Utilitarianism is a moral philosophy which has its origins in 18th
Century Britain. It is a teleological theory according to which the good
or right action to take is that which will produce the best consequence. In
particular, Utilitarianism aims to create the good consequence of happiness or
pleasure for as many people as possible. Utilitarianism tends to have noble
goals such as ending poverty and world hunger, but it readily allows that sometimes
it is necessary to cause harm in order to achieve these important goals. “The
end justifies the means” as the saying goes.
The two most important Utilitarian
thinkers were Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832)
and John Stuart Mill (1806 – 1873),
and they are responsible for Act Utilitarianism and Rule Utilitarianism
respectively. Bentham campaigned for improvements in how prisoners were
treated, for better treatment of animals, and for the abolition of slavery.
Meanwhile, Mill supported the idea of liberal freedom and was a champion of
women’s rights.
The founder of Utilitarianism was Jeremy Bentham. Bentham’s original version of Utilitarianism is known today as Act Utilitarianism because it insists that we cannot make general rules about which actions are allowed and which are not, we need to judge each individual act by its own merits, based on the consequences that individual act will have. In other words, the right thing to do is going to be a relative issue. Bentham wrote that practically any action can be allowed, even killing or depriving individuals of freedom and property, so long as the act brought about happiness for the greater part of mankind.
Act Utilitarianism is based on the
Utility Principle:
By the
principle of utility is meant that principle which approves or disapproves of
every action whatsoever, according to the tendency which it appears to have to
augment or diminish the happiness of the party whose interest is in question:
or what is the same thing in other words, to promote or to oppose that
happiness. I say of every action
whatsoever, and therefore not, only of every action of a private individual,
but of every measure of government.[1]
The word ‘utility’ means ‘usefulness’
so essentially Bentham thinks actions are good if they are useful, and that an
action is useful if it creates happiness or pleasure, and reduces its opposites
of pain and suffering. An individual will tend to perform the action that they
think is best to bring themselves happiness, and similarly, governments ought
to do whatever brings the greatest amount of happiness to the people of their
society. The view that our actions are always centred around seeking pleasure
and avoiding pain is called hedonism:
Nature has
placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and
pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we shall do. On the one hand
the standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of causes and effects,
are fastened to their throne. They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in
all we think.[2]
Utilitarianism is a hedonistic and
teleological theory based on creating pleasure and diminishing pain, but it is
also an altruistic theory according to which individuals should not just
attempt to procure their own pleasure and happiness, they should also act for
the sake of other people, sometimes even sacrificing their needs for the sake
of others. In many ways Utilitarianism is a democratic and egalitarian theory
because it views each person as entirely equal: the needs of a man are not more
important than the needs of a woman, nor are the needs of a rich person or
aristocrat above the needs of a poor person or commoner, each person’s needs
for pleasure count equally to a Utilitarian.
Another key point is that Utilitarianism
is a naturalistic moral theory because it is not based around the
commandments of a supernatural entity such as God. Instead Utilitarianism
attempts to explain morality empirically through human nature and things which
can be measured and clearly seen: pleasure and pain.
The simple
summary of Act Utilitarianism is that a person ought to do whatever action will
produce “the greatest good for the greatest number”, even if this means
sacrificing their own personal happiness, or having to cause harm to a number
of people. In the film Star Trek II the character Spock sacrifices his life to
save the crew of his ship. As he dies his final words are “The needs of the
many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.” This is a thoroughly
Utilitarian way of thinking.
Examples
of Act Utilitarianism in action:
These examples show how Utilitarian
thinking can be used to make moral decisions:
1) If there was
a city of a million people which needed a new reservoir and the only place available
for it was where a small village could currently be found. Utilitarians would
say the village should be destroyed to build the reservoir; the unhappiness of
the 200 villagers would be lamentable, but outweighed by the million city’
dwellers’ needs.
2) Normally it
is wrong to kill because it causes misery to those who are left behind and robs
a person of their future happiness, however, suppose there was a brutal
dictator who was making people’s lives a misery through terror, taxation, and
murder of political enemies. According to Utilitarianism it would be acceptable
to have him assassinated in order to improve the lives of his people.
3) If there is a
natural disaster in a foreign country then those in rich nations are obliged to
sacrifice some of their personal wealth to provide aid. If I spent £30 on a
take away meal this will bring me an evening of happiness, however, by donating
this money to a relief charity I could provide medical aid and food to a victim
and save their life. The happiness created by the charity far outweighs that of
spending it on myself.
