consequentialism and friends

Are Act-Consequentialism and Friendship Incompatible?

I

Recent critics of Act Consequentialism, hereafter referred to simply as AC, have sought to argue that because the theory’s structure is committed solely to maximizing the good the Act Consequentialist, hereafter referred to simply as the AC-ist, cannot have true friendships. To be explicit, the “…objection advanced by the new friendship critics is not based on the claim that consequentialists should not be true friends, but instead, they argue that for various reasons, sophisticated consequentialists cannot be true friends…” (Card, 2004)
These critics highly value true friendship and claim that this relationship is extremely important to human life. If a moral theory cannot permit its agents to have these highly valued and special relationships, they believe it undermines the theory’s plausibility. One such critic, Neera Kapur, writes the following about true friendships:

“End friendship (hereafter, simply “friendship”) is a cardinal human value. Aristotle declared that no one would choose to live without friends…Through such sharing, friendship serves both to confirm and to shape our sense of things, of the important and the unimportant, and to fuel our interests in our activities. And because it involves mutual pleasure and enjoyment, friendship is also an intrinsic part of our happiness. Thus friendship plays a constitutive role in our happiness and the constitution of our selves – our identity.” (Kapur, 1991)

Shortly after she also writes the following:

“Nor is it to say that friendship is the most important value: an individual might justifiably choose to do without friendship if friendship conflicts with some other highly prized and morally praiseworthy value, such as a life of dedication to art or alleviation of human suffering. But if she lacks the character necessary for friendship, she is seriously deficient.” (Kapur, 1991)

So friendship is essential to the development of our characters. Friendships help us shape how we view the world, they give us motivation to pursue certain interests, and they also contribute to our happiness. One might wonder how a human being would develop that is not capable of true friendships and what kind of life they would live. AC broadly understood is a theory of maximization. Its construction picks out some goal and states that a given act is permissible if and only if it maximizes that goal. Because the AC-ist is committed to this construction Kapur believes the AC-ist, as a consequence, lacks the character necessary for true friendship because she will be ready to sacrifice the friendship as soon as it becomes sub-optimal. Kapur also thinks that the AC-ist commitment to this construction does not allow for friendships to be intrinsically justified. Instead they are justified instrumentally as a mere means to promote some further goal. Quoting Kapur again, she expresses this criticism when she writes:

“Hence, if I accept C, the moral justification I must give to my friendship is instrumental. And acceptance of an instrumental justification of friendship, whether of particular acts of friendship or of the dispositions of friendship, is logically inconsistent with the attitudes and motivations of end friendship, and so with regarding friendship as an intrinsic value.” (Kapur, 1991)

Thus Kapur believes that by committing to AC the friendships of AC-ist can only be justified instrumentally. She thinks instrumental justification yields instrumental motivation to act and hold the dispositions of true friendship, and that the AC-ist will value the friendship instrumentally instead of intrinsically. In this paper I will argue that those who claim the AC-ist cannot have true friendships for motivational, logical, and psychological reasons merely misunderstand the theory and therefore do not threaten its plausibility. I will conclude this paper by showing what I believe to be a further flaw in one of the objections the new friendship critics put forth.
The main ambiguity lies in understanding what a “true”, “genuine”, “non-instrumental” or “end” friendships consist of. Unless noted, I will use the term true friendship(s). In Section II I will illuminate on what condition(s) are necessary for true friendships, in Section III I will argue against the three objections, motivational, logical, and psychological, advanced by critics of AC, and finally in Section IV I will continue to argue against one of their objections revealing further flaw.

II

What condition(s) are required for a relationship between two people for it to qualify as a “true friendship”? In this section I will construct a clear and concise picture of what a true friendship is composed of by looking to Neera Kapur’s recent paper, Why It Is Wrong to be Always Guided by the Best: Consequentialism and Friendship. At the beginning of her paper she defines true friendship in the following way:

“In an end friendship, one loves the friend as an essential part of one's system of ends and not solely, or even primarily, as a means…In such love, one loves the friend for the person she is, that is, for her essential rather than incidental features. These include both her character traits-the fundamental intellectual, psychological, moral, and aesthetic qualities that constitute an individual's personality-and her unique perspective on herself and others…” (Kapur, 1991)

She also writes that it is the “necessary irreplaceability” (Kapur, 1991) of the friend herself that clearly distinguishes a true friendship from an instrumental friendship. In an instrumental friendship the friend can be replaced for the sake of better achieving some end external to the friendship. This is contrary to true friendship where,

