Just distribution of resources
Matjaž Potrč, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
Distribution of resources as continuous problem 
Distribution of resources is one of the main motors of history. Empires struggled for dominance of the worldly areas and the fight goes on. Twentieth century saw two wars with aims of conflicting expansion goals. Twenty-first century continues to be riddled by global north-south inequalities, of which European Union economic tensions provide just one example. 
Utilitarianism and consequentialism
Utilitarianism and consequentialism try to address the distribution of resources problem, treating it as a moral issue. Revolutionaries aiming at the prospect of a better world used to read Mill. Utilitarianism has as its goal increasing of the goodness in the world, which may be in the beginning conceived as enhancing of pleasure and avoiding of pain, to the possible maximal limits. Maximizing of the good is then extended to more sophisticated qualities, such as intellectual achievements. Consequentialism is concerned with consequences of one’s acts and with the direction of judgment leading to these acts, with utilitarianism as its subset.
The environmental dialectics in epistemology
We will tackle the problem of just distribution of resources as it is addressed by consequentialism through the environmental dialectics, which determines its outcome. We distinguish local, global and transglobal forms of consequentialism. In order to introduce this topics, we take a brief look at epistemology where such a dialectics is already proposed (Henderson and Horgan 2011; Henderson, Horgan and Potrč 2007). Local environment in respect to epistemic justification of belief provides an external support. One can say that my belief that the book is on the table is justified by reliability of my cognitive processes in a causally accessible external environment. But there come some challenges for such a view, such as these that are introduced by the famous fake barn cases. If I drive through a countryside where unbeknownst to me there are several fake barn construals, I lose the reliability of my belief that there is a barn over there. The environment is epistemically unfriendly, and I react by putting stress upon whatever stays accessible to me, namely upon my experiences. Now even my global experiential world may be put into question by the daemonic case: I may be fooled in what I think are my justified beliefs by the evil daemon scenario. I can find my justificatory refuge by switching from global to transglobal, i.e. evidentially supported environment. The dialectics lead me to justified beliefs of mine so that it turns out that evidential reliabilism provides the needed justification, in phenomenology constituted narrow environment. It is not just that evidence is adjoined to reliability in order to bring you to justified belief. Rather, evidence, in the transglobal environment constitutes epistemic justification of reliable processes supporting your beliefs.
Consequentialist environmental dialectics
Something similar as the just sketched epistemic environmental dialectics is proposed for the case of consequentialism. We start with local consequentialism, pointing out some problems that it faces. Trying to fix these we move into direction of global consequentialism. That one again encounters some hurdles that we try to fix by embracing transglobal brand of consequentialism.
Local consequentialism
We start with local consequentialism that is also known as act consequentialism. This one tells you that you are morally obliged to maximize the utility of your acts, i.e. by choosing such acts of yours that will provide the best outcome in the world. This will be the world where there will be less pain and more pleasure experienced by the people, where there will be an abundance of intellectual satisfaction. This kind of consequentialism thus tries to maximize the right and good consequences, as opposed to wrong and bad consequences of one’s actions. Moral dimension comes through the choice of your acts that again comes through your judgments which lead to these acts.  It sounds strange that such an approach is dubbed as local, for its main idea is consequential maximization utility of all your acts, related to what the whole world may be morally like: right or wrong, good or bad. So something is required from you, in respect to how you should judge, and how you should act, in vision of the consequences of your actions. And this is local. This is also objective consequences or utility requiring approach. Maximization provides objectively the biggest amount of good in the world.
Repugnant conclusion
Local consequentialism is committed to impartiality requirement. This one is in accordance with the just distribution of resources goal of local consequentialism. The idea is not just that there needs to be the world where the amount of right and good is maximal given the circumstances, but that goodies are justly distributed among the population. It seems unjust that some people would have more resources available than others, so that some of them would lead luxurious lives, whereas others would starve at the barely survival edge. Impartiality requirement thus seems appropriate. You should not give preferential treatment to any.
