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Review: Brandt on Utilitarianism and the Foundations of Ethics

Reviewed Work(s): Morality, Utilitarianism and Rights by Richard B. Brandt


Review by: Thomas L. Carson
Source: Business Ethics Quarterly, Vol. 7, No. 1 (Jan., 1997), pp. 87-100
Published by: Cambridge University Press
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BRANDT ON IZILITARIANISM
AND THE FOUNDATIONS OF ETHICS

Thomas L. Carson

Mor!ity, tJtitosreanXsnt and Rights

Kchaxd }). ]3randt

Camblrsdge Univ¢rsity Pss, 1992

9 ichard Brandt is one of the world's preeminent moral philosophers. Morality,


I\Utilita rianism, and Rights is a collection of some of Brandt's most important
papers written between 1965 and 1988. This volume includes a very useful intro-
duction by Brandt in which he discusses the development of his views and the papers
included in the volume. Brandt has been publishing since the 1930s and his recol-
lections of other philosophers and earlier philosophical settings are most interesting.
Brandt divides the book into five sections: A) Metaethical Preliminaries, B)
Normative Ethics: Utilitarianism, C) Utilitarianism and Rights, D) Determinism,
Excuses, and Character, and E) Implications of Utilitarian Theory. Normative ethics
and metaethics are the areas of his work represented in this volume which I believe
have had the greatest influence. I will focus my discussion on the papers included in
the first two sections of Brandt's book and the following four topics: Brandt's for-
mulation and defense of rule-utilitarianism, Brandt's theory of human welfare,
Brandt's theory of rationality, and Brandt's discussion of moral language. I will con-
clude with some thoughts about the significance of Brandt's work for business ethics.

1. Rule-Utilitarianism

Brandt's very influential paper "Some merits of one form of rule- utilitarianism
defends the following version of RU:
[A]n action is right if and only if it would not be prohibited by the moral code ideal
for the society in which it occurs, where a moral code is taken to be "ideal" if and
only if its currency would produce at least as much good per person as the currency
of any other moral code (pp. 124 5).
Brandt calls this the "ideal moral code theory" (IMCT). The IMCT employs the
notion of what it is for a moral code to have currency in a society. Brandt explains
this in the following passage:

t1997. Business Ethics Quarlerly, Volume 7, Issue 1. ISSN 1052-1SOX. pp. 87-100

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88 BUSINESS ETHICS QUARTERLY

[Flor a moral code to have currency in a society two things must be true. First, a high
proportion of adults in the society must subscribe to the moral principles, or have the
moral opinions, constitutive of the code.... probably it would not be wrong to require
at least 90 percent agreement. Second, we want to say that certain principles A, B,
etc. belong to the moral code of a society only if they are recognized as such (p. 120).
Brandt offers an interesting argument for thinking that Mill endorsed something like
the IMCT.

Brandt stresses that when assessing the consequences of the currency of a moral
code we must not only weigh the benefits of compliance or partial compliance with its
rules and prohibitions we must also weigh the good and bad consequences of teaching
such a code, e.g, guilt and other risks associated with interiorizing strong prohibitions
(p. 125). The IMCT and other versions of rule- utilitarianism are often characterized
as "indirect" versions of utilitarianism. Unlike act-utilitarianism (AU), they do not
hold that the rightness or wrongness of a particular action is determined by its conse-
quences. Rather, they hold that the rightness or wrongness of an action is determined
by the content of the ideal moral code for the agent's society; moral codes are assessed
in terms of their consequences.

What would be the content of an ideal moral code? Some have suggested that the
ideal or utility maximizing moral code for any society would be act utilitarianism
itself. On this interpretation, RU and AU are equivalent for all practical purposes.
Brandt rejects this interpretation of the IMCT. He claims that AU is not the moral
code whose currency would have the best consequences (in any society). His argu-
ments for this (which are developed in a later paper in this volume "Fairness to
Indirect Optimific Theories in Ethics") resemble certain standard objections to AU.
First, the use of AU as a decision procedure requires people to make difficult and
time-consuming calculations. Second, "many people are just not bright enough, or
well enough educated, to make reliable judgments about the utilities of their options"
(p. 142). Third, the subtlety of the calculations required is "a standing invitation to
rationalize in one's own favor" (p. 142). These three objections all appeal to the idea
that people are likely to misapply AU and, as a result, perform actions that are not
optimific. Brandt's final argument is somewhat different. He claims that the general
acceptance of AU would render human actions too unpredictable for people to be able
to enter into beneficial agreements and activities which require complex coordination
of the actions of different people. Brandt explains this claim in the following passage.
[W]here individuals to reach moral decisions in this way, it would be difficult to pre-
dict where they would come out: We would not know whether a person would keep
a promise unless we could see how the benefits looked to him. As a result, there
would not be the security in predicting how others would behave necessary for mak-
ing personal plans or effectuating schemes of cooperation (p. 142).
This kind of argument is developed with great force and subtlety by David
Hodgson in Consequences of Utilitarianism.2 Hodgson claims that his argument is
independent of the idea that people are likely to misapply AU. According to him,
cooperation and the institution of promise keeping would be seriously undermined if
everyone accepted and correctly followed AU.
Brandt claims that the ideal moral code for any society would include principles
very similar to Ross's prima facie duties.3 It would include "obligations of fidelity,