“…the friend cannot be replaced by another, for no other can have her essential features. Nor can she be replaced by a more efficient means to one’s end or abandoned on their achievement, for it is not as a means that one loves her…Hence, to love a friend as an end is to place a special value on her–to believe that her value is not outweighed, say, simply by the greater needs of others or the needs of a greater number of others…” (Kapur, 1991)

Moreover she claims that true friendship requires certain virtues. I am reinterpreting this claim as implying that certain dispositions must be present in true friendships, e.g. benevolence, justice, integrity and autonomy. At the end of the road true friendships must have no further goal than the friend itself and the agent must hold the required dispositions. The AC-ist is thought to have only instrumental friendships, only holding these dispositions and placing value on the relationship and the friend herself when it contributes to the maximization of the good.
On this account true friendship is composed of the following pieces: 1) the agent must value the friend as an end in herself, not as a mere means, she must be valued intrinsically, and 2) the agent must hold certain dispositions that are required by true friendship. If the AC-ist can satisfy these two conditions and still maintain her commitment to AC, then the objection that the she cannot have true friendships arises from a mere misunderstanding of her theory.

III

I understand AC to make the following claim: An act is morally permissible if and only if it maximizes the good, and if an act is morally permissible, then what makes it so is ultimately the fact that it maximizes the good.

Motivational Objection:

The first strike against AC is the Original Objection (OO):

“While consequentialists always aim at maximizing the good irrespective of who may benefit, friendship requires that one regularly aim at the good of the friend herself.” (Card, 2004)

OO claims that the AC-ist and true friendship are incompatible on purely motivational grounds. It claims that the AC-ist it only motivated to act in ways that will maximize the good for everyone, and as we have seen true friendship requires that one aim at the good of the friend herself. If this objection is true:

“…then a consequentialist world, stripped of the deep caring and intimacy which characterizes friendship, would contain less happiness than a world in which persons were motivated in ways consistent with loving relationships.” (Card, 2004)

So following the advice of AC seems to lead to devastating consequences, almost to the point of becoming self-defeating. But in response the AC-ist can draw a distinction between her criterion of rightness and her decision procedure.
A criterion of rightness specifies what the fundamental right and wrong making features of acts are. To illustrate, AC determines the rightness of an act entirely on whether or not it maximizes the good. By contrast, Rule Consequentialism (RC) defines the rightness of an act in terms of whether or not it is in accordance with a certain code of rule selected for their good consequences. A moral theory’s decision procedure refers not only to the process used to decide what one ought to do in a given situation, but also what dispositions and beliefs the moral agent ought to hold. While AC and RC differ in how they define what makes an act right, they both generally agree on the same decision procedure. This decision procedure reads something like this (DP1): Agents should decide what to do by following certain tried and tested rules, and by holding certain dispositions and beliefs, e.g. “Don’t harm others,” “Be truthful,” “Keep your promises,” “Act justly,” etc. Included with these rules and dispositions is a further rule that says, “If following one of these rules will lead to drastically bad consequences, violate the rule.” It is these rules that if followed by everyone everywhere will produce the best consequences. They both reject the following decision procedure (DP2): In all situations, an agent should decide what to do by attempting to calculate which outcome out of all the acts available to her will maximize the good.
Several reasons for rejecting DP2 include: a) the cost of obtaining all the information more than likely outweighs the benefit of doing so, b) often times there is insufficient evidence available, such that long tested rules would prove to be more effective and c) people’s expectations would be better met if people followed DP1 as opposed to DP2, that is to say, people would trust others to not kill them as soon as it would maximize the good. Also, not only do AC and RC agree that agents ought to follow the same decision procedure, they also agree that agents should internalize these rules, dispositions, and beliefs instead of merely complying with them.
Why internalize a given set of rules, dispositions, and beliefs? One reason is that internalization can have benefits that compliance doesn’t have. For example, suppose you have internalized the rule “If attacked, retaliate in self-defense”. Let us also assume that you live in a world where people can “see” your dispositions just by looking at you. Because you have internalized this rule of retaliation, and others can see that you have internalized this rule, future attacks may now be deterred without you having to first retaliate. Undoubtedly internalizing this rule along with others will lead to better consequences as opposed to some other decision procedure. We can even postulate that the best decision procedure is the one where people internalize the belief that friendships are valuable independently of their contribution to maximizing the good, and that they should stick by their friend even when doing so would not maximize the good.
As I have illustrated, supporters of AC do not advocate that the AC-ist ought to decide what to do by attempting to calculate which act of all those available to her will maximize the good. Instead, the AC-ist should follow tried and tested rules, hold certain dispositions, and beliefs such as: “Don’t lie,” “Be just,” “Be truthful,” etc. Hence the AC-ist can aim at the good of the friend herself, and by making this distinction OO is pushed aside and so is the supposed motivational obstacle. This viewpoint will be referred to as “sophisticated act-consequentialism”, and I will change the acronyms to SAC and SAC-ist.
By making this clarification one of the two conditions for true friendship has been satisfied, the condition that the SAC-ist must hold certain dispositions. With this important distinction made apparent the SAC-ist can consistently hold the dispositions of benevolence, justice, integrity and autonomy. However over time the Original Objection has become more refined and new challenges face supporters of SAC.