4) In the 1960s
abortion was illegal in the UK as it was considered to be the murder of a
defenceless human being (a deontological view). However, many women were dying
from dangerous illegal ‘backstreet’ abortions and suffering from stress or
depression from having unwanted babies. Abortion was legalised in 1967 to
prevent these things from occurring, and statistics also show it has helped to
reduce crime rates and poverty, thus Utilitarians agree with keeping abortion
legal.
5) Utilitarians are
in support of voluntary euthanasia. Suffering can be accepted if it leads to
greater happiness in the long term, but in cases such as terminal cancer a
person will simply suffer for months and then die. If a person requests death
it is better to allow it and so reduce the amount of pain in the world and in
their life.
6) Utilitarians
tend to support legalisation of soft drugs like cannabis. Firstly these can be
pleasurable to use, but also legalisation would allow the government to tax the
drugs and use the money for public services. It would also take money out of
the hands of criminal gangs and prevent them from encouraging users to try more
dangerous drugs.
7) In World War
II the Americans dropped two atom bombs on Japan, killing around 200,000 people,
mostly innocent civilians. However, arguably this shortened the war and saved
the loss of millions who would have died in a land invasion of Japan, thus it
was justified on Utilitarian grounds.
Criticisms
of Act Utilitarianism
Utilitarianism is a theory which
attempts to make the world a better place, and which accepts that this may
sometimes have to come at a cost in human suffering. Utilitarians might say
that there will always be suffering in the world, all we can do is do our best
to try to reduce suffering and increase happiness. Utilitarianism is clearly very
practical and pragmatic. None the less, there are numerous criticisms of Act
Utilitarianism. As you read these criticism think about how Utilitarians like
Bentham could respond to rescue their theory.
1)
Minorities
Utilitarianism attempts to do what is
most beneficial for the majority, but because of this, minorities will always
be over looked, and could even be abused for the benefit of the majority.
Imagine that an old lady lives next door to a young man who regularly has 40 or
more friends over to his house for loud parties until the early hours of the
day. She hates the noise and it makes her angry and tired, but seemingly under
Utilitarianism she ought to just put up with the noise because the enjoyment of
the partygoers outweighs her suffering. Seemingly the young man is ‘right’ to
host these noisy parties and should continue to do so despite the old lady’s
suffering.
Loud music may seem like a trivial
example but it helps to make the point: under Utilitarianism minorities or
individuals will always be put last and their needs could be ignored and they
might even be abused. Suppose we could better the lives of the majority of the
population by enslaving 1% of the population to do all of the hard work and
menial tasks. This doesn’t have to be a racial minority, it could be the people
of one village or a bunch of randoms chosen by lottery. Surely enslaving the 1%
would bring about “the greatest good for the greatest number” and yet this does
not seem moral at all.
2)
With Act Utilitarianism there are no rights
In many ways this criticism is just
another way of expressing the previous point. Imagine that four men have
life-threatening diseases: one has lung cancer, one has heart disease, one has
liver failure and one has kidneys that do not work. They all have large loving
families, do work that is important for society, and would all be sorely missed
by many people if they died. An unemployed man with no friends or family walks
into the hospital suffering from a minor injury, and after a blood test the
doctor realises that his organs would be compatible with his four important
dying patients. Would it be right to kill him in order to use his organs to
save the other four? Seemingly Act Utilitarianism would have to say ‘yes’ because
killing him will result in less misery and more happiness than letting the
other four die.
This thought experiment shows us that
Act Utilitarianism leaves people without any rights: there is literally nothing
that can be done to an individual so long as it can benefit the wider public in
some way. A person could have his property taken away, he could be killed,
imprisoned, tortured, forced into slavery, literally anything, just so long as
it brings a net gain in happiness for society as a whole. Indeed, Bentham himself
called all talk of rights “dangerous nonsense” and “nonsense on stilts.”[3]
So far as Bentham was concerned governments existed for the sake of securing
the happiness of their people, and if that meant that a few individuals had to
suffer for the good of all, then so be it.
The idea of rights is a central idea
in modern moral philosophy, so to see Act Utilitarianism dismissing rights
might be taken as an indication that it is a deeply flawed approach to ethics.
