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Judgment Misguided

by Jonathan Baron

Utilitarian Jonathan Baron plows through dozens of issues ranging from global warming to conflicts in India. Utilitarian in Baron’s usage means choosing alternatives that result in better consequences over alternatives that result in worse consequences. It does not mean maximizing pleasure. Benefit and harm are colossally important and Baron recognizes that fact. If there were no obligations to benefit and prevent harm, real morality would be a joke. There are plenty of “moralities” out there that pay little interest to benefit and harm.

Baron contrasts utilitarianism with seven reasons that he calls "intuitions" and "reasonable" rules of thumb:

· Do no harm.

· Status-quo is best. (It is infuriating that many people are against policies that will harm any person they favor, regardless of how much harm comes to others, and regardless how much harm other policy options would cause. If they can think of one anecdote of harm, they believe the policy is bad.)

· Natural is best.

· Group loyalty.

· Retribution.

· Fairness (meaning keeping agreements and pursuing various forms of equality).

· Autonomy (meaning absence of restraint) and individual rights.

His categorizing is a mistake. These ideas should not be lumped together as seven deadly sins. The first four are never good premises or rules of thumb for believing and doing anything. It is occasionally the case that you should do no harm, choose the natural, keep the status quo or be loyal to something, but these are conclusions that need the support of well-reasoned arguments. For example, "You should steal (conclusion) because you should be loyal (premise)," is nonsense. But "Be loyal to us (conclusion) because we need you to save lives (premise)," could be part of an argument that could lead somewhere.

The final three--retribution, fairness and rights--can be elements in both consequentialist and deontological theories and can sometimes serve as good premises or good conclusions or both. And sometimes they do not. That criminals deserve a certain punishment can sometimes be outweighed by consequentialist considerations about the costs of ignoring more important crimes, the rights of taxpayers and so on. The fact that people often give too much weight to the wrong rights does not make rights in general a logical mistake. Consequentialist arguments are mighty important, but they are not everything. Acts and omissions are not always morally equivalent, even when the consequences are morally equivalent. Failure to prevent a death is bad but not as bad as murdering someone.

There are too many issues crammed in this book with too few alternatives explored and too many good points left out. The author claims it is acceptable for the government to stick the wetlands tag on private property without compensating the property owners. The tough luck theory of property rights sounds like a bad idea. The government should compensate property owners because otherwise:

· Politicians will engage in arbitrary or vengeful tagging and confiscation.

· They will really tick people off.

· They will seriously undermine property rights and trust in economic affairs.

Coincidently, I happened upon another review of this book while browsing through a psychology journal. That reviewer used the typographical error heuristic, which in English means "I don’t know much about morality and I'm a glib ivory tower fellow with nothing better to do than to judge books solely on spelling errors." Worth skimming.

Book review article by J.T. Fournier.

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