By Fred Feldman

A number of years in the past I came upon a wonderful little paper during which Hector-Neri Castaneda exhibits that normal models of act utilitarian­ l ism are officially incoherent. i used to be intrigued by way of his argument. It had lengthy looked as if it would me that I had a company take hold of on act utilitarianism. certainly, it had frequently looked as if it would me that it was once the clearest and most fascinating of normative theories. but the following was once an easy and comparatively uncontrover­ sial argument that confirmed, with just some trivial assumptions, that the doctrine is almost unintelligible. The gist of Castaneda's argument is that this: believe we comprehend act utilitarianism to be the view that an act is compulsory if and provided that its application exceeds that of every substitute. consider it really is compulsory for a undeniable individual to accomplish an act with elements - we will name it 'A & B'. Then, evidently sufficient, it's also compulsory for this individual to accomplish the elements, A and B. If act utilitarianism have been actual, we appar­ ently may infer that the software of A & B is greater than that of A, and better than that of B (because A & B is compulsory, and the opposite acts are possible choices to A & B).