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BRANDT: A REVIEW ARTICLE 89

obligations of gratitude, obligations to make restitution for injuries, obligations to other


persons, to avoid injuring them, to improve one's self, and to bring about a just dis-
tribution of the good things in life" (p. 131). These obligations can conflict. An ideal
moral code must include principles for resolving conflicts of duties. If ideal moral
codes rely on AU as the principle for deciding what to do in cases of conflicts of
duties, then AU and the IMCT will not be significantly different in practice. Brandt
contends that AU would not be the principle for resolving conflicts of duties in an
ideal moral code. This seems plausible given the claims he makes about the bad con-
sequences of trying to directly follow AU. Brandt also makes some positive sugges-
tions about how an ideal moral code would resolve conflicts of obligations (I discuss
these below).
The paper "Fairness to Indirect Optimific Theories in Ethics" is a much later
defense of RU. Brandt defends the same version of RU,4 however, he defends the the-
ory on substantially different grounds than those he offered in the earlier paper. He
no longer takes the appeal to intuitions to be a decisive reason for preferring RU to
AU and, in general, seems more sympathetic with AU than before.
Brandt devotes much of the paper to replying to objections to RU. I will briefly
sketch some of these objections and Brandt's replies.
i) The first objection is that the term "society of the agent" is open to many differ-
ent construals. We might take this to mean one's nation or some subgroup within the
nation, e.g. people in a particular geographical region, members of a particular ethnic
or religious group, or members of a professional association. The problem is that
there are many different ways of construing the term "society of the agent" and, for
each of these there is a corresponding different version of RU. (The ideal moral code
for my "society" will probably differ depending on how my society is defined. The
ideal moral code for the US as a whole probably differs from the ideal moral code for
some of the subgroups of which I am a member.) Brandt offers the following pro-
posal: we should decide questions about how to draw lines between different societies
by determining which way of drawing lines would be most beneficial (p. 148). This
is puzzling. How we are to judge the benefits of different ways of drawing lines
between different societies? Brandt doesn't elaborate on this suggestion. Presumably
he is talking about comparing the benefits that the currency of ideal moral codes
would produce given different ways of drawing lines between different societies; we
should draw lines in such a way that the total benefit produced by the currency of
ideal moral codes would be maximized. This introduces a very serious complication
for those who would apply RU. In order for someone to know what sorts of moral
rules she should follow, she must know the content of the ideal moral code for her
society. But, in order for an agent to determine which moral code is ideal for her soci-
ety, she must first determine which society she belongs to. In order to do this, she
must make conjectures about the good and bad consequences of the currency of many
different possible moral codes for many different possible societies.
ii) Brandt says that the rules which determine the rightness and wrongness of
actions in our non-ideal world (in which hardly anyone accepts the ideal moral code
for her society) are those whose general currency (acceptance by most people) would
have the best consequences. The sort of moral code which would produce the best

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9o BUSINESS ETHICS QUARTERLY