Does it not seem that there are some actions which should never be done no
matter what good consequences might come from it? Surely people have rights
such as the rights to life and free speech, and the rights to freedom from
torture, slavery, and imprisonment without trial, and yet under Act
Utilitarianism all of these could be allowed if they are convenient for
creating the greatest happiness.
3)
Taking pleasure directly from pain
A commonly cited example of the
minorities problem is gang rape: if 10 men were to abduct one person (either
male or female) and rape them, then surely this means that 10 people are
getting pleasure whilst only one person is experiencing pain and misery, and
therefore, surely Utilitarianism will have to support gang rape. The same kind
of problem emerges if we consider 10 sadists abducting someone to torture them,
or 29 boys bullying a single boy in their class of 30, or a crowd of 20,000
people turning up to a Roman Amphitheatre to watch two gladiators fight to the
death.
Obviously the problem of abusing
minorities is part of these examples, but there is an added layer of criticism:
it would seem that sometimes people take pleasure directly from seeing others
harmed and that they find suffering entertaining. Now perhaps it is realistic
to say that for the sake of saving five lives one person must die, or for the
sake of providing water to thousands of people one person must have their land
taken away to build a reservoir, but can it really be right to say that gang
rape is good because it makes numerous people happy? Do those people really
deserve to be made happy if their happiness comes from sadism? Can Utilitarians
really maintain that all pleasure is good when some pleasures are so twisted?
Utilitarians might try to respond to
this by saying that people such as sadists and gang rapists are going against
the very spirit of Utilitarianism. Utilitarianism takes the view that all pain
and suffering is bad, however, sometimes it might be necessary to cause pain as
a means to an end of creating happiness. Pain is something to be lamented and
avoided if at all possible, and therefore the very notion of someone taking
their pleasure directly from harming another person is very un-Utilitarian.
When Bentham founded Act Utilitarianism his aim was to make life better for as
many people as possible, not to justify abusing people.
4)
Pleasure is not quantifiable
Utilitarianism aims to create the
greatest amount of pleasure for the greatest number of people. In order to do
this effectively it seems necessary to be able to measure pleasure and pain,
for instance to calculate how much pleasure and pain option A would bring, and
then compare this to the pleasure and pain option B would bring in order to
make a choice. However, is it really possible to measure and quantify pleasure
and pain in the way required?
A person might well be able to say
that they enjoy eating Chinese food more than they enjoy eating Italian food,
or that they enjoy watching films more than they enjoy reading books, but can
we really measure pleasure and pain accurately? What is going to cause more
pain and suffering, cutting off one finger from each of 20 different people’s
hands, or cutting the whole hand off one person? What is greater, one woman’s
long term happiness or five women’s short term happiness? Would it be
acceptable to make five people experience intense short term pain to enable one
man to achieve long term pleasure? What is worse, psychological pain or
physical pain? Surely pleasure and pain are not measurable like weights of
objects or volumes of liquid, and if it is not possible to accurately measure
pleasure and pain then it would seem incorrect to base decisions on how much
pain or pleasure they would cause.
5) With Utilitarianism there is no justice
We tend to think that
principles such as justice and fairness matter, however, an Act Utilitarian
would reject these principles and say that principles like justice can be ignored
if ignoring them brings about “the greatest good.” Imagine that you are a
police inspector investigating a murder during World War II and you discover
that the killer is an important scientist who is working on a secret project to
improve radar detection of Luftwaffe bombers. If he is put in prison his
research work will suffer and it may well mean that hundreds more people are
killed thanks to bombing raids. If that policeman was a Utilitarian he would
surely let the murdering scientist go free, but is that really the right thing
to do? Shouldn’t deontological principles such as justice and fairness be
upheld even when upholding them is problematic?
One argument for the death
penalty is that it is a deterrent against crime, in other words, that by
executing murderers we can prevent others from killing out of fear they will be
caught and executed. It is not proven that this works, but let’s just suppose for
the sake of argument that every time we execute one criminal it prevents four
murders. Under these conditions it would be acceptable to frame an innocent man
and execute him for murder because although one innocent life would be
destroyed a further four lives would be saved, which is a net gain of three
saved lives. This is not only unjust, but also dishonest, so how can it be
right?
