Utilitarianism

MORAL PHILOSOPHY: Utilitarianism

ACT V RULE UTILITARIANISM

Act utilitarians believe that whenever we are deciding what to do, we should perform the action that will create the greatest net utility. In their view, the principle of utility should be applied on a case by case basis. The right action in any situation is the one that yields more utility (i.e. creates more well-being) than other available actions.

Rule utilitarianism claims that an action is right if, and only if, it complies with those rules which, if everybody followed them, would lead to the greatest happiness (compared to any other set of rules). Rather than considering actions individually in relation to whether they create the greatest happiness, we need to take the bigger picture. Morality should be understood as a set of rules. The aim of these rules is to maximise happiness. Actions are right when they follow a rule that maximises happiness overall – even when the action itself doesn’t maximise happiness in this particular situation. According to rule utilitarianism, we don’t have to work out the consequences of each act in turn to see if it is right. We need to work out which rules create the greatest happiness, but we only need to do this once, and we can do it together. This is what Mill says human beings have done over time, giving us our customary moral rules (‘secondary principles’). Rule utilitarianism gives rules a formal place in its theory of whether an action is right.

STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES OF ACT AND RULE

ACT

Provides a clear and simple way of making decisions – consider the consequences of the different actions you could perform and choose that action that brings about the greatest happiness.
It makes complicated decisions easy – the only thing that matters is happiness (and surely everyone wants happiness).
Can assess each situation on its own merits
It does not rely on any controversial or unverifiable theological or metaphysical claims (e.g. the existence of God), so it is accessible to everyone.
If we applied this theory to our lives we might become more unselfish, this is because everyone's happiness counts the same.
Is it possible to work out the consequences of an action for human happiness? How can we know or work out the consequences of an action, to discover whether it maximises happiness or not? Surely this will be too difficult and too time-consuming for us to do.
No type of action is ruled out, in principle, as immoral. For example, if torturing a child produces the greatest happiness, then it is right to torture a child.
It could require us to violate the standards of justice. For example, imagine that you are a judge in a small town. Someone has committed a crime, and there has been some social unrest resulting in injuries, violent conflict, and some rioting. As the judge, you know that if you sentence an innocent man to death, the town will be calmed and peace restored. If you set him free, even more unrest will erupt, with more harm coming to the town and its people. Utilitarianism seems to require punishing the innocent in certain circumstances, such as these.
Some critics argue it is too impartial – if a house was on fire and you could only save your mother or the world’s best surgeon you would according to the PoU have to save the surgeon. No room for emotions. John Rawls advocates this criticisms pointing out that it could support a more dictatorial society just because it produces the greatest amount of pleasure.
It is too subjective, everyone has different views on happiness/pleasure

RULE

Mill’s idea of creating generalised rules makes the theory more objective and provides us a means to creating universal rules.
According to rule utilitarianism, a rule forbidding torture of children will clearly cause more happiness if everyone followed it than a rule allowing torture of children. So it is wrong to torture children. More generally, individuals have rights, which are rules, because if people have to follow these rules (respect people’s rights), that leads the greatest happiness.
Act utilitarianism requires us to ignore the moral status of particular relationships such as family. Whereas rule utilitarianism can allow a rule that allows partiality to our family and friends as this will create more happiness than a rule that requires us to be impartial all the time. This secures the moral importance of such relationships – they are necessary to happiness. Of course, we shouldn’t be completely partial. We still need to consider the general happiness, but we only need to act in such a way that, if everyone acted like that, would promote the greatest happiness.

Bentham (1748-1832)

Bentham developed a type of quantitative hedonistic act utilitarianism judge each situation differently and arguing that actions are morally right or wrong depending on their consequences and nothing else. His theory is therefore teleological, from the Greek world Telos meaning ends.

For Bentham humans are only motivated by and can only aim for pleasure (known as psychological hedonism, from the Greek word hedone meaning pleasure), stating that “nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters pains and pleasure.” He then goes on to argue that bringing about pleasure and avoiding pain is the right thing to do; “it is for them alone to point out what we ought to do”.

