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The Point of View of the Universe: Sidgwick and Contemporary Ethics
What does the idea of taking 'the point of view of the universe' tell us about ethics? The great nineteenth-century utilitarian Henry Sidgwick used this metaphor to present what he took to be a self-evident moral the good of one individual is of no more importance than the good of any other. Ethical judgments, he held, are objective truths that we can know by reason. The ethical axioms he took to be self-evident provide a foundation for utilitarianism. He supplements this foundation with an argument that nothing except states of consciousness have ultimate value, which led him to hold that pleasure is the only thing that is intrinsically good.
Are these claims defensible? Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek and Peter Singer test them against a variety of views held by contemporary writers in ethics, and conclude that they are. This book is therefore a defence of objectivism in ethics, and of hedonistic utilitarianism. The authors also explore, and in most cases support, Sidgwick's views on many other key questions in how to justify an ethical theory, the significance of an evolutionary explanation of our moral judgments, the choice between preference-utilitarianism and hedonistic utilitarianism, the conflict between self-interest and universal benevolence, whether something that it would be wrong to do openly can be right if kept secret, how demanding utilitarianism is, whether we should discount the future, or favor those who are worse off, the moral status of animals, and what is an optimum population.
Are these claims defensible? Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek and Peter Singer test them against a variety of views held by contemporary writers in ethics, and conclude that they are. This book is therefore a defence of objectivism in ethics, and of hedonistic utilitarianism. The authors also explore, and in most cases support, Sidgwick's views on many other key questions in how to justify an ethical theory, the significance of an evolutionary explanation of our moral judgments, the choice between preference-utilitarianism and hedonistic utilitarianism, the conflict between self-interest and universal benevolence, whether something that it would be wrong to do openly can be right if kept secret, how demanding utilitarianism is, whether we should discount the future, or favor those who are worse off, the moral status of animals, and what is an optimum population.
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422 pages, Hardcover
First published May 8, 2014
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October 14, 2017
Here’s a gem I wish more people, not just those interested in philosophy, would read. "The Point of View of the Universe: Sidgwick and Contemporary Ethics" by Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek and Peter Singer is one of the strongest defenses of utilitarianism as a moral theory. Utilitarianism is generally held to be the view that the morally right action is the action that produces the most good. There are many ways to spell out this general claim. One thing to note is that the theory is a form of consequentialism: the right action is understood entirely in terms of consequences produced. What distinguishes utilitarianism from egoism has to do with the scope of the relevant consequences. On the utilitarian view one ought to maximize the overall good — that is, consider the good of others as well as one's own good.
By reading this book you will learn about one of the greatest philosophers whose name you had probably never heard: Henry Sidgwick. If you are familiar with classical utilitarianism, it’s because you’ve probably read or heard of Jeremy Bentham or John Stuart Mill. But according to Singer and Lazari-Radek, Sidgwick’s The Methods of Ethics far surpasses, in philosophical depth, any of the ethical writings of Bentham or Mill. Regrettably, Sidgwick’s masterpiece is still not widely known. This, however, is slowly changing, and the authors hope to accelerate the pace of that change.
Reading this book, you will also learn a lot about the ideas of Derek Parfit, another great philosopher who died in January, 2017, and whose name is just as unfamiliar to most people even though his contribution to philosophy, I would say, is groundbreaking. Parfit never called himself either a utilitarian or a consequentialist but his influence on contemporary utilitarianism and on the arguments laid out in this book is present practically in every chapter. Fittingly, Parfit claimed that, in the long tradition of ethics, "Sidgwick's book [The Methods of Ethics] contains the largest number of true and important claims.”
So here are some points on The Point of View of the Universe. First, on the title. This great title is actually a quote from The Method of Ethics by Sidgwick: "The good of any one individual is of no more importance, from the point of view (if I may so say) of the Universe, than the good of any other; unless, that is, there are special grounds for believing that more good is likely to be realized in the one case than in the other."
The book starts with discussion of the competing methods of ethics and reasons for actions. Philosophical accounts of reasons for action can be divided according to whether the reasons provided are subjective or objective. Drawing on arguments advanced by Sidgwick and Parfit, the authors argue, against Hume and his followers, that normative reasons for actions are objective. One objection to this view is that it is unclear how reason can motivate action. Another is that psychopaths appear to be able to reason adequately, but do not act morally. Both of these objections are discussed and answered.
Sidgwick thought that some axioms of ethics are self-evident. These include: an axiom of justice—‘whatever action any of us judges to be right for himself, he implicitly judges to be right for all similar persons in similar circumstances’, an axiom of prudence—‘a smaller present good is not to be preferred to a greater future good’, and an axiom of benevolence—‘each one is morally bound to regard the good of any other individual as much as his own, except in so far as he judges it to be less, when impartially viewed, or less certainly knowable or attainable by him’.
The ‘profoundest problem of ethics’ according to Sidgwick, arises from the apparent rationality of both egoism and utilitarianism. Sidgwick called this the ‘dualism of practical reason’ and he held that it showed that reason cannot, after all, be a complete guide to what we ought to do. Moreover if we always have sufficient reason to do what is in our own interests—so that acting in our own interests would always be rational, but not rationally required—then that seems to sharply diminish the importance of an ethical theory like utilitarianism, based as it is on the idea of acting with impartial concern for others. Singer and Lazari-Radek discuss the ways in which Gauthier, Brink, and Parfit have sought to overcome or reduce the scope of the problem, and suggest why their proposals fail to resolve it.
The authors, however, attempt to strengthen the foundations of Sidgwick’s idea of taking ‘the Point of View of the Universe’ by arguing, as Sidgwick himself hesitated to do, that the ‘the Point of View of the Universe’ is the perspective of a rational being, in a way that alternative perspectives, such as that of egoism, are not.
The baffling realization one cannot escape is that utilitarianism is self-effacing but not self-defeating as a moral theory. This becomes especially telling as the authors discuss what Sidgwick termed “esoteric morality.” According to Sidgwick, “on Utilitarian principles, it may be right to do and privately recommend, under certain circumstances, what it would not be right to advocate openly; it may be right to teach openly to one set of persons what it would be wrong to teach to others; it may be conceivably right to do, if it can be done with comparative secrecy, what it would be wrong to do in the face of the world;and even, if perfect secrecy can be reasonably expected, what it would be wrong to recommend by private advice and example.’
This is where it gets murky. Probably the most controversial part of the book is when Singer and Lazari-Radek tried to defend esoteric morality. In public, they as Sidgwick say, esoteric morality should be disavowed. However, some acts can be justifiable in secret. The most famous case, the one often put forward against utilitarianism, is the one where a doctor kills one patient to save five. There is simply no way how this, or a similar case, could be defended even by a utilitarian philosopher. But one can imagine that some similar case could be played out in secret and be kind of OK-ish on the Utilitarian grounds if the consequences of such act are clearly better than inaction. One example is some people can be trained to torture a terrorist and this can be done if this could prevent a nuclear explosion in an urban area.
The authors agree with Sidgwick that we should be reluctant to embrace esoteric morality, and you should feel that there is something wrong with their conclusion. “Arguably, we should not even have written this chapter; yet in a book on Sidgwick, to fail to discuss the topic of esoteric morality would be to leave the impression that on this issue Sidgwick’s stance—and therefore utilitarianism in general—is indefensible. That impression could also have bad consequences. In the end, we have chosen to defend, in this relatively public manner, both utilitarianism and the view that sometimes we are right to do in secret what it would be wrong to do, or to advocate, in public,” they conclude.
It is often claimed that utilitarianism is too demanding, because it gives us obligations that virtually no one meets. The authors consider Sidgwick’s response to the demandingness objection, especially his important distinction between whether an act is right or wrong, and whether it is appropriate to praise or blame the agent for that act. Parfit’s concept of ‘blameless wrongdoing’ fits within this framework.
As you keep reading, it appears that it is not as demanding as many people believe. In fact, maybe less so than some forms of contractualism. On the one hand a utilitarian morality places almost limitless demands on us, making us feel that we will never be able to be fully moral. Yet because this may discourage people from even trying to get anywhere near to living ethically, utilitarianism does not blame you if you do not do your very best. In fact, it may even praise you for doing rather little, if this praise will provide the necessary motivation for you to do something rather than nothing.