6)
Not everyone is equally deserving of happiness
Utilitarianism is an egalitarian
theory as it views the happiness of each person as equally important. In many
ways this is a praiseworthy ideal, after all, in Bentham’s time society was
heavily divided along lines of class and wealth. Only men with significant
property assets could vote and no women could vote at all, so the government
consisted of rich men and the country was often run mainly for the benefit of
rich men. The Utilitarian idea that the country should be run for the benefit of
all its people was in many way revolutionary. However, is it really true that
all people are equal and that all people’s pleasure and pain is equally
important? Do we not think that a hard working person is more worthy of
happiness than a lazy person? And do we not think that some people, such as
criminals, deserve to suffer?
7)
Individual unhappiness
It can be argued that if an
individual tries to follow Act Utilitarianism then they will actually end up
having a very unhappy life. Suppose that it’s payday and after a hard month of
work I decide to go and buy a new video game, get an Indian takeaway, and buy a
new pair of trainers, after all, I have worked hard to earn my money and buying
these things will make me happy. However, if I am a Utilitarian then surely I
would have to think about whether spending all this money on myself would
actually generate the greatest good for the greatest number, and the answer is
a resounding “no!” If I were to donate that money to a foreign aid charity it
could easily save three or four people from polio, which will clearly end a
large amount of suffering and bring much happiness to people’s lives. Time and
time again this will be the case, and so if I follow Utilitarianism then surely
I am going to end up being a very unfulfilled and joyless individual who never
gets to enjoy his own life.
Ayn
Rand (1905-82) took the view that Utilitarianism, like all moral theories
demanding altruism, was simply a way of the poor, unsuccessful, and lazy trying
to leech on the rich, successful, and hard working. As far as she was concerned
a person should feel no obligation to give away their own hard earned money or
resources to other people. People should work hard and strive to be independent
and successful rather than demand a hand out from others.
8)
You cannot predict consequences accurately
This was one of the major criticisms
of teleological theories from Immanuel
Kant (1724-1804). Kant argued that because you cannot accurately predict
the outcome of your actions you should not gamble with people’s lives by making
teleological calculations, instead you should just stick to the rules or
principles. He gave the following example: suppose a man comes to your door
asking where he can find your brother, whom he wishes to kill because of a debt.
You know that your brother is upstairs hiding in his bedroom, so should you
tell the truth or lie, for example, say that your brother has gone out to the
high street? Kant argued that you should tell the truth, partly because it is
wrong to lie, but also because you cannot be sure what the consequences will
be. Suppose your brother saw the man coming and secretly climbed out of the
window to escape down to the safety of the high street? By lying to the man you
have actually sent him to where your brother now is, so you would be
responsible for his death. Kant argued it is far better to stick to the rules
and tell the truth.
We might think that Kant’s views are
too strict and most people would indeed lie to save their friends or family,
but he does have a point: it is difficult to accurately predict consequences. A
person might think that assassinating an evil dictator will set his country
free and improve the lives of the country’s people, but what if instead it
sparks off a bitter civil war and thousands die? It is very difficult to
calculate consequences as the world is unpredictable, so perhaps people should
not think about consequences at all when making decisions?
9)
Act Utilitarianism is impractical
It can be argued that Act
Utilitarianism is impractical because it requires us to make a new calculation
about what is best to do in each new situation. Every time someone asked you a
question you would have to think hard about whether to tell the truth or not.
Every time you saw the opportunity to steal some money you would have to think
hard about whether it was a good idea to steal it and donate it to charity.
Would it not be better to have a clear set of rules?
On a similar note, would it really be
possible to base a legal system on Act Utilitarianism? If a judge was an Act
Utilitarian he would have to let people who committed crimes go free just so
long as they were able to show that they did these things in order to generate
the greatest happiness for the greatest number. For example, if you burgled a rich
man’s house and took thousands of pounds worth of goods and then spread them
out amongst your friends then you would have to acquitted for doing the right
thing. Surely such a system could not work, again, rules are required.
It could be argued that Act
Utilitarianism is more like a morality for governments and rulers rather than
private individuals. It is the specific job of the government to look after the
lives of a mass of people and often difficult decisions have to be made which
will upset a lot of people but benefit others. It seems that Act Utilitarianism
is useful for when governments need to decide whether to build an airport or
not, or fight a war or not, but it seems far less useful for helping average
people to make decisions. Arguably rules are required, and this is the basis of
JS Mill’s version of Utilitarianism, Rule Utilitarianism.
