| Utilitarianism is a suggested theoretical framework for morality,
law and politics, based on quantitative maximisation of some definition of "utility" for society or humanity.
Utilitarianism: "The greatest good for the greatest number." or: "The greatest good over the least pain." A theory that
the morality of any action or law is defined by its utility.
A Theory of 'Good' and 'Right'
Utilitarianism is both a theory of the good and a theory of the right.
- As a theory of the good, utilitarianism is welfarist, holding that the
good is whatever yields the greatest utility --'utility' being defined as pleasure, preference-satisfaction, or in reference to
an objective list of values.
- As a theory of the right, utilitarianism is consequentialist, holding that the right act is that which yields the greatest net utility. People
have an innate moral sensitivity to others.
Frances Hutcheson
said it is "based on the principle of utility which proposes that if in a situation where one is faced with a moral choice one
should do that which results in the greatest number's happiness". The principle of utility he speaks of morally determines every
action depending on how much it has increased or decreased the amount of pleasure or happiness to the party being affected.
Negative Utilitarianism
Most utilitarian theories deal with producing the greatest amount of good for the greatest number. Negative utilitarianism
requires us to promote the least amount of evil or harm, or to prevent the greatest amount of harm for the greatest number.
Proponents argue that this is a more efficacious ethical formula, since, they contend, there are many more ways to do harm than
to do good, and the greatest harms are more consequential than the greatest goods.
However, advocates of the Utilitarian principle (including Mill) were quick to suggest that the ultimate aim of negative
utilitarianism would be to engender the quickest and least painful method of killing the entirety of humanity, as this ultimately
would effectively minimise pain.
History of Utilitarianism
Utilitarianism was originally proposed in 18th century England by Jeremy Bentham and
others, although it can be traced back to ancient Greek
philosophers such as Parmenides. Bentham was born at a time of great
scientific and social change, and there were many demands for greater democracy, especially since there had been Revolutions in
France and America. He worked on legal reform and wrote
"Principles of Morals and Legislation" in which he set out his ethical theory. It can be divided into 3 parts: Views on what
motivated human beings, the principle of utility, the Hedonic Calculus. From the principle of utility, he found pain and pleasure to be the only absolutes
in the world: "nature has put man under the governance of two sovereign masters: pleasure and pain." From this he derived the
rule of utility: that the good is whatever brings the greatest happiness to the greatest number of people. Later, after realizing
that the formulation recognized two different and potentially conflicting maximanda, he dropped the second part and talked
simply about "the greatest happiness principle".
Both Bentham's formulation and the philosophy of Epicurus can be considered different types of hedonistic consequentialism, since they judge the rightness of actions from the happiness that they lead to, and they identify happiness with pleasure. Note, however, that Bentham's formulation
is a selfless hedonism. Where Epicurus recommended doing whatever made you happiest, Bentham would have you do what makes
everyone happiest.
John Stuart Mill wrote a famous (and short) book called
Utilitarianism. Although Mill was a utilitarian, he argued that not all forms of pleasure are of equal value, using his
famous saying "It is better to be Socrates dissatisfied, than a fool satisfied." He
disagreed with Bentham's hedonic calculus, holding that quality is better than quantity.
Utilitarianism influenced economics, in particular utility theory, where the concept of utility is also used, although with quite different effect. See also
Utilitarian ethics and Utilitarian Bioethics for further consequences of its influence.
Act Utilitarianism vs. Rule Utilitarianism
Other varieties of utilitarianism have also been proposed.
The traditional form of utilitarianism states that the best act is whichever act would yield the most utility. A common
alternative form is rule utilitarianism, which states that the best act is the one that would be enjoined by whichever
rule would yield the most utility.
To illustrate, consider the following scenario: A surgeon has six patients: one needs a liver, one needs a pancreas, one needs
a gall bladder, and two need kidneys. The sixth just came in to have his appendix removed. Should the surgeon kill the sixth man
and pass his organs around to the others? This would obviously violate the rights of the sixth man, but utilitarianism seems to
imply that, given a purely binary choice between (1) killing the man and distributing his organs or (2) not doing so and the
other five dying, violating his rights is exactly what we ought to do.
A rule utilitarian, however, would look at the rule, rather than the act, that would be instituted by cutting up the sixth
man. The rule in this case would be: "whenever a surgeon could kill one relatively healthy person in order to transplant his
organs to more than one other person who needs them, he ought to do so." This rule, if instituted in society, would obviously
lead to bad consequences. Relatively healthy people would stop going to the hospital, we'd end up performing many risky
transplant operations, etc., etc. So a rule utilitarian would say we should implement the opposite rule: don't harvest healthy
people's organs to give them to sick people. If the surgeon killed the sixth man, then he would be doing the wrong thing.
Many utilitarians would argue that utilitarianism applies not only to acts, but also to desires and dispositions, praise and
blame, rules, institutions and punishment. Once this is recognized, utilitarianism becomes a much more complex, and rich, moral
theory, and may align much more closely with our moral intuitions.
It was Bentham who originally proposed Utilitarianism, and his was what we would now call Act Utilitarianism. Mill expanded
and proposed what we now call Rule Utilitarianism.