consequences if the great majority of people accepted it, might require actions that
have very bad consequences in a non-ideal world in which very few people accept it.
For example, most ideal moral codes would include rules forbidding discrimination
on grounds of race, religion or gender. But following such rules might be disastrous
for the agent if the agent's actual society institutionalizes such discrimination. Those
who practice nondiscrimination in societies whose moral and legal codes require dis-
crimination might bring harsh punishment upon themselves. Brandt regards acting
contrary to the demands of a discriminatory code as supererogatory (or at least not
obligatory) under such circumstances. He claims that his theory can accommodate
this view because the optimal morality for a society will include "disjunctive rules"
that speak to such cases. The disjunctive rules for discrimination would be something
like the following:
Treat everyone equally, without regard to race, religion, or sex; but in case such con-
duct would produce serious social harm because of massive disagreement, then per-
form that act which is beneE1t-maximizing, for all of society, for you (your group) to
do, as a means to social chunge in the direction of equal treatment. (p. 156)
iii) J.J.C. Smart and other act-utilitarian critics of RU accuse rule utilitarians of
"rule-worship." In cases in which AU and RU disagree about the rightness or wrong-
ness of an action RU will recommend a non-optimal action on the ground of its con-
formity to certain (utility maximizing) rules. Smart states his objection in the
following passage:
[Tlhe rule-utilitarian presumably advocates his principle because he is ultimately
concerned with human happiness: why then should he advocate abiding by a rule
when he knows that it will not in the present case be most beneficial to abide by it?
The reply that in most cases it is beneficial to abide by the rule seems irrelevant. And
so is the reply that it would be better that everybody should abide by the rule than that
nobody should. This is to suppose that the only alternative to 'everybody does A' is
'no one does A'. But clearly we have the possibility 'some people do A and some
don't'. Hence to refuse to break a generally beneElcial rule in those cases in which it
is not most beneficial to obey it seems irrational axld to be a case of rule worship.5
If the purpose of moral rules is to promote human welfare, then isn't it irrational to
follow them in cases in which doing so does not promote human welfare? By way of
reply, Brandt tries to minimize the difference between AU and RU. He suggests that
the ideal moral code for most societies would include something like the following
. .

prlnclp e:
If following an otherwise optimiflc set of rules would cause a very large utility loss
or forgo a very large utility gain on this occasion, the agent is permitted to perform
an act that is (close to) utility maximizing on that occasion (p. lSl).
Given that ideal moral codes include something like the foregoing principle, AU
and RU will differ only in cases in which the harm produced or benefit foregone by
following RU is relatively small. In trying to avoid this objection, Brandt has formu-
lated a version of RU that, in practice, does not differ greatly from AU. Brandt's ver-
sion of RU will never require agents to perform actions that produce a great deal less
utility than some possible alternative.
iv) Several critics have argued that RU exacerbates the problems that AU has in
trying to identify which actions maximize human welfare. It is often difficult to com-

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BRANDT: A REVIEW ARTICLE 91

pare the consequences of a single course of action with


alterative actions. In order know what the ideal mor
would be, one must be able to assess the consequences
certain rules, e.g., rules forbidding lying. Judgment
judgments about the consequences of many specific a
consequences of the currency of entire moral codes (wh
are even more difficult to make. Brandt responds to th
the optimal moral code for most societies would include
such as the primafacie obligation not to harm others. T
but Brandt does rather little to argue that such duties
moral codes. A healthy skepticism is in order here. For
of moral principles and moral training whose general ac
have not yet been formulated; ideal moral codes might
of moral education that we haven't yet imagined.
But let us grant, for the sake of argument, that the id
eties would include Rossian prima facie duties. Brand
epistemological problems for those who would apply it.
involve conflicts of primafacie duties. Without some pr
importance of conflicting duties, Rossian prima facie p
clear guidance as to how to act. Ross and Brandt hold th
But here we must ask: How wrong is lying? How strong
lying? How much good produced or bad avoided is ne
lying?
Ross himself does not propose any general criteria for
tance of conflicting primafacie duties, although he does
others is generally more important than the duty to hel
question of how to weigh conflicting duties in "Moralit
in a utility maximizing ethical code each duty would ha
of a certain strength. Each kind of act that is prohibite
will be correlated with an aversion of an appropriate st
order the acceptable level of aversion to various act-type
damage... that would likely be done if everyone feltfree t
behavior in question (pp. 8485).
When primafacie principles conflict, one's actual duty i
the strengths of the aversions in the utility maximizin
considerable merit and ingenuity but it further complicat
calculations necessary for identifying a utility maxim
society. Suppose that we have found the ideal set of pri
a given society. We are still very far from having found
society. There are a great many different possible ways o
aversions associated with violating these primafacie prin
the consequences that the code is likely to produce for ea
make an estimate as to which will produce the best cons
Let us turn to anoeher issue that is prominent in curre
ism. Many philosophers criticize AU on account of its "d