Logical Objection:

The next objection comes directly from Kapur commonly called the Incompatibility Argument, and it claims that the SAC-ist and true friendship are logically incompatible. Quoting directly:

“She might think that this moral devaluation of friendship vis-a-vis the overall good is logically compatible with a personal commitment to end friendship. But the two commitments would have to be expressed in the following kind of thought: "As your friend, I place a special value on you out of friendship and not out of consequentialist considerations-but as a consequentialist agent I do so only so long as, all things considered, valuing you thus promotes the overall good."…And the two thoughts are logically incompatible. To be consistent she must think, "As a consequentialist friend, I place a special value on you so long, but only so long, as valuing you thus promotes the overall good."” (Kapur, 1991)

The objection hinges on the idea that the SAC-ist must provide instrumental justification for the value of her friendship with another because she cannot value it as an end. Following Card , Kapur’s term “instrumental” is composed of the following two components: (1) treating the friend as a means to some further good, e.g. maximization of the good, and (2) attributing to the friendship a reductionist account of value. Putting it together then, the term “instrumental”, I think, can be read as saying: if having the friendship contributes to the maximization of the good it will hold some value, V. If for some reason continuing to hold this friendship contributes only sub-optimally compared to some other state, e.g. the discontinuation of the friendship, then the value of the friendship is reduced to V-x, where x is the difference between the current sub-optimal and the counterfactual optimal. It is not implausible at first glance to be persuaded by Kapur’s reasoning. The SAC-ist is committed to maximizing the good, and what it is right to do is that, and only that, which contributes maximally to the maximization. There is no room for anything to have more than mere instrumental worth under this construction. But this is not the only construction available to the SAC-ist.
The SAC-ist need not endorse the “traditional” teleological structure where “the good” has been reduced to some non-moral property such as pleasure. Instead she can create a new teleological structure for herself where “the good” refers to other intrinsically moral properties such as justice, fairness and friendship. This construction permits the SAC-ist to value friendship intrinsically independent of its contribution to the maximization of the good, and it is still teleological because it says that what is right is the maximization of this good. She does not need to ascribe everything outside of “the good” a merely instrumental value. Instead, she can make a list of intrinsically valuable goods, still value them intrinsically, and argue that what it is right to do is to bring about the best consequences with respect to these intrinsic goods. This structure does not erect a barricade between friendship and the consequences of the friendship, but instead it allows friendship to be part of the outcomes that is valued. I will call this structure “friendship teleology” (FT).
This modification permits the SAC-ist to bestow friendship a moral worth independent of her criterion of rightness. She can still define rightness in terms of maximal goodness, but she does not have to reduce “the good” to something that is independent of what is right, meaning, some non-moral property or sensation. Therefore, the claim that the SAC-ist must justify the value of friendship in merely instrumental terms is incorrect. By adopting FT where friendship holds an intrinsic moral value that aids in determining right action, the SAC-ist can justify her commitment to friendship independent of its contribution to the maximization of “the good”. Merely adopting FT, while it doesn’t defeat the Incompatibility Argument completely, does satisfy the first condition for true friendship. The SAC-ist can now value her friend intrinsically and not as mere means. Both conditions for true friendship have been satisfied, and the motivational and logical obstacles have been shown to be misunderstandings of SAC. Yet critics may still appeal to a further claim in hopes of showing the SAC¬-ist moral theory to be implausible.

