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Utilitarianism, Supererogation
and Future Generations
a
R. I. SIKORA
a
University of British Columbia
Published online: 01 Jul 2013.

To cite this article: R. I. SIKORA (1979) Utilitarianism, Supererogation and Future

Generations, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 9:3, 461-466

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00455091.1979.10716262

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 CANADIAN jOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Volume IX, Number 3, September 1979
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Utilitarianism, Supererogation
and Future Generations

R. I. SIKORA, University of British Columbia

I shall argue here that the reason supererogatory acts are not
obligatory is that they require too much personal sacrifice, and that in
order for an act to be supererogatory, it must have a kind of result that
you would have an obligation to bring about if you could do so with
no personal sacrifice. 1 I further argue that traditional utilitarianism
should be modified so as not to treat supererogatory acts as
obligatory.
The first two points bear on William Anglin's criticism 2 of an earlier
paper of mine 3 where I gave the following two cases to support the

1 I am using" sacrifice" in a broader way than usual. I shall say that someone is
making a sacrifice whenever he knowingly acts for the sake of others in a way
that entails personal loss for him.

2 "The Repugnant Conclusion", Canadian journal of Philosophy 7 (1977), pp.

745-54.

3 "Utilitarianism: The Classical Principle and the Average Principle", Canadian

journal of Philosophy 5 (1975), pp. 409-19.

461
 R. I. Sikora

contention that it is prima facie wrong to prevent the existence of

future generations because it is prima facie wrong to prevent the
existence of happy people.
Case 1. A woman knows that if she has a baby, he will be so
seriously malformed that it is virtually certain that he will wish he had
never been born. Still, she wants a baby and she cannot adopt one
because she has severe emotional problems. She believes (correctly)
that she would be happier with a malformed child than with no child
at all. Her added happiness, however, would be small in comparison
with the child's wretchedness. The disadvantage to society of her
having a child who might become a public burden would be balanced
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by the advantage that she would become less problematic herself. In

such a case, most people would I think, agree that she should not
have the baby.
Case 2. A population planner can get a birth-control program
accepted in a world in which there is no threat whatever of
over-population. The existent population would be about as well off
with the program as without it, but although the overwhelming
majority of those persons whose lives would be prevented if the plan
were put into effect would have happy lives, statistical considerations
make it virtually certain that some oft hem would have wretched lives.
If advocating the program would only prevent those lives, he surely
ought to advocate it, but in this case it would clearly not be wrong not
to advocate the program, even though it means letting wretched
people be born (in contrast to case 1 where it was clearly wrong to let
the wretched baby be born). Why isn't it wrong in this case? Surely,
because by advocating the program the population planner would be
preventing the existence of a great many happy lives as well as a few
wretched ones. It seems to follow that preventing the birth of happy
people is not morally neutral but is prima facie wrong: otherwise,
there would be nothing in this case to counterbalance the prima facie
wrongness of failing to prevent the births of the wretched people.
I also claimed that these cases show that there is a prima facie
obligation (which is obviously commonly overridden) to bring about
the existence of happy people. Anglin objects that our response to
such cases can be adequately explained by its being supererogatory,
but in no way obligatory, to bring about the births of happy people. 4
But in order for this to be so, he must find a case where if you bring

4 jonathan Bennett raises other objections to my argument ("On Maximizing

Happiness", in a forthcoming collection of papers, Obligations to Future
Generations, ed. R. I. Sikora and Brian Barry (Philosophical Monographs,
Spring, 1978)), to which I respond in my contribution to the same collection.