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92 BUSINESS ETHICS QUARTERLY

us to be impartial between our own interests and those o


own interests if doing so produces the best consequences
is no limit to the sacrifices that one can be obligated to
or much of one's money would have the best consequenc
one's duty to do so. Such cases are not unusual. It is plausible to suppose that AU
implies that the average American is obligated to give at least half of her disposable
income to famine relief rather than use it for the benefit of herself and her own fam-
ily. Given the massive disutility of starvation, the decreasing marginal utility of
wealth, and the existence of very efficient charitable organizations such as CARE and
OXFAM, the average American family would produce more good by giving away half
its income to CARE than by using all of its income for its own benefit.
In "Morality and Its Critics" Brandt argues that RU is considerably less demand-
ing than AU. Unlike AU, the ideal moral code (for most societies) will not require
people to constantly think about promoting the general welfare (p. 86). Brandt goes
on to suggest that ideal moral codes are very likely systems of "'side constraints'
which specify what may not (ordinarily) be done, but otherwise leave a person free to
follow his own projects" (p. 86). Codes of this sort will give moral agents a great
sense of freedom.
There is no doubt that AU and other demanding moral codes which require (many)
people to make large sacrifices to help others create significant disutilities for the peo-
ple on whom those responsibilities fall. Such codes are difficult to follow; they limit
people's freedom in the pursuit of their "projects" and may burden many people with
guilt. But these "costs" of demanding moral codes must be weighed against their ben-
efits. Brandt does not examine these benefits, much less show that they are out-
weighed by their "costs." If we focus on the issue of famine relief and weigh the costs
and benefits of an affluent society adopting a moral code that requires (most of) its
members to make significant sacrifices to help the poor and destitute of the world, it
seems that the benefits far outweigh the costs. After all, we are comparing the value
of lives of the starving with the value of the benefits that the affluent would derive
from spending more money on themselves (and doing so with a clear conscience).
Brandt's argument about being free to pursue one's "projects" (which he takes from
Bernard Williams) is very weak. Starvation and destitution are far greater hindrances
to the pursuit of one's projects than the hindrances created by the currency of a
demanding moral code.
Here, it might be objected that ideal moral codes would include special duties or
obligations to one's friends and family and thus would include principles that allow
or require one to favor one's own friends and family over others. (For his part, Brandt
claims that ideal moral codes 'will presumably recognize special obligations to wives
and children' (p. 86).) If I am permitted or required to favor my own friends and fam-
ily over others, then I cannot be morally required to make large financial sacrifices for
the sake of strangers in impoverished countries. There are two serious problems with
this argument. 1) A moral code might be very demanding and still allow one to strong-
ly favor one's own friends and family. An American with an annual income of
$100,000 a year who gave $40,000 a year to famine relief could still strongly favor
his own children over any other children. 2) In the passage that I cited earlier from p.

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BRANDT: A REVIEW ARTICLE 93

151, Brandt says that "If following an otherwise optim


very large utility loss or forgo a very large utility gain
permitted to perform an act that is (close to) utility m
Saving people from starvation is surely such a case. The good produced here is
(according to Brandt's own theory) sufficient to justify one in violating any otherwise
optimal rules which might prohibit it (e.g, rules requiring one to favor one's own
friends and family).7

11. Human Welfare or Self-lnterest

The concept of human welfare or self-interest is a central notion in ethics.


Traditional act-utilitarians hold that our only ultimate duty is to promote human wel-
fare. Any plausible ethical theory will take promoting human welfare and avoiding
harm to others to be important prima facie duties. The concept of harm so central in
political philosophy and certain theories of corporate social responsibility8 presup-
poses the concept of human welfare. Brandt's two papers "Rationality, Egoism, and
Morality," and "Two Concepts of Utility," present two very different accounts of
human welfare. The development of Brandt's views and his reasons for modifying
them bear serious examination. In "Rationality, Morality and Egoism," Brandt
claims that welfare consists in the satisfaction of rational desires or preferences. He
claims that the actions that are in a person's self-interest or which promote the per-
son's welfare are the same as those which the person:
actually would perform at that time if (a) his desires and aversions at the time were
what they would be if he had been fully exposed to available information, and if (b)
the agent had firmly and vividly in mind, and equally at the center of his attention, all
those knowable facts which, if he thought about them, would make a difference to his
tendency to act, given his "cleaned-up" desires (as in (a)) (p. 94)
According to Brandt, any act that is in accordance with one's overall rational desires
promotes one's own self-interest, even if it is based on altruistic desires. He claims
that, if we really care about others, altruistic acts that might ordinarily be described
as acts of self-sacrifice are really beneficial to us (p. 97).
Mark Overvold argues that Brandt's theory has the unacceptable consequence that
acts of self-sacrifice are logically impossible unless the agent acts on the basis of
incomplete information or irrational desires. In order to be a genuine case of self-sac-
rifice, an act must be (a) voluntary, (b) informed (the agent must be aware of the loss
to her own welfare and she must be aware of alternatives more favorable to her own
interests), and (c) contrary to the agent's self-interest. But, according to Brandt's the-
ory, any act that fully satisfies conditions (a) and (b) ipsofacto maximizes the agent's
self-interest and thus cannot be an act of self-sacrifice. On Brandt's theory, it is log-
ically impossible for a rational and fully informed person to perform an act of self-
sacrifice.9 Brandt's theory makes the thesis of psychological egoism trivially true.l°
Overvold tries to modify the desire-satisfaction theory to avoid this objection. In
"Two Concepts of Utility" Brandt concedes this objection. Instead of trying to mod-
ify the desire-satisfaction theory, he opts for a hedonistic theory of welfare which he
calls the "happiness theory.''ll