There is a chapter on distribution of happiness. This is where Parfit comes into play no less than Sidwick. If happiness is the good, how should it be distributed? Should we take into account only the happiness of human beings, or of all those capable of experiencing pleasure and pain? Should we favour an egalitarian distribution, or prioritarianism (i.e. giving priority to those who are worse off), or should we simply aim at increasing happiness as much as possible, irrespective of how it is distributed? Is it permissible to discount the future, as economists like Von Mises have proposed? Should we, in maximizing happiness, be concerned only about those who already exist, or who will exist independently of what we do, or should we also be concerned about merely possible beings, whose very existence depends on the choices we make?
I was curious to see that antinatalist views of Benatar are discussed. Benatar, following the footsteps of Schopenhauer, believes that coming into existence is always a serious harm. This comes to contrast with Sidgwick’s belief, that it is good to bring more beings into existence, other things being equal. Even if other things are not equal—that is, if bringing more beings into existence will cause the average level of happiness to fall—he thinks it will still be good to bring more beings into existence as long as the happiness of the additional beings is greater than the loss of happiness to others. In deciding how many beings should exist, we should be guided by the total amount of happiness that will result, and not by the average level of happiness.
The book ends with an interesting twist. For much of the 20th century, Sidgwick’s belief that ethics has a rational basis was decidedly unfashionable. In some circles it still is. There are signs, however, that on this issue opinion is swinging back in Sidgwick’s direction, and not only among philosophers, but among scientists too. The authors discuss one of my favorite books of all times, Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels of our Nature, a study of the factors that have, over the course of human history, reduced violence and cruelty. Pinker assembles an impressive body of evidence to show that, although the 20th century saw two terrible world wars and the atrocities committed by Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, and others, anyone born in that century had a lower chance of meeting a violent death at the hands of another human being than people born in any previous century. Pinker regards our ability to reason as one of the key factors in this ethical improvement, which has been taking place over many centuries and even millennia.
Pinker argues that enhanced powers of reasoning give us the ability to detach ourselves from our immediate experience and from our personal or parochial perspective, and frame our ideas in more abstract, universal terms. If he had read Sidgwick, he might have written that our enhanced reasoning abilities make it more likely that we will take the point of view of the universe, and begin to see that the good of any one individual is of no more importance than the good of any other. It is just this kind of reasoning ability that has improved during the 20th century, write Peter Singer and Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek.
What I find baffling is that philosophy graduates in Central and Eastern Europe, the region where one of the authors of this book comes from, are unfamiliar with works of Sidwick and Parfit. There is hope given the sponsorship this publication has received from the Polish National Science Center. It is also great to see Peter Singer and Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek continue their cooperation. I've already read the first two chapters of their latest book “Utilitarianism: A Very Short Introduction”. A page-turner for fans of philosophy in a hurry :)
Finally a quote: “Ethics is a unique subject. As an area of philosophy, it challenges us to develop theories, construct arguments, weigh objections, and above all, to reason clearly; but ethics is also the point at which philosophy engages with our everyday lives, and can have an impact on the way we live and on the world as a whole. Sidgwick was well aware of these two faces of ethics. In the preface to the first edition of The Methods of Ethics he wrote that he saw his work as a contribution to knowledge, seeking to show ‘what conclusions will be rationally reached if we start with certain ethical premises, and with what degree of certainty and precision’. But this quest was not for knowledge for the sake of knowledge; rather it was a necessary element of a proper response to ‘the urgent need which we all feel of finding and adopting the true method of determining what we ought to do’. Our aim in this book has been the same as Sidgwick’s, to make progress in philosophy in order to make progress in practice. Ultimately, we hope that our work will be seen as part of a long line of thought that has helped many generations to live in ways that are happier, more fulfilling, less prone to inflict cruelty or to suffer it, and committed to improving the well-being of other conscious beings. In a word, lives that are more ethical.”
This is how this book concludes. And this is what philosophy should be about. These authors did their job perfectly.
By reading this book you will learn about one of the greatest philosophers whose name you had probably never heard: Henry Sidgwick. If you are familiar with classical utilitarianism, it’s because you’ve probably read or heard of Jeremy Bentham or John Stuart Mill. But according to Singer and Lazari-Radek, Sidgwick’s The Methods of Ethics far surpasses, in philosophical depth, any of the ethical writings of Bentham or Mill. Regrettably, Sidgwick’s masterpiece is still not widely known. This, however, is slowly changing, and the authors hope to accelerate the pace of that change.
Reading this book, you will also learn a lot about the ideas of Derek Parfit, another great philosopher who died in January, 2017, and whose name is just as unfamiliar to most people even though his contribution to philosophy, I would say, is groundbreaking. Parfit never called himself either a utilitarian or a consequentialist but his influence on contemporary utilitarianism and on the arguments laid out in this book is present practically in every chapter. Fittingly, Parfit claimed that, in the long tradition of ethics, "Sidgwick's book [The Methods of Ethics] contains the largest number of true and important claims.”
So here are some points on The Point of View of the Universe. First, on the title. This great title is actually a quote from The Method of Ethics by Sidgwick: "The good of any one individual is of no more importance, from the point of view (if I may so say) of the Universe, than the good of any other; unless, that is, there are special grounds for believing that more good is likely to be realized in the one case than in the other."
The book starts with discussion of the competing methods of ethics and reasons for actions. Philosophical accounts of reasons for action can be divided according to whether the reasons provided are subjective or objective. Drawing on arguments advanced by Sidgwick and Parfit, the authors argue, against Hume and his followers, that normative reasons for actions are objective. One objection to this view is that it is unclear how reason can motivate action. Another is that psychopaths appear to be able to reason adequately, but do not act morally. Both of these objections are discussed and answered.
Sidgwick thought that some axioms of ethics are self-evident. These include: an axiom of justice—‘whatever action any of us judges to be right for himself, he implicitly judges to be right for all similar persons in similar circumstances’, an axiom of prudence—‘a smaller present good is not to be preferred to a greater future good’, and an axiom of benevolence—‘each one is morally bound to regard the good of any other individual as much as his own, except in so far as he judges it to be less, when impartially viewed, or less certainly knowable or attainable by him’.
The ‘profoundest problem of ethics’ according to Sidgwick, arises from the apparent rationality of both egoism and utilitarianism. Sidgwick called this the ‘dualism of practical reason’ and he held that it showed that reason cannot, after all, be a complete guide to what we ought to do. Moreover if we always have sufficient reason to do what is in our own interests—so that acting in our own interests would always be rational, but not rationally required—then that seems to sharply diminish the importance of an ethical theory like utilitarianism, based as it is on the idea of acting with impartial concern for others. Singer and Lazari-Radek discuss the ways in which Gauthier, Brink, and Parfit have sought to overcome or reduce the scope of the problem, and suggest why their proposals fail to resolve it.
The authors, however, attempt to strengthen the foundations of Sidgwick’s idea of taking ‘the Point of View of the Universe’ by arguing, as Sidgwick himself hesitated to do, that the ‘the Point of View of the Universe’ is the perspective of a rational being, in a way that alternative perspectives, such as that of egoism, are not.
The baffling realization one cannot escape is that utilitarianism is self-effacing but not self-defeating as a moral theory. This becomes especially telling as the authors discuss what Sidgwick termed “esoteric morality.” According to Sidgwick, “on Utilitarian principles, it may be right to do and privately recommend, under certain circumstances, what it would not be right to advocate openly; it may be right to teach openly to one set of persons what it would be wrong to teach to others; it may be conceivably right to do, if it can be done with comparative secrecy, what it would be wrong to do in the face of the world;and even, if perfect secrecy can be reasonably expected, what it would be wrong to recommend by private advice and example.’
This is where it gets murky. Probably the most controversial part of the book is when Singer and Lazari-Radek tried to defend esoteric morality. In public, they as Sidgwick say, esoteric morality should be disavowed. However, some acts can be justifiable in secret. The most famous case, the one often put forward against utilitarianism, is the one where a doctor kills one patient to save five. There is simply no way how this, or a similar case, could be defended even by a utilitarian philosopher. But one can imagine that some similar case could be played out in secret and be kind of OK-ish on the Utilitarian grounds if the consequences of such act are clearly better than inaction. One example is some people can be trained to torture a terrorist and this can be done if this could prevent a nuclear explosion in an urban area.