10) Utilitarianism is too impersonal
Suppose that I see two
people drowning in a lake, but I can only save one of them. One is my mother,
whilst the other is a Nobel Prize winning scientist who is currently working on
a cure for cancer. Whom should I save? According to Utilitarianism I ought to
save the scientist because this will bring about the greatest happiness. Saving
my mother will certainly make her happy, as well as her friends and myself and
our family, but surely our happiness will be vastly outweighed by the happiness
brought about by saving the scientist?
Utilitarianism states that
each other person should be treated as precisely equal, but surely this means
that your obligations to a total stranger and their happiness are equal to your
obligations to your friends and family. Utilitarianism insists that people are
to act in an unbiased and impartial manner, but this seems to be very unrealistic.
If it was a choice between saving your own mother and a random stranger then as
far as Utilitarianism is concerned you may as well toss a coin to decide which
one to help because (all things being equal) there will be the same amount of
happiness and misery caused by saving either one. But surely this is totally
counter intuitive? Surely it is normal, natural, and right to put your
obligations to friends and family before your obligations to strangers or the
general public?
11)
There are numerous problems with hedonism
Utilitarianism is a hedonistic theory
which takes the view that good = pleasure and bad = pain and misery. To say
“this is good” simply means “this is pleasurable” or “this makes me happy”,
whilst to say “this is bad” can be translated without loss of meaning to “this
is painful” or “this makes me unhappy.” According to Utilitarians the main goal
of every person is to achieve happiness or pleasure, and to avoid pain and
suffering, and a pleasurable life is a good life. But are things really so
simple?
Firstly, many things that are
pleasurable are not necessarily good for us, for instance, eating too much food
or smoking and drinking may well be pleasurable but they are not healthy things
to do. However, a hedonist could reply to this by saying that a lack of health
is bad precisely because it leads to pain and suffering, and that whilst over
eating may be pleasurable in the short term, in the long term it is not
pleasurable and so over all it is not good. Secondly, as previously mentioned,
some people take pleasure out of hurting other people or watching them suffer,
so can we really say that this kind of sadistic pleasure is a good thing?
An important point is that pleasure
and happiness do not quite seem to be the same thing as each other, after all, a
life of pleasure is not necessarily a happy life. You could spend all of your
time enjoying interesting company, good food and other carnal delights, and yet
still feel unfulfilled. Many people associate pleasure with short term experiences
such as going to a party, watching a sports game, or having sex, whereas
happiness seems more like a long term state of mind, a state of contentment. There
are people who live in poverty, who put up with terrible misfortunes, and clearly
have very few pleasures in their lives and yet somehow they are still happy and
satisfied with life. Meanwhile there are people with rich and pleasurable lives
who are so unhappy that they become depressed or even suicidal. Aristotle (384-322 BCE) argued that
there was more to happiness than pleasure, for Aristotle a person’s life could
only truly be called happy or ‘flourishing’ if they were healthy, had friends,
were respected as good citizens, and they were well educated and made good use
of their intellect. Some critics of Bentham went so far as to say that hedonism
was a doctrine worthy of swine.
A major problem with hedonism is underlined
by Robert Nozick (1938-2002) with
his ‘experience machine’ thought experiment. Suppose that a scientists managed
to develop a virtual reality machine so advanced that people who were plugged
into it could not tell the difference between being in the machine and being in
the real world, essentially something like The
Matrix. Suppose that you were given the opportunity to go into the experience
machine and have an absolutely wonderful life where everything goes right for
you, for instance you can become a successful film star or businessman, strike
it rich, have plenty of friends and popularity, a busy social life, and never
get ill. Suppose further that your memories of being put into the machine could
be erased so that you completely believed all of these experiences were real.
Now if hedonism is correct and the only thing that matters is pleasure then
surely the best thing you could do, indeed the moral thing to do, would be to
plug yourself into the experience machine and live a life of blissful fake
fantasies. However, many people would reject the chance to be plugged into the
machine, which surely indicates that there is something more to life than just
pleasure.
Defences
and Reformulations of Utilitarianism
Because of the many criticisms of Act
Utilitarianism there have been several attempts to reformulate or improve the
theory in order to avoid these problems. Some of the most important defences
are detailed below for your consideration, although it would be impossible to
consider all of them here.
