An Application of Utilitarian Moral Theory to the Well-being of Future People

“… I know this steak doesn't exist. I know that when I put it in my mouth, the Matrix is telling my brain that it is juicy and delicious. After nine years, you know what I realize?
 … Ignorance is bliss.”

Cypher, The Matrix.[1]

At the twilight of the twentieth century The Wachowski Brothers sparked our philosophical imagination by positing a terrible future that involved a virtual reality that was imposed on humanity by a self-aware system of complex machinery. Their film, The Matrix, challenged us to think about what we want our future to be like and whether is it morally acceptable for us to impose a morally dubious world on those in the distant future. The Wachowski Brothers’ film also challenges to think about our obligations to future people and if we have any. One of our greatest present moral challenges, anthropogenic climate change, is a moral issue that questions our obligations to future people and their well-being. In determining our obligations to future people, especially with regards to large scale and far reaching public and economic policy that affects the environmental scale of climate change, it can be difficult to see what these obligations are with respect to their well-being. This essay however, is not an epistemological argument regarding the validity of anthropogenic climate change theories.[2] A myriad of peer-reviewed scientific evidence has proven beyond doubt the causes and consequences of climate change.[3] Rather, this essay will focus on our moral responsibility to responding to the human consequences of climate change. This will be done by linking the future well-being of people with our moral obligations to climate change. Obligations aside, it is firstly difficult to define what exactly constitutes as well-being for humans. A substantive and conclusive moral understanding of what well-being is would be a key component in understanding our obligations to future generations thus highlighting the morally correct public policy choices that will safeguard their future well-being.

Defining well-being has been a difficult exercise for philosophers for thousands of years; from Aristotle's concept of Eudaimonia to Jeremy Bentham's unit of pleasure, the hedon. Tim Mulgan has argued that well-being can not be easily linked exclusively to either happiness or welfare as this gives rise to objections and intuitively negative implications.[4] Happiness has the implication being linked to pleasure; but not all pleasures are empirically constitutive of what could be regarded as well-being. The consumption of drugs or alcohol may bring temporary pleasure but overuse will create negative health effects that most would agree would be detrimental to well-being. Welfare is unnecessarily tied to material wealth. Monetary value, although easily measurable, is not explicitly an indicator of well-being either. A person on a modest income could be a picture of health whereas a multi-millionaire could over-indulge in fatty foods or suffer from a lack of meaningful personal social relationships. These do not capture what our intuition tells us what well-being is. What is constituent of well-being is what is regarded as intrinsically valuable; a value that is not merely instrumental for human lives but valuable in itself.[5] This essay will approach theories of well-being from an rule-utilitarian perspective. Utilitarianism posits that the correct moral choices are those that create the greatest happiness for the greatest number, whereas rule-utilitarianism argues that the correct moral choices are the creation of institutional rules (or in our case public policy choices) that bring about the greatest happiness for the greatest number.[6]

Classical utilitarianism regards hedonism, the presence of pleasure and the absence of pain, as the only intrinsically valuable constituent of human well-being.[7] A hedonist public policy would seek to ensure the augmentation of pleasure for the greatest number. The difficulties hedonism faces are its subjectivity as well as its phenomenological implications. John Stuart Mill refined Bentham's original concept of pleasure with higher and lower pleasures.[8] Mill sought to define higher and lower pleasures with competent judges, something that immediately manifests thoughts of subjectivity as well as paternalism. Robert Nozick has argued against a hedonistic view of well-being by saying pleasure is not the only intrinsically valuable aspect of human lives. Nozick proposed a thought experiment that speaks to our intuition and challenges us to reject hedonism. His "Experience Machine", which one had the choice to plug into or not, consisted of a kind of virtual reality that was phenomenologically indifferent from reality. Its user could choose any experience possible from being a successful athlete to completing a great novel. But the intuitions of those who reject the Experience Machine suggest that there are more valuable aspects to human experience than purely sensuous experience. A rejection of the Experience Machine suggests that we need a greater connection with reality; we want our experiences to be genuine.[9] Another possible objection to hedonism is similar to the aforementioned objection to a welfarist, or monetary, conception of well-being. Not all pleasures are positive: consumption of certain foods, alcohol, or drugs bring temporally brief sensuous pleasures but in excess would detrimentally affect a person’s health and therefore well-being. The same could be said of sadistic pleasures one might acquire from morally objectionable activities such as torture or rape—psychologically these would be detrimental if they were regarded to be constituent of well-being.