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94 BUSBESS ETHICS QUARTERLY

Brandt questions whether the desire-satisfaction theory of welfare can deal plausi-
bly with cases in which people's desires change. His worries about such cases led him
to abandon the desire satisfaction theory. The problem is that it is unclear that we can
speak coherently about what maximizes the satisfaction of a person's desires in cases
in which her desires change over time. Brandt presents the following example.
Suppose that a father is deciding what to give his son for his twentieth birthday. The
father is trying to decide between giving his son a bicycle and a Greek lexicon.
Which course of action will be most beneficial to his son? Which will maximize the
satisfaction of the son's desires? Suppose that the following are the case: between
the ages of 6 and 18 the son strongly preferred to have the bicycle [when he is twen-
ty]; between the ages of 18 and 22 he will prefer to have the lexicon; and from then
on he will prefer to have the bicycle. [For the sake of simplicity, Brandt talks about
the maximization of one's actual desires but this example could easily be adopted to
deal with "ideals' or rational desires.] Given that his desires change over time, it's not
clear which course of action will maximize the satisfaction of his desires. Getting the
bike will best satisfy the son's present desires but getting the lexicon will best satisfy
the desires the son will have at most other times in his life. We might try to resolve
this in accordance with any of the following principles [this list is not intended to be
exhaustivel2]:

a in measuring the overall satisfaction of someone's desires, we "count" the desires


that the person has at all of the different times in his life. (If getting a present when
one is twenty results in the satisfaction or non-satisfaction of desires that one has at
other times in one's life, then the satisfaction or non-satisfaction of those desires
"counts" as much for determining one's welfare as the satisfaction or non-satisfaction
of the desires one has while one is twenty years old.)
b. In determining the effect of an event on the overall satisfaction of someone's
desires, we only "count" the satisfaction or nonsatisfaction of the desires that one has
after the event occurs. (In the present example, the son's desires after he is twenty are
the only desires that matter.)
c. In determining the effect of an event on the overall satisfaction of someone's
desires, we only "count" the satisfaction or nonsatisfaction of the desires that one has
at the time the event occurs. [In the present example, the son's desires when he is
twenty are the only desires that matter.]
Proponents o£ the desire-satisfaction theory of welfare need to defend one of these
alternatives over the others. Brandt questions whether there are grounds for prefer-
ring any particular alternative to the others. Note that a) and b) create problems for
measuring welfare; they require us to compare the strength of desires that one has a
different times. I agree with Brandt that the phenomenon of changing desires is a seri-
ous problem for the desire satisfaction theory, but he is premature in dismissing the
theory on these grounds. He has not shown that there is no solution to the problem.l3
R. M. Hare has proposed a solution to this problem; he defends something like c). He
distinguishes between
The preferences a person has at a parficular bme regarding things that happen at that
time (he calls these "now for now" and "then for then preferences").
The preferences that a person has at a particular time regarding things that happen at
other times (he calls these "now for then" preferences).

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BRANDT: A REVEW ARTICLE
59

According to Hare, when such desires conflict the former override the latter for
determining one's own welfare.l4 When assessing the bearing of some event that
occurs at time T on one's welfare, the only preferences that matter are the (ideal) pref-
erences that one has at T.
In 4'Fairness to Happiness" (a more recent paper which is unfortunately not includ-
ed in the present volume), Brandt again defends a hedonistic theory of welfare.ls This
paper is particularly interesting because Brandt defends the hedonistic theory of wel-
fare by appeal to what we would prefer or desire if we were fully informed. Drawing
on recent work in empirical psychology, Brandt argues that it is likely that the only
intrinsic desires that would survive full information and maximal criticism are desires
for pleasant experiences.