Say that there is a population where 100 people have 1.000 goodies each, and are thus able to live abundant luxurious lives. In the same population however there are 10 million people with 10 goodies each, all living their lives on the brink of starvation. Nothing seems more just than to take away their over the edge resources from the filthy rich and to distribute them among the total population. This will barely improve the lives of the total population though, as each one will now have something like 10.009 of goodies. The situation to which we came may be called     repugnant conclusion, for the world will not be populated by any really happy, but mostly with egalitarian miserable people. We came to the situation by following impartiality requirement, namely the requirement of just distribution. We ended up with fairly miserable world in respect to how much of good or of pleasure inhabits it. All people will be equally bad-off: that’s the repugnant conclusion.
Towards global consequentialism
If the conclusion is repugnant it leads us to reconsider things. You may decide that it is better nevertheless to treat people according to their merits, so that the people whose character is good and efficient, contributory, will have the right to get more goodies than the average. This would then be recognition of character contribution. In other words, you opt for more dimensions of evaluation than just the utility and consequences of deeds. Character is one natural dimension. And there is the feeling that your preference to deliver goods to your dear and near may be justified and even required, as this is in the case for a mother caring about her own children more than about some other starving folks in another continent. You now realize that local approach just cared about quantity of distribution of resources, not about quality. Character now brings the quality in, but there are other dimensions as well. This is now called global consequentialism (Driver 2012). You have countered repugnant conclusion and you have achieved some quality.
Utility monster enters the scene
But now consider this. There are two ladies, A and B. A’s character is all you can wish for, she’s laborious and enjoys her life, strives towards good and accomplishing matters, being virtuous along several dimensions. You have 1000 $. If you give it to A, she will use it in order to educate herself in aesthetic matters, and so she will qualitatively improve her life along with the lives of others with whom she will interact and thereby she will increase the good in the world. The lady B does not have any ambitions in life, really. If you will give money to her, she will buy access to even more TV channels, so that she will be able to continue her main activity which consists in watching TV. She will get even more depressing news from all around the world then. This means that the amount of goodness in the world will not increase thereby but to the contrary it will decrease through her actions, for depressive state of mind is contrary to enjoyment and pleasure residing the world. So according to the just distribution of goods, it seems, you should give your money to A and not to B, so that the amount of good things in the world will increase.
This now opens the door however to a slippery slope of a kind, through which the utility monster enters the scene. The previous case shows that you should give resources to the ones who will increase the good in the world, in order to stick to the maximization principle. Accordingly, you should give the goodies, the resources to the one who maximizes them to the greatest possible extent. And this is exactly the creature called utility monster. He enjoys and increases consequential utility of each piece of goodies or resources he gets his hands on by millions times, say whereas you and person such as A may increase it 10 times. People like B will even diminish the utility of resources given to them. So if you are rational, playing by the maximization of consequences rules, then you should really give everything available to the utility monster. So utility monster will suck all the resources in the world. Notice that utility monster is the mirror image of the repugnant conclusion case. 
Overcoming global consequentialism
Utility monster shows that playing by the global consequentialism rules is wrong. But now notice that global consequentialism (as Driver 2012 claims), plurality of features as good consequences embracing, not just action consequences or even rule-consequences, is objective kind of consequentialism. This means that all in recognizing contribution of persons according to their character, it does not stick to the subjective side of their deeds, it does not stick to their intentions, say. Dancy (2004) may be an objective consequentialist in this sense as he claims that the right thing to do is not falling judgment and acting upon one’s intentions, but upon the basis of what is objectively required. The right reason for me to help her does not reside in my intention about helping her, but in the objective circumstances where the received help is welcome. In this sense, objective consequentialist dismisses intentions and other subjective stuff. Consequences that count are just objective consequences, and not someone’s intentions. (Naturally, intentions seem to be matters that support action, in counter distinction to just physical movement description, say.) Utility monster now seems to put all this objective consequentialist stuff, along its several dimensions (as global consequentialism proceeds) into question. What is the way out?
