If we accept the Total View, we are forced to accept the following proposition: for any world containing a finite population of very happy people, there is some possible world containing a very much larger population living lives that contain a very tiny surplus of happiness over misery—and this second world is preferable to the first. This is a consequence of the Total View because we can, in theory, make the second world as large as we like; and there must be some number of people such that even a tiny amount of happiness, multiplied by that number, gives a larger total amount of happiness than that which exists in the first world, with its smaller population.
This consequence most people find difficult to accept. The difficulty is not merely that our ordinary moral judgments prefer the first of the two worlds. A clash between utilitarianism and our ordinary moral judgments is, after all, a common enough occurrence, and stout-hearted utilitarians should be prepared to jettison a good many commonly accepted moral judgments. The difficulty is, rather, that this consequence does not seem to be in accordance with what is most appealing and plausible about utilitarianism. As [Jan] Narveson has said, this view treats the production of happiness like the production of milk—the more cows you have, the more milk you get, and the more people you have, the more happiness you get. This, surely, is not the version of utilitarianism that makes the utilitarian view appear so strikingly attractive, so self-evidently correct, to its supporters.
(Peter Singer, "A Utilitarian Population Principle," chap. 5 in Ethics and Population, ed. Michael D. Bayles [Cambridge, MA: Schenkman Publishing Company, 1976], 81-99, at 83-4 [endnotes omitted; boldface added])
Note from KBJ: I have two comments on this passage. In the first boldfaced sentence, Singer is saying that utilitarians can and should bite the bullet. This means sticking to their theory when it produces repugnant conclusions. Singer thinks that many or most "commonly accepted moral judgments" are rooted in ignorance, superstition, or bias. He is more confident of the correctness of his theory (utilitarianism) than he is of conventional morality or any particular judgments of conventional morality, so why would he use the latter to test the former? I have no problem with bullet biting. It's a way (though not the only way) to preserve consistency. I do object, however, to allowing only utilitarians to bite the bullet. If it's respectable for Singer and other utilitarians to bite the bullet, then it's respectable for ethical egoists to bite the bullet. And yet, you see ethics textbooks in which the author says that, since ethical egoism implies X, and X is unacceptable, ethical egoism is unacceptable. All I want is a single standard for all normative ethical theories. I don't want a lenient, respectful standard for utilitarianism and a strict, disrespectful standard for ethical egoism. Either everybody gets to bite the bullet or nobody does.
My second comment is about the second boldfaced sentence. Singer finds utilitarianism "strikingly attractive" and "self-evidently correct." I and many others find it strikingly unattractive (even revolting). I won't say that it's self-evidently incorrect, because, like J. J. C. Smart (a utilitarian), I don't believe that normative ethical theories are either correct or incorrect. One subscribes to them; one doesn't discover their truth or falsity. Isn't it interesting that there should be such a wide range of attitudes toward a given theory? I guess theoretical attractiveness, like personal beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 