III. Rationality

The paper "Rational Desires" (Brandt's Presidential Address to the American


Philosophical Association in 1970) is an early version of views developed more fully
in A Theory of the Good and the Right.l6 Brandt proposes that we take the question
"Is the state of affairs S intrinsically desirable [intrinsically good]?" to mean "Is it
rational (in a sense to be specified) for Mr. X to desire S intrinsically" (p. 39). A
desire is rational provided that it is "not irrational." Brandt's definition of "irra-
tional" is an early statement of his well known theory of "cognitive psychotherapy."
I mean by an "irrational" desire or aversion one which would not survive in a given
person, in the presence of vivid awareness of knowable propositions. Or, to be a bit
more explicit, I mean by saying that a certain desire is irrational for a given person,
that the person would not continue to have the desire if he got before his mind vivid-
ly, with firm belief, not necessarily just once but on a number of occasions, all the rel-
evant propositions the truth of which can be known to him at the very same time at
which he was reflecting on the object in a desiring way (p. 40).
It is a measure of the change in the philosophical climate that Brandt took his claim
that intrinsic desires can be criticized to be contrary to the prevailing views of the
times.
Brandt's theory is open to the following serious objection. Irrational intrinsic
desires caused by false beliefs might not be extinguished by full information. Brandt
seems unduly optimistic of the causal efficacy of cognitive psychotherapy. Suppose
that a desire or aversion was formed in the past on the basis of false beliefs. Brandt's
theory implies that such a desire is rational provided that it would survive vivid rep-
resentation of relevant information ("cognitive psychotherapy"). The fact that a
desire is dependent on false beliefs (would not have arisen were it not for false
beliefs) is sufficient to show that it is irrational whether or not the desire is extin-
guishable by cognitive psychotherapy is beside the point. But we can avoid this prob-
lem within the context of a Brandtian full information theory of rationality. We
should say roughly the following: rational or ideally rational desires are those one
would have had if one had been fully informed (and free of cognitive mistakes) at all
times when the desires were being formed.l7

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96 BUSINESS ETHICS QUARTERLY

1E Moral Language

Brandt's papers "Moral Philosophy and the Analysis of Language" and "The
Explanation of Moral Language" mount a vigorous attack on the view that philo-
sophical accounts of moral language and analyses of moral concepts should aim at
explicating the actual meaning or use of moral terms in ordinary language, rather than
proposing new concepts or suggesting ways of reforming existing moral language.
The view that Brandt attacks dominated meta-ethics during the first half of the twen-
tieth century. For all their disagreements, such diverse figures as Moore, Hare, Foot,
and at least some of the emotivists all take themselves to be analyzing the meaning of
ordinary language concepts and take the appeal to the meaning of terms in ordinary
language to be the last court of appeal in conceptual disputes.
Ordinary language is often vague or imprecise. It should not be presumed a priori
that the moral/conceptual framework of one's own society is adequate or optimal for
the purposes for which it is used. Some conceptual frameworks may make it impos-
sible for people to raise certain important questions or make certain important dis-
tinctions (pp. 28-29). Brandt gives the following hypothetical example. Suppose that
the only terms in a language that are used to make overall assessments and commen-
dations of actions are terms that mean roughly the same as "prudent" and "impru-
dent." In such a language it would be impossible to condemn actions that are known
to be beneficial to the agent.
[W]e would think that there should be terminology available for classifying an action
as beneficial or harmful from the point of view of the whole social group, and not
merely from the point of view of the agent or family group.... (p. 28).
I agree fully with Brandt about these matters and would like to add two further
arguments of my own. First, we can sensibly ask whether we should care whether a
certain act counts as right or wrong according to the linguistic criteria of a given com-
munity (whether or not it is one's own community). The fact that the meaning of
moral terms in a particular language presupposes or embodies certain standards for
evaluating things does not show that those standards are justified or correct. Second,
moral discourse includes "thick" evaluative notions terms which have both descrip-
tive and evaluative meaning, e.g., "courage." These terms encapsulate evaluations of
certain descriptive properties. The word "courage" encapsulates a favorable evalua-
tion of the willingness to face danger. An "ethnic slur word" expresses contempt and
disdain for members of a certain ethic group qau members of that group.
Philosophers should not be content to analyze the conventional meanings of thick
moraUnormative concepts. They need to ask whether the evaluations implicit in those
concepts are justified. Ethnic slur words and at least some other thick normative
terms such as "honorable" (as it is understood in certain warrior societies) presuppose
evaluations which are not justified. We should refuse to use such terms.

v Morals for Business Ethics

Brandt's greatest contribution to business ethics is his formulation of a distinctive


approach to the rational assessment of moral judgments and moral principles that does
not appeal to intuitions. Too much of the work in business ethics proceeds by way of

