The "There's No Time" Objection

In Chapter II of Mill's Utilitarianism, he addresses an objection to the utilitarian argument that oftentimes there is not enough time to weigh the consequences of our actions in the moment. Mill's response is, "...that there has been ample time, namely, the whole past duration of the human species. During all that time, mankind have been learning by experience the tendencies of actions; on which experience all the prudence, as well as all the morality of life, are dependent" (25). I will argue that Mill's response to this objection does not treat it seriously enough.

Mill's rejoinder that humanity's existence through time has provided us the general experience to understand the outcomes of our actions is not as readily apparent as Mill makes it seem. He commits a straw man fallacy when he says, "People talk as if the commencement of this course of experience had hitherto been put off, and as if, at the moment when some man feels tempted to meddle with the property or life of another, he had to begin considering for the first time whether murder and theft are injurious to human happiness" (25). Mill uses the examples of murder and theft, which tend to be far more often morally black and white than other moral issues we run into. The original objection is really targeted to any situation where we are forced to make a moral choice quickly.

For example, a firefighter runs into a building that is rapidly burning down. He hears the cries of a baby upstairs, but notices that the mother is passed out downstairs in the hallway. He only has time to save one before the house crashes down. It is very difficult for the utilitarian to weigh the consequences of each action the firefighter takes in the small frame of time that he has to choose. There is not really a precedent of action in human history between saving a baby and a mother based on happiness. What is a utilitarian to do here?

It seems that this type of "damned if you do, damned if you don't" type objection is not necessarily fatal to utilitarianism. Perhaps there is equal moral weight when choosing between a mother and her child, though I suspect most people tend to think it is more morally important to save the baby. Either way, utilitarianism has to come up with some way to answer situations where it is difficult to judge the consequences of one's actions and Mill's response was insufficient to knock down this objection.