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Notes
Marcus G. Singer,Generalization in Ethics (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1961), p. 64.
Lansing Pollock, ‘The Principle of Consequences’,Philosophical Studies, vol. 31, p. 389. Pollock's actual words are: “What is surprising is that Singer would claim that C is non-controversial”. I find myself here in a bit of a dilemma. For I have recently been much impressed by what Gilbert Ryle has said, with his characteristic charm, bite, and wit, about what he calls “the monster of Initialisation” (Mind, vol. 85, January 1976, p. 78), and have myself disliked and distrusted the practice, even if I have sometimes succumbed to it, of using letters of the alphabet as surrogate names for phrases and statements and ideas about which one is writing or which one is using. However, I am in a way hoist by my own petard. For in the sentence just quoted Mr. Pollock uses the initial ‘C’ to stand for the principle of consequences — itself a name for the principle ‘If the consequences ofA's doingx would be undesirable, thenA ought not to do x’ — and that is an initial that I originally used, though only intermittently, for the same purpose, and it is also a label (along with ‘PC’) that has come to be used by other philosophers who have concerned themselves with these matters. I have decided that I should try very hard to break the habit, but habits are notoriously hard to break, and I may not succeed. I console myself by reflecting that I share Ryle's dislike of footnotes, only I have not learned, as he has, how to do without them.
Certainly a number of acute and able critics have been misled on this matter. For example, George Nakhinikian, ‘Generalization in Ethics’,The Review of Metaphysics, vol. XVII (March 1964), p. 440, and David Lyons,Forms and Limits of Utilitarianism (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1965), pp. 210–11.
Lyons's definition (Forms and Limits, citedsupra note 3, p. 23) runs as follows: “A principle iscomparative ornon-comparative according as it does or does not incorporate some requirement of comparing the utility of an act with the utilities of its alternatives. That is, a comparative principle concerns relative utilities, whereas a non-comparative principle does not”. I strongly suspect that the notion of alternatives, simply taken for granted in this definition, may be, when taken in this unrestricted way, ultimately incoherent, because in considering alternatives there seems to be on the utilitarian theory no way of stopping short of infinity, and I therefore suspect that this distinction between comparative and non-comparative principles may be ultimately incoherent. I have added an Annex on Alternatives to bring out how and why.
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Singer, M.G. The principle of consequences reconsidered. Philos Stud 31, 391–410 (1977). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01857031
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01857031