The common objection to utilitarianism is that it is an unreasonable ethical theory because it yields counterintuitive-immoral conclusions. In response, utilitarianism argues either that the generation of counterintuitive conclusions does not justify ...
The common objection to utilitarianism is that it is an unreasonable ethical theory because it yields counterintuitive-immoral conclusions. In response, utilitarianism argues either that the generation of counterintuitive conclusions does not justify rejecting the theory or that utilitarianism does not actually produce such conclusions. The former includes defense strategies and tolerance strategies, while the latter includes denial strategies and revision strategies. Defense and tolerance strategies argue for the the priority of utility over intuition, whereas denial strategies contend that counterintuitive-immoral conclusions arise only from errors in calculating consequences or from unrealistic empirical assumptions. Two-level utilitarianism, which incorporates the strengths of rule utilitarianism, emphasizes the priority of utility while also maintaining that counterintuitive conclusions stem from extreme exceptions rather than inherent flaws in utilitarianism. These response strategies can address counterintuitive objections based on extremely exceptional cases but fail to adequately respond to the moral agency objections, which argues that utilitarianism is an immoral theory because it disregards the separateness of persons and the integrity of persons.