This is a debate book about utilitarianism, containing a 90-page critique by James Lenman, followed by a 60-page defence by Ben Bramble. Each then responds to the other’s main contribution. There is a foreword by Roger Crisp, a glossary, and recommendations for further reading.

Lenman targets utilitarian theories that combine act consequentialism with welfarism about value. According to these, an agent morally ought to do whatever maximises the sum/average of all future actual/expected welfare. Lenman takes these theories to tell moral agents to at some level aim at such maximisation, and he sensibly assumes that a theory that does not provide agents with any guidance on how to live fails as an ethical theory (p. 67). Lenman criticises both those who take the pursuit of the act-utilitarian aim to require us to often act contrary to common-sense morality (such as some contemporary longtermists) and those who take this pursuit to be more accommodating to common-sense morality (such as John Stuart Mill).

Bramble defends an act utilitarianism according to which ‘you have most reason to do what will help beings the most’ (p. 101). This amounts to doing what increases beings’ pleasures over their pains or displeasures the most – although Bramble is mostly silent on the latter negative term of the equation. Unlike the theories targeted by Lenman, this person-affecting utilitarianism limits the welfare to be maximised to that of beings existing at the time of the action or who will come to exist but whose identity is not affected by it. Moreover, Bramble’s utilitarianism is not a theory of morally right and wrong action, but of moral reasons for action.

I will now present Lenman’s and Bramble’s respective main contributions in more detail. In chapter 2, Lenman considers Judith Jarvis Thomson’s claim that the notion of a state of affairs or event being good or bad is unintelligible. If true, one might think that utilitarianism is thereby also unintelligible. Against Thomson, Lenman argues that the notion is intelligible: a good state of affairs or event is one that a virtuous person would welcome. However, this makes virtue conceptually more basic than the good, which is at odds with utilitarianism. In addition, Lenman argues that a virtuous person would not welcome complete worlds, which ‘are way too big meaningfully to be objects of moral thought’ (pp. 25–26). I do not find this convincing. Perhaps virtuous people tend to ‘focus’ on welcoming local state of affairs such as the peace after the war or a happy marriage (p. 25), but this does not rule out that they would also on reflection welcome a complete world that contains at least as much welfare as all alternative such worlds. Indeed, when discussing total (sum-ranking) utilitarianism’s ‘repugnant conclusion’ in chapter 4, Lenman himself reasons intelligibly about the relative goodness of states of affairs that are a lot less local than a peace or a marriage. Moreover, as Roger Crisp points out, ‘any utilitarian can badge themselves a non-consequentialist by claiming that the only action we must perform is that of maximising overall happiness, regardless of the consequences’ (xiv). Such a non-consequentialist utilitarian need not assume that states of affairs or worlds are good as such.

In chapter 3, Lenman argues that welfare is best understood as living well according to the shared values of one’s community. Chapter 4 contains an illuminating discussion of the repugnant conclusion. In chapter 5, he argues that we should give more weight to our considered moral judgements regarding particular cases than to those concerning general principles. Such judgements, Lenman also argues, need not be debunked by evolutionary moral psychology.

In chapters 6 and 7, Lenman presents and expands his well-known argument that act utilitarianism, whether focused on the maximisation of actual or expected welfare, leaves agents completely clueless about what to do, because ‘the world is very intricate and the future very long’ (p. 63). Besides presenting this cluelessness argument, which I expect is familiar to most of Utilitas’ readers, Lenman persuasively responds to various attempts to blunt its force. But he does not explicitly discuss the idea that a utilitarian might entirely give up the ambition of giving practical guidance and settle for theoretically explaining what makes actions morally right or wrong.

However, Lenman argues that very remote consequences do not merely make utilitarianism hopelessly impractical. They open the theory up to direct refutation: ‘If utilitarianism is true, we do not know the Holocaust was wrong. We do know the Holocaust was wrong. So utilitarianism is false.’ (p. 66) Moreover, he suggests that there might not be any fact of the matter about which actions maximise total welfare. This is in part because he is sceptical about the possibility of a meaningful welfare metric that could apply to all the beings that will exist and that could exist (pp. 79–80). Chapter 8 concludes with some thoughts about how consequences and harm might figure in an alternative contractualist moral theory.

Bramble’s main contribution starts with chapter 9. As Bramble emphasises and Lenman acknowledges in his response, Bramble’s version of utilitarianism can withstand Lenman’s cluelessness argument. While you are likely to be clueless about which action you have most reason to perform at any given moment, you can according to Bramble nevertheless be reasonably confident about what sort of person you ought to be in order to help beings a lot over the long run (and according to Bramble, you should be the sort of person the character George Bailey is in the film It’s A Wonderful Life); that you fail to do what you have most reason to do does not imply that you fail to do what is morally required.

In chapter 10, Bramble tries to defuse a worry that has led many to reject the kind of person-affecting utilitarianism he espouses, namely that it cannot account for the badness of human extinction. Intriguingly, Bramble argues that human extinction would not be bad, but sad. We can fittingly feel sad about its prospect. This is because ‘humanity’s story [would be] cut short’ while there is so much left for us to achieve (p. 109). One might think that this would provide us with a reason to avoid human extinction, but for a utilitarian like Bramble, it only provides such a reason insofar as the prospect of extinction negatively affects beings’ welfare.

In chapter 11, Bramble among other things responds to Nozick’s experience machine objection to hedonism with the help of a distinction between wonderful and bodily pleasures. He argues that wonderful pleasures are of superior value and necessarily involve learning about the real world. In principle, Bramble argues, we may have most reason to plug into an experience machine capable of providing such pleasures by simulating interaction with the real world.

In chapters 12 and 13, Bramble discusses Lenman’s cluelessness argument. In chapter 14, he argues that his utilitarian theory is not excessively demanding. In ordinary circumstances (of readers ‘in the US or UK’? (p. 143)), you can have friends, partners and personal projects while reasonably thinking ‘that you are helping people more than you are harming them’ (p. 140; also p. 130). But it is unclear why Bramble’s utilitarianism would imply that it is sufficient for you to help more than harm. You have (much) more reason to help (much) more than that, so why not try to do that?

In chapter 15, Bramble argues for the radical thesis that the motivations constitutive of genuine relationships of love and friendship are, contrary to what many have supposed, perfectly aligned with his utilitarianism. He writes:

Even regarding those of us who are virtuous, I find this speculation extremely farfetched. And as Lenman retorts: ‘Very bad people can often be sexy as hell’ (p. 174).

Chapter 16 finishes Bramble’s defence of utilitarianism with a brief discussion of the fact that there may be circumstances in which we have most reason to perform an act which on the face of it is horrendous.

Both Lenman’s and Bramble’s contributions to the book are excellent: thought-provoking, innovative and engaging. In light of these virtues, I highly recommend the book! It should be suitable for anyone with a little bit of background in normative ethics. However, having the contributions side-by-side in the format of a debate book does not, I think, add much value. Since Lenman’s critique and Bramble’s defence focus on distinct versions of act utilitarianism, the book does not present the kind of direct confrontation found in e.g. Jack Smart and Bernard Williams’ Utilitarianism: For and Against (1973). Finally, the production of the book is not flawless. In Lenman’s ‘reply’ and Bramble’s ‘response’, their quotations of each other lack page numbers, and a handful of references in the ‘Further Reading’ section are missing from the list of references.