462
 Utilitarianism, Supererogation, Future Generations

about a certain state of affairs, it is a supererogatory good deed but

where, if that state of affairs could have been arranged at no cost
whatever to yourself, you would have had no obligation whatever to
do so. I doubt that such a case can found. For instance, Schweitzer's
work in Africa is a paradigm case of supererogatory behaviour, but
although Schweitzer may not have had an obligation to make
sacrifices to help the Africans, if no sacrifice whatever had been
required of him, it would have been wrong for him not to have helped
them: if you can prevent or alleviate suffering at no cost to yourself,
you should certainly do so. Examples can, however, be found of
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actions that many philosophers regard as supererogatory even

though they don't believe that they have a kind of outcome for others
that an agent ought to bring about whenever it costs him nothing to
do so. Take the following case. Smith could make his associates feel
better by smiling when he comes to work, and smiling would involve
no sacrifice whatever for him. Even so, some philosophers would
regard his smiling as supererogatory. But a utilitarian could hardly do
so: if smiling really didn't bother him at all and it would make other
people even a little bit happier, then he ought to smile for
utilitarianism says that there is a general obligation to maximize
happiness. Failing to smile might not be seriously wrong but it would
be wrong.
Also, for an action to be supererogatory it must be morally
commendable. But a utilitarian can't regard an action as morally
commendable unless it has (or is designed to have) a good result, and
if something is a good result a utilitarian must hold that we have a
prima facie obligation to bring it about. Thus if a utilitarian holds that
it is sometimes a supererogatory good deed to bring about the births
of happy people, he must also hold that we have a prima facie
obligation to bring about such births. This point is directed not only
to utilitarians but to anyone who thinks (like W.O. Ross) that there is
at least a prima facie obligation to bring about good results (and, of
course, not to prevent them).
Supererogation does, however, constitute a problem for
utilitarians because they are forced to categorize many actions as
obligatory which would strike most of us as supererogatory.
Specifically, they must classify a// actions in which other people gain
the least bit more than the agent loses as obligatory: they must
therefore regard Schweitzer's actions as obligatory rather than
supererogatory. Though this is clearly counter-intuitive, I was once
inclined to accept it. After all, there is no one consistent set of moral
intuitions shared by all ordinary men so that any consistent ethical
system must reject some commonly-held moral intuitions. I have
come to believe, however, that although it is never wrong to do the

463
 R. I. Sikora

optimific thing, you only have an obligation to do it when the ratio of

gain to others compared to the loss to yourself is sufficiently high.
This modifies strict utilitarianism but it preserves its method of
dealing with moral dilemmas: in situations where all of the
alternatives seem to be wrong, it is always morally acceptable to
perform the optimific action. Also, if one selects a ratio between
personal loss and public gain that is not extremely egoistic, it leaves
one, surprisingly enough, committed to favouring pretty much the
same public policies as a strict utilitarian because when you favour a
public policy that involves a private sacrifice, the public gain will
almost invariably be immensely greater than your own sacrifice.
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Suppose that Canada could give wheat to India, that the cost to you
and to each of twenty million other Canadian would be a dollar, and
that this money would do roughly twice as much good in India as it
would at home. The gain/sacrifice ratio would then be roughly twenty
million to one: mankind would gain roughly twenty million times as
much as you would lose. With a ratio like this, you would have to be
extremely selfish not to be willing to make the sacrifice.

Utilitarianism without supererogation has another advantage.

One of the main problems in ethics is to find reasons that may lead
people who aren't particularly benevolent to make sacrifices for
others. It has become clear by now that ordinary usage on the
meaning of obligation-judgments is loose enough to allow
considerable leeway in defining them: we are in effect forced to offer
precisive definitions. If "obligation" is defined in terms of what an
ideal observer who is both cognitively ideal and completely
benevolent would choose to do, we might indeed have obligations to
do all that traditional utilitarianism requires, including supererogat-
ory acts. With this definition of "obligation", however, getting
someone who isn't particularly benevolent to admit that he has an
obligation to do something won't help much in getting him to do it.
Why should he care what a completely benevolent person, however
intelligent, would choose to do if he isn't completely benevolent
himself? But if "obligation" were defined instead in such a way that
someone can't consistently both admit that he has an obligation to do
X and deny that he himself would choose to do X if he were in an ideal
cognitive state, it would be much harder to admit that you have an
obligation to do a thing while denying that you have a good reason to
do it. (By an ideal cognitive state, I mean one in which a person's
choices are not influenced by factual ignorance, by logical errors or
by failing to have a vivid idea of the effect of his action on other
sentient beings. It isn't logically necessary that a vivid idea should be
a sympathetic one: the connection between the two characteristics is