The authors agree with Sidgwick that we should be reluctant to embrace esoteric morality, and you should feel that there is something wrong with their conclusion. “Arguably, we should not even have written this chapter; yet in a book on Sidgwick, to fail to discuss the topic of esoteric morality would be to leave the impression that on this issue Sidgwick’s stance—and therefore utilitarianism in general—is indefensible. That impression could also have bad consequences. In the end, we have chosen to defend, in this relatively public manner, both utilitarianism and the view that sometimes we are right to do in secret what it would be wrong to do, or to advocate, in public,” they conclude.
It is often claimed that utilitarianism is too demanding, because it gives us obligations that virtually no one meets. The authors consider Sidgwick’s response to the demandingness objection, especially his important distinction between whether an act is right or wrong, and whether it is appropriate to praise or blame the agent for that act. Parfit’s concept of ‘blameless wrongdoing’ fits within this framework.
As you keep reading, it appears that it is not as demanding as many people believe. In fact, maybe less so than some forms of contractualism. On the one hand a utilitarian morality places almost limitless demands on us, making us feel that we will never be able to be fully moral. Yet because this may discourage people from even trying to get anywhere near to living ethically, utilitarianism does not blame you if you do not do your very best. In fact, it may even praise you for doing rather little, if this praise will provide the necessary motivation for you to do something rather than nothing.
There is a chapter on distribution of happiness. This is where Parfit comes into play no less than Sidwick. If happiness is the good, how should it be distributed? Should we take into account only the happiness of human beings, or of all those capable of experiencing pleasure and pain? Should we favour an egalitarian distribution, or prioritarianism (i.e. giving priority to those who are worse off), or should we simply aim at increasing happiness as much as possible, irrespective of how it is distributed? Is it permissible to discount the future, as economists like Von Mises have proposed? Should we, in maximizing happiness, be concerned only about those who already exist, or who will exist independently of what we do, or should we also be concerned about merely possible beings, whose very existence depends on the choices we make?
I was curious to see that antinatalist views of Benatar are discussed. Benatar, following the footsteps of Schopenhauer, believes that coming into existence is always a serious harm. This comes to contrast with Sidgwick’s belief, that it is good to bring more beings into existence, other things being equal. Even if other things are not equal—that is, if bringing more beings into existence will cause the average level of happiness to fall—he thinks it will still be good to bring more beings into existence as long as the happiness of the additional beings is greater than the loss of happiness to others. In deciding how many beings should exist, we should be guided by the total amount of happiness that will result, and not by the average level of happiness.
The book ends with an interesting twist. For much of the 20th century, Sidgwick’s belief that ethics has a rational basis was decidedly unfashionable. In some circles it still is. There are signs, however, that on this issue opinion is swinging back in Sidgwick’s direction, and not only among philosophers, but among scientists too. The authors discuss one of my favorite books of all times, Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels of our Nature, a study of the factors that have, over the course of human history, reduced violence and cruelty. Pinker assembles an impressive body of evidence to show that, although the 20th century saw two terrible world wars and the atrocities committed by Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, and others, anyone born in that century had a lower chance of meeting a violent death at the hands of another human being than people born in any previous century. Pinker regards our ability to reason as one of the key factors in this ethical improvement, which has been taking place over many centuries and even millennia.
Pinker argues that enhanced powers of reasoning give us the ability to detach ourselves from our immediate experience and from our personal or parochial perspective, and frame our ideas in more abstract, universal terms. If he had read Sidgwick, he might have written that our enhanced reasoning abilities make it more likely that we will take the point of view of the universe, and begin to see that the good of any one individual is of no more importance than the good of any other. It is just this kind of reasoning ability that has improved during the 20th century, write Peter Singer and Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek.
What I find baffling is that philosophy graduates in Central and Eastern Europe, the region where one of the authors of this book comes from, are unfamiliar with works of Sidwick and Parfit. There is hope given the sponsorship this publication has received from the Polish National Science Center. It is also great to see Peter Singer and Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek continue their cooperation. I've already read the first two chapters of their latest book “Utilitarianism: A Very Short Introduction”. A page-turner for fans of philosophy in a hurry :)
Finally a quote: “Ethics is a unique subject. As an area of philosophy, it challenges us to develop theories, construct arguments, weigh objections, and above all, to reason clearly; but ethics is also the point at which philosophy engages with our everyday lives, and can have an impact on the way we live and on the world as a whole. Sidgwick was well aware of these two faces of ethics. In the preface to the first edition of The Methods of Ethics he wrote that he saw his work as a contribution to knowledge, seeking to show ‘what conclusions will be rationally reached if we start with certain ethical premises, and with what degree of certainty and precision’. But this quest was not for knowledge for the sake of knowledge; rather it was a necessary element of a proper response to ‘the urgent need which we all feel of finding and adopting the true method of determining what we ought to do’. Our aim in this book has been the same as Sidgwick’s, to make progress in philosophy in order to make progress in practice. Ultimately, we hope that our work will be seen as part of a long line of thought that has helped many generations to live in ways that are happier, more fulfilling, less prone to inflict cruelty or to suffer it, and committed to improving the well-being of other conscious beings. In a word, lives that are more ethical.”
This is how this book concludes. And this is what philosophy should be about. These authors did their job perfectly.
March 18, 2017
This book contains three major parts: defending the view that there are objective reasons for action, and objective moral truths; defending hedonism as the sole and ultimate good; and finally defending the resultant moral system - classical, hedonistic act utilitarianism - against the intuition-based objections, such as the demandingness objection, to it that are commonly put forward.
On the meta-ethical view that there are objective moral truths, this book is best read after having read Parts One and Six of Parfit's 'On What Matters', unless one is familiar with some of the terminology used. As Singer and De-Lazari Radek themselves note, Parfit's work is a much more detailed defence of objectivism in ethics, and of Non-Metaphysical, Non-Naturalist Cognitivism.
Despite this, Singer and De-Lazari Radek still put forward a strong - and ultimately convincing - defence of objectivism in ethics. Along with Parfit and other authors such as Sam Harris, 'The Point of View of the Universe' is a major contribution to the resurgence of the idea that there are objective moral truths, an idea which, despite Sidgwick's strong arguments (which are clearly presented in this book), fell out of fashion by the mid-20th Century.
This book convincingly goes further than Parfit and others, however, in arguing that act utilitarianism is the sole objective moral system, and that classical, hedonistic utilitarianism is more defensible than preference utilitarianism. (Avid readers of Singer will note that this marks a change in his normative ethical beliefs).
Despite the force of the arguments put forward in this book, some may still baulk at this outcome, but Singer and De-Lazari Radek provide convincing rebuttals to many of the objections to utilitarianism on the basis of its supposed counter-intuitive implications in some domains. When read alongside Joshua Greene's 'Moral Tribes', which also defends utilitarianism against these objections, it would take a stubborn person indeed not to adopt utilitarianism as their ethical system.
On the meta-ethical view that there are objective moral truths, this book is best read after having read Parts One and Six of Parfit's 'On What Matters', unless one is familiar with some of the terminology used. As Singer and De-Lazari Radek themselves note, Parfit's work is a much more detailed defence of objectivism in ethics, and of Non-Metaphysical, Non-Naturalist Cognitivism.
Despite this, Singer and De-Lazari Radek still put forward a strong - and ultimately convincing - defence of objectivism in ethics. Along with Parfit and other authors such as Sam Harris, 'The Point of View of the Universe' is a major contribution to the resurgence of the idea that there are objective moral truths, an idea which, despite Sidgwick's strong arguments (which are clearly presented in this book), fell out of fashion by the mid-20th Century.
This book convincingly goes further than Parfit and others, however, in arguing that act utilitarianism is the sole objective moral system, and that classical, hedonistic utilitarianism is more defensible than preference utilitarianism. (Avid readers of Singer will note that this marks a change in his normative ethical beliefs).
Despite the force of the arguments put forward in this book, some may still baulk at this outcome, but Singer and De-Lazari Radek provide convincing rebuttals to many of the objections to utilitarianism on the basis of its supposed counter-intuitive implications in some domains. When read alongside Joshua Greene's 'Moral Tribes', which also defends utilitarianism against these objections, it would take a stubborn person indeed not to adopt utilitarianism as their ethical system.