Preference Utilitarianism
Preference utilitarianism is a particular type
of utilitarianism which defines utility in terms of preference satisfaction. So, like any utilitarian theory, preference
utilitarians claim that the right thing to do is that which produces the best consequences, but defining the best consequences in
terms of "preference satisfaction", which may include concepts such as "reputation" rather than pure hedonism.
Criticism of Utilitarianism
Critics of utilitarianism claim that this view suffers from a number of problems, one of which is the difficulty of comparing
utility among different people. Many of the early utilitarians hoped that happiness could somehow be measured quantitively and
compared between people through felicific calculus, although no
one has ever managed to construct one in practice. It has been argued that the happiness of different people is incommensurable, and thus felicific calculus is impossible, not only in
practice, but even in principle. Defenders of utilitarianism reply that this problem is faced by anyone who has to choose between
two alternative states of affairs where both impose burdens to the people involved. If happiness were incommensurable, the death
of a hundred people would be no worse than the death of one.
Utilitarianism has also been criticized for leading to a number of conclusions contrary to 'common sense' morality. For
example, if forced to choose between saving one's child or saving two children of strangers, most people will choose to save
their own child. However, utilitarianism would support saving the other two instead, since two people have more total potential
for future happiness than one. Utilitarian anarchist William Godwin famously observed that if the life of the Archbishop of Cambray
is preferable to the life of his chambermaid, the fact that the latter is my mother "would not alter the truth of the
proposition". Utilitarians, however, argue that 'common sense' has been used to justify many positions on both sides of
controversial issues and varies greatly from individual to individual, making it an unsuitable basis for a 'common' morality.
Daniel Dennett uses the example of Three Mile Island to explore the limits of utilitarianism for guiding decisions. Was the
near-meltdown that occurred at this nuclear power plant a good or a bad thing (according to utilitarianism)? He points out that
its long-term effects on nuclear policy would be considered beneficial by many and might outweigh the negative consequences. His
conclusion is that it is still too early (20 years after the event) for utilitarianism to weigh all the evidence and reach
a definite conclusion. Utilitarians believe this is actually a criticism of consequentialism as the 'goodness' or 'badness' of
the meltdown depends on the alternative scenario envisaged.
John Rawls rejects utilitarianism, both rule and act, on the basis that it
makes rights depend on the good consequences of their recognition, and thus he argues that it is incompatible with liberalism. For example, if slavery or
torture is beneficial for the population as a whole, it could theoretically be
justified by utilitarianism. He instead argues that political ethics must be drawn from the original position. Utilitarians argue that justification of either slavery or torture would require
improbably large benefits to outweigh the direct suffering to the victims and that Rawl's analysis excludes the indirect impact
of social acceptance of inhumane policies. (The issue in particular rests on who is included in the evaluation: animal welfare activists may argue that the suffering of farm animals is
immoral on utilitarian grounds if including other species in the overall assessment.)
It is noteworthy that most of the criticism espoused are specifically critical of act utilitarianism and that it is
possible for a rule utilitarian philosophy to render conclusions that are compatible with the criticism. In fact, John Stuart Mill considered Immanuel Kant a rule utilitarian disguised as a deontological moralist. The reason for his view is that according to Mill, Kant's categorical imperative only makes sense for cases of, say,
violence, if we consider the consequences of the action. Thus, Kant states that living selfishly cannot be universalised because
we all need someone's help/affection at one time or another. According to Mill, this argument is based on consequences. It can be
seen that some forms of rule utilitarianism are therefore potentially compatible with Kantianism and other moral philosophies.
R. M. Hare is another example of a utilitarian who has adapted his
philosophy to Kantianism. While he does not base his theory on a principle of utility, he believes we can take utilitarian
considerations, consequences, into account in formulating universal judgments. He calls his philosophy universal prescriptivism.
There are also some specific criticisms of rule utilitarianism:
- Why should one follow the rule? If a certain concrete action causes more utility than the compliance with the rule, why
should one follow the rule? It is argued that this cannot be answered inside Utilitarianism.
- Which rule? Taking the above example about the medical patients, we could think of instituting the rule to kill persons in
order to transplant their organs only when those persons were already injured, they could not choose to go to the hospital, the
transplant operations are not too risky, etc. It is always possible to formulate the rule as an exception so it will only apply
to the case we are considering and to identical cases, where it is useful to act against the general rule.
- What are the consequences of the rule? One of the most difficult jobs in political decision is the assessment of the
consequences of a rule. Should we base our moral judgments in such difficult assessments?
- Rule Utilitarianism seems to mix up morality and law. Legal rules are or can be instituted in societies (by legislators), moral rules cannot. What is the moral
point of following a rule that will not be instituted as if it would, i.e., pretending that it would? Or does Rule
Utilitarianism claim that we should only follow the already instituted rules, i.e. do as the others do?
Some would argue that the principle of rule utilitarianism is commonly used in society and not for ethical reasons. They would
argue that individuals are mostly egoistic using arguments from sociobiology. But that egoistic individuals have to compromise with each other. The
result of that compromise is a social contract with rule
utilitarianism as the guiding principle. Since utilitarianism increase the average happiness, there is a good chance that the
happiness of the egoistic individual will also increase if society implement this contract. Thus the individual will publicly
argue that society and other individuals should follow this contract, but may himself break the contract if this increases his
own happiness and other individuals do not know of or cannot punish this.
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