Towards transglobal consequentialism
Utility monster pushes dialectics to the subsequent stage: transglobal consequentialism. This one disciplines consequentialism outcome in transglobal, i.e. ethical, i.e. your best take as based upon the available judgmental consequences, evidential epistemic justification, i.e. your brain in a vat experiential equivalent measure. Notice that global consequentialism recognizes character besides to other dimensions of objective consequences, but it does not get all the way: it tries to keep a kind of balance between character and objective consequentialism. Now, utilitarian monster grabs all the goodies, in order to increase utility and good consequences in the world. That’s a gloomy kind of world however, as most of the people are in dire straits, really, with just the monster being there with his shining success. The way out to counter him is to cut the objective consequentialist pretensions, and recognize just subjective stuff, such as intentions to act in good manner. Then many virtuous people will be able to contribute to the amount of good or right in the world. Their perspective will be narrow in this case. Notice that utility monster thrived upon objective consequences being in the center of attention. But now, countering himn, evidence comes into the play if consequences are close to intentions. The fact is however that there is nothing else as the evidentially justified stuff for each one that is available for decision to make an appropriate judgment. This is what Potrč's principle advises: “Form your judgments (and beliefs) according to the best take upon the evidence that is available to you, in your best faith.” (Horgan and Potrč Forthcoming). This narrow advice is really all that there is in order to make the right judgment. Utility monster’s objective approach is superseded in this manner.
In this way the dialectics came to transglobal evidentially and phenomenologically founded consequentialism at the synthetic stage, disciplining thereby local consequentialism (just objective consequences) and global consequentialism (multidimensional mixture of objective and character-guided, i.e. subjective consequences) towards the quality stressing transglobal intention based consequences as the basis how to direct one’s actions. In the experiential world, and as we believe also in the real world, this experiential take upon things delivers the best consequences that inhabit judgmental directions.
One thing that global consequentialism opts for is buying just real consequences, not possible people obligations and consequences directed at them. The reality of transglobal consequentialism in this sense gets the quality of the experiential world underpinned.
Experience machine and brain in a vat
Experience machine (Nozick 1974) is a thought experiment that is usually taken to undermine Benthamian pleasure consequentialism in the form of hedonism. If you feel that your life could have been going better (as perhaps most of us do), you get offered a choice of programming yourself a brain in a vat experience for the next two years, with an option to reprogram the experience machine following your wishes in two years time as you wake up from your pleasant world into the actual one for the period of ten minutes. The idea is that you would not choose your being in experiential machine though, for you would like your experiences of living beautiful and successful life to be real, to be happening not just in an experiential but in the real world. This is what counts against private pleasure experiences.
Now compare experience machine to brain in a vat scenario. A criticism of the experience machine is that it goes wrong on agency-sourcehood. This, says Driver (2012) is misguided. I agree as I understand that there is phenomenology of agency and self-sourcehood for the agent in experience machine. The idea with pleasure machine is that it provides criticism of consequentialism. The idea is further that there needs to be objective pleasure around, not just experienced pleasure, in order for the goodness (pleasure) to be there in the world, for goodness to be maximized. The gist of the criticism is that the objectivity, the objective consequences are needed in order for utilitarianism, consequentialism to come through. 
	I support the view that your experiential world that is presumably externally supported is equivalent to your brain in a vat duplicate’s experiential world. The intuition against this take is that the external world is important. Now, we (Potrč Forthcoming; Horgan and Tienson 2002; Graham, Horgan and Tienson 2004; Horgan 2013) have argued that my and my brain in a vat’s duplicate experiential worlds are equivalent, that we have the same phenomenology. Searle endorsed my view that brain in a vat does it, and that no reference to the external world is needed, in matters of intentionality, once there is dominance of phenomenal intentionality.
	Here we can use experience machine thought experiment. As already claimed, the criticism of this scenario is that according to consequentialism, the goodness, pleasure, should not just be experienced, but that it should be in the world, i.e. something external. This is an externalist criticism. It rests upon the intuition that the increase of goodness, utility, of pleasure, should be in the world, and not just experienced. 
	But wait a minute here. If consequences are determined in respect to goodness, maximized goodness in the world, and if goodness is subsequently understood as the presence of pleasure, this refers to the psychological states of the agents, and of the people. Seems that we have kind of empiricist conundrum here, similar to the one where Carnap criticizes the use of concepts in philosophy that do not proceed from empirical sources. But these empirical sources (and this thing appeared strange to me for quite a long time) are grounded in first-person perspective (this is recognized by Carnap 1928), which is a quite sensible thing to claim, as experiences are psychological, first-person states. I have this experience, from my first person point of view, and you do not participate in it. You have your own first-person view experience, and these do not match. 