December 13, 2023
"Most of you reading this will be philosophers, or students of philosophy..." :D
Such an excellent overview of how Sidgwick's ideas and how they hold up when compared against the compendium of historical and contemporary work in ethics that we have available us today. Like many works in this space, however, it lacks proper consideration of negative utilitarianism, and particularly how it out-competes other normative frameworks in the realm of population ethics, regardless of how one finds the normative symmetry vs asymmetry arguments for pleasure/pain. It further fails to mention the 'very repugnant conclusion' alongside the standard version, though it's unclear even to me how prevalent this was in 2014 at the date of publication.
For anyone interested in Sidgwick's work, this is a must-read. For anyone not interested, get yourself together.
Such an excellent overview of how Sidgwick's ideas and how they hold up when compared against the compendium of historical and contemporary work in ethics that we have available us today. Like many works in this space, however, it lacks proper consideration of negative utilitarianism, and particularly how it out-competes other normative frameworks in the realm of population ethics, regardless of how one finds the normative symmetry vs asymmetry arguments for pleasure/pain. It further fails to mention the 'very repugnant conclusion' alongside the standard version, though it's unclear even to me how prevalent this was in 2014 at the date of publication.
For anyone interested in Sidgwick's work, this is a must-read. For anyone not interested, get yourself together.
May 14, 2016
Not nearly as mind-blowing as something like Reasons and Persons, but compensated for by its readability. Overall, a highly accessible summary of some key moral arguments over the past century or so.
September 4, 2016
For what he’s achieved in practical ethics, Peter Singer is one of the four people I’d least want this world to be without, along with Elon Musk, Toby Ord and my partner (and one of only three of those who’s reading this as I type it). So I feel like I should disclaim that I was always going to support this book, especially since it codifies his recent conversion to hedonistic utilitarianism, which I’ve long favoured over its alternatives.
That said, reading this book was like hanging out with Wile E Coyote. It’s obviously very smart company, and I’m generally happy to walk alongside it, but eventually we’re going to look down and realise that it’s been walking on thin air, while I’ve – hopefully – been walking on the bridge next to it.
Let me turn that glibness into some more specific criticisms: Lazari-Radek and Singer have a keen attachment to the sort of hard normativity that can come off as quite alienating to those of us who don’t share it. It would be wonderful if it were true, and even without it, we can reach many of the same conclusions about how to order states of the world, but it’s ultimately an unsupportable concept.
Their response, to sceptics like me, that we should still believe that there are things I ought to do is this:
‘The word “ought” implies that, if you were to adopt the end of [for example] preserving your health, and refuse to take the means that are necessary to achieving this end, even when you can do so at no cost to anyone, including yourself, you would be unreasonable.’
The final, unassuming clause of this sentence is what much of the book’s theoretical argument relies on, but it’s profoundly ambiguous. In fact, it seems very much like what Daniel Dennett calls a ‘deepity’ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKPhy...). It’s either trivially true, in that it seems straightforwardly contradictory to ‘have a goal’ that I have no inclination to effect, or it’s trying to bring in a new concept, of reasonableness – something which I presumably want to have – via a simply invalid deduction.
For much of the book, little hangs off their underlying view. It has some good critique of alternative moral views, much of which is not new (most of this felt more like a literature review than original argument, but given the dearth of high profile arguments for the overall hedonistic utilitarian view, it’s something in between, and very welcomely so).
Their main new contribution is an argument that, unlike egoism (which they treat, following Sidgwick, as the hardest alternative to utilitarianism to refute) and unlike a number of other ‘common sense’ moral principles, belief in the principle of universal benevolence (a core component of utilitarianism) doesn’t have any evolutionary explanation. That is, we cannot explain anyone having such a belief by its advantage for reproductive fitness – on the contrary, it can actively reduce reproductive fitness.
Therefore (and oversimplifying slightly), the authors claim, the best explanation for (m)any of us having former such a belief is that our sense of reason has gotten away from its evolutionary purpose. Ie, rather than merely helping us wield basic tools that would improve our survival prospects, reason has started letting us find out things that are true(™). These things include the claims of pure sciences and, allegedly, the principle of universal benevolence.
I’m sympathetic to this argument and glad they made it, because I think it might be quite convincing to other normativists (if that’s a word) – but I’m not convinced by it myself. If concepts like ‘truth’ can even apply to the principle of universal benevolence, it’s still a very different beast from the conclusions of the pure sciences, which use empirical data or pure maths, which uses formal proof.
In fact, Lazari-Radek and Singer seem sceptical of their own reasoning, admitting that ‘the fact that mathematical reasoning … may have had a separate evolutionary origin from deductive reasoning would also lead one to expect moral reasoning to be at least as distinct. If it can be shown (to be), that would undermine the argument we are making here’.
This is a powerful admission – that something that would undermine their argument is likely to be true!
Still, much of the groundwork they lay is compatible with a non-moral-realist form of utilitarianism, so I don’t think one needs to be a normativist to profit from reading the book.
The one point at which I finally felt they’d looked down – and plummeted – was in the penultimate chapter, addressing the idea of scalar utilitarianism, as laid out by Alastair Norcross: that rather than considering only utility-maximising acts as right we should treat goodness and badness as a matter of degree, and eschew the concepts of ‘rightness’ and ‘wrongness’ altogether.
Lazari-Radek and Singer dismiss this in a couple of pages – having spent several on the far less interesting act/rule utilitarian distinction among others – with unconvincing arguments whose weakness, I think, stems from the authors’ attachment to normativity.
(I’m not alone in finding this ratio skewed – from a straw poll on the utilitarianism group on Facebook and the utilitarianism forum of which I’m a member, every single one of the (admittedly 16-strong, counting me) utilitarian respondents supported the scalar version.)
‘For Sidgwick’, the authors write, ‘[ethics] is precisely the other way round: the concept of “what ought I to do?” … is fundamental.’
But why should we just follow Sidgwick on this? We get some clarification of what this claim means, but basically no further justification for it. Norcross, they admit ‘does consider this view … offering as grounds for rejecting a simple conceptual connection between rightness and [maximisation] the concept of supererogation’ (the view that some acts can go beyond the requirements of morality).
‘That concept is at home in deontological conceptions of morality, but for utilitarians it is a concept that confuses what we ought to do with what it is appropriate to praise or blame people for doing. To abandon core moral concepts like “right” and “wrong” in order to avoid having to reject supererogation is truly to strain at a gnat and swallow a camel.’
After a book of careful arguments for (in some sense) persuasive views, it’s disappointing to wind down with what’s essentially an ad hominem, and an ironic one at that. The duty to do some particular act is core to deontological ethics, so in insisting on it, Lazari-Radek and Singer are the ones displaying vestigial deontology.
Meanwhile, they’re apparently misrepresenting Norcross’ argument here. In the version of the essay I read (which, admittedly, is a revised draft for a chapter of a forthcoming book, not the version Lazari-Radek and Singer are quoting from), Norcross gives a number of arguments for scalarism, none of which we hear here. Moreover he explicitly denies using supererogation to justify it:
‘The scalar utilitarian will deny the existence of duty as a fundamental moral category, and so will deny the possibility of actions that go ‘beyond’ our duty, in the sense of being better than whatever duty demands.’
What he says is rather that ‘the intuition that drives the belief in supererogation’ can be explained by actions that seem ‘considerably better than what would be reasonably expected of a decent person in [comparable] circumstances’. In other words, he thinks it just a side benefit that scalar utilitarianism will appeal to supererogationists (these derivations are getting painful!) – not one of the core arguments.
But, to return to practical ethics, Singer’s arguments elsewhere about what benevolence actually means in 21st century society have lost none of their force. While I dispute the foundations of The Point of View of the Universe, I nevertheless wholly support its conclusions (as, come to that, does Norcross).
That said, reading this book was like hanging out with Wile E Coyote. It’s obviously very smart company, and I’m generally happy to walk alongside it, but eventually we’re going to look down and realise that it’s been walking on thin air, while I’ve – hopefully – been walking on the bridge next to it.
Let me turn that glibness into some more specific criticisms: Lazari-Radek and Singer have a keen attachment to the sort of hard normativity that can come off as quite alienating to those of us who don’t share it. It would be wonderful if it were true, and even without it, we can reach many of the same conclusions about how to order states of the world, but it’s ultimately an unsupportable concept.