Psychological Objection:

By making the move to FT the SAC-ist has weakened the Incompatibility Argument. Even if one can dodge the logical incompatibility, critics still claim the SAC-ist and true friendship are psychologically incompatible. They claim that the impersonal point of view endorsed is incompatible with friendship itself, the core of this objection centers on the “realm of concerns” (Kapur, 1991) under which friendships may be formed and terminated. To be explicit:

“When friendship is justified by its intrinsic moral goodness, its moral value remains intact even when it is right to sacrifice it. For by this justification, the conflict between the reasons for pursuing the friendship and the agent’s own good, on the one hand, and the reasons for their renunciation, on the other, is a conflict between the same realm of concerns.” (Kapur, 1991)

Kapur claims that in order for friendship to be intrinsically moral one must adopt the personal point of view as the primary moral point of view. She must be claiming that the “…impersonalist consequentialist must utilize an “external” standard to evaluate friendships, which illustrates their wrong-headed conception of friendship.” (Card, 2004) In response the SAC-ist is able to say that friendship is intrinsically good independent of its contribution to the maximization of the good by adopting FT, however friendships are still vulnerable to termination if they fail to contribute to the maximization of the good. So I reinterpret the objection raised to the SAC-ist as saying: While you may form a friendship from the personal point of view, if it comes time to terminate the friendship because it sub-optimally contributes to the maximization of the good, the termination will not come from the personal point of view, but from the impersonal point of view to which you ascribe, and true friendship is incompatible with the impersonal point of view.
Once again I appeal to the distinction made at the beginning of this paper, the difference between the SAC-ist criterion of rightness and her decision procedure. While the SAC-ist is committed to the maximization of the good, she is not committed to walking around with her calculator, calculating which action would maximize the good, and prior to that calculating if calculating would be optimal, continuing ad infinitum. Instead she believes that she should internalize certain tried and tested rules, hold certain dispositions and beliefs, that will more often than not produce the best consequences overall. I think it appropriate to say that the termination of a friendship, if necessary, need not come from the impersonal point of view but can, and more often than not will, from the personal point of view of the SAC-ist.

IV

So far I have disarmed the three objections (motivational, logical, and psychological) that have been thrown at SAC. Each objection claims that for some reason or another the SAC-ist cannot have true friendships. Also, I have satisfied both of the conditions necessary for true friendship. That 1) the agent must value the friend as an end in herself and not merely as a means, she must be valued intrinsically, 2) the agent must hold certain dispositions that are required by true friendship. Now I wish to further examine the Incompatibility Argument.
At first glace the Incompatibility Argument discussed in Section III seems peculiar to me compared to the other two objections waged against the SAC-ist. The initial drive is a logical incompatibility with an underlying psychological incompatibility, and as noted earlier in this paper the SAC-ist need not think like a SAC-ist at all times in all places. While the two former objections (motivational and logical) target grounds that I consider central to her, e.g. her supposed solely instrumental justification for her friendships, the Psychological Objection targets something different. Claiming that the personal point of view must be the primary point of view in order for the friendship’s intrinsic value to remain “intact” if and when it comes time to terminate it is an extremely confining and restrictive position. Why must true friendship require this position?
Kapur writes the following:

“…some of the reasons for renouncing friendship that we would usually label “moral” are also internal to friendship…some of the reasons for not renouncing it that we would usually label “reasons of friendship” are also internal to morality…The conflict between them is only a partial conflict, because their requirements are, in part, internally connected. ” (Kapur, 1991)

So to illustrate, friendships could be renounced for “reasons of justice”. Suppose I am a friend of Phil Knight, the owner of Nike. And suppose I discover that Phil has outsourced his company’s product production to China in order to cut down on production expenses by employing Chinese children to increase profits. Justice may deem the exploitation of children for purely corporate gain to be unjust and associating with unjust beings is wrong, therefore I should relinquish my friendship with him. While my reasons for relinquishing the friendship fall under the realm of “reasons of justice”, Justice is also a necessary true friendship disposition. Because justice is both part of friendship and part of morality broadly understood, the intrinsic value of the friend remains intact because the reasons for doing so apply to the same “realm of concerns” (Kapur, 1991). So why is the SAC-ist commitment to the impersonal point of view excluded?
Perhaps the reason rests upon the initially plausible point that our SAC-ist is committed a moral theory of maximization taking into consideration all things. As a result moral reasons external to the friendship may conflict with the friendship itself. Surely though the SAC-ist isn’t the only moral agent that allows impersonal reasons to play a role in his or her motivations, or in assessing the value of a particular relationship. The agent of virtue may choose to revalue and relinquish his friendship with another for external moral reasons, to sacrifice his life for his country for example. Kapur even alludes to this explicitly when she writes:

“Friendship may have to be renounced for moral reasons that are external to friendship. For example, it might be the case that honor or courage as a soldier requires the betrayal of friend over country…” (Kapur, 1991)