This means that objectivity requirement is rooted in the overall presumably external consequences. But in order to judge, one needs to have recourse to experiential  consequences. Judgment, namely is psychological activity. And from your judgment leading to action consequences of maximization of utility, of pleasure (and not miserable feelings of people) in the world follow. 
Here is the thesis: As consequences related to moral judgment supporting consequentialism are moral indeed, there is responsibility of the one who judges. Such a responsibility related to judgment and tied to it cannot embrace all the consequences, but just the consequences that one may preview and foresee, as based upon one’s evidential epistemic support for the judgment that one makes.This is related to the demandingness problem of consequentialist maximization, the problem that does away with supererogatory acts, for all the acts are required from the agent.
Scalar consequentialism Norcross (1990, 2005, 2008) tried to find a way out here, i.e. to push aside the demandingness worry for consequentialism, by allowing sufficient and not always maximal following of the maximization principle: one is just required to do the best in respect to maximization as related to contextual circumstances, good enough, but not perfect good action support. 
Scalar consequentialist is on the right path here. He eliminates right and wrong for scalar grades of good and bad of act’s consequences. Now we offer a helping hand to him: compatible  with scalar and contextual approach to maximization in this manner is moral judgment (consequentialist moral judgment) related experiential machine pleasure maximization in the world. Pleasure or miserable feelings are consequences of one’s actions. All these actions are in fact narrow, brain in a vat experiential duplicate of the judger equivalent actions grounded. Consequentialistically minded moral judger cannot predict all of the consequences of her acts, all ensuing act-consequences. This is intractable for her. Now, she needs to stick to what she has access to, to her evidential epistemic judgment support that she happens to be related to. She has a moral obligation to fall the judgment in question according to her best good faith. There is no other support out there.
The external circumstances and consequences go down the drain once as one embraces first-person judgment, i.e. experiential judgment as the source of maximization. Similarly as in the intentionality case external causal links go down the drain. 
One problem here seems to be with a weirdo construing his judgments upon his distorted evidence, serial killer say acting in his best faith that killing people will save the world and thus maximize the overall goodness. We can propose as solution to this though our pluralist view about prima facie duties. Notice that prima facie duties need not be exceptionless, which poses an additional question by the way. The critic may say that these prima facie duties offer an external idealized and context-free measure of judgment’s appropriateness, similar to Peter Railton’s (1984) external criteria for consequentialist effectivity.
But take a look at the following. There is no other basis of judgment than the evidence that the judger possesses, in her best faith upon the available evidence. This is Potrč’s principle leaning.
Coming back to the main issue. Experiential machine is taken to be problem for consequentialism. But given that consequentialism builds upon the judgment, experiential machine thought experiment may actually support consequentialism, bringing it to discipline the demandingness problem, and moving it closer to scalar consequentialism. A straight criticism of externalist, causal and similar approaches is needed. It also needs to be specified why this approach is transglobal and not just global: global consequentialism involves various dimensions in evaluation of moral judgment and of its subsequent consequences, whereas transglobal consequentialism disciplines all these dimensions by overwhelming transglobal brain in a vat related and experience machine compatible point of view. This is transglobal narrow point of view. Similarly as there is phenomenal intentionality that disciplines externalist accounts of intentionality, there is then phenomenally grounded transglobal (judgment based) consequentialism that disciplines externalist versions of consequentialism. Quality is achieved through this, as opposed to quantitative local (act-consequentialism) and global consequentialisms. Sticking to just quantity -- in local consequentialism one meets repugnant conclusion, and in global consequentialism one meets utility monster -- needs to be disciplined by dismissing externalist quantitative criteria, and to get back to qualitative criteria of goodness or badness judgment evaluation. This is then similar to the criticism of externalist causal accounts of intentionality from the point of view of phenomenal intentionality. There is just falling your judgment according to your best faith as based upon the available evidence that you have. Forget about externalist, causal relations, for the path for consequentialism is falling of judgment, and this judgment then leads to several consequences, that all are best qualitatively seen through transglobal phenomenological judgment perspective. Judgment leads to actions. These are acts, seen through judgment perspective, that lead to scalar maximization and now to transglobal maximization of resources and of the good in the world, i.e. in the experiential transglobal world, compatible with your brain in a vat intentional experiential world and to the world related to the experiential machine. In this manner experiential machine supports consequentialism, understood as transglobal brand of consequentialism.

References

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