This is also known as the ‘Principle of Utility’. Utility means usefulness. Bentham states that utility is “that property in any object, whereby it tends to produce benefit, advantage, pleasure, good, or happiness.” Bentham was clear that every person’s pleasure had equal value: "each to count for one, and none for more than one". Therefore, for Bentham, as action is morally right if the outcome produced the greatest amount of pleasure (which Bentham equates to happiness) for the greatest number of people. In other words, an act is morally right if it seeks to maximise pleasure and minimise pain both for the individual and for the sum of individuals in a community. Bentham’s utilitarianism is therefore known as quantitative as he was concerned with the quantity of pleasure produced. Bentham believed that all types of pleasure were equal; therefore quality was not an issue.

Bentham sought to develop a way of calculating the amount of pleasures and pain and therefore formulated the utility calculus, also known as the hedonic calculus. This was supposedly a scientific measure. He produced seven criteria to measure pleasure and pain. These were:

Purity – how free from pain?
Remoteness – how near/distant is the pleasure?
Extent – how many people will experience the pleasure/how widespread is it?
Duration – how long will the pleasure last?
Intensity – how powerful will the pleasure be?
Certainty – how likely or probably is it that pleasure will result?
Fucundity – is it likely to be followed by other pleasures? Will the actions lead to more pleasures?

John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)

Mill's Proof

Mill's Utilitarianism

• Atheist
• Extreme empiricist - argues that you can’t strictly ‘prove’
• It is not something you can deduce from other premises
• Mill does not rely on intuitions or innate ideas, appeals only to factual evidence
• First principles (basic assumptions) in any area of knowledge can not be proven
• Nonetheless we can give reasoned arguments

The only evidence that something is desirable is that it is actually desired
Each person desires their own happiness
Therefore, each person’s happiness is desirable
Each person’s happiness is desirable

The general happiness is desirable
Each person’s happiness is a good to that person
The general happiness is a good to the aggregate of all persons

Happiness is one of the ends of conduct
Happiness is one of the criteria for morality
Other elements can be ends of conduct too
However, these other elements start as a means to gaining happiness for the persons
Therefore, happiness should be seen as the sole end of our conduct

Mill was uncomfortable with some of the implications of Bentham's Utilitarianism. He suggested that utilitarian principles could be used to make 'rules of thumb' to live by. Mill was an advocate for rule utilitarianism arguing that we should create ethical norms that generally provide the best result. Mill called these 'secondary principles' - rules which experience has shown tend to produce the greatest happiness e.g. We should not encroach on the rights of others.

Mill was concerned that the Utility Principle could lead to ‘the tyranny of the majority’ whereby policies that lead to the greatest happiness for the majority could have a very negative affect on the minority. Mill argued that the powers of a democratic government need to be limited by a respect and recognition for individual rights and liberties.

Mill also took a qualitative approach arguing that some pleasures are more valuable than others. He divided pleasures into higher pleasures and lower pleasures. Higher pleasures are things such as poetry and music (only accessible to humans); lower pleasures are things such as eating and drinking. He said that it is ‘better to be a human being dissatisfied rather than being a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied’.

Mill argues that humans prefer pleasures of the mind even if pleasures of the body are more pleasurable. Mill said that those who had experienced both higher and lower pleasures were Competent Judges and these people would choose higher pleasures even knowing that he/she may be more satisfied as a pig.

J.J.C. Smart (1920-2012)

Asks.. is only pleasure good? Is only happiness (understood as involving both quantity and quality of pleasure) good? Is anything else good? (He refers to Moore) SMART agrees with Mill that not all pleasures are equal.

Smart - pleasures are not equal
Someone is wired up to electrodes in his brain, so that just by pressing a button he could give himself intense sensual pleasure reliably with no ill-effects.

What should we say if he came to prefer this to anything else, and spent all his spare time doing this? What if we knew that most people would feel the same if they were wired up? Is this a picture of a good or happy life, one we should bring about as the maximisation of happiness? He may be content, we may be content, but we do not want to become like him as we want to do more with our lives.

