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Consideration of the objection from the personal point of view reveals the resources of utilitarianism. The utilitarian can offer a partial rebuttal by distinguishing between criteria of rightness and decision procedures and claiming that, because his theory is a criterion of rightness and not a decision procedure, he can justify agents' differential concern for their own welfare and the welfare of those close to them. The flexibility in utilitarianism's theory of value allows further rebuttal of this objection; objective versions of (...) utilitarianism can treat self-determination or autonomy as a dominant good which trumps even large magnitudes of lesser goods such as pleasure. After the resources of utilitarianism are exhausted, though, there remains a worry, generated by the personal point of view, about utilitarianism's impartiality. But this worry is correctly viewed, not as a moral worry about the merits of utilitarianism as a moral theory, but as a worry about morality concerning the rationality or supremacy of impartial moral demands. Whether or not this worry can be answered, the fact that it arises supports rather than undermines a utilitarian account of morality. (shrink)

In this article we argue that the worries about whether a consequentialist agent will be alienated from those who are special to her go deeper than has so far been appreciated. Rather than pointing to a problem with the consequentialist agent's motives or purposes, we argue that the problem facing a consequentialist agent in the case of friendship concerns the nature of the psychological disposition which such an agent would have and how this kind of disposition sits with those which (...) are commonly thought proper to relations of friendship. To the extent that we are right, then, the rejoinders which indirect consequentialists have offered to the problem of alienation are ill directed and so do not succeed in meeting the real problem. In articulating what we see as the source of the alienation problem which friendship poses for consequentialism, we also hope to clarify the general distinction between dispositions and motives and to show how certain kinds of guiding internalized normative dispositions help us to define and therefore distinguish between various types of relationships. Undertaking this task may also help to identify some of the crucial issues for an adequate moral psychology of friendship and its place in any plausible ethical theory. (shrink)

John Stuart Mill's commitment to liberty and individual development is one of the most exoteric themes of his moral and political philosophy. But the linkages between this commitment to liberty and development and Mill's conception of utility and principles of the good are not as commonly recognized. As part of a more general transformation of his utilitarianism, Mill repudiated Bentham's principles of the good and instead adopted a more sophisticated form of hedonism. While Bentham admits only the total quantity of (...) pleasure as contributing to value, Mill expands the circle to admit quality or kind of pleasure as well into the value reckoning. I have elsewhere interpreted and defended Mill's qualitative hedonism, and in this paper I can offer only a brief overview of that account and must largely assume its plausibility. Bentham and Mill agree that only pleasurable experiences and the absence of painful experiences have value and so both are called hedonists. But they have very different views about what properties of pleasures makes them valuable, or in other words what are the good-making properties of pleasure. Bentham thinks that only intensity and duration, or quantity, are good-making properties of pleasures, and thus he includes only these properties in measuring value. As a consequence, in the context of value measurement he is not interested in the kinds of things in which people take pleasure. But Mill is a qualitative hedonist, and thinks that the quality or kind of pleasure is also a good-making characteristic and thus should be included in value measurement. The things that are sources of pleasure matter to Mill. (shrink)