Their response, to sceptics like me, that we should still believe that there are things I ought to do is this:
‘The word “ought” implies that, if you were to adopt the end of [for example] preserving your health, and refuse to take the means that are necessary to achieving this end, even when you can do so at no cost to anyone, including yourself, you would be unreasonable.’
The final, unassuming clause of this sentence is what much of the book’s theoretical argument relies on, but it’s profoundly ambiguous. In fact, it seems very much like what Daniel Dennett calls a ‘deepity’ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKPhy...). It’s either trivially true, in that it seems straightforwardly contradictory to ‘have a goal’ that I have no inclination to effect, or it’s trying to bring in a new concept, of reasonableness – something which I presumably want to have – via a simply invalid deduction.
For much of the book, little hangs off their underlying view. It has some good critique of alternative moral views, much of which is not new (most of this felt more like a literature review than original argument, but given the dearth of high profile arguments for the overall hedonistic utilitarian view, it’s something in between, and very welcomely so).
Their main new contribution is an argument that, unlike egoism (which they treat, following Sidgwick, as the hardest alternative to utilitarianism to refute) and unlike a number of other ‘common sense’ moral principles, belief in the principle of universal benevolence (a core component of utilitarianism) doesn’t have any evolutionary explanation. That is, we cannot explain anyone having such a belief by its advantage for reproductive fitness – on the contrary, it can actively reduce reproductive fitness.
Therefore (and oversimplifying slightly), the authors claim, the best explanation for (m)any of us having former such a belief is that our sense of reason has gotten away from its evolutionary purpose. Ie, rather than merely helping us wield basic tools that would improve our survival prospects, reason has started letting us find out things that are true(™). These things include the claims of pure sciences and, allegedly, the principle of universal benevolence.
I’m sympathetic to this argument and glad they made it, because I think it might be quite convincing to other normativists (if that’s a word) – but I’m not convinced by it myself. If concepts like ‘truth’ can even apply to the principle of universal benevolence, it’s still a very different beast from the conclusions of the pure sciences, which use empirical data or pure maths, which uses formal proof.
In fact, Lazari-Radek and Singer seem sceptical of their own reasoning, admitting that ‘the fact that mathematical reasoning … may have had a separate evolutionary origin from deductive reasoning would also lead one to expect moral reasoning to be at least as distinct. If it can be shown (to be), that would undermine the argument we are making here’.
This is a powerful admission – that something that would undermine their argument is likely to be true!
Still, much of the groundwork they lay is compatible with a non-moral-realist form of utilitarianism, so I don’t think one needs to be a normativist to profit from reading the book.
The one point at which I finally felt they’d looked down – and plummeted – was in the penultimate chapter, addressing the idea of scalar utilitarianism, as laid out by Alastair Norcross: that rather than considering only utility-maximising acts as right we should treat goodness and badness as a matter of degree, and eschew the concepts of ‘rightness’ and ‘wrongness’ altogether.
Lazari-Radek and Singer dismiss this in a couple of pages – having spent several on the far less interesting act/rule utilitarian distinction among others – with unconvincing arguments whose weakness, I think, stems from the authors’ attachment to normativity.
(I’m not alone in finding this ratio skewed – from a straw poll on the utilitarianism group on Facebook and the utilitarianism forum of which I’m a member, every single one of the (admittedly 16-strong, counting me) utilitarian respondents supported the scalar version.)
‘For Sidgwick’, the authors write, ‘[ethics] is precisely the other way round: the concept of “what ought I to do?” … is fundamental.’
But why should we just follow Sidgwick on this? We get some clarification of what this claim means, but basically no further justification for it. Norcross, they admit ‘does consider this view … offering as grounds for rejecting a simple conceptual connection between rightness and [maximisation] the concept of supererogation’ (the view that some acts can go beyond the requirements of morality).
‘That concept is at home in deontological conceptions of morality, but for utilitarians it is a concept that confuses what we ought to do with what it is appropriate to praise or blame people for doing. To abandon core moral concepts like “right” and “wrong” in order to avoid having to reject supererogation is truly to strain at a gnat and swallow a camel.’
After a book of careful arguments for (in some sense) persuasive views, it’s disappointing to wind down with what’s essentially an ad hominem, and an ironic one at that. The duty to do some particular act is core to deontological ethics, so in insisting on it, Lazari-Radek and Singer are the ones displaying vestigial deontology.
Meanwhile, they’re apparently misrepresenting Norcross’ argument here. In the version of the essay I read (which, admittedly, is a revised draft for a chapter of a forthcoming book, not the version Lazari-Radek and Singer are quoting from), Norcross gives a number of arguments for scalarism, none of which we hear here. Moreover he explicitly denies using supererogation to justify it:
‘The scalar utilitarian will deny the existence of duty as a fundamental moral category, and so will deny the possibility of actions that go ‘beyond’ our duty, in the sense of being better than whatever duty demands.’
What he says is rather that ‘the intuition that drives the belief in supererogation’ can be explained by actions that seem ‘considerably better than what would be reasonably expected of a decent person in [comparable] circumstances’. In other words, he thinks it just a side benefit that scalar utilitarianism will appeal to supererogationists (these derivations are getting painful!) – not one of the core arguments.
But, to return to practical ethics, Singer’s arguments elsewhere about what benevolence actually means in 21st century society have lost none of their force. While I dispute the foundations of The Point of View of the Universe, I nevertheless wholly support its conclusions (as, come to that, does Norcross).
April 11, 2023
Would probably give this book 6 stars if I could!!! Probably the best book on meta ethics there is, it achieves so much and clarifies so many things. If you are looking for a way to refute egoism and self-centeredness as an ethical theory, read chapter 7. It really provides the only convincing argument I know of for choosing universal good instead of selfishness, if one begins from a position of moral nihilism and refuses to admit that one can have reasons for behaving ethically towards others. It really is much harder than you would think to convince, for example, a psychopath that only cares about his own happiness that he is objectively wrong, which makes this achievement that much more impressive!
January 26, 2025
Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. Despite the subtitle, The Point of View of the Universe isn't a piece of Sidgwick scholarship but a philosophical treatise in its own right. The authors present a novel defense of Sidgwick's intuitionist moral realism. They then go on to draw some of the practical implications of the utilitarian theory it entails. The strongest, as well as the most original, part of the book is probably its discussion of evolutionary debunking arguments. Not only do they convincingly defend the basic axioms of utilitarianism against such arguments, but they manage to turn evolutionary debunking to their advantage by showing how it can be used to lend rational support to utilitarianism other theories. Without exaggeration, this is probably the single greatest book on ethics I've ever read.
August 1, 2025
A defense of Henry Sidgwick’s utilitarianism in conversation with recent developments in ethics. It’s well-written and argued, but not ultimately convincing for me. The book is complex, so I don’t have time to get into everything here. But here are a few of my objections. The first is the rejection of teleology — the authors appear to be following the consensus view without putting a whole lot of thought into it. Second, the authors follow Sidgwick in rejecting Christian/scriptural ethics because, they say, interpreting scripture is an exercise in theology, not ethics: which seems to be a No True Scotsman argument.
Thirdly, Sidgwick’s utilitarianism invokes a quantitative/mathematical model of doing ethics — calculating your decisions according to what will produce maximum “happiness.” Leaving aside Sidgwick’s tortured definition of happiness and the difficulty (impossibility?) quantifying it, it seems unrealistic to suppose that humans could actually perform such calculations with any degree of accuracy, given our limits of knowledge and lack of foreknowledge. There are some concessions in the book that in everyday dealings such calculations will be “rough,” but this seems to be putting it lightly.
Again, though, it’s well-written, and recommended for anybody interested in ethics. I’ve never been attracted to utilitarianism and wanted to read a strong defense to get a better handle on it. It certainly increased my understanding, and I wouldn’t mind having it on my bookshelf as a reference for future use.
Thirdly, Sidgwick’s utilitarianism invokes a quantitative/mathematical model of doing ethics — calculating your decisions according to what will produce maximum “happiness.” Leaving aside Sidgwick’s tortured definition of happiness and the difficulty (impossibility?) quantifying it, it seems unrealistic to suppose that humans could actually perform such calculations with any degree of accuracy, given our limits of knowledge and lack of foreknowledge. There are some concessions in the book that in everyday dealings such calculations will be “rough,” but this seems to be putting it lightly.