Jeremy
Bentham: The Hedonic Calculus
Bentham did not just state that we
should maximise public happiness, he also provided us with a means to calculate
the amount of happiness an action would create and compare this to the amount
of pain created. The Hedonic Calculus
is a mathematical algorithm which can be used to calculate the utility of an
action. This takes seven factors in to consideration:- Intensity 5.
Fecundity
- Duration 6.
Remoteness
- Extent 7.
Purity
- Likeliness
Since the outcome of actions cannot
always be predicted with total accuracy, the likeliness of the action leading
to the sought after pleasure needs to be taken in to consideration also: if
action A has a 90% chance of producing 200 hedons, whilst action B has a 20%
chance of producing 400 hedons, then it is better to go with action A since it
is more likely to pay off.
Fecundity is another word for ‘fertility.’
In this context we are talking about the likelihood that the action will lead
to further advantages in the future. For example, playing fairly in a game of
football may reduce the amount of pleasure in the here and now if it means you
lose, but it will lead to further happiness in the future as people will agree
to keep playing you. Remoteness concerns how soon the action is likely to
produce happiness; pleasures which are fairly remote in the future are to be
valued less than those which are achievable in the short or medium term.
Lastly, the possible pain to be
caused by the action would be considered, as it detracts from the utility of
the action and may make it immoral. Pain or suffering is measured in ‘dolars’,
and can be calculated in a similar way to pleasure by multiplying intensity,
duration, and extent. Hedons minus dolars gives us a figure for the total
utility of an action, and we should compare the utility of it with other
possible courses of action and perform the act with the most net gain in
hedons.
The Hedonic Calculus directly combats
criticism (4), the criticism which argues that pleasure is not quantifiable, because
it gives us a means to measure pleasure and pain, however, many critics will
argue that it is still far too simplistic to be credible. How can we quantify
the pleasures of a good meal and a good night’s sleep and then compare them,
they are such different things? Moreover, the hedonic calculus runs a risk of
simply counting materialistic things and ignoring many of the finer, but less
quantifiable things in life, such as love and friendship.
The Hedonic Calculus also gives
Utilitarians the chance to defend against criticisms (1), (2) and (3): the
abuse of minorities, rejection of rights, and causing pain for twisted
pleasures. Take the example of 10 sadists torturing one victim, The Hedonic
Calculus shows us that Utilitarian calculations are not a simple matter of the
number of people involved (the extent) as we must also consider duration and
intensity. When it comes to duration the pleasure of the sadists will only last
a short time, but the suffering of the victim could well be a lifelong
experience of depression and post-traumatic stress. This alone is enough to
show that the pain the victim experiences outweighs the pleasure the sadists
experience, and that’s without even looking at the fact of how intense the
victim’s pain will be. To put it simply, the long, intense pain of one person
can easily outweigh the short and shallow pleasures of 100 or even more. For
this reason a Utilitarian would reject the idea of enslaving 1% of the
population to work for the benefit of the other 99% because the gains to the
99% would not outweigh the severe loses to the 1%. However, although using the
Hedonic Calculus is going to rule out most cases of abusing individuals or
minorities, there will still be extreme circumstances when it can happen for
the greater good.
Karl
Popper: Negative Utilitarianism
There are several points in favour of
this approach, as Geoff Cocksworth
explains:
Happiness or pleasure are impossible to quantify, but pain and suffering
are not. We may not necessarily know what will make someone happy but we can
have a good idea as to what will make them suffer, certainly in the physical
sense. We may have enormous difficulties in deciding what is right or good but
we can come to more immediate agreement over what is evil or bad… Thus, the
usefulness (utility) of Classical Utilitarianism may lie in assessing what
action will cause the least amount of suffering… The principle of utility
becomes ‘an action is wrong if it creates suffering.’ To this may well be
added: if two or more actions are all likely to create suffering, we can only
choose the one that will bring about the least.[4]
The first point is that arguably pain
and misery are more easily quantifiable than pleasure, which helps to tackle
criticism (4) which stated that happiness cannot be quantified. Unhappiness is
generally caused by lack of welfare, and welfare can be measured and improved
by providing people with good housing, food and water, health care, employment,
safer working environments, and so on.