Nozick, however, is not rejecting an individual's right to choose the Experience Machine, but is deferring to an individual the choice rather than insisting the machine as a hedonist would. This leads us to the second utilitarian conception of well-being, preference theory, which regards an individual's right to choose what they prefer as the only intrinsically valuable aspect of human well-being.[10] The utilitarian approach to preference theory would seek to maximise the opportunities for preferential moral decisions for the greatest number. This theory posits that the only morally acceptable way for people to decide well-being is have them decide for themselves. The theory is popular with libertarians such as Nozick, because of the emphasis of individual free choice, as well as economists because it is easily measured—a stronger preference for a resource or commodity will elicit a higher price therefore show that that particular item is more preferred for an individual's well-being.[11] Public policy choices in this regard would cater to an individual's preferences and thus avoid any accusations of paternalism. Preference theory however faces similar problems to hedonism: preference is also subjective and can be based on uninformed choices or ignorance of consequences. Preference theory can also unfortunately be linked with monetary power and therefore return the measure of well-being to mere monetary terms rather than something with objective moral significance; the implication that the preferences of affluent European or North American choices have more moral worth than those of Latin American or African choices seems, intuitively, to not grasp the concept of well-being. The aggressive commodification of all aspects of life in capitalist economies would have more worth to well-being within preference theory than the self-sustainability of communal pre-industrial economies because of mere monetary value—something itself which is instinctively Eurocentric.

The final theory to be addressed, objective-list, takes a different approach to well-being than the subjectivism of hedonism and preference theory. Objective-list theory presupposes a list of items that are intrinsically, as well as objectively, valuable to human well-being.[12] These items are based on the independent value of each item rather than a preference for each item; this creates a desire based on value rather than value based on desire.[13] The list might include items such as: healthy food and water; appropriate clothing and shelter from the elements; positive family and social relationships; opportunities for education and knowledge; opportunities for exercise and physical activity; freedom from fear and intimidation; the right to personal expression. These are just some of the basics that might be included on a list. Many objectivists might also encompass the above theories by including positive pleasures and the ability to exercise preferences, however, these are not the only intrinsically valuable constituents of what well-being is.

Objective-list theory relies on empirically measurable proxies for constituent items.[14] For example, a comprehensive analysis of health would include, but not be limited to, data concerning rates of disease, mortality, obesity, or mental illness. A utilitarian approach to objective-list would attempt to augment the positive aspects in subsequent data for the greatest number, such as lowering rates of disease or increasing access to healthy food. An advantage objective-list offers over hedonist and preference theories are that it is less risk-averse at both an individual and societal level. An adherence to an objectively measurable standard of well-being is less likely to encounter the shortcomings of hedonism and preference theory; individuals and societies are no longer subject to an arbitrary blissful ignorance when it comes to moral choices concerning their needs. This is especially critical in determining our moral obligations to future people, more of which will be outlined below.

The obvious objection objective-list theory immediately faces is accusations of paternalism. Why should I be told what is good for me? This makes individuals subject to somebody else’s, often elitist, concept of what well-being is. Certain individuals might not feel an obligation to adhere to a preconceived notion of what is good for them; it takes away individuals’ faculties to rationally choose for themselves what they determine to be adequate for the well-being of their own lives. Why should an individual not choose Nozick’s Experience Machine if for them it would make them better off? Objective-list seems to trample on individual freedoms; something most, if not all, people value intrinsically, even if some choices may be detrimental. The idea of being coerced into living a certain way we have been told that it is for our own good seems, intuitively, to make us anxious. There is also difficulty in determining what exactly goes on the list and where the list stops; any preconceived list is inevitably arbitrarily subject to its author’s bias. It might also be less palatable if the author’s list reflects affluent conceptions of well-being. Objective-list is just as at risk of accusations of subjectivity as hedonism or preference theories.

Despite these objections to an objective conception of well-being it is a more suitable moral theory for determining our obligations to future people. Subjective theories breakdown and produce undesirable consequences temporally, especially when present moral choices drastically affect the well-being of future people. Mulgan has given more impetus to Nozick’s Experience Machine to demonstrate this; a further thought experiment called the Virtual Future. Mulgan’s thought experiment is similar to Nozick’s in the sense that a virtual reality phenomenologically indifferent to an actual reality is projected onto its user. Where it differs, is that the Virtual Future is an alternative to a broken world: a world so damaged by the effects of human activity that it becomes almost uninhabitable; it is a simultaneously shared user experience within the virtual world (Mulgan does not mention what portion of the population is engaged in the Virtual Future machine but it is likely that its use would elicit a significant expense); every user is aware the reality projected on them is false but they are also aware that it is preferable to their actual reality; finally, this is not a reality chosen by its users but imposed on them by a past generation of people.[15]

