| | Merlin,
I think a solution might be in one's focus. Take pragmatists. They're supposed to be "practical." By contrast, all other philosophies are either impractical or less practical -- but what hidden premises have we just accepted there? Well, we accepted the premise that reality is something that changes and that the same problems popping up in differing times and differing places will always have differing solutions. We accepted that humanity is something that changes, that natural law is something that changes (or doesn't actually exist), etc.
It is therefore a petitio principii to refer to pragmatism as practical. There is a focus either on method or on result. What pragmatists say is that there is no best method, only best results. This lop-sided focus is the same with champions of utilitarianism -- even for rule-utilitarians (those attempting to confine the scope of morality to a set of heuristic rules). If pragmatists claim a monopoly on practicality, then utilitarians claim a monopoly on rational, utility-maximizing choice. In both cases, they are wrong. When you ask your question about the CEO abandoning egoism in order to embrace a means toward maximum utility, then you are setting up that claim that utilitarians start out with a monopoly on utility-maximization.
There isn't a good reason to presume that what is actually in a CEO's rational self-interest is something that doesn't maximize the expected utility from a rationally-optimized mix of intended effects on customers, employees, and shareholders. This is confusing the method with the results. The error of utilitarianism is that it starts in a vacuum and then asks the individual about results they supposedly want to maximize. A utilitarian question might be:
What's the best way to deal with world hunger? And then the utilitarian answers would only be roughly similar, but strikingly similar in that they are automatically aimed at the chosen goal. The burning question is: Who chooses the goal? In the case of utilitarians, it's the guy with the loudest voice. That's why utilitarianism is so good at steering an unsuspecting public away from what is in their best (egoistic) interests. Dictators love utilitarianism, because it tricks you into thinking only about really neat results, like rivers flowing with milk and honey. But it is just whim-worship. It is a separation of ends and means.
In your CEO dilemma, the CEO may have to deal in an arena of imperfect information -- where he doesn't know precisely who to appeal to and in what measure -- but he can still base his action on his very own long-range, wide-scale interests. Let's make it more easy and concrete.
A CEO could begin to use whips and chains on his employees instead of paying them well. In the beginning ...
1) the customers won't be affected, because they are getting the same quality of product or service at the same price as they were paying before
2) the shareholders will reap the temporary reward of extra profits from the imposed slave-labor -- a temporary windfall for them
3) the employees will suffer
Now, if you take the egoist view, then this decision was morally wrong -- because in real life it won't be in the CEO's personal interest. If a CEO actually did this, he would soon be in jail with a tummy full of regret. So, we can say that it is not in his interest to make this choice to help shareholders at the cost of hurting employees. But the stickler is when some academician chimes in saying that the choice to refrain from engaging in slave labor is utilitarian.
That's just another way of saying that the CEO was acting in his own personal interests. Utilitarianism doesn't add anything to a moral calculation, it's just a retroaction rationalization for results that you wanted in the first place.
Ed
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... the country deserves us to be willing to compromise on behalf of the greater good.