What is the difference between Mill and Smart? For Smart it is not a matter of the quality of the pleasure but our attitude towards it. To say someone is happy, and not just contented, is to express approval of their pleasures. We think the life as an electrode operator is wasted. We do not think such a person ‘happy’. Smart claims that Mill’s position is not a form of pure hedonism after all. Pure hedonism recognising pleasure as the only good and sole criterion for what we ought to bring about. Such a position can only defend the place of higher pleasures in terms of their fecundity. Mill’s concept of pleasure is evaluative so it is not pure hedonism

Smart – pleasure ‘in itself’ is never bad
Imagine there is just one person who believes (falsely) that elsewhere in the world, other people are being tortured. This thought delights him a great deal; he is a sadist. Is his pleasure bad? Would the world be morally better place if this belief cause him sadness?

Mill says… it is good that he feels pleasure. No one is in fact suffering. Our difficulty in accepting this in the real world is that pleasures often cause actual suffering. Smart agrees with Mill... no pleasure is intrinsically bad; it is only ever bad if it causes pain.

Robert Nozick (1938-2002) - The Experience Machine

Aristotle argues that happiness is the ultimate end to the means of living— the meaning of life. This is something that the hedonist would likely agree with. However Nozick question the truth of that idea. In “The Experience Machine,” he proposes a hypothetical situation in which humans have the option to plug into a machine that would give you any experience you wanted. While in it, you would have no idea that what was happening wasn’t real. At the surface, this seems to be an ideal scenario. You can do, feel, and experience anything you want to; you can achieve a state of total bliss by handpicking the way your life will go. But Nozick argues that most people would not choose to plug into the machine. He states that there are more things that matter to us than just the way that we feel; if our internal emotional state is all that matters, why not plug in? Nozick says that we want to do things, and not just to experience doing them. He says that what we are matters, not just what we do. And he argues that humans crave contact with a “deeper reality”. All of these aspects of living are stripped away when you plug into the machine. And these parts of living seem to be ignored by utilitarianism, by just focusing on what causes you or others pleasure. Nozick states that “what we desire is to live ourselves, in contact with reality”. This emphasis on wanting to stay in touch with reality implies that we want more than just the happiness that the machine would be able to supply. We crave the fabric of reality, including the hardships and the struggles that make happiness distinct.

Non-Hedonistic Utilitarianism (Preference)

A key problem with classic utilitarian arguments is that they doe not define the nature of ‘good', people might have very different ideas about what constitutes their benefit, pleasure, or happiness.Therefore it is important to consider what is in people’s interest recognising that what is in the interest of one person may go against the interest of another. But there is a further problem. How do I determine what is in the interest of another person? Since utilitarian arguments originated at a time when democracy was developing and sought to reflect a political situation where everyone counted, it is only reasonable to allow everyone concerned to express their own preferences, rather than someone else’s idea of a benefit imposed on them.

Richard Hare

Hare introduced ‘preference utilitarianism’. In this form if utilitarianism it is important to take into account the preferences of the individuals involved, except where those preferences come into direct conflict with the preferences of others.

The right thing to do therefore is to maximise the chance that everyone’s preferences will be satisfied. Preferences are arguably easier to find out as we can just ask!

G E Moore

Naturalistic Fallacy: Moore argued that it was a fallacy to define 'good' as happiness of pleasure or any kind of naturalistic concept.

Good can only be grasped by our intuitions. Moore's theory is known as 'ideal utilitarianism'. Ideal, Moore defined as "the best state of things conceivable". Moore lists greatest goods e.g. beauty and friendship. We should am to maximise these ideas in the world, not only because they bring about pleasure, but because this would help to bring us closer to the best state of things conceivable.