Again, though, it’s well-written, and recommended for anybody interested in ethics. I’ve never been attracted to utilitarianism and wanted to read a strong defense to get a better handle on it. It certainly increased my understanding, and I wouldn’t mind having it on my bookshelf as a reference for future use.
September 15, 2024
The most convincing arguments on ethics I've ever encountered. While it at first may be seem very abstract and "philosophical", solid groundwork is laid on which important real world issues such as inequality, altruism, animal ethics, and our obligations to future generations are discussed plainly and clearly. Strongly recommended.
March 24, 2025
“The good of any one individual is of no more importance, from the point of view (if I may so say) of the Universe, than the good of any other; unless, that is, there are special grounds for believing that more good is likely to be realized in the one case than in the other.”
— Henry Sidgwick
In the Point of View of the Universe (2014), Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek and Peter Singer restate the works of the nineteenth-century utilitarian Henry Sidgwick in much more contemporary and accessible language before proceeding to test them rigorously against a variety of views held by contemporary writers in ethics. They conclude that they are indeed defensible.
First of all, this is an academic book that is written for philosophers or students of philosophy and therefore, basic prior knowledge of moral philosophy in terms of meta-ethics and normative ethics is required. In this review, I will only focus on the meta-ethics of utilitarianism (Chapters 1 to 7) and the authors’ ingenious argument (Chapter 7) in their attempt to resolve the “duality of practical reason” which was dubbed by Sidgwick as the “Profoundest Problem of Ethics.” The remaining chapters defend the normative theory of hedonistic utilitarianism.
Chapter 1 covers how ethics is defined—along with its scope, aim, and epistemology. In short, ethics is a study of what we “ought”—or what is “right”— to do, NOT what is the case or what is psychologically motivating or socially accepted for us to do. Most people make the mistake of conflating them. One can find it psychologically difficult to be motivated to donate $3,000 to save a child in Uganda dying from malaria, or socially difficult to stop consuming factory farmed meat. Still, the case can be made that they “ought” to do so if what they forgo is nothing of comparable moral importance like a new smartphone or their preference for tasting meat. What we ought to do can also be thought of as “what do we have most reasons to do,” thus leading to the conclusion that reason and morality are intertwined, and that not acting in accordance with what we ought to do is a form of irrationality.
This leads to Chapter 2 which covers Reason and Action, showcasing how reason—which stems from cognition like grasping the truth of a moral judgement— can itself lead to motivation for action—which stems from feelings and desires. But that reason is only one of such motivating factors since humans are not purely rational beings given our evolutionary origins. The authors also refute subjectivism in ethics, showcasing its implausibility using Derek Parfit’s case of a person with ‘Future Tuesday Indifference.” In doing so, they defend the meta-ethical position of a non-naturalistic objectivist—the view that moral judgements are either true or false, but that they cannot be derived from natural facts, and that they apply universally for all beings, independent from human beliefs.
Chapter 3 covers the epistemology of ethics, establishing intuitionism as a ‘method of ethics’ which has three phases, each one more philosophically developed than its predecessor, and only the third as satisfactory to a philosopher.
1. Perceptual Intuitionism—relies on immediate judgement alone and makes no appeal to more general principles or any kind of moral reasoning.
2. Dogmatic Intuitionism (or common sense morality)—discerning certain general rules which are clear. This is what is commonly accepted by most people in the world and forms the basis for non-consequentialist positions such as Deontology, but to Sidgwick, is not fully satisfactory as there is a need for justification for these rules.
3. Philosophical intuitionism—seeks to find a basis for commonsense morality by resting it on a principle or principles that are ‘more absolutely and undeniably true and evident.’—in other words, self-evident axioms.
Still on the topic of epistemology, in chapter 4, on Justification in Ethics, the authors reject John Rawls’ “reflective equilibrium”—a form of coherentism—for Sidgwick’s “foundationalism.” The authors state that coherence is a necessary consequence of the truth of a foundational principle, but not constitutive of the justification of its truth. This brings us to Chapter 5 on The Axioms of Ethics, which form the basis of taking “The Point of View of the Universe” when it comes to ethics, which is the view of a rational being.
1. Axiom of Justice—what is right for oneself must be right for all who are similarly circumstanced.
2. Axiom of Prudence—smaller present good should not be preferred to larger future good (time impartiality).
3. Axiom of Benevolence—the good of others is just as important as one’s own good (interpersonal impartiality).
However, while Sidgwick holds these three axioms to be self-evident, he expressed difficulty to secure the last axiom since it seems that both “rational egoism” and “rational benevolence” were both rational. He calls this tension between self-interest and impartiality the “duality of practical reason” and dubbed it as the “Profoundest Problem of Ethics,” which is detailed in-depth by the authors in chapter 6. Despite attempting to resolve the deadlock, Sidgwick did not think he was successful.
It is in Chapter 7 on “The Origins of Ethics and the Unity of Practical Reason,” where the authors accomplish what Sidgwick was unsuccessful in. In the most important and original chapter of the book, both Singer and Katarzyna attempt to resolve the “dualism of practical reason” in favour of rational benevolence. They claim that there are three elements in the process of establishing that an intuition has the highest possible degree of reliability:
1. Careful reflection leading to a conviction of self-evidence;
2. Independent agreement of other careful thinkers; and
3. The absence of a plausible explanation of the intuition as a non-truth-tracking psychological process.
It is necessary for any worthwhile intuition to meet the first two. But if an intuition meets the first two criteria but not the third—if the intuition could be explained as the outcome of a non-truth-tracking process—that would not show the intuition to be false, but it would cast some doubt on its reliability.
The authors then delve into the evolutionary origins of our ethical and moral intuitions—kin selection and reciprocal altruism. Since our commonsense moral intuitions are shaped by evolution—a process that is concerned with survival and reproduction to pass on genes, not truth—they are then subjected to “evolutionary debunking arguments.” However, they state that “rational benevolence” is immune to such debunking arguments since that principle runs counter to what evolution would have selected for.
As evolution operates at the gene level of an individual, not species or group level, any form of benevolence beyond kin selection or reciprocal altruism that emerge in an individual organism would have been selected against by evolution, not for. On the other hand, egoism would have been selected for by evolution. Even in the unlikely event that future scientific evidence finds that selection occurred at the group level, the benevolence that utilitarianism requires goes beyond the species level and considers all sentient beings and hence, could not have been selected for.
On this basis, the authors then mount an evolutionary debunking argument against “rational egoism” and conclude that it is an intuition that aligns with evolution and hence, was brought about by a non-truth-tracking process and thus, is unreliable. In doing so, they sway the favour of rationality towards rational benevolence (utilitarianism) which is more likely brought about by reason rather than evolution. The author adds that the capacity to grasp moral truths is an application of our capacity to reason, which enables us to grasp a priori truths in general, just like the truths of mathematics and the laws of physics.
Accepting the three axioms still leaves open the question of what is “good”. In chapters 8 and 9, the authors argue about what is the “Ultimate Good” by refuting desire-based and objective list theories, leaving hedonism as the most plausible. They then cover contemporary research on well-being and happiness, highlighting the work of Daniel Kahneman, by distinguishing “experienced (or affective) well-being” with “evaluative (or cognitive) well-being”—aka life satisfaction, and conclude that the latter is not completely reliable due to the “peak-end rule.” Hedonism is concerned with the former.
In the remaining chapters—10, 11, and 12— the authors defend utilitarianism against objections related to rules, demandingness, and distribution. I recommend reading An Introduction to Utilitarianism (2024) as they cover these topics in their defense of utilitarianism as a normative ethical theory in a manner that is simpler to read, and can be found free on utilitarianism.net.
To conclude, this is a 5/5 and a must-read for anyone with sufficient background knowledge on moral philosophy, particularly in meta-ethics and normative ethics, or anyone like me, who is a non-philosophy student but is deeply interested about the question of what is the ultimate value in the universe and what we ought to do. After reading this, which is arguably the strongest defense of hedonistic utilitarianism, it is hard to see how any rational being can refute it as the true moral theory. Perhaps, and not surprisingly, it is truly a challenge for most humans to breakfree from their moral intuitions shaped by evolutionary pressures that enabled us to survive and reproduce successfully for the past 600 million years, from the first bilaterians to our current primate form. Also, I acknowledge that most people just don’t have the luxury of time or are uninterested in studying moral philosophy as a hobby.
