Paste your essay in here… Can a utilitarian support an obligation to keep our promises?
Finish this. To start this essay, I will summarise the theory of utilitarianism, and the view that promises have normative powers, a stance I will assume through the essay. I will explain the problem that utilitarianism allegedly has in accounting for our promissory obligations, which manifests itself as two criticisms. …
Promises
When an agent communicates an intention to act in a certain way, the communication hardly binds the agent with a duty to act as intended. For example, if A and B live in a house together, and A says to B ‘I will mow the lawn today’, but A then puts it out of their mind and stays in bed all day, it might be true that B will then be disappointed in A. However, we will hardly think that A was under any obligation to mow the lawn, and so will not think that A has acted in any morally impermissible when A fails to act as communicated. When an agent makes a promise, however, the promisor not only communicates an intention to perform in a certain way, but the promisor voluntarily binds themselves under an obligation to perform as promised, solely in virtue of the words ‘I promise’. Cite Owens here. To clarify this theory, return to the example. If A had instead said to B ‘I promise to mow the lawn today’ and then failed to, A would have acted in a way that was morally impermissible. This is evidently not because we all have prevailing moral duties to mow the lawn on certain days – before making the promise, A had no moral duty to mow the lawn. It would only be in virtue of any voluntary promise made that there were any obligations for A to mow the lawn. This view of ‘promissory obligations’ is the typical view that to make a promise is to exercise our ‘normative powers’, powers that agents have to change the duties that exist in a situation. This intuitive view of promises is widely accepted/hard to deny, and so I will assume this typical view of the nature of promissory obligations throughout this essay.
Utilitarianism
As a consequentialist moral theory, utilitarianism judges the moral status of acts with respect to their consequences only, through no appeal to any intrinsic moral value of the act itself. For a utilitarian, the consequence used to judge an action is the ‘utility’ that results from the evaluated action, where ‘utility’ is often taken as quantifiable human welfare, and so an act is judged morally good or right if and only if that act produces the maximum net utility. This primitive form of utilitarianism is essentially the ‘act-utilitarian’ view, and it is often attacked on the grounds that the theory appears unable support promissory obligations.
Why might utilitarians appear unable to support our promissory obligations?
To illustrate the apparent incompatibility between utilitarianism and the taken view of promissory obligations, I will employ a more developed version of the previous example. Once more, imagine A has said to B ‘I promise to mow the lawn today’, but this time further suppose some additional events that follow the promise. Shortly after the promise, A looks out the window and notices a puppy scurrying up and down the road, displaying signs of distress. She is very skinny, covered in mud, and when A notices that she has a collar with a tag, A comes to know that the puppy is a lost domestic pet, and has been lost for some time. She desperately needs to be saved, taken to a vet and returned to her owner. Only if A were to neglect the promised task of mowing the lawn, would A then have the time to save the lost puppy, take her to the vet, and track down her owner. (For the purpose of the example, suppose that the conditions of the situation dictate that it would be both necessary and sufficient for A to sacrifice the task of mowing the lawn in order to save the puppy. In other words, A has to choose between keeping the promise and saving the puppy; the puppy is so weak that she must be saved today, there is not time to both mow the lawn and save her in one day, A is the only person who will notice the puppy and can save her, etc.)
From the normative nature/normative powers view of promises, it has already been established that there is a moral requirement for A to mow the lawn today, since A has promised B that they will. Note that; like any other moral duty, promissory obligations bind over the promisor through changes to the circumstances, and so will hold even if the promisor is presented with more attractive alternatives in future. This is suited to the very purpose of making promises – why would I require that anyone make a promise to me, above a mere expression of their intention to act, if the promise provided no additional assurance (in the form of a voluntarily invoked obligation) that the promisor would act as promised above the mere expression of their intention? From this, we also know that A is morally required to mow the lawn today even if A is confronted with more attractive alternatives. Therefore, the moral requirement of A to mow the lawn will hold even through A’s encounter of the lost puppy and the benefit that A could cause to the puppy and her owner by breaking the promise made to B. As such, it still stands that A will commit a morally impermissible act if A were to break this promise.