The most important thing about
Negative Utilitarianism is that it does not allow for individuals or minorities
to be abused simply to make people happy, it is purely dedicated to diminishing
the suffering and pain in the world. This means that problem (3) is neatly
dealt with because Negative Utilitarians would not care how much pleasure the
10 sadists or rapists were getting out of harming their victim, the only
concern a Negative Utilitarian has is for the suffering of the victim. In this
way Negative Utilitarianism helps to capture the true spirit of Utilitarianism,
for surely a Utilitarian ought to abhor all suffering and find it unacceptable
for people to take pleasure directly from another person’s suffering. In the
same way Negative Utilitarianism helps to mitigate problem (1) because
minorities or individuals could not be abused in order to make the rest of
society happier. Although minorities might get abused this would become very
rare because it could only happen in the rare circumstance that doing this
would help to end a greater amount of pain and suffering in the world. As an
example, a Negative Utilitarian might well agree to sacrificing the lives of
several thousand soldiers to bring freedom and prosperity to the millions of
citizens of an invaded country.
On another note, the burden on the
individual to sacrifice his or her own happiness for the sake of other people
is reduced, helping to mitigate criticism (7), the problem of individual
unhappiness. This is because the Negative Utilitarian is not obliged to give up
time or money to provide others with entertainments or luxuries, they only need
to provide the basics such as clean water and vaccines.
Another strength of Negative
Utilitarianism is that it takes into account the asymmetry between pleasure and
pain, with avoiding pain and suffering being placed as a much more important
task than creating happiness for others. Many people feel that pleasure and
pain are not symmetrical because pain is far worse than pleasure is good. It is
not a simple case that one person’s pain can be counterbalanced by one person’s
pleasure because pain and pleasure are not equivalent. If you asked an average
person whether they would like to be tortured for one hour in exchange for one
hour of blissful pleasure they would probably decline. Human beings do
instinctively seek pleasure, but it is arguably more important to avoid pain
and suffering. Negative Utilitarianism takes this into account and so seeks to
avoid all unnecessary pain and will not allow people to be made to suffer for
the sake of others’ happiness.
Having said all of this, Negative
Utilitarianism still has its problems. Strictly speaking a Negative
Utilitarianism will still have to agree with killing one healthy man for the
sake of saving four people from dying by providing them with organs because
saving the four men will be the course of action which leads to the least
suffering and misery. Negative Utilitarians might also impose bans on things like
alcohol because they are not interested in the fact that it brings happiness
and enjoyment to millions of people, they would simply be concerned with ending
the various social problems and illnesses that it also causes. Negative
Utilitarianism also has the problem of still being impersonal because it does
not prioritise the suffering of any one group of people over others, so a
person should not be putting the suffering of themselves or their friends or
family above that of others.
John
Stuart Mill: Rule Utilitarianism
Mill believed that if we lived in a
country governed by Act Utilitarianism this would actually lead to widespread
unhappiness. People would not be able to feel safe and secure because they
would know that at any time they could stripped of their rights, property, or
liberty for the benefit of the wider public. Mill thought that rules were
necessary for a safe and happy society, especially to protect minorities from “the
tyranny of the majority”, so what we should do is work out which rules will be
most conducive to happiness and then stick to those rules.
Act Utilitarianism works on a case by
case basis, so it will ask questions such as “should person A be allowed to
steal in their situation?” and “should person B be allowed to steal in their
situation?” However, Mill believed it was more sensible to establish general laws
for everyone to stick to, so for him the question needed to be “should people
generally be allowed to steal or not?” He argued that generally the
consequences of things like stealing, killing, and interfering with the private
lives of other people would be bad, and therefore, general rules should be
established to ban these things. For this reason Mill’s version of
Utilitarianism is known as Rule Utilitarianism. A good example of Rule
Utilitarianism is in having rules for driving on the road as keeping to 30 MPH
helps to ensure that roads are safer. Mill, if he lived today, would say that
people should stick to the speed limits even if they were running late for an
important appointment and the roads seemed to be empty of other traffic.