Nevertheless, the authors highlight that the use of reason has enabled humanity to make tremendous strides in moral progress since the 18th century or before, as argued by compelling evidence in Steven Pinker’s book The Better Angels of our Nature (2011) which showed how despite what you see in the news, mortality rates from violence and diseases today are substantially lower than any other time in human history due to advancement in reasoning and scientific breakthroughs. It is my sincere hope that our reasoning continues to advance as there is no doubt we need to move beyond our commonsense moral intuitions to deal with the far greater challenges that face humanity—which our primate brain did not evolve to deal with—such as climate change, global inequality, and AI alignment, just to name a few. The moral psychologist, neuroscientist, and philosopher Joshua Greene has mentioned that what humanity lacks, is a coherent global moral philosophy to resolve disagreements. That global moral philosophy is, in his view, utilitarianism.
— Henry Sidgwick
In the Point of View of the Universe (2014), Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek and Peter Singer restate the works of the nineteenth-century utilitarian Henry Sidgwick in much more contemporary and accessible language before proceeding to test them rigorously against a variety of views held by contemporary writers in ethics. They conclude that they are indeed defensible.
First of all, this is an academic book that is written for philosophers or students of philosophy and therefore, basic prior knowledge of moral philosophy in terms of meta-ethics and normative ethics is required. In this review, I will only focus on the meta-ethics of utilitarianism (Chapters 1 to 7) and the authors’ ingenious argument (Chapter 7) in their attempt to resolve the “duality of practical reason” which was dubbed by Sidgwick as the “Profoundest Problem of Ethics.” The remaining chapters defend the normative theory of hedonistic utilitarianism.
Chapter 1 covers how ethics is defined—along with its scope, aim, and epistemology. In short, ethics is a study of what we “ought”—or what is “right”— to do, NOT what is the case or what is psychologically motivating or socially accepted for us to do. Most people make the mistake of conflating them. One can find it psychologically difficult to be motivated to donate $3,000 to save a child in Uganda dying from malaria, or socially difficult to stop consuming factory farmed meat. Still, the case can be made that they “ought” to do so if what they forgo is nothing of comparable moral importance like a new smartphone or their preference for tasting meat. What we ought to do can also be thought of as “what do we have most reasons to do,” thus leading to the conclusion that reason and morality are intertwined, and that not acting in accordance with what we ought to do is a form of irrationality.
This leads to Chapter 2 which covers Reason and Action, showcasing how reason—which stems from cognition like grasping the truth of a moral judgement— can itself lead to motivation for action—which stems from feelings and desires. But that reason is only one of such motivating factors since humans are not purely rational beings given our evolutionary origins. The authors also refute subjectivism in ethics, showcasing its implausibility using Derek Parfit’s case of a person with ‘Future Tuesday Indifference.” In doing so, they defend the meta-ethical position of a non-naturalistic objectivist—the view that moral judgements are either true or false, but that they cannot be derived from natural facts, and that they apply universally for all beings, independent from human beliefs.
Chapter 3 covers the epistemology of ethics, establishing intuitionism as a ‘method of ethics’ which has three phases, each one more philosophically developed than its predecessor, and only the third as satisfactory to a philosopher.
1. Perceptual Intuitionism—relies on immediate judgement alone and makes no appeal to more general principles or any kind of moral reasoning.
2. Dogmatic Intuitionism (or common sense morality)—discerning certain general rules which are clear. This is what is commonly accepted by most people in the world and forms the basis for non-consequentialist positions such as Deontology, but to Sidgwick, is not fully satisfactory as there is a need for justification for these rules.
3. Philosophical intuitionism—seeks to find a basis for commonsense morality by resting it on a principle or principles that are ‘more absolutely and undeniably true and evident.’—in other words, self-evident axioms.
Still on the topic of epistemology, in chapter 4, on Justification in Ethics, the authors reject John Rawls’ “reflective equilibrium”—a form of coherentism—for Sidgwick’s “foundationalism.” The authors state that coherence is a necessary consequence of the truth of a foundational principle, but not constitutive of the justification of its truth. This brings us to Chapter 5 on The Axioms of Ethics, which form the basis of taking “The Point of View of the Universe” when it comes to ethics, which is the view of a rational being.
1. Axiom of Justice—what is right for oneself must be right for all who are similarly circumstanced.
2. Axiom of Prudence—smaller present good should not be preferred to larger future good (time impartiality).
3. Axiom of Benevolence—the good of others is just as important as one’s own good (interpersonal impartiality).
However, while Sidgwick holds these three axioms to be self-evident, he expressed difficulty to secure the last axiom since it seems that both “rational egoism” and “rational benevolence” were both rational. He calls this tension between self-interest and impartiality the “duality of practical reason” and dubbed it as the “Profoundest Problem of Ethics,” which is detailed in-depth by the authors in chapter 6. Despite attempting to resolve the deadlock, Sidgwick did not think he was successful.
It is in Chapter 7 on “The Origins of Ethics and the Unity of Practical Reason,” where the authors accomplish what Sidgwick was unsuccessful in. In the most important and original chapter of the book, both Singer and Katarzyna attempt to resolve the “dualism of practical reason” in favour of rational benevolence. They claim that there are three elements in the process of establishing that an intuition has the highest possible degree of reliability:
1. Careful reflection leading to a conviction of self-evidence;
2. Independent agreement of other careful thinkers; and
3. The absence of a plausible explanation of the intuition as a non-truth-tracking psychological process.
It is necessary for any worthwhile intuition to meet the first two. But if an intuition meets the first two criteria but not the third—if the intuition could be explained as the outcome of a non-truth-tracking process—that would not show the intuition to be false, but it would cast some doubt on its reliability.
The authors then delve into the evolutionary origins of our ethical and moral intuitions—kin selection and reciprocal altruism. Since our commonsense moral intuitions are shaped by evolution—a process that is concerned with survival and reproduction to pass on genes, not truth—they are then subjected to “evolutionary debunking arguments.” However, they state that “rational benevolence” is immune to such debunking arguments since that principle runs counter to what evolution would have selected for.
As evolution operates at the gene level of an individual, not species or group level, any form of benevolence beyond kin selection or reciprocal altruism that emerge in an individual organism would have been selected against by evolution, not for. On the other hand, egoism would have been selected for by evolution. Even in the unlikely event that future scientific evidence finds that selection occurred at the group level, the benevolence that utilitarianism requires goes beyond the species level and considers all sentient beings and hence, could not have been selected for.
On this basis, the authors then mount an evolutionary debunking argument against “rational egoism” and conclude that it is an intuition that aligns with evolution and hence, was brought about by a non-truth-tracking process and thus, is unreliable. In doing so, they sway the favour of rationality towards rational benevolence (utilitarianism) which is more likely brought about by reason rather than evolution. The author adds that the capacity to grasp moral truths is an application of our capacity to reason, which enables us to grasp a priori truths in general, just like the truths of mathematics and the laws of physics.
Accepting the three axioms still leaves open the question of what is “good”. In chapters 8 and 9, the authors argue about what is the “Ultimate Good” by refuting desire-based and objective list theories, leaving hedonism as the most plausible. They then cover contemporary research on well-being and happiness, highlighting the work of Daniel Kahneman, by distinguishing “experienced (or affective) well-being” with “evaluative (or cognitive) well-being”—aka life satisfaction, and conclude that the latter is not completely reliable due to the “peak-end rule.” Hedonism is concerned with the former.
In the remaining chapters—10, 11, and 12— the authors defend utilitarianism against objections related to rules, demandingness, and distribution. I recommend reading An Introduction to Utilitarianism (2024) as they cover these topics in their defense of utilitarianism as a normative ethical theory in a manner that is simpler to read, and can be found free on utilitarianism.net.
