Williams writes “(2) Jim finds himself in the central square of a small South American town. Tied up against the wall are a row of twenty Indians, most terrified, a few defiant, in front of them several armed men in uniform. A heavy man in a sweat-stained khaki shirt turns out to be the captain in charge and, after a good deal of questioning of Jim which establishes that he got there by accident while on a botanical expedition, explains that the Indians are a random group of the inhabitants who, after recent acts of protest against the government, are just about to be killed to remind other possible protestors of the advantages of not protesting. However, since Jim is an honoured visitor from another land, the captain is happy to offer him a guest’s privilege of killing one of the Indians himself. If Jim accepts, then as a special mark of the occasion, the other Indians will be let off. Of course, if Jim refuses, then there is no special occasion, and Pedro here will do what he was about to do when Jim arrived, and kill them all. Jim, with some desperate recollection of schoolboy fiction, wonders whether if he got hold of a gun, he could hold the captain, Pedro and the rest of the soldiers to threat, but it is quite clear from the set-up that nothing of that kind is going to work: any attempt at that sort of thing will mean that all the Indians will be killed, and himself. The men against the wall, and the other villagers, understand the situation, and are obviously begging him to accept. What should he do?”
In this case, it once again seems intuitive that Jim should kill Indians. If he does not, everyone is worse off. We should take options that make everyone better off.
It might be true that it would be hard to blame Jim for acting wrongly here, given the difficulty of taking the right actions. Certain actions are psychologically difficult, partly as a result of desirable heuristics, such that we oughtn’t fault people too much for failing to take those actions. However, how much we would blame Jim would be distinct from the wrongness of his actions.
We can consider a parallel case; suppose that the only way to save the world was to steal a penny. In this case, it seems reasonable to say one ought to steal the penny. Additionally, suppose that an asteroid was about to collide with earth. The only way to prevent the asteroid deflection was to press a button, which would compress it into a javelin, which would be subsequently launched at a person, thereby killing them. Surely we should launch the javelin. Now suppose that the button presser had to witness the person being hit with the javelin. It still seems clear that the button ought to be pressed. Finally, suppose that they had to hurl the javelin. It once again seems intuitive that it would be extremely morally wrong not to hurl the javelin. We ought to save the world, even if we have to sully ourselves in the process.
Williams goes on to say “To these dilemmas, it seems to me that utilitarianism replies, in the first case, that George should accept the job, and in the second, that Jim should kill the Indian. Not only does utilitarianism give these answers but, if the situations are essentially as described and there are no further special factors, it regards them, it seems to me, as obviously the right answers. But many of us would certainly wonder whether, in (1), that could possibly be the right answer at all; and in the case of (2), even one who came to think that perhaps that was the answer, might well wonder whether it was obviously the answer.”
This is not a mark against utilitarianism. Ideally, a theory will make us able to come to conclusions quickly, even if they had previously seemed impossible to solve quickly. It makes no more sense to criticize utilitarianism for its ease of generating a solution to this thought experiment than it would to criticize the chain rule in calculus, for simplifying seemingly very complex math problems, or the intersection of marginal revenue and marginal cost, in economics, for quickly figuring out what the price would be, or the labor theory of value for quickly figuring out the long run equilibrium price of goods. Regardless of whether or not we accept the labor theory of value, it would be silly to reject it on the basis of it being too quick at generating accurate predictions of long run equilibrium price.
Williams’ argument seems to run afoul of the Pareto principle, according to which bad actions must make some people worse off. It’s also susceptible to previous objections given to rights.