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Utilitarianism is an ethical theory that states that the best action is the one that maximizes
utility. "Utility" is defined in various ways, usually in terms of the
well-being of
sentient entities.
Jeremy Bentham,
the founder of utilitarianism, described utility as the sum of all
pleasure that results from an action, minus the suffering of anyone
involved in the action. Utilitarianism is a version of
consequentialism,
which states that the consequences of any action are the only standard
of right and wrong. Unlike other forms of consequentialism, such as
egoism, utilitarianism considers the interests of all beings
equally.
Proponents of utilitarianism have disagreed on a number of
points, such as whether actions should be chosen based on their likely
results (
act utilitarianism) or whether
agents should conform to rules that maximize utility (
rule utilitarianism). There is also disagreement as to whether total (
total utilitarianism) or average (
average utilitarianism) utility should be maximized.
Though the seeds of the theory can be found in the hedonists
Aristippus and
Epicurus, who viewed happiness as the only good, the tradition of utilitarianism properly began with Bentham, and has included
John Stuart Mill,
Henry Sidgwick,
R. M. Hare,
David Braybrooke, and
Peter Singer. It has been applied to social welfare economics, the crisis of global poverty, the
ethics of raising animals for food and the importance of avoiding
existential risks to humanity.
Etymology
Benthamism, the utilitarian philosophy founded by
Jeremy Bentham, was substantially modified by his successor
John Stuart Mill, who popularized the word 'Utilitarianism'.
[1]
In 1861, Mill acknowledged in a footnote that, though "believing
himself to be the first person who brought the word 'utilitarian' into
use, he did not invent it. Rather, he adopted it from a passing
expression in"
John Galt's 1821 novel
Annals of the Parish.
[2]
Mill seems to have been unaware that Bentham had used the term
'utilitarian' in his 1781 letter to George Wilson and his 1802 letter to
Étienne Dumont.
[1]
Historical background
Chinese philosophy
In
Chinese philosophy, the
Mohists and their successors the
"Chinese Legalists"[citation needed] might be considered utilitarians, or at least the "earliest form of
consequentialism".
The fourth century witnessed the emergence of particular concerns for
them, including discussions polarizing the concepts of self and private,
commonly used in conjunction with profit and associated with
fragmentation, division, partiality, and one-sidelines, with that of the
state and "public", represented by the duke and referring to what is
official or royal, that is, the ruler himself, associated with unity,
wholeness, objectivity, and universality. The later denotes the
"universal Way".
[3]
However, the Mohists did not focus on emotional happiness, but
promoted objective public goods: material wealth, a large population or
family, and social order.
[4] On the other hand, the "Legalist"
Han Fei "is motivated almost totally from the ruler's point of view."
[5]
Western philosophy
The importance of
happiness as an end for humans has long been recognized. Forms of
hedonism were put forward by
Aristippus and
Epicurus;
Aristotle argued that
eudaimonia is the highest human good and
Augustine wrote that "all men agree in desiring the last end, which is happiness." Happiness was also explored in depth by
Aquinas.
[6][7][8][9][10] Different varieties of consequentialism also existed in the ancient and medieval world, like the
state consequentialism of
Mohism or the political philosophy of
Niccolò Machiavelli.
Mohist consequentialism advocated communitarian moral goods including
political stability, population growth, and wealth, but did not support
the utilitarian notion of maximizing individual happiness.
[11]
Machiavelli was also an exponent of consequentialism. He believed that
the actions of a state, however cruel or ruthless they may be, must
contribute towards the common good of a society.
[12] Utilitarianism as a distinct ethical position only emerged in the eighteenth century.
Although utilitarianism is usually thought to start with
Jeremy Bentham, there were earlier writers who presented theories that were strikingly similar. In
An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals,
David Hume writes:
[13]
In all determinations of morality,
this circumstance of public utility is ever principally in view; and
wherever disputes arise, either in philosophy or common life, concerning
the bounds of duty, the question cannot, by any means, be decided with
greater certainty, than by ascertaining, on any side, the true interests
of mankind. If any false opinion, embraced from appearances, has been
found to prevail; as soon as farther experience and sounder reasoning
have given us juster notions of human affairs, we retract our first
sentiment, and adjust anew the boundaries of moral good and evil.