To demonstrate that objective-list theory is the best moral theory regarding both our obligations of future people as well as our obligations to responses to climate change Mulgan’s Virtual Future thought experiment could be approached both literally and metaphorically. Each well-being theory and its implications must be tested to provoke our intuitive response. A literal interpretation of the Virtual Future that is not unlike the aforementioned film The Matrix, in the sense that it presupposes that humanity in the future has indeed somehow destroyed their natural environment beyond repair, that the technology exists to create (or more disturbingly, impose) an artificial reality for humanity, and the virtual reality appears to be better for humanity than the reality of their actual world. The choice faced by a present generation of people is to decide not for themselves but for their descendants whether or not to impose this virtual reality on them: a choice between a broken reality and blissful ignorance. Hedonist and preference theories would no doubt be useful in providing a better, albeit false, reality for future generations but distorts what we value phenomenologically. It is forcing us to make a difficult choice where either option makes us uncomfortable. Our imposition of a Virtual Future is an easy option to avoid obligations as well as a disturbing manipulation of the intrinsic values of future generations.[16]

It is another, metaphorical, interpretation of the Virtual Future thought experiment that evokes our intuitive reaction to outright dismiss subjective moral theories regarding obligations to future generations. Mulgan’s thought experiment teases our train of thought back to the reality of the actual situation humanity faces: a choice between the imposition of the chaotic effects of climate change on humanity or a mitigation of these effects to a liveable environment—a decision that its recipients have to live with but have absolutely no say in effecting. This is where subjective moral theories break down. There is an unbridgeable gap between the desires of present people and the desires future people (it becomes more apparent when subsequent generations no longer overlap the present generation and as the effects of climate change become increasingly drastic). If the present generation desires to defer costly responses to environmental disaster for the sake of economic growth they fail, temporally, to meet the desires of future generations. Future generations would desire the same natural environment and all its benefits we enjoy here in the present (or past) over a destroyed environment especially if they had been given the choice. It is this imposition where better choices could have been made that seems morally disturbing in the sense that present choices are both arbitrary and naïvely authoritarian across time as well as space. Unfortunately, future people cannot make present decisions and this forces us to rethink our moral responsibilities in the present to objectively capture what is intrinsically valuable to well-being across time as well as space. If we think about our list of objectively valuable items, many of which preference theorists would agree would contribute to their well-being, it is almost certain that an irrevocably damaged environment would fail to provide many of these items or a the very least make them very difficult to provide. Only an application of objective-list theory is congruent in transmitting what is intrinsically valuable across time. If we are genuinely concerned about fulfilling the well-being of future people we must abandon temporally myopic subjective moral theories that are imposing with regard to our responses to anthropogenic climate change.

The subjective-objective dichotomy is often contentious in moral philosophy, and subjective moral theories can certainty accommodate individuality in many circumstances in the present where present people are affected. But it is this subjectivity that has dangerous implications when applied to moral decisions for future people. Subjective moral theories exponentially fail to be conductive across time. The idea that our moral subjectivity can impose drastic consequences for future generations is deeply unnerving. Anybody who was born into undesirable conditions where the decisions regarding those circumstances were self-regarding (inter-generational rather than inter-personal) expresses some regret towards their ancestors. If we genuinely believe that it is our moral obligation to leave future generations better off than the present generation it is imperative that we adopt an objective account of what human well-being is. Only then can our present decisions regarding climate change policy aim to meet the well-being of our descendants without being bogged down in the myopia of trivial present pursuits.

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[1]  Joe Pantoliano, The Matrix. Motion picture. Directed by The Wachowski Brothers. United States: Warner Bros. Pictures, 1999.

[2] For the purpose of this essay any mention of climate change can be regarded as anthropogenic i.e. caused by human activity.

[3] Jim Salinger, ed. Living in a Warmer World: How a Changing Climate Will Affect Our Lives, (Collingwood, Victoria: CSIRO Publishing, 2013), 10-2.

[4] Tim Mulgan, Ethics for a Broken World: Imagining Philosophy After Catastrophe (Montreal, Québec: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2011), 100.

[5] ibid., 101.

[6] Simon Blackburn, The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 388.

[7] Roger Crisp. "Well-Being," Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Accessed April 11, 2014, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/well-being/.

[8] John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism, On Liberty and Considerations on Representative Government, (London, UK: Everyman's Library, 1984), 10-1.

[9] Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, (New York: Basic Books, 1974), 42-5.

[10] Mulgan, Ethics for a Broken World, 104.

[11] ibid., 111.

[12] Crisp, “Well-being”.

[13] Mulgan, Ethics for a Broken World, 108.

[14] ibid., 111.

[15] Tim Mulgan, "Ethics for Possible Futures," in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, (London: The Aristotelian Society, 2014), 7-9.

[16] ibid., 10.

———————————————————————————————————————— "... we can explore space together, both inner and outer, forever in peace." —W. M. Hicks.