Do Implicit Preferences Matter?

Utilitarianism prescribes maximizing fulfillment of preferences, where "preferences" is defined to include both explicit and implicit desires. But why should we care about implicit desires? If an organism can't think of its preference in abstract terms, why should we count it? This essay presents an intuitive answer to that question.

Definition. Explicit-preference utilitarianism is the form of utilitarianism in which only explicit preferences are counted. My own position--that both explicit and implicit preferences matter--might be referred to by the ungainly term explicit-and-implicit-preference utilitarianism.

At one time, I made the following argument in favor of explicit-preference utilitarianism:

The human species is capable of a degree of self-awareness [and abstract thought] far exceeding that of any other creature on earth. [...]

It is, moreover, that same human awareness that creates and defines morality [i.e., explicit preferences]. The idea that a person is of more value than any other animal is not a universal truth but, rather, a human moral standard. The anthropocentricity of my belief [in the acceptability of slaughtering chickens] is therefore inconsequential, for it is humans who decide the morality of actions. [Why do only humans define the morality of actions? Because morality consists in fulfillment of explicit preferences, and (according to my ignorant view of animal capabilities) only humans have explicit preferences.] If it is generally considered acceptable to kill animals for meat, then to do so is not "wrong." At the same time, commonly held notions of what is "right" forbid the murder of a person, almost without exception. Not everyone agrees, of course, on the guidelines and boundaries of morality, but the most passionate beliefs of the greatest number of people affected by a decision should generally militate most heavily on the final course of action; it is my perception that the slaughter of chickens for food conforms to this standard.

Note that the method I prescribed in the final sentence for deciding what moral position should be adopted--namely, considering "the most passionate beliefs of the greatest number [...] affected by a decision"--is the same as the utilitarian approach outlined in section "Utilitarianism as a Resolution to Ethical Disagreements." The essential difference was that, in the above passage, I only included explicit preferences in my assessment.

According to explicit-preference utilitarianism, animals--including human babies and severely intellectually disabled adults--have nothing to be counted in the utilitarian ethics calculation. This does not mean, of course, that these animals will necessarily be treated poorly: if most of those whose preferences are counted feel concern for those beings, then it will be moral to take the interests of those beings into account. In the present day, that is largely true for human infants, severely intellectually disabled human adults, and pets; for virtually all other animals, it is not.

In response to explicit-preference utilitarianism, I give an intuitive appeal. It is unfair to limit the set of organisms whose preferences count to only those that have abstract reasoning ability. Why? Well, why do we care about preferences at all? What's the intuitive emotion that underlies utilitarianism? The emotion is hard to articulate, but it's something like this: Organisms are combinations of atoms constructed in such a way that they want certain things to happen. Preferences are sort of an intangible "will" that a combination of atoms feels. I care about preferences because I am one of those combinations of atoms, and I know what it's like to have a "will" for the universe to be in one state instead of another. That "will" does not take form only once I speak or write words to express it; rather, it's always there, as part of my being. It is the intangible will that matters; words are just tools for communicating information about the will. Preferences don't matter because they've been made explicit. Preferences matter when they're implicit. That is, explicit preferences only matter because implicit preferences matter.

Here's another intuitive way of looking at the situation. The decision as to which organisms should have their preferences counted is analogous to the decision of which organisms ought to be able to vote. (Of course, suffrage is not exactly the same as utilitarian aggregation of preferences, forasmuch as the former counts only the "location" of an organism's desire while the latter also considers the strength of the desire. But this distinction is unimportant to the present example, which concerns itself only with the question of which creatures are counted in aggregating preferences.) Except when discrimination takes place, restrictions on suffrage arise from necessity: it is simply not possible for a frog to vote. In the same way, one might want only to consider explicit preferences because those are the only types of preferences that one can hear or read about. Only organisms that have voices understandable to humans are able to participate in the discussion, so to speak.

As a matter of practical necessity, we exclude children and future generations from being able to vote. But that doesn't mean it's fair to do so, because those people are or will be just as affected by politics as voting-age adults. In response to this unfairness, adults can choose to correct the situation to some degree by giving surrogate representation to "those who cannot speak for themselves." This approach is far from perfect in its application; indeed, one of the most common complaints against democracy is that voters care only about their own generation and burden posterity with all kinds of problems. But this is all the more reason for people to strive to correct the system's flaws.

The problem with explicit-preference utilitarianism is that it confuses what is what is convenient--considering only preferences that can be put into words--with what is right: considering all preferences that exist.