Mill was very concerned with personal
liberty and he thought that the best way to ensure public happiness was simply
to let people get on with their own lives and pursue their own goals:
The only freedom which deserves the
name is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not
attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it. Each
is the proper guardian of his own health, whether bodily, or mental or
spiritual. Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems
good to themselves, than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest.[5]
Whilst Mill believed in setting rules
to be followed, and especially in protecting minorities, he was not generally an
absolutist as he did not say that people should never steal, or never
kill, but his moral philosophy was generally very strict in saying that certain
actions should only very rarely be permitted. As an example, Mill wrote the
following:
Thus, to save a life, it
may not only be allowable, but a duty, to steal, or take by force, the
necessary food or medicine, or to kidnap, and compel to officiate, the only
qualified medical practitioner.[6]
Mill believed that when general rules
were established it was also important to clearly specify the exceptions to the
rule. Mill often talked in terms of principles such as justice and liberty,
which made him sound like a deontologist, however, it was his opinion that
principles such as these were important because upholding them would lead to
happiness, and thus, these principles were based in utility.
Mill’s Rule Utilitarianism helps to
combat some of the problems with Act Utilitarianism because it seeks to protect
minorities and establish rights for people, thus tackling problems (1) and (2)
as well as the sadist and rapist problem (3). Rule Utilitarianism also helps to
combat problems (8) and (9) by providing general rules for people to follow and
avoiding the problems which come with trying to make a Utilitarian calculation
for every action you do what with all the problems of accurately predicting
consequences.
The major problem with Rule
Utilitarianism is that it is not hard to think of cases where rules could get
in the way of the Utilitarian goal of creating the greatest happiness for the
greatest number. Mill argued that killing should be forbidden because if we
allowed a general rule of “remove men who are a cause of no good” then no one
would be safe. However, if the very purpose of following the ‘do not kill’ rule
is to make people happy, and in this instance following the rule is making
people unhappy, does it not seem that the rule should be abandoned? Mill says
that generally stealing should be banned as it leads to unhappiness, but that
there can be exceptions to the rule such as stealing to save a life, since in
these cases stealing will bring about the greatest happiness. However, why can
this approach not be taken to every action, for instance, why not say “torture
is forbidden, unless torture is the only way to discover a bomb, or get a
confession from a killer, etc. etc.”? In this way it can be argue that Rule
Utilitarianism dies a death by a thousand qualifications, for surely it will
collapse back into being Act Utilitarianism.
John
Stuart Mill: higher and lower pleasures
JS Mill also attempted to defend
Utilitarianism against the criticism that hedonism is a doctrine worthy of
swine, criticism (11). Mill did this by redefining the nature of happiness. Mill
argued that in order to be properly happy it is necessary for us human beings to
satisfy the rational part of our nature, rather than just satisfying the
animalistic pleasure seeking side of ourselves. Thus, Mill made a distinction
between ‘higher pleasures’ and ‘lower pleasures’ with our desires for food,
sex, comfort, excitement, and so on being classed as lower pleasures, and our
needs for art, culture, literature, and knowledge being classed as higher:
It
is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be
Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are
of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the
question.[7]
What Mill is effectively saying is
that some pleasures are better than others, so that pleasures of the mind are
above pleasures of the body. In this matter he is essentially copying the views
of the Greek philosopher Aristotle. JS
Mill justified this by saying that those who have experienced both higher
pleasures and lower pleasures will always opt for the pursuits which are of the
highest quality and that these people will tend to prefer the pleasures of the
mind. Mill uses this to write off examples of taking pleasure from other
people’s pain as unworthy of consideration by Utilitarians; for Mill the
quality of sadism is so low as to be worthless.
Mill is often accused of being a snob
because of the way that he writes off lower pleasures – the pleasures of the
common man – as being of less value. And he is surely wrong in saying that educated
people always choose intellectual activities over physical or non-intellectual
pursuits, these people may enjoy gambling, drinking, sex, and sports just as
much as anyone else. Many people quite like to have a decent mixture of both
higher and lower pleasures in their lives, and couldn’t be happy without both.
As far as Bentham was concerned it didn’t matter whether something was
intellectual or not, all that mattered was whether it was enjoyed or not: “prejudice
apart, the game of push-pin is of equal value with the arts and sciences of
music and poetry.”
Parting
Thoughts
Utilitarianism aims to improve the
world by making the general public happier, a noble goal, however, it suffers
from the key problem that it could easily lead to the abuse of minorities or
individuals. On the other hand, perhaps people should do what is best and not
what is ideal? Michael Palmer, Moral Problems
Michael Schefczyk, John Stuart Mill’s Ethics, IEP
Robert Bowie, Ethical Studies
Geoff Cocksworth, Utilitarianism (Dialogue Magazine)
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