To conclude, this is a 5/5 and a must-read for anyone with sufficient background knowledge on moral philosophy, particularly in meta-ethics and normative ethics, or anyone like me, who is a non-philosophy student but is deeply interested about the question of what is the ultimate value in the universe and what we ought to do. After reading this, which is arguably the strongest defense of hedonistic utilitarianism, it is hard to see how any rational being can refute it as the true moral theory. Perhaps, and not surprisingly, it is truly a challenge for most humans to breakfree from their moral intuitions shaped by evolutionary pressures that enabled us to survive and reproduce successfully for the past 600 million years, from the first bilaterians to our current primate form. Also, I acknowledge that most people just don’t have the luxury of time or are uninterested in studying moral philosophy as a hobby.
Nevertheless, the authors highlight that the use of reason has enabled humanity to make tremendous strides in moral progress since the 18th century or before, as argued by compelling evidence in Steven Pinker’s book The Better Angels of our Nature (2011) which showed how despite what you see in the news, mortality rates from violence and diseases today are substantially lower than any other time in human history due to advancement in reasoning and scientific breakthroughs. It is my sincere hope that our reasoning continues to advance as there is no doubt we need to move beyond our commonsense moral intuitions to deal with the far greater challenges that face humanity—which our primate brain did not evolve to deal with—such as climate change, global inequality, and AI alignment, just to name a few. The moral psychologist, neuroscientist, and philosopher Joshua Greene has mentioned that what humanity lacks, is a coherent global moral philosophy to resolve disagreements. That global moral philosophy is, in his view, utilitarianism.
May 22, 2023
I strongly recommend this book as an accessible discussion of contemporary issues around utilitarianism. Although the book is structured as a commentary on the 19th Century utilitarian philosopher Henry Sidgwick, it is very comprehensive and valuable.
The book achieves several things. First, it sets out Sidgwick’s views and relates them to later discussion. Second, it covers much of the philosophical literature around Sidgwick’s subjects. Third, it sympathetically but critically discusses the relevant work of Parfit. Fourth, it documents Singer’s considered views. Fifth, it extends Sidgwick’s position, notably on the duality of practical reason. Finally, it sets out and argues compelling for a contemporary utilitarian view close to that of Sidgwick.
The book’s main addition to Sidgwick is the view that evolutionary origins debunks the partial aspects of our intuitive morality but leaves intact impartial ethics, which comes from reason not from survival. This allows the dualism of practical reason to be resolved. Another important theme is that philosophers have caused confusions by focusing on a narrow sense of morality instead of Sidgwick’s broad sense of ethics which covers all reasoning about practical reason. Related to this is the theme that moral philosophy went astray in the 20th Century and is only now returning to Sidgwick’s normative theme of reasoning about what to do. It is suggested that happiness is the only source of ultimate value because it is not a debunkable belief but is uniquely directly known.
My summary of and extracts from the book: https://jamesaitchison.co.uk/?p=581
The book achieves several things. First, it sets out Sidgwick’s views and relates them to later discussion. Second, it covers much of the philosophical literature around Sidgwick’s subjects. Third, it sympathetically but critically discusses the relevant work of Parfit. Fourth, it documents Singer’s considered views. Fifth, it extends Sidgwick’s position, notably on the duality of practical reason. Finally, it sets out and argues compelling for a contemporary utilitarian view close to that of Sidgwick.
The book’s main addition to Sidgwick is the view that evolutionary origins debunks the partial aspects of our intuitive morality but leaves intact impartial ethics, which comes from reason not from survival. This allows the dualism of practical reason to be resolved. Another important theme is that philosophers have caused confusions by focusing on a narrow sense of morality instead of Sidgwick’s broad sense of ethics which covers all reasoning about practical reason. Related to this is the theme that moral philosophy went astray in the 20th Century and is only now returning to Sidgwick’s normative theme of reasoning about what to do. It is suggested that happiness is the only source of ultimate value because it is not a debunkable belief but is uniquely directly known.
My summary of and extracts from the book: https://jamesaitchison.co.uk/?p=581
January 25, 2018
Ethics is based on reason, and this makes it possible to expect that, as our reasoning develops and builds on the work of those who have thought about ethics before us, we will improve our understanding of ethics and get closer to the truth about what we ought to do.
Lazari-Radek and Singer do great justice to a tragically under-read moral philosopher in The Point of View of the Universe. The book tracks the ins and outs of Henry Sidgwick's analyses and arguments from his masterwork, The Methods of Ethics. While anyone interested in ethical theory would do well to read Sidgwick's work, no prior knowledge is necessary. The authors do a fantastic job of translating the Victorian English into modern day parlance, distilling the main themes and finer points, while contextualizing them with current moral philosophy. Highly recommended for anyone interested in applied ethics and normative theory.
Lazari-Radek and Singer do great justice to a tragically under-read moral philosopher in The Point of View of the Universe. The book tracks the ins and outs of Henry Sidgwick's analyses and arguments from his masterwork, The Methods of Ethics. While anyone interested in ethical theory would do well to read Sidgwick's work, no prior knowledge is necessary. The authors do a fantastic job of translating the Victorian English into modern day parlance, distilling the main themes and finer points, while contextualizing them with current moral philosophy. Highly recommended for anyone interested in applied ethics and normative theory.
February 7, 2024
This is the most comprehensive and engaging discussion of utilitarianism I have read thus far. It doesn't avoid looking at philosophical complexities but manages to balance in enough practical considerations to be viable for categorizing it as casual. While it focuses on Sidgwick's "Methods of Ethics", it tries to evaluate its merits from the lens of other well-developed ethical systems. By doing that it also serves well as a draft portrayal of those -- with both their achievements and problems.
All in all, it's a book I'll definitely get in paper, as I'll want to reread it.
All in all, it's a book I'll definitely get in paper, as I'll want to reread it.
February 8, 2025
I’m not a studied philosopher, but I find I am less convinced of utilitarianism after reading this book than I was beforehand. I intend to read Sidwick’s The Methods of Ethics now and I think that is what I would recommend for anyone considering this book. The entire book is a review of Methods and I would rather read an original work than a review of an original work. Maybe I would have gotten more out of this if I had read Methods first.
August 10, 2023
Three of diamonds.
This is a great overview of Sidgwick's philosophy and many issues relating to utilitarianism and realist meta-ethics in general. It has the clarity and simplicity of Singer's other work while also delving into complex arguments in dialogue with many other philosophers. I particularly liked the chapters on hedonism and esoteric morality.
This is a great overview of Sidgwick's philosophy and many issues relating to utilitarianism and realist meta-ethics in general. It has the clarity and simplicity of Singer's other work while also delving into complex arguments in dialogue with many other philosophers. I particularly liked the chapters on hedonism and esoteric morality.
May 8, 2025
I think this book is superior to The Moral Landscape. Though TML might be more readable for those less philosophically-inclined, it seems to commit Moore’s naturalistic fallacy by identifying good with happiness (i.e. deriving values from facts). While TPVU also defends a hedonistic moral view, it consciously avoids that fallacy.
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May 6, 2020An important contribution to contemporary philosophy
April 11, 2025
Wonderful book, amazing introduction to Sidgwick. Very clear writing.
April 25, 2024
Solid book. The two authors knew well Sidgwick’s thought. They make a solid défense and they try very well to solve the dualism that left Sidgwick so uncertain about his own theory. Not entirely sure on the authors views against Esoteric Morality, I think it’s a point that his way more complex that the weight they gave it. I’m also not sure Sidgwick would defend the very demanding view of Charity that Singer hold. It is said a few times that Sidgwick imagined the solution of the problem in a more institutional manner, but despite that they hammer in how easy it is to give money to poor people wherever they are nowadays… I think Sidgwick as an economist would have been smarter than that and recognize that this problem might be solvable by institutions like higher International aid by countries. I also didn’t like how little his Pratical ethics were mentioned or any other work.
But they wrote a pretty brilliant défense, that also defends his intuitionism which honestly is something that few authors have done. And I think it’s dope to see them defend the moral epistemology. The work also builds on Parfit a lot, so that’s great.
But they wrote a pretty brilliant défense, that also defends his intuitionism which honestly is something that few authors have done. And I think it’s dope to see them defend the moral epistemology. The work also builds on Parfit a lot, so that’s great.
December 14, 2014
Pretty strenuous to read but very worthwhile. Kinda like The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values but more in-depth and with a greater variety of ideas considered.
May 27, 2025
Must-read book if you study or like ethics. A great read if you are serious about ethics.
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