Hume studied the works of, and corresponded with,
Francis Hutcheson, and it was he who first introduced a key utilitarian phrase. In
An Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (1725), Hutcheson says
[14]
when choosing the most moral action, virtue is in proportion to the
number of people a particular action brings happiness to. In the same
way, moral
evil, or
vice,
is proportionate to the number of people made to suffer. The best
action is the one that procures the greatest happiness of the greatest
numbers—and the worst is the one that causes the most misery.
In the first three editions of the book, Hutcheson included
various mathematical algorithms "...to compute the Morality of any
Actions." In this, he pre-figured the
hedonic calculus of Bentham.
Some claim that
John Gay developed the first systematic theory of utilitarian ethics.
[15] In
Concerning the Fundamental Principle of Virtue or Morality (1731), Gay argues that:
[16]
happiness, private happiness, is
the proper or ultimate end of all our actions… each particular action
may be said to have its proper and peculiar end…(but)…. they still tend
or ought to tend to something farther; as is evident from hence, viz.
that a man may ask and expect a reason why either of them are pursued:
now to ask the reason of any action or pursuit, is only to enquire into
the end of it: but to expect a reason, i.e. an end, to be assigned for
an ultimate end, is absurd. To ask why I pursue happiness, will admit of
no other answer than an explanation of the terms.
This pursuit of happiness is given a theological basis:
[17]
Now it is evident from the nature
of God, viz. his being infinitely happy in himself from all eternity,
and from his goodness manifested in his works, that he could have no
other design in creating mankind than their happiness; and therefore he
wills their happiness; therefore the means of their happiness: therefore
that my behaviour, as far as it may be a means of the happiness of
mankind, should be such…thus the will of God is the immediate criterion
of Virtue, and the happiness of mankind the criterion of the wilt of
God; and therefore the happiness of mankind may be said to be the
criterion of virtue, but once removed…(and)… I am to do whatever lies in
my power towards promoting the happiness of mankind.
Gay's theological utilitarianism was developed and popularized by
William Paley.
It has been claimed that Paley was not a very original thinker and that
the philosophical part of his treatise on ethics is "an assemblage of
ideas developed by others and is presented to be learned by students
rather than debated by colleagues."
[18] Nevertheless, his book
The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy (1785) was a required text at Cambridge
[18]
and Smith says that Paley's writings were "once as well known in
American colleges as were the readers and spellers of William McGuffey
and Noah Webster in the elementary schools."
[19]
Although now largely missing from the philosophical canon, Schneewind
writes that "utilitarianism first became widely known in England through
the work of William Paley."
[20] The now forgotten significance of Paley can be judged from the title of
Thomas Rawson Birks's 1874 work
Modern Utilitarianism or the Systems of Paley, Bentham and Mill Examined and Compared.
Apart from restating that happiness as an end is grounded in the
nature of God, Paley also discusses the place of rules. He writes:
[21]
...actions are to be estimated by
their tendency. Whatever is expedient, is right. It is the utility of
any moral rule alone, which constitutes the obligation of it.
But to all this there seems a plain objection, viz. that many
actions are useful, which no man in his senses will allow to be right.
There are occasions, in which the hand of the assassin would be very
useful… The true answer is this; that these actions, after all, are not
useful, and for that reason, and that alone, are not right.
To see this point perfectly, it must be observed that the bad
consequences of actions are twofold, particular and general. The
particular bad consequence of an action, is the mischief which that
single action directly and immediately occasions. The general bad
consequence is, the violation of some necessary or useful general rule…
You cannot permit one action and forbid another, without showing a
difference between them. Consequently, the same sort of actions must be
generally permitted or generally forbidden. Where, therefore, the
general permission of them would be pernicious, it becomes necessary to
lay down and support the rule which generally forbids them.
