One
of the great works of recent moral philosophy is Don Regan’s Utilitarianism and Co-operation (New
York: OUP, 1980). Although the theory that Regan argues for in the book (viz.,
cooperative utilitarianism) is, I believe, untenable, I think that Regan makes
a very important discovery: that no exclusively
act-orientated moral theory will be tenable. Now, unfortunately, Regan
gives us nothing much beyond the following rough characterization of what it
means for a theory to be exclusively act-orientated: “a theory is
exclusively act-orientated if it can be stated in the form ‘An agent should
that act which…’.” (p. 10). But perhaps we can do better and define
the notion as follows: A theory T is not exclusively act-orientated if and only
if T requires of agents something more than just the performance of certain
voluntary acts. With this definition in hand, let me explain how any moral
theory that is exclusively act-orientated will have counterintuitive
implications in the following case, which I borrow with revision from Regan (p.
18) and which I name The Buttons. I name it this, because it involves two
individuals, Coop and Uncoop, each with a button in front of them. Depending on
whether or not each pushes their respective buttons, the consequences will be as
depicted in Table 1.
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