Utilitarianism demands that agents adopt utilitarian ideals; that agents give utilitarian ideals the kind of priority that would have them function as the central identity-conferring commitments of their life.
It is not hard to see that the proposed reading of the distinction should easily pass the litmus test given above, classifying objective utilitarian reasons as agent-neutral (as with (P)) and egoistic reasons as agent-relative.
Thus, we get to the utilitarian conclusion that each agent as a member of society has reason to maximize the aggregate social good even at the expense of the individual good of herself (or others).
For a start, a plausible litmus test for any proposed version of the distinction is that it uncontroversially classifies egoistic reasons as agent-relative and utilitarian reasons (to maximize happiness, simpliciter) as agent-neutral.
A recent study showed that, when it comes to motivation, successful agents are "utilitarian," or: …motivated by money and security.
But this worry about potential conflicts between the agent's own interests and utilitarian moral demands seems to arise for any conception of morality that recognizes other-regarding moral demands.
We adopt a utilitarian perspective on social choice, assuming that agents have (possibly latent) utility functions over some space of alternatives.
This paper attempts to show that an implicit consideration, using the utilitarian paradigm of maximizing the sum of agents' utilities, is insufficient.
In general, Williams concludes, identity-conferring commitments cannot play the kind of role in act-utilitarian moral deliberation that is required for an agent to act with integrity, that is, for an agent to act with genuine conviction in matters of grave, identity-determining importance to them.
We can say that Williams takes the utilitarian world-view to be absurd, because it requires agents to act on external reasons.
