A. Theodore Izmaylov, 2024.
Keywords: negative utilitarianism; utility monster; bodhisattva; Buddhist ethics;
The greatest good for the greatest number – variations of consequentialism-utilitarianism is an intuitive, if not natural, ethical framework. It implicitly guides many people facing moral dilemmas. Buddhism judging the virtue of actions by their soteriological consequences instead of inherent goodness and striving to bring the greatest good of enlightenment to the endless number of beings sounds ultimately consequentialist and utilitarian.
This poses two problems concerning environmental ethics and vulnerability. First, there is some justified scepticism regarding how much Buddhist tradition cared about ecology historically or how well-equipped it is conceptually to facilitate it now. Second, utilitarianism has a utility monster problem. If some being is capable of converting resources into their own pleasure more efficiently, then maths forces us to maximise the total good by giving everything to them.
This thought experiment and the problem of utility monsters are not that contrived. Don’t we as individuals often consider our pleasure of greater weight than others’, therefore acting like utility monsters appropriating disproportional resources? Doesn’t environmentally unconscious humanity as a whole? Aren’t conservation efforts often motivated by benefits for humans at the expense of non-human animals and the environment? Aren’t invasive species, in a sense, natural utility monsters since they are, by definition, more efficient at using resources to multiply and enjoy the privilege of living?
A tempting solution would be to opt for virtue ethics or deontology, asserting that caring about the environment and the vulnerable is a virtue or duty. Buddhist ethics allows such interpretations, too. But I would like to give utilitarianism another try.
Buddhism is not actually concerned with maximising pleasure but with minimising suffering. While mathematically equivalent if symmetrical, it is asymmetrical in Buddhism. Mundane pleasure essentially does not exist; it is just temporary alleviation of or alteration between different types of suffering, while ultimate pleasure is the complete cessation of suffering.
Negative utilitarianism, dealing with asymmetries of pleasure and suffering, tries to solve the aforementioned problems by positing a negative utilitarian monster – still all about maximising pleasure, it might start with a negative amount of it to justify the priority resource allocation.
I propose an alternative account: the inverse utility monster – a being with an increased or extreme capacity to cope with things that normally bring suffering to other beings. Therefore, it would be mathematically and ethically sound to divert as much suffering as possible from the vulnerable – now understood as beings with relatively diminished capacity to cope with suffering - to this monster. Next, we might recognise that this inverse utility monster is effectively a bodhisattva; such diversion of suffering from the vulnerable is one of traditional Buddhist practices; and the coping capacity could be increased by bodhisattva’s greater cognitive abilities and greater mundane knowledge relative to lay people and non-human animals, and eventually by the ultimate wisdom realising selflessness and interdependent existence.
I believe this account paves a new promising path for engaging with Buddhism and utilitarianism and provides a novel comparative perspective on the problems of environmental ethics and vulnerability.
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The International Conference “Environmental Ethics and Vulnerability in Western and/or Buddhist Philosophy”, Verona, Italy, 25 October, 2024.