464
 Utilitarianism, Supererogation, Future Generations

purely contingent. Benevolence is not covertly built into the

definition.)
Now it seems likely that most people in a cognitively ideal state
would be prepared to make sacrifices for others if the gain to others
was great enough in proportion to their own loss. It also seems likely
that most people would usually regard the fact that they would only
choose to do X if they were ignorant of the facts, were making a
logical error or weren't vividly aware of the consequences of X, as a
good reason for not doing it. If so, there is a good answer to the
question. "Why be moral?" Still, most of us, even if we were in the
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ideal state, would probably not be willing to make sacrifices for

others unless they would gain considerably more than we would
lose. Given this, if "obligation" is defined as I propose, traditional
utilitarianism does indeed need to cut out what I take to be
supererogatory demands.
I haven't specified what particular ratio of benefit to others versus
loss to oneself is required in order for there to be an obligation to
make a sacrifice. Obviously, for me it is the ratio an individual would
choose if he were in a cognitively ideal state. Accordingly different
individuals would have widely differing obligations. However ethical
judgments would still be open to criticism because one could easily
be mistaken as to what one would choose in an ideal state.
Alternatively, the ratio could be set a level low enough so that it
would not be too demanding for anyone in the ideal cognitive state
(except for a small number of people whose extreme selfishness was
firmly entrenched). With such a ratio, almost anyone who was
unwilling to make the sacrifices required would be unwilling only
because he was making some sort of error, or because he didn't have
a vivid enough idea of the consequences of his actions. Such a low
ratio has the advantages that everyone would have similar obligations
and almost everyone could be given good reasons for fulfilling them.
But it has the disadvantages that most people would be willing to
accept a more altruistic sacrifice/gain ratio and that there would still
be some extremely selfish people who would not be prepared to do
what they were obligated to do, even in a cognitively ideal state. Even
using such a low ratio, however, is compatible with the view that
optimistic actions are never wrong and that we should almost always
follow the dictates of traditional utilitarianism in the public sphere.
Would these two kinds of utilitarianism without supererogation
leave us with sharply diminished obligations to future generations?
As far as public policy on future generations is concerned, my earlier
remarks still apply: optimific social policies would almost invariably
not require too much personal sacrifice in proportion to public gain
to be obligatory. But on the question of whether particular couples

465
 R. I. Sikora

should have children, utilitarianism without supererogation would

usually allow us to follow our own desires while traditional
utilitarianism (at least as I see it) often would not.
L.W. Sumner argues (in an unpublished paper) that, on the
contrary, the common belief that it is ordinarily morally permissible
for people to either have children or not is compatible with
traditional utilitarianism. He holds that, according to utilitarianism,
people who don't want children characteristically have no obligation
to have them because they can use their time in other ways that would
be equally beneficial to mankind. But he forgets that frequently, and
perhaps usually, such prospective parents could find not only as
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useful things but more useful things to do than rearing children so

that though they would not have an obligation to have them
according to traditional utilitarianism, they would have an obligation
not to have them. Utilitarianism without supererogation can avoid
this counter-intuitive result by arguing that typically, if one wants
children, doing something more useful instead is not obligatory but
supererogatory. This is a point in its favour. However, it would also
usually allow those who want to have more children than is good for
mankind to do so because usually the harm they would do to others
would not be very much greater than the good they would derive for
themselves. Moral intuitions about this vary a good deal. It used to be
regarded as all right to have as many children as you liked provided
you could support them, but now an increasing number of people
consider it wrong to have a large family in an already over-populated
world. Though I have considerable sympathy with this, my form of
utilitarianism forces me to disagree. Still it does allow me to make
what I regard as this crucial point on population policy. Two of the
main reasons why so many couples continue to have large families
are the high infant mortality rate in certain countries and the fact that
many people need children to support them in their old age. The key
obligation here is to support public policies to alter these and other
conditions which make it personally advantageous to have a large
family. This, like other obligations to support optimific public
policies, can be derived from utilitarianism even when its
supererogatory aspect is removed.

july 1978

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