A Quick Refutation of Desire Utilitarianism

This post is part two in a two part series. It will refute desire utilitarianism (desirism). Read part 1 for a plain English introduction to desire utilitarianism.



The 900 Racists Problem

The 900 racists problem forms the heart of my criticism of desirism. Consider a small society with 900 racist members of a majority ethnic group and 100 minorities. There is no one else. The racists have the desire that minority group be enslaved and treated as inferiors. In this case the racist oppressors are the ones with the numbers on their side. They are the ones who have the ability to praise, punish, and condemn in order to have their racist desires fulfilled. The question is this: why should the racists change their desires such to allow the minority ethnic group to fulfill more of their desires?

This question places desirists between a rock and a hard place. I will call it Justin's fork.

Fork #1: Rationality

The entry point to the rational fork is the case of Hateful Craig. In this case Craig has hateful desires. The $64,000 question is, "why should a hateful person like Craig act morally?" Alonzo Fyfe's answer is that there is no reason - unless the rest of society gives him one. They do that using praise, punishment, and condemnation. So if you want to refute desirism then you need to pick an example where the power to praise, punish, and condemn belongs to the people who are immoral. The case of the 900 racists does that. The 900 racists have numbers on their side. They may also have wealth and technology on their side too. So how can desirists respond? I've seen two main responses.

The powerful minorities objection. The first response is to argue that the minority group is powerful enough to stop the oppression. They could use praise and condemnation to shape the desires of their oppressors. They might even be able to use "punishment" against their oppressors, such as with an underground resistance movement. Sometimes this approach works and when that happens the majority group will no longer have the desire to be oppressive. But history is filled with plenty of examples of successful acts of oppression.

The karma response. The second response is that the oppressors might find themselves the oppressed at some point in the future. Recall the poem First they came ...

First they came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up, because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me.

On this analysis if the racists were truly rational they would create a more tolerant world lest they themselves become the victims of intolerance. Karma is a bitch. In some cases this must be true. The Roman Empire went through a period in which the generals of the Roman armies repeatedly turned their troops on Rome and made themselves Emperor. That's an job with little security! But in other cases oppression really is stable. E.g. the caste system in India has survived for thousand of years. Moreover, you could also argue the other way around. Creating a tolerant world will make you more likely to be oppressed yourself. See also: Muslim immigration to Europe. Best to show your strength. Overall the argument that oppression is always irrational has been falsified repeatedly by history. The preference utilitarian Peter Singer is more honest than these desirists when he writes in Practical Ethics (p.335) that "ethically indefensible behavior is not always irrational."

Fork #2: Normative

The entry point to the normative fork is the case of the the 1000 sadists. In that case 1000 sadists desire to hurt a single person. Clearly a lot more desires would be fulfilled through torture than by protecting the lone person. So desirism (wrongly) seems to defend torture. But that is not the case. Alonzo Fyfe explains.

"So, take the desire to rape children, for example. In any society, the more prevalent and the stronger this desire becomes, the more other desires are thwarted. As we turn the desire up, making it stronger and more common, either more children (and those who truly care for children) are having their desires thwarted, or those with this desire to rape children are having their desires thwarted.

Either way, ‘up’ in strength and prevalence means more desires being thwarted. ‘Down’ on the other hand means fewer desires being thwarted. If we can dial this desire all the way down to zero, then children would be safe at least from this type of harm, and nobody in society would be suffering the frustration of not acting on such a desire.

So, this desire counts as a bad desire.

Imagine that you had a magical stereo that could change both how common and strongly held a given desire is. As you turn the knob of the stereo up more and more people will get that desires. Those that already have it will get the desires at a stronger and stronger intensity. In the case of good desires like helping the poor this results in more desires overall being fulfilled. By contrast, consider an evil desire like rape or murder. In evil cases it generally results in more desires being thwarted. If everyone in society became a sadist then people would be frequently tortured and murdered and a lot of desires would be thwarted. This is the true was that desirism defines good and bad. Good desires tend to fulfill other desires as they become more common. Bad desires tend to thwart other desires as they become more common.

Ok, fair enough. The "turn the knobs" technique shows that racist oppression is bad. But remember, desire utilitarianism is hard-headed. It is only based on things that actually exist. Well, the racists have the desire to oppress. That desire actually exists. They do not have a desire to follow the "turn the knobs" technique. That desire does not exist. So I have to ask my question yet again: why should the racists change their desires such to allow the minority ethnic group to fulfill more of theirs? Why should the racists accept desire utilitarianism? Why not regular preference utilitarianism? Or Francis Galton's eugenics?


The reciprocity response. Consider Sam, one of the 1000 sadists. If Sam could wave a magic wand then his ideal world would allow him to torture children free of punishment and condemnation. In Sam the sadist's ideal world the other sadists would be prevented from torturing Sam's children. They would also be prevented from torturing the children of Sam's friends and family. But of course, Sam can't wave a magic wand. Nor can any of the other sadists. Thus the sadists have a rational reason to thwart sadism with punishment and condemnation. That is how they would promote the most and strongest of their desires (maximize their personal utility). But note that this response does not apply to the 900 racists. The only people they care about belong to their own ethnic group. They don't have a rational reason to thwart racists desires towards the minority ethnic group.

Now we can see why the 900 racists case was chosen. It avoids the weaknesses of the case of Hateful Craig because the immoral group is the one with the power to praise, punish, and condemn. And it avoids the problem of the 1000 sadists because there is no issue of reciprocity. The racists will treat each other with kindness even while they oppress people who are different.

The upshot is that there is no rational reason to "turn the knobs" in the case of the 900 racists. So where does the normative fork stand? Desire utilitarianism provides a rational reason to act on one's own desires, but not on someone else's desires. More precisely, it does not give a reason to change your own desires to accommodate the desires of others.

Alonzo's Loaded Proposition

Alonzo Fyfe seems to hold that the rationality fork is desirism's canonical approach. My favorite post on desire utilitarianism is The Insignificance of Morality.I like it because he is honest and forthright and lays out the propositions that make up the foundation of his theory of morality. The ambiguous proposition is this one:

(8) To the degree that a malleable desire tends to fulfill other desires, to that degree people generally have reason to promote or encourage the formation and strength of that desire. To the degree that a malleable desire tends to thwart other desires, to that degree people generally have reason to inhibit or discourage the formation and strength of that desire. [bold added]

First let me use a concrete example to show this point. The desire to murder children tends to thwart a lot of desires. It thwarts the desires of the children, of their parents, of the children's friends, and of the parents' friends and family. The desire to murder children tends to thwart other desires. Thus people have a rational reason to use praise, punishment, and condemnation to thwart the desire-thwarting desires. E.g. the desire to murder children.

So how is proposition 8 loaded? Because it uses the word 'generally'. In the case of the 900 racists they do not have a reason to promote the desire-fulfilling desire. Instead they have a reason to promote an oppressive, desire-thwarting desire. The use of the word generally creates an opening a mile wide. Now, it is "generally" true that using the "turn the knobs up" technique is rational. But this post has sustained the argument that there are many exceptions.

* An economist might point out that there are collective action problems in the process of promoting and thwarting desires. But I'll table that for the purposes of this discussion.