Utilitarians, however, appear to take a different stance on the impermissibility of breaking promises. Act-utilitarianism requires agents to act in whichever way maximises utility. If this moral theory is applied to the question of whether we have a moral obligation to keep our promises, it appears that a promise ought to be kept if and only if the promised act produces the highest net utility. if breaking a promise would produce more utility than maintaining the promise, then act-utilitarianism would simply require us to break the promise, and this would not be morally impermissible. (Habib, 2017) In light of the encounter with the lost puppy, A would be morally required to neglect the task of mowing the lawn and save the puppy, as the net increase in welfare felt by the puppy and her owner would be greater than the net increase in satisfaction felt by B, when A keeps the promise.
What moral value, then, will utilitarians place on promises made? Even if a utilitarian agent has made a promise to another to act in a certain way, they are required to evaluate what to do based entirely on the consequences of their action, at the time of performance. Utilitarianism places no normative value on promises made at all, it seems. They appear to be completely morally irrelevant to utilitarians, and this conflicts with the ‘normative powers’ view that promises do, however, impose genuine moral requirements. This amounts to the initial claim that utilitarianism is unable to support our promissory obligations.
Hodgson outlines a disastrous consequence of this result, which forms a second criticism of utilitarianism. (Norcross, 1997) He starts with the undeniable premise that for a promisor to be able to make a promise to another agent, the promisor must intend for the promisee to believe that the promisor will act as promised, and for this belief to persist even if the promisee believes that other alternatives may present themselves as more beneficial to the promisor. As an obvious consequence of purpose of promises, outlined previously, I will accept this premise. If promisees did not expect the promisor to keep their word, would anyone even make promises over the mere expression of intention? He further claims that if everyone lived in an act-utilitarian society where rational agents acted only to maximise utility, and the promisee is aware that the promisor always acts to maximise utility, then the promisee will expect the promisor to simply evaluate whichever option will produce the best consequences at the time, rather than to commit to the promised act. Promisees can have no trust in promisors, and promisors will always be unable to form a promise with anyone as a result. I will also accept this premise. What, then, are the consequences of this? Hodgson lastly adds; if a world where promises are possible to make is better than a world where promises cannot be used, then the theory of utilitarianism will therefore refute itself, as the society where everyone acts in accordance with utilitarian principles will be ‘less good’ than a society where we don’t. (Narveson, 1971)
To make the criticisms explicitly clear, I will isolate them further. The first criticism is the claim that utilitarianism is unable to support our duty to keep our promises. The second criticism, from Hodgson, takes the form of an argument, which I will recognise as formed from three premises, and resting on two assumptions. Hodgson’s premises and conclusion are as follows;
If utilitarianism fails to support any moral requirement for us to keep our promises, then promises won’t be possible to make in an act-utilitarian society.
If promises won’t be possible to make in an act-utilitarian society, then utilitarianism will ultimately advocate a society without promises.
If utilitarianism will ultimately advocate society without promises, then it will refute itself.
(C) Utilitarianism refutes itself.
This argument rests on two assumptions. Firstly, it rests on the first criticism; the claim that utilitarianism is unable to support any moral requirement for us to keep our promises. Secondly, it rests on the assumption that a society without promises is ‘less morally good’ or ‘promotes less net utility’ than a society with promises. This is how the premise (iii) is supported; only if it is the case that a society without promises is a society that promotes less net utility, will utilitarianism advocate a society that promotes less net utility, and in turn, refute itself.
In this essay, I will defeat both charges against utilitarianism, simply by challenging the first criticism; ‘the claim that utilitarianism is unable to support our duty to keep our promises’. This will be sufficient to defeat the second criticism too, as the first criticism is one assumption necessary for the second criticism to hold. Note that; I have taken Hodsgon’s argument as valid, accepting (i) – (C), as the premises are relatively indisputable and the conclusion follows from the premises. This, however, hardly matters. Since I will find one of the assumptions to be false, then Hodsgon’s argument will no longer stand, whether or not his logical argument was strong.
Can a utilitarian support an obligation to keep our promises?
