Bleached Foundations 121substantive principles of justice or rights. It has therefore no substantive or rich moral
content. It works with an essentially simple principle of utility maximization and it
claims that, as long as one can measure or calculate neutrally and impartially good
or bad consequences from actions, then the principle is efficacious. All this second
order argumentation assumes though that some generally acceptable meaning can be
given to ‘utility’.
Even if utilitarianism is an intuitively attractive second order principle, still, one
quite crucial problem is that it containsnoagreement on the concept of utility.
Basically, utility itself has never been agreed upon amongst utilitarians. It usually,
vaguely, equates with welfare, well-being, or quality of life. However, the substance
of this basic welfare varies enormously, since it depends upon what someone, or
group, wants, desires, or prefers. The oldest version equates it with pleasure, or the
balance of pleasure over pain. No utilitarian would now, however, use the hedonic or
pleasure criterion alone. It just carries too many deep problems, for example, is there
any way of effectively calculating interpersonal comparisons, on the basis of such an
inchoate ‘state of mind’ as pleasure? In consequence of this weakness, the preferred
term then became ‘preferences’, or the maximization of ‘preference satisfaction’ (or
desires), particularly for economistically inclined utilitarians. Preferences refer not
just to a state of mind, but toactualpreferences andactualexperiences. However, it
still remains far from clear that one really can make precise interpersonal comparisons
even between actual preferences or experiences.
One can, however, see here the close links between utilitarianism and rational
choice. Both doctrines only give a small focused snapshot of one meagre aspect of
human thought and action. Both commonly ignore the complexity of individual
persons, for the sake of aggregating preferences or preference satisfactions. Both also
try to apply a neutral decision-making procedure for social, moral, and public choice.
The ‘reason’ they employ is largely instrumental. All moral and political dilemmas
are resolved, in this scenario, by the rational calculation of utilities. Some utilitarians
have noted that conscious preferences may not always provide full insight into an
agent’s interests. They have, therefore, moved the utility goal posts, once again,
to notions such as ‘rational preferences’, or, more significantly, ‘interests’. Interests,
in this sense, usually refer to resources, which will prove useful for the long-term
welfare of the agent, but, which may not be immediately articulated as conscious
preferences. This latter point has subtle links to the older distinction, initially and
fatefully introduced by J. S. Mill, between higher and lower pleasures. The basic point
is that there are certain ‘resources’, ‘utilities’, or ‘actions’, which are valuable regardless
or not as to whether they correspond with our immediate desires, preferences, or
conscious interests. This idea, though, is deeply problematic for all utilitarians, since
it negates the logic of the consequential position and speaks rather of things being
‘intrinsically good’. It is questionable as to whether this is really utilitarian at all,
although some have had the temerity to call it ‘ideal utilitarianism’.
The relation between these various senses of utility remains unresolved and prob-
lematic. However, one can overdue the differences between some of these readings.
Thus, although preference utilitarians reject pleasure-based arguments and welfare or