Singer

Peter Singer argues today for preference utilitarianism. He proposes a utilitarian system with ‘the best interests’ of the individuals concerned at the heart of the ethical decision making. Singer’s formulation of utilitarianism replaces ‘pleasure’ with ‘best interests’. Singer argues that humans have no inherent right to better treatment than animals - instead their ability to suffer and their rationality need to be evaluated. A dolphin or a chimpanzee may be more rational and be able to suffer more than a newborn baby. Beings that have rationality or self-consciousness are more important than mere sentient beings. If you had to choose to save a child or a dog, you should save the higher "person" - the child. If the choice was between saving a newborn baby who had no family and a mature chimpanzee and could only save one of them, the chimp should be saved.

Problems for utilitarianism

Issues named on the spec

Whether pleasure is the only good (Nozick) - See above

Fairness and individual liberty/rights

A second criticism of act utilitarianism is that no type of action is ruled out, in principle, as immoral. For example, if torturing a child produces the greatest happiness, then it is right to torture a child. Suppose a group of child abusers only find and torture abandoned children. Only the child suffers pain (no one else knows about their activities). But they derive a great deal of happiness. So more happiness is produced by torturing the child than not, so it is morally right. This is clearly the wrong answer. Act utilitarians can reply that it is very probable that someone will find out, and then many people will be unhappy. Because we should do what is likely to produce the greatest happiness, we shouldn’t torture children. However, the theory still implies that if it was very unlikely anyone would find out, then it would be right to torture children. But other people finding out isn’t what makes torturing children wrong. This thought expresses two possible objections. First, we can point out that the example shows that happiness (or satisfying people’s preferences) is not always morally good. For example, the happiness child abusers get from hurting children is morally bad. The fact that the abusers are made happy by what they do doesn’t make their action better at all, but worse. So there must be some other standard than happiness for what is morally good. Second, we can appeal to moral rights, understood in terms of restrictions placed on how people can treat each other. For instance, I have a right that other people don’t kill me (the right to life). I also have a right to act as I choose as long as this respects other people’s rights (the right to liberty). One of the purposes of rights is to protect individual freedom and interests, even when violating that freedom would produce some greater good. For example, my right to life means that no one should kill me to take my organs, even if doing so could save the lives of four other people who need, respectively, a heart, lungs, kidneys and a liver. Utilitarianism doesn’t respect individual rights or liberty, because it doesn’t recognise any restrictions on actions that create the greatest happiness. Some utilitarians simple accept this. We have no rights. As long as we consider situations realistically, then whatever brings about the greatest happiness is the right thing to do. Counterexamples that appeal to very unlikely scenarios are unhelpful, because they have little to do with real life. In real life, act utilitarianism gives us the correct moral answer.