To defeat the claim that ‘utilitarianism is unable to support our duty to keep our promises’, we can appeal only to the consequences of realised utility of keeping/breaking a promise to supply the normative force of promises. This immediately rules out any deontological appeals to the intrinsic moral value of a promise, or any absolute duties not to mislead, etc. Essentially, to resolve the problem, utilitarians must demonstrate that there are always better consequences when we keep a promise, and this where other accounts of promissory obligation come into the picture. Social practise theories, attributed to the likes of Hume and Rawls, can justify the normative force of promises purely through consequentialist grounds, and so can be used to preserve the ability of utilitarianism to support our promissory obligations in the face of the first criticism.
Hume too was concerned with the view to break a promise is always judged as morally impermissible, even in cases where negligible amounts of harm and far greater amounts of net welfare could be promoted by breaking a promise. He couldn’t conceive of how an act could be wrong when no human interest was damaged by it, or on the contrary, that human interests were promoted by it. To resolve what Hume called the ‘problem of Bare Wronging’, Hume attempted to identify an interest served to society, satisfied only when promises are universally kept. He justified our promissory obligations through the facilitation of social co-ordination. If agents broke promises, then promisees could have no trust that promisors would still perform as promised even when more attractive alternatives present themselves to the promisor,
and utilitarians are open to use this as a way to argue that there are always better consequences when we keep a promise.
Rawls. Utilitarians will want the social practise of promises to facilitate social co-ordination.
which argue that when a promisor breaks their promise, a useful social practise of promising is damaged as a result, and this is sufficient to justify our obligations to keep our promises.
(Is this an act-utilitarian solution? Many might see this as a turn to rule-utiltarianism. This is a common route. Doesn’t matter; still utilitarian.)
At this point, it will be important to clarify that this response is consistent with the introduction of a rule utilitarian approach to solve the problem. Rule utilitarianism judges the moral worth of an action by whether or not in conforms to a rule that normally produces the highest net utility. Rule utilitarians would therefore introduce the rule that ‘we ought to keep our promises’ which would prevent the act utilitarians from evaluating individual instances of promises, to an evaluation of the utility resulting from the practise of keeping promises on the whole. They would add this rule if in most cases, the amount of utility produced by breaking a promise is lower than the utility i.e. if in most cases, the rule produced the highest net utility.
How does this solve the problem? Lawn mow vs. puppy example.
Return to the example used previously. A has said to B ‘I promise to mow the lawn today’, but then encounters a lost, distressed puppy, and is faced with the exhaustive choice of breaking the promise in order to save the puppy, or keeping the promise. Rawls would argue that utilitarianism requires us to keep this promise.
Remove: I have promised A that I will do x, which would invoke 1,000 units of utility to A. If I break this promise to A, I would be able to do some other act that would invoke 1,001 units of utility to B, but this will also take 2000 units of utility. Utilitarians would therefore encourage us to do the promised act.
This solves both criticisms. (Maybe move how solving claim 1 solves both here?)
Note that there were two slightly different issues within the initial criticisms to act utilitarianism; the view that promises have no value, and the resulting view from Hodgson that promises cannot be made in a utilitarian society. This turn to rule utilitarianism is able to respond to both issues. On the rule utilitarian view, promises are able to have value because in most cases, we can expect that the promisor’s obligations lie in keeping the promise. Whether the promisor is motivated to keep their promise on selfless grounds is another question, but, at least, in theory, in a society full of rational utilitarians, promisees can trust their rational utilitarian promisors to keep their promise. This, in turn, defeats Hodgson’s dilemma; since we can trust that in most cases, the high net negative consequences of breaking a promise entail our obligations to keep our promises, and we can trust our promisor to keep their promises, we are able to have a society in which promises work. Hence, it is clear that a rule utilitarians can far better account for our promissory obligations.
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There are two types of promises this solution still fails to justify. I will call them ‘extreme promises’ and ‘deathbed promises’.
Criticism = Death Bed Promises.
Promise to a person who is dying will not damage a social practise if broken.
Response
Rawls. Unfair to break a promise – to take benefits from the promises system, and not give back.
Counter.
This isn’t a utilitarian response. Need a different solution.
…
And can’t say no reason to keep deathbed promises, as this is not where our intuitions lie. Maybe refer to Norwell-Smith here. We’d be back at the start; dying promisors can’t trust promisees.
Rawls:
Utilitarianism requires us to keep the promises. Two Concepts of Rules.
Difference between justifying a practise and specific instances under that practise.