Classical utilitarianism
Jeremy Bentham
Bentham's book
An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation
was printed in 1780 but not published until 1789. It is possible that
Bentham was spurred on to publish after he saw the success of Paley's
The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy.
[22] Bentham's book was not an immediate success
[23] but his ideas were spread further when
Pierre Étienne Louis Dumont translated edited selections from a variety of Bentham's manuscripts into French.
Traité de legislation civile et pénale was published in 1802 and then later retranslated back into English by Hildreth as
The Theory of Legislation, although by this time significant portions of Dumont's work had already been retranslated and incorporated into
Sir John Bowring's edition of Bentham's works, which was issued in parts between 1838 and 1843.
Bentham's work opens with a statement of the principle of utility:
[24]
Nature has placed mankind under the
governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them
alone to point out what we ought to do… By the principle of utility is
meant that principle which approves or disapproves of every action
whatsoever according to the tendency 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.
In Chapter IV, Bentham introduces a method of calculating the value
of pleasures and pains, which has come to be known as the hedonic
calculus. Bentham says that the value of a pleasure or pain, considered
by itself, can be measured according to its intensity, duration,
certainty/uncertainty and propinquity/remoteness. In addition, it is
necessary to consider "the tendency of any act by which it is produced"
and, therefore, to take account of the act's fecundity, or the chance it
has of being followed by sensations of the same kind and its purity, or
the chance it has of not being followed by sensations of the opposite
kind. Finally, it is necessary to consider the extent, or the number of
people affected by the action.
Perhaps aware that Hutcheson eventually removed his algorithms
for calculating the greatest happiness because they "appear'd useless,
and were disagreeable to some readers",
[25]
Bentham contends that there is nothing novel or unwarranted about his
method, for "in all this there is nothing but what the practice of
mankind, wheresoever they have a clear view of their own interest, is
perfectly conformable to."
Rosen warns that descriptions of utilitarianism can bear "little resemblance historically to utilitarians like Bentham and
J. S. Mill" and can be more "a crude version of act utilitarianism conceived in the twentieth century as a
straw man to be attacked and rejected."
[26]
It is a mistake to think that Bentham is not concerned with rules. His
seminal work is concerned with the principles of legislation and the
hedonic calculus is introduced with the words "Pleasures then, and the
avoidance of pains, are the ends that the legislator has in view." In
Chapter VII, Bentham says: "The business of government is to promote the
happiness of the society, by punishing and rewarding… In proportion as
an act tends to disturb that happiness, in proportion as the tendency of
it is pernicious, will be the demand it creates for punishment."
The question then arises as to when, if at all, it might be legitimate to break the law. This is considered in
The Theory of Legislation,
where Bentham distinguishes between evils of the first and second
orders. Those of the first order are the more immediate consequences;
those of the second are when the consequences spread through the
community causing "alarm" and "danger".
It is true there are cases in which, if we confine
ourselves to the effects of the first order, the good will have an
incontestable preponderance over the evil. Were the offence considered
only under this point of view, it would not be easy to assign any good
reasons to justify the rigour of the laws. Every thing depends upon the
evil of the second order; it is this which gives to such actions the
character of crime, and which makes punishment necessary. Let us take,
for example, the physical desire of satisfying hunger. Let a beggar,
pressed by hunger, steal from a rich man's house a loaf, which perhaps
saves him from starving, can it be possible to compare the good which
the thief acquires for himself, with the evil which the rich man
suffers? … It is not on account of the evil of the first order that it
is necessary to erect these actions into offences, but on account of the
evil of the second order.[27]
John Stuart Mill
Mill was brought up as a Benthamite with the explicit intention that he would carry on the cause of utilitarianism.
[28] Mill's book
Utilitarianism first appeared as a series of three articles published in
Fraser's Magazine in 1861 and was reprinted as a single book in 1863.
[29][citation needed]
Higher and lower pleasures
Mill rejects a purely quantitative measurement of utility and says:
[30]
It is quite compatible with the
principle of utility to recognize the fact, that some kinds of pleasure
are more desirable and more valuable than others. It would be absurd
that while, in estimating all other things, quality is considered as
well as quantity, the estimation of pleasures should be supposed to
depend on quantity alone.