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BRANDT: A REVEW ARTICLE
79

mere appeal to moral intuitions. The problem with this is that people often appeal to
disputed intuitions, i.e., intuitions which conflict with at least some other people's
intuitions. Discussions of business ethics reveal (as do most other discussions of eth-
ical questions) a tremendous amount of disagreement between the intuitions of dif-
ferent philosophers/writers. We cannot, in good conscience, defend or attack ethical
views simply by appealing to disputed intuitions. When we discover that other peo-
ple have intuitions that are opposed to our own we are not entitled to assume that ours
are correct and the other people's mistaken at least not without being able to give
reasons for thinking that this is the case.l8 Applied ethicists who postulate rights
willy nilly without argument should look to Brandt's papers, "The Concept of a Moral
Right and Its Function" and "Utilitarianism and Moral Rights." These papers attempt
to provide a conceptual and normative framework within which claims about rights
(claims to the effect that we do or do not have certain rights) can be justified.
Ross's concept of a primafacie duty is extremely important for business and pro-
fessional ethics. It is difficult to talk about conflicts of duties or the obligations attach-
ing to particular roles or offices without employing Ross's concept of a prima facie
duty. But Ross's theory of prima facie duties is more impressive than his defense of
it. His defense of his theory is little more than an appeal to intuition. He claims that
the basic primafacie obligations are "self-evident" (for example, it is self-evident that
there is a primafacie duty to keep promises).l9 Brandt's rule-utilitarianism provides a
surer foundation for an ethic of primafacie duties than Ross's own theory.
Conceptual analysis of moral concepts is an important part of business ethics. A
number of "thick" concepts such as conflict of interest, bribery, sexual harassment,
loyalty, and lying are of special importance in our field. Brandt's work warns us
against conducting this analysis simply by appeal to the use or meaning of these con-
cepts in ordinary language. Brandt's arguments also provide us with reasons not to
slavishly follow the definitions employed in the law. We need to consider the possi-
bility and desirability of conceptual reform. We should not reject out of hand analy-
ses of normative concepts that are inconsistent with conventional usage.20
No living philosopher has contributed more to the discussion of the concept of
rationality than Brandt. The concept of rationality is of considerable importance in
business ethics. Among other things, it is a central notion in the idea of a "morally
acceptable exchange" that figures so importantly is questions about the ethics of sales,
deception in advertising, and larger questions about the justification of the market
system. Brandt's discussion of rationality is an essential point of departure for those
who work in these areas. Full information of the sort that Brandt describes in his the-
ory seems to me to be at least a necessary condition of full rationality.
A final thought about the significance of Brandt's work: RU is a plausible way to
think about the issue of corporate social responsibility. Theories of corporate social
responsibility, as they are usually formulated, are not plausible.as statements of basic
or fundamental moral principles. They are most plausibly construed as claims about
the best policies or moral codes for business people to follow. (This is surely true in
the case of Milton Friedman's theory about the social responsibilities of business.)
Those who defend views about the social responsibilities of business would do well
to consult the literature on RU, in particulars the attempts by various rule-utilitarians
to justify claims about which moral codes would be optimific for particular societies.

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98 BUSINESS ETHICS QUARTERLY

A Brief Lament

The areas of Brandt's work covered in this volume are well known to contemporary
philosophers. Unfortunately, some of Brandt's earlier work is less well-known and
currently out of print. His work on the ideal observer theory (his critique of Firth and
his own formulation of the ideal observer theory in Ethical Theory) and the issue of
relativism are particularly important. Brandt's Hopi Ethics is a distinguished work of
philosophical anthropology. Both Hopi Ethics and Ethical Theory are now out of print.
These books and many of Brandt' s papers not included in this volume are still very
much worth reading .21

Endnotes

*I am indebted to Brad Hooker for helpful criticisms of an earlier draft of section