Criticism = Extreme promises.
This turn to rule utilitarianism preserves the possibility of a utilitarian society which would not entirely eliminate the value of a promise, but has it shown that we have obligations to keep all of our promises? Note that this was a condition required for a solution to the incompatibility between utilitarianism and promises. Rule utilitarians are unlikely to believe that we have obligations to keep every promise we make, because we can still imagine some, although few, cases in which the act contrary to the promised act would produce so much utility that it was worth breaking the rule that ‘we ought to keep our promise’. As Ross argued, even if breaking a promise always removes a high amount of net utility, we can conceive that there will always be cases in which breaking the promise still produces net utility, because the act contrary to the promised act could produce more units of utility, for instance. (Norcross, 1997) This may be the case in an example provided by Norcross. CHANGE TO LAWN MOW – is that a promise we think should be kept? I have made a promise to you that I will meet you for a coffee in five minutes, but a stranger in front of me collapses and will not survive unless I give them CPR. (Norcross, 1997) Keeping the promise will prevent the loss of less utility than breaking the promise, so utilitarianism will require that I break this promise.
Response.
This tolerance of breaking promises in the ‘extreme cases’ will only be a problem of utilitarianism if we think a theory of promissory obligations must actually say that we have obligations to keep every promise. Intuitively, however, ‘we ought to keep all of our promises’ is false. It is highly implausible that any moral person will think that my promise to meet you in coffee for five minutes must be upheld, when the consequence is the loss of a stranger’s life.
Can utilitarianism be shown to align with this intuition? Can utilitarianism cover the extension of promises we think we ought to keep? …To draw the line between the promises we ought and ought not to keep; through rule utilitarianism.
Return to the example of my A’s promise to mow the lawn. A makes a promise to B to mow the lawn, but the puppy. Compare this with a parallel case. A’s promise to mow the lawn, but there the chance to win unlimited free food from McD if I neglect. For many of us, our intuitions will cause us to think that the promise to can be broken when the puppy’s life is at risk, but cannot permissibly be broken when the unimportant task of collecting free food, even though the utility produced by breaking the promise could be same in both cases.
What, then, is different about our obligations in the two cases? In the first case, the promise conflicts with another moral obligation we have to protecting the lives of others, whereas the promise in the second instance conflicts with no such moral obligations. This points towards the view that our promises have moral weight, (Narveson, 1971) balanced against our other obligations, which are also created by utilitarian rules. To clarify; we ought to follow the rule to keep our promises, as prescribed by rule utilitarianism, unless greater utility will be achieved by breaking them, in which case we are breaking our promises for the sake of upholding other, perhaps stronger obligations, which derive from other utilitarian rules. In other words, we are only ever permitted to violate the rule ‘keep promises’ so that we can uphold some moral rule that produces more utility i.e. ‘protect the lives of others’. It is clear, then, that rule utilitarianism can account for our promissory obligations.
By answering (i1) and (ii1), I have arrived at the conclusion that utilitarianism can explain our promissory obligations. Rule utilitarianism protects the value of promises in a utilitarian society better than act utilitarianism can, and any promises that utilitarians would encourage us to break in such a society, are simply examples of us following our stronger obligations to other utilitarian rules. I would like to end with some remarks about whether such a society might be able to operate, as there is a pragmatic issue that still remains; how can a utilitarian agent ever know where their obligations lie? How can I calculate whether breaking some promise would produce more net utility than keeping it? Even though our promissory obligations might exist and have value in a utilitarian society, perhaps such a society would not be one in which we would know what our promissory obligations are. However, since this is not an issue of whether utilitarianism can account for promissory obligations, but rather can utilitarianism tell us what our promissory obligations are, this did not need to be covered in this essay.
Works Cited
OWENS, David, 'The Possibility of Consent', in his Shaping the Normative Landscape (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2012), pp. 164-88.
Habib, A. (2017). "Promises", The Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy (Fall 2017 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.). Retrieved from Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy: <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2017/entries/promises/>
Narveson, J. (1971, Dec). Promising, Expecting and Utility. Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 1, No.2.
Norcross, A. (1997). Comparing Harms: Headaches and Human Lives. Philosophy & Public Affairs, 26, no. 2.