It is also necessary to remember that a criticism of act utilitarianism should criticize it as a normative system. Some writers seem to think that to refute utilitarianism it is sufficient to show that it conflicts with some of our particular moral intuitions or feelings. R. B. Brandt and H. J. McCloskey have both taken this line. A false analogy with science seems to operate. In science we certainly must correct our general principles in the light of particular observations. But in ethics our particular statements are not observation reports but recommendations. It therefore seems to me that the matter is the other way round. Our general principle, resting on something so simple and natural as generalized benevolence, seems to me to be more securely founded than our particular feelings, which are subtly distorted by analogies with similar looking (but in reality totally different) types of cases, and with all sorts of hangovers from traditional and uncritical ethical thinking.
If, of course, act utilitarianism were put forward as a descriptive systematization of how the ordinary man, or even we ourselves in our unreflective and uncritical moments, actually thinks about ethics, then of course it is easy to refute and I have no wish to defend it. Similarly again if it is put forward not as a descriptive theory but as an explanatory one.
John Plamenatz, in his English Utilitarians, seems to hold that the sort of doctrine which I shall be advocating 'is destroyed and no part of it left standing'. This is apparently on the ground that the utilitarian explanation of social institutions will not work: that we cannot explain various institutions as having come about because they lead to the maximum happiness. In this monograph I am not concerned with what our moral customs and institutions in fact are, and still less am I concerned with the question of why they are as they in fact are. I am concerned, by implication, with what they ought to be. The correctness of an ethical doctrine, when it is interpreted as recommendatory, is quite independent of its truth when it is interpreted as descriptive and of its truth when it is interpreted as explanatory. In fact it is precisely because a doctrine is false as description and as explanation that it becomes important as a possible recommendation.
(J. J. C. Smart, An Outline of a System of Utilitarian Ethics [Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1961], 40-1 [italics in original; footnotes omitted])
Note from KBJ: Smart's point is an important one. He is saying that, before criticizing a theory or doctrine such as utilitarianism, one must understand how it is being used. There are at least three uses of utilitarianism. If it is being used descriptively, then it can be shown to be false by showing that it fails to describe what it purports to describe. If it is being used explanatorily, then it can be shown to be false by showing that it fails to explain what it purports to explain, or rather, that it fails to explain as well as some rival. If it is being used recommendatorily, then it cannot be shown to be false, since it does not purport to describe or explain anything. Many philosophers simply assume that the theories or doctrines they criticize are being used descriptively or explanatorily. When this is not the case, as it is with Smart, their criticisms miss the mark.
I've written before about my essay "A Theory of Rape." In this essay, which appeared in my 1999 book A Most Detestable Crime: New Philosophical Essays on Rape, I set forth a recommendatory theory of rape. I proposed that rape be understood as coerced sex rather than as forcible sex, manipulated sex, unconsented-to sex, or unwanted sex. Antony Duff reviewed my book for a prominent philosophical periodical, the editor of which sent me an advance copy. Duff wrote in his review that I was "confused" about rape. I wrote back to say that I'm not the least bit confused, and explained why. He agreed. But instead of deleting the criticism, he changed "confused" to "wrong." In other words, I wasn't confused; I was wrong! I protested that I can't be wrong unless I'm trying to be right, and I'm not trying to be right. He didn't get it. The man did not get it. Or maybe he did get it but decided to play the thug rather than the scholar. A scholar would have admitted to misreading my essay, embarrassing though that would have been to him or her. This is one of many examples I could cite of intellectual dishonesty. Sadly, philosophers are not immune to it.