Issues around partiality

Many of the things that we do to make people happy are aimed at specific other people, our family and friends. We do them favours, buy them presents, generally spend our time and money on them. But act utilitarianism argues that in our decisions, we need to consider the greatest happiness that our actions could create. So shouldn’t we spend much less time with the particular people we love and more time helping people who need help, e.g. through voluntary work, and likewise spend less money on the people we love and much more money giving to charity? This would lead to greater happiness, because people who really need help will be made much more happy by the same amount of money or effort than people who don’t really need anything. There are different ways we can develop this thought into an objection. For instance, we can argue that utilitarianism is too idealistic, expecting people to give priority to needy strangers over those they know and love. Or again, we can argue that utilitarianism misses something morally important in counting each person equally. In the abstract, each person is equal, but to me, each person does not and should not count equally. It is morally right and good (or at least, not morally wrong) to show partiality towards those people one knows and loves. Mill’s response, in Ch. 2, is simply to say that on the whole, there are very few opportunities any of us have to benefit people ‘in general’. And so only considering and contributing to the happiness of a few people is absolutely fine, and utilitarianism does not require more. But there are two objections to this response. First, if it was true in Mill’s day that people could not often benefit people ‘in general’, that no longer seems true today. There are many charities that work around the globe and welcome volunteer fund-raisers, and the news makes us continually aware of many different causes of suffering around the world. It is perfectly possible, therefore, to dedicate much of one’s time and money to helping others ‘in general’, and there are many opportunities to do so. So it seems that utilitarianism does demand more. Second, Mill’s response doesn’t address the objection that utilitarianism simply fails to understand the moral importance of particular relationships. If the general happiness is the ultimate end that we should seek in our action, then we should think of our friendships as a way to maximise the general happiness. Suppose a woman visits a friend in hospital. The friend thanks her. She replies, ‘It was nothing, I was just doing my duty, maximising the general happiness in the world’. The friend can feel upset – the visit isn’t personal, it is just a means to create happiness. If some other action would have created more happiness, the woman would have done that instead of visiting the friend. Or again, suppose a man is in a boating accident with both his wife and a stranger. Neither can swim, and he can only rescue one. We might think that he should simply rescue his wife. But if he thinks, ‘Rescuing my wife will lead to greater happiness than rescuing the stranger’, this seems to miss the particular importance that being married has, including its moral importance. The man has ‘one thought too many’, and we (and his wife!) can object to his way of thinking about what to do. Friendship requires that the friend is valued as the individual person that they are, and that we act out of love for them. The motives that are involved in friendship seem to preclude a utilitarian understanding of morality. Yet doing something for a friend is morally good. Furthermore, attachments of love and friendship are central to our happiness, indeed to wanting to stay alive at all. But these attachments motivate actions that are not impartial between everyone’s happiness. Utilitarianism fails to recognise the moral importance of partiality. Some utilitarians have replied that morality is just much more demanding than we like to think. Can you defend spending money on your friends, rather than helping others through charity, when much of the world is in poverty or at war? However, Mill explicitly allows for partiality in his discussion of justice in Ch. 5. He would most likely argue that we are considering utilitarianism in the wrong way again. People have learned that having partial relationships is central to happiness, and so it does not maximise happiness to require people to give them up in favour of promoting the general happiness all the time. To this response we may object that Mill is giving up on act utilitarianism. Instead, he is appealing to general rules about living, and considering which of these rules would maximise happiness. And this is rule utilitarianism.

Problems with calculation

Act utilitarianism seems to offer a clear and straightforward way of discovering what is right and wrong. We need to consider how much pleasure and pain (or preference satisfaction) an action will cause. But is it possible to work out the consequences of an action for human happiness? How can we know or work out the consequences of an action, to discover whether it maximises happiness or not? Surely this will be too difficult and too time-consuming for us to do. Bentham’s felicific calculus is, in practice, mind-boggling, and we just can’t get the relevant information (how intense each affected person’s pleasure or pain will be, how long it will last, what other pleasures or pains it might cause in turn, etc.). Preference utilitarianism might try to claim another advantage here. It is easier to know whether someone’s preference has been satisfied than how much pleasure someone experiences. But this is very little improvement if we still need to compare the strength of different people’s preferences and so on. However, the objection misrepresents what utilitarians say. Bentham does not say that an action is right if it actually maximises happiness. He says it is right according to ‘the tendency which it appears to have’ to maximise happiness. We don’t need to be able to work out the consequences precisely. An action is right if we can reasonably expect that it will maximise happiness. He also says that the felicific calculus need not be ‘strictly pursued’ before each decision or moral judgement. It just needs to be ‘kept in view’. This still means we must be able to work things out roughly. Mill thought this was still too demanding. Happiness is ‘much too complex and indefinite’ a standard to apply directly to actions. But we don’t need to try, he claims, because over time, people have automatically, through trial and error, worked out which actions tend to produce happiness. This is what our inherited moral rules actually are: ‘tell the truth’, ‘don’t steal’, and ‘keep your promises’ are embodiments of the wisdom of humanity that lying, theft and false promising tend to lead to unhappiness. Mill calls these moral rules ‘secondary principles’. It is only in cases of conflict between secondary principles (e.g. if by telling the truth you break your promise) that we need to apply the greatest happiness principle directly to an action. We shouldn’t attempt to calculate happiness directly unless we have such a conflict. Only in cases of conflict will there be genuine exceptions to these rules. Of course, our inherited morality still makes mistakes in what it thinks will or won’t contribute to general happiness. So we can improve on the rules that we have. But saying this is quite different from saying that we have to consider each action from scratch, as though we had no prior moral knowledge.