The word utility is used to mean general well-being or happiness, and
Mill's view is that utility is the consequence of a good action.
Utility, within the context of utilitarianism, refers to people
performing actions for social utility. With social utility, he means the
well-being of many people. Mill's explanation of the concept of utility
in his work, Utilitarianism, is that people really do desire happiness,
and since each individual desires their own happiness, it must follow
that all of us desire the happiness of everyone, contributing to a
larger social utility. Thus, an action that results in the greatest
pleasure for the utility of society is the best action, or as Jeremy
Bentham, the founder of early Utilitarianism put it, as the greatest
happiness of the greatest number.
Mill not only viewed actions as a core part of utility, but as
the directive rule of moral human conduct. The rule being that we should
only be committing actions that provide pleasure to society. This view
of pleasure was hedonistic, as it pursued the thought that pleasure is
the highest good in life. This concept was adopted by Jeremy Bentham,
the founder of Utilitarianism, and can be seen in his works. According
to Mill, good actions result in pleasure, and that there is no higher
end than pleasure. Mill says that good actions lead to pleasure and
define good
character.
Better put, the justification of character, and whether an action is
good or not, is based on how the person contributes to the concept of
social utility. In the long run the best proof of a good character is
good actions; and resolutely refuse to consider any mental disposition
as good, of which the predominant tendency is to produce bad conduct. In
the last chapter of Utilitarianism, Mill concludes that justice, as a
classifying factor of our actions (being just or unjust) is one of the
certain moral requirements, and when the requirements are all regarded
collectively, they are viewed as greater according to this scale of
"social utility" as Mill puts it.
He also notes that, contrary to what its critics might say, there
is "no known Epicurean theory of life which does not assign to the
pleasures of the intellect… a much higher value as pleasures than to
those of mere sensation." However, he accepts that this is usually
because the intellectual pleasures are thought to have circumstantial
advantages, i.e. "greater permanency, safety, uncostliness, &c."
Instead, Mill will argue that some pleasures are intrinsically better
than others.
The accusation that hedonism is "doctrine worthy only of swine" has a long history. In
Nicomachean Ethics (Book 1 Chapter 5),
Aristotle
says that identifying the good with pleasure is to prefer a life
suitable for beasts. The theological utilitarians had the option of
grounding their pursuit of happiness in the will of God; the hedonistic
utilitarians needed a different defence. Mill's approach is to argue
that the pleasures of the intellect are intrinsically superior to
physical pleasures.
Few human creatures would consent to be changed into any
of the lower animals, for a promise of the fullest allowance of a
beast's pleasures; no intelligent human being would consent to be a
fool, no instructed person would be an ignoramus, no person of feeling
and conscience would be selfish and base, even though they should be
persuaded that the fool, the dunce, or the rascal is better satisfied
with his lot than they are with theirs… A being of higher faculties
requires more to make him happy, is capable probably of more acute
suffering, and certainly accessible to it at more points, than one of an
inferior type; but in spite of these liabilities, he can never really
wish to sink into what he feels to be a lower grade of existence… 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…[31]
Mill argues that if people who are "competently acquainted" with two
pleasures show a decided preference for one even if it be accompanied by
more discontent and "would not resign it for any quantity of the
other", then it is legitimate to regard that pleasure as being superior
in quality. Mill recognizes that these "competent judges" will not
always agree, and states that, in cases of disagreement, the judgment of
the majority is to be accepted as final. Mill also acknowledges that
"many who are capable of the higher pleasures, occasionally, under the
influence of temptation, postpone them to the lower. But this is quite
compatible with a full appreciation of the intrinsic superiority of the
higher." Mill says that this appeal to those who have experienced the
relevant pleasures is no different from what must happen when assessing
the quantity of pleasure, for there is no other way of measuring "the
acutest of two pains, or the intensest of two pleasurable sensations."
"It is indisputable that the being whose capacities of enjoyment are
low, has the greatest chance of having them fully satisfied; and a
highly-endowed being will always feel that any happiness which he can
look for, as the world is constitute, is imperfect."
