INTRODUCTORY COMMENTS

If we take our utilitarianism narrowly, we take it simply as a principle about the normative status of actions. If we take it widely, we take it as a family of principles about the normative status of all sorts of things – actions, motives, traits of character, and so on. Because of its more extensive application across the evaluative board, wide utilitarianism is more impressive.

However, it is not clear that one can consistently maintain a utilitarianism of acts and a utilitarianism of, for example, motives. In his important paper “Motive Utilitarianism,” Robert Adams argued that these views are inconsistent in some cases. Thus, the prospects for wide utilitarianism are dim. Adams drew an even more sweeping conclusion: The moral point of view cannot be the utilitarian point of view.

My overt aim in Essay 4 is to show that Adams's argument does not succeed. If we formulate our act utilitarianism and our motive utilitarianism correctly, they are bound to be consistent. Along the way, I try to establish some other small points about Adams's formulation of the doctrines and arguments.

Adams made use of a traditional formulation of act utilitarianism. This is his “AU,” and it is based on the standard concepts of act, alternative, and consequence. Although there is some confusion about this in the essay, it is reasonable to assume that he meant to make use of a similarly traditional formulation of motive utilitarianism.