So just because moral reasons are external to friendship doesn’t seem to be Kapur’s aim either. The agent of virtue may assess his situation from the impersonal point of view and thereby revalue his friendship with another in light of honor and his commitment to his country. If moral reasons external to friendship can qualify as reasons for relinquishment Kapur must ultimately be driving at the SAC-ist reason being: the friendship does not maximize the good. So it seems that this is the reason she objects to. However I agree with Card that:

“Sophisticated consequentialists should renounce certain friendships at times because they are suboptimal, since they ought to shuttle between the immediate and long term perspectives. (c.f. Mill 1979, pp. 17-19)” (Card, 2004)

If I choose to relinquish my friendship with another on sub-optimal grounds, how does this violate the two conditions necessary for true friendship?
Kapur must think that if one chooses the personal point of view as the primary point of view, one will be immune to relinquishing friendships because they are sub-optimal. I have already pointed out that even if one accepts the impersonal point of view, this will not be a regular occurrence because the SAC-ist will think and act on various internalized rules, dispositions, and beliefs. But if I have enough evidence to believe that remaining in a friendship with murderer could lead to devastatingly bad consequences, I ought to end that friendship! While I have written that the SAC-ist should not always base what she ought to do by calculating which outcome of all those available to her will produce the best consequences, in certain scenarios she ought to engage in consequentialist deliberation explicitly. The SAC-ist ought to “monitor” her surroundings. One might worry if allowing for the SAC-ist to move freely between a consistent, stable character and an obsessive calculator pushes SAC back into a self-defeating corner. It does not.
While many of us act in a consistent manner we also keep ourselves attentive to our surroundings just in case there is a special situation to be taken advantage of. For example, you might be fairly conservative with your grocery budget because you are a poor graduate student who is living paycheck to paycheck with a notorious caffeine and nicotine addiction. During your routine grocery shopping you stumble upon a sale of Diet Coke 12-packs, 10 for 100 Rs, and you choose to buy 30 12-packs. Because you were attentive to your surroundings you were able to pick up on an easy opportunity to benefit yourself by minimizing your overall grocery costs in the future. One could object to the idea of “monitoring” because the world is in a perpetual state of need as thousands every day go without clean food, water, and basic medical supplies. They may say the SAC-ist ought to always be engaging in explicit consequentialist deliberation because of this ongoing state of need. Hence they concluded that the SAC-ist has no room for true friendships in our world. Notice however the question I am answering is not, should the SAC-ist be a true friend? The question I am answering is, can the SAC-ist be a true friend?
So is relinquishing a friendship because it is sub-optimal really inconsistent with true friendship? I think not. Suppose I am friends with an individual whom I have known since childhood, we grew up playing baseball, attended the same university where we were roommates. Then I discover that he is a murderer and decide to relinquish our friendship because it is sub-optimal. Continuing to befriend a murder may result in me being considered an accomplice to his murders or even worse I may get murdered myself. My reasoning does not violate either of the two conditions necessary for true friendship. I can still value him intrinsically and I can still hold the dispositions necessary for true friendship, but in realizing this relationship would not be best overall I choose to relinquish it. I fail to see how this reason for relinquishing a friendship would remove its intrinsic value or deprive me of my required dispositions.
In this paper I have shown that the objections advanced by the new friendship critics, specifically Kapur, against the SAC-ist merely misunderstand her theory and are therefore not a threat to the theory’s plausibility. The SAC-ist, by making several adjustments to her moral theory is able to satisfy the conditions necessary for true friendships. Further I have taken a closer look at the Incompatibility Argument, specifically its psychological objection to the SAC-ist and revealed an important flaw in its reasoning. The Incompatibility Argument objects to relinquishing friendships because they are sub-optimal but this reason is perfectly consistent with true friendship because it violates neither necessary condition. This reason for relinquishment will not be a regular occurrence as the SAC-ist will “monitor” her surroundings and more often than not will not need to engage in explicit consequentialist deliberation. Whether or not SAC-ist should be true friends is a different question that requires a different paper. However, given that certain critics have placed such a high prize on true friendship and attempted to undermine SAC by claiming that its agents cannot have these special types of relationships when they can leads me to think that if one were to take up the question, “Should the Sophisticated Act-Consequentialist be a true friend?” the answer would be yes.


References:

Card, R. F. (2004). Consequentialism, Teleology, and the New Friendship Critique. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 85, 149-172.

Kapur, N. B. (1991). Why It Is Wrong to be Always Guided by the Best: Consequentialism and Friendship. Ethics, 101 (3), 483-504.

Portmore, D. W. (2008, Spring). Consequentialism. PHI420/591: Arizona State University.