[32]
Mill also thinks that “intellectual pursuits have value out of
proportion to the amount of contentment or pleasure (the mental state)
that they produce”.
[33]
Mill also says that people should pursue these grand ideals, because if
they choose to have gratification from petty pleasures, “some
displeasure will eventually creep in. We will become bored and
depressed.”
[34]
Mill claims that gratification from petty pleasures only gives short-
term happiness and, subsequently, worsens the individual who may feel
that his life lacks happiness, since the happiness is transient.
Whereas, intellectual pursuits give long term happiness because provide
the individual with constant opportunities throughout the years to
improve his life, by benefiting from accruing knowledge. It should be
noted that Mill’s views intellectual pursuits as “capable of
incorporating the 'finer things' in life” while petty pursuits do not
achieve this goal.
[35]
Mill is saying that intellectual pursuits gives the individual the
opportunity to escape the constant depression cycle since these pursuits
allow them to achieve their ideals, while petty pleasures do not offer
this. Although debate persists about the nature of Mill's view of
gratification, this suggests that his was a bifurcated position.
Mill's 'proof' of the principle of utility
In Chapter Four of
Utilitarianism, Mill considers what proof can be given for the principle of utility. He says:
[36]
The only proof capable of being
given that an object is visible, is that people actually see it. The
only proof that a sound is audible, is that people hear it... In like
manner, I apprehend, the sole evidence it is possible to produce that
anything is desirable, is that people do actually desire it… No reason
can be given why the general happiness is desirable, except that each
person, so far as he believes it to be attainable, desires his own
happiness… we have not only all the proof which the case admits of, but
all which it is possible to require, that happiness is a good: that each
person's happiness is a good to that person, and the general happiness,
therefore, a good to the aggregate of all persons.
It is usual
[37] to say that Mill is committing a number of fallacies. He is accused of committing the
naturalistic fallacy, because he is trying to deduce what people ought to do from what they in fact do; the
fallacy of equivocation,
because he moves from the fact that (1) something is desirable, i.e. is
capable of being desired, to the claim that (2) it is desirable, i.e.
that it ought to be desired; and the
fallacy of composition,
because the fact that people desire their own happiness does not imply
that the aggregate of all persons will desire the general happiness.
Such allegations began to emerge in Mill's lifetime, shortly after the publication of
Utilitarianism, and persisted for well over a century, though the tide has been turning in recent discussions.
A defence of Mill against all three charges, with a chapter devoted to each, can be found in Necip Fikri Alican's
Mill's Principle of Utility: A Defense of John Stuart Mill's Notorious Proof
(1994). This is the first, and remains the only, book-length treatment
of the subject matter. Yet the alleged fallacies in the proof continue
to attract scholarly attention in journal articles and book chapters.
Hall
[38] and Popkin
[39]
defend Mill against this accusation pointing out that he begins Chapter
Four by asserting that "questions of ultimate ends do not admit of
proof, in the ordinary acceptation of the term" and that this is "common
to all first principles." According to Hall and Popkin, therefore, Mill
does not attempt to "establish that what people do desire is desirable
but merely attempts to make the principles acceptable."
[37]
The type of "proof" Mill is offering "consists only of some
considerations which, Mill thought, might induce an honest and
reasonable man to accept utilitarianism."
[37]
Having claimed that people do, in fact, desire happiness, Mill now has to show that it is the
only
thing they desire. Mill anticipates the objection that people desire
other things such as virtue. He argues that whilst people might start
desiring virtue as a
means to happiness, eventually, it becomes part of someone's happiness and is then desired as an end in itself.
The principle of utility does not
mean that any given pleasure, as music, for instance, or any given
exemption from pain, as for example health, are to be looked upon as
means to a collective something termed happiness, and to be desired on
that account. They are desired and desirable in and for themselves;
besides being means, they are a part of the end. Virtue, according to
the utilitarian doctrine, is not naturally and originally part of the
end, but it is capable of becoming so; and in those who love