I. I would also like to thank Chris Meyers and Mark Schneider.
lUnless otherwise indicated, all page numbers refer to Morality, Utilitarianism.
and Rights.
2Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967.
3See W.D. Ross The Right and the Good, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1930)
and The Foundations of Ethics, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1939). To say that
a certain action is one's prima facie duty (in Ross's sense) is to say that there is a pre-
sumption for thinking that it is one's actual duty (what one ought to do all things con-
sidered). A prima facie duty is one's actual duty in the absence of countervailing
reasons for thinking that it is not one's duty (on Ross's view, the only countervailing
reasons are conflicting prima facie duties). Consider a brief example. There is a
prima facie duty not to lie. It is my actual duty not to lie provided that the duty not
to lie is more important than any prima facie duty (or duties) that conflict with it (in
this case).
4In this paper Brandt states his theory as follows:
An act is morally right if it would be permitted by the moral code optimal for the soci-
ety of the agent (p. 147).
sAn Outline of a Utilitarian Theory of Ethics, in Utilitarianism For and Against,
with Bernard Williams, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), p. 10.
6The Right and the Good, p. 21.
7For more on the issue of the demandingness of RU see the following papers: Brad
Hooker, "Rule Consequentialism," Mind, 99, 1990, pp. 67-77; Thomas Carson, "A
Note on Hooker's 'Rule-Consequentialism,"' Mind, 100, 1991, pp. 117-121; and Brad
Hooker, "Rule Consequentialism and Demandingness: A Reply to Carson," Mind, 100,
1991, pp. 269-276. Hooker argues that RU is substantially less demanding than AU.

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BRANDT: A REVIEW ARTICLE 99

8I have in mind Mill's harm principle (which says that the only reason for which
the state can be justified in limiting a person's freedom is to prevent harm to others)
and theories of corporate social responsibility according to which a corporation's pur-
suit of profits is constrained by the duty not to harm others. See Kenneth Goodpaster
"Business Ethics and Stakeholder Analysis," in Business Ethics Quarterly, Vol. 1
number 1, pp. 53-72 and John Simon, Charles Powers, and Jon Gunneman, "The
Responsibilities of Corporations and Their Owners," in Ethical Theory and Business,
Tom Beauchamp and Norman Bowie, eds., fourth edition, (Englewood: Prentice Hall,
1994), pp. 60-65.
9This greatly oversimplifies the argument. For needed qualifications see "Self-
Interest and the Concept of Self-Sacrifice," Canadian Journal of Philosophy 10,
1980. Overvold refines the argument to make the even stronger objection that
Brandt's view makes it logically impossible for there to be any genuine acts of self-
sacrifice. See Brad Hooker, "A Breakthrough in the Desire Theory of Welfare,"
Richard Brandt, "Overvold on Self-Interest and Self-Sacrifice," and Thomas Carson,
"The Desire-Satisfaction Theory of Welfare: Overvold's Critique and Reformulation,"
all included in Rationality, Moralit:y, and Self-Interest: Essays Honoring Mark Carl
Overvold, John Heil, editor (Lanhan: Rowman Littlefield, 1993).
l°"Morality, Self-Interest and Reasons for Being Moral," Philosophy and
Phenomenological Research, 44, 1984, p. 499.
ll"Two Concepts of Utility," in The Limits of Utilitarianism, Miller and Williams
eds. (Minneapolis University of Minnesota Press, 1982); see p. 173 in particular. Also
see Brandt's paper "Overvold on Self-Interest and Self-Sacrifice," in Rationality.
Morality, and Self-Interest: Essays Honoring Mark Carl Overvold, John Heil, editor.
Indeed, I haven't listed all of those that Brandt himself enumerates.
l3See my paper "The Desire-Satisfaction Theory of Welfare: Overvold's Critique
and Reformulation," in Rationality, Morality, and Self-Interest: Essays Honoring
Mark Carl Overvold, John Heil, editor.
14R. M. Hare, Moral Thinking, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), pp. 105-
106.
l 550cial Theory and Practice, 15, 1989, pp. 33-58.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979.
17I develop this in greater detail in The Status of Morality (Dordrecht: Reidel,
1984), pp. 66-67 and 178-179. 19
l8Cf. Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics, seventh edition, (New York: Dover,
1966):
Since it is implied in the very notion of Truth that it is essentially the same for all
minds, the denial by another of a proposition that I have affirmed has a tendency to
impair my confidence in its validity.... the absence of such disagreement must remain
an indispensable negative condition of the certainty of our beliefs. For if I find any
of my judgments, intuitive or inferential, in direct conflict with a judgment of some
other mind, there must be error somewhere: and I have no more reason to suspect
error in the other mind than in my own (pp. 341-342).
9See, The Right and the Good, pp. 27-29.

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100 BUSINESS ETHICS QUARTERLY

20For an example of an analysis of a normative concept that explicitly rejects the


appeal to ordinary usage and conventional meaning, see my paper "Conflicts of
Interests' Journal of Business Ethics, 13, 1994, pp. 387-404.
2IFor a bibliography of Brandt's writings up until 1976 see Values and Morals, A.
I. Goldman and J. Kim, eds. (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1978).

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