Abstract
The mismatch problem for consequentialism arises whenever the theory delivers mismatched verdicts between a group act and the individual acts that compose it. A natural thought is that moving to expected utility versions of consequentialism will solve this problem. I explain why the move to expected utility is not successful.
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Notes
For the seminal discussion of this problem, see Parfit (1984).
Jackson (1997) mentions this approach explicitly in connection with Two Shooters. Many others defend the approach in related cases. Like Two Shooters, voting cases involve an overdetermined bad outcome. Suppose that an inferior candidate wins an election by many votes. Parfit (1984, 73–74) argues that consequentialists should appeal to expected utility to explain why individuals act wrongly in voting for the inferior candidate. Factory farming also involves an overdetermined bad outcome. Suppose the same number of animals will be factory-farmed for meat whether I purchase factory-farmed chicken today. Singer (1980), Norcross (2004, 232–233) and Kagan (2011) argue that consequentialists should appeal to expected utility to explain why I act wrongly in purchasing factory-farmed chicken. For other arguments that make an appeal to expected utility in connection with bad outcomes brought about by groups, see Gibbard (19990, 26–27) and Regan (2000, 69–70).
Why the appeal to compossibility? Suppose you and I are at the salon. I can fit into the tanning booth, and you can fit into the tanning booth, but we cannot both fit into the tanning booth. So if we both opt out of using the tanning booth, it doesn’t follow that [I use the tanning booth, you use the tanning booth] is one of our alternatives. It is not a compossible combination of your and my individual alternatives. In this paper, all the examples will be ones for which all sets of individual alternatives are compossible.
I take this formulation of expected utility from Feldman (2006).
There’s also a temporal dimension to \(Pr(O_{i} \mid a)\) that’s important to keep in mind. Suppose we operate under the credential interpretation of expected utility. Then \(Pr(O_{i} \mid a)\) may vary through time. I might believe firmly in the proposition \(O_{i}\) occurs given that I do a one moment, but become doubtful about this same thing just a moment later. In Two Shooters, I might have a credence of .99 in the proposition the victim dies given that I holster my weapon before you shoot the victim, and a credence of 1 in this same proposition after you in fact shoot him. For this reason, I will assume that the calculation of expected utilities in Two Shooters is to occur in the moments before we fire our weapons.
Since the conditional probabilities are the same on you shoot and you holster respectively, the expected utilities will be the same for you shoot and you holster, respectively. So we have to run the calculation only once.
There’s another version of Two Shooters that gives rise to the mismatch problem under the credential interpretation of expected utility: imagine that each of us is certain that the other will shoot. See Nefsky (2012) and Pinkert (2015). In response to such a case, Kagan (2011) concedes that the move to expected utility is supposed to work only under the condition of individual uncertainty. Two Shooters+ meets the condition of individual uncertainty and yet still gives rise to the mismatch problem for EUAC.
I take it that this is a natural assumption. See, for example, Hylland and Zeckhauser (1979, 1323).
I must note here that I cannot see how any special difficulties will arise in connection with the assignment of objective probabilities to group acts. You and I might have different credences in a conditional on b, and you and I might have different bodies of evidence justifying a conditional on b, but the objective probability of a conditional on b cannot differ between us. Thus, I see no reason to worry about the attributions of conditional probabilities in Two Shooters under the objective intepretation of expected utility.
References
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Acknowledgements
I’d like to thank the audiences at graduate conferences at the University of Utah and Syracuse University for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this essay. I’d also like to thank participants in the UMass dissertation seminar. For their help with this version of the paper, special thanks goes to Christopher Meacham, Peter Graham, Tricia Magalotti, Miles Tucker, Luis Oliveira, and Scott Hill. I’m especially grateful to Fred Feldman for his invaluable help on this project.
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Gruber, R. Actual utility, the mismatch problem, and the move to expected utility. Philos Stud 174, 3097–3108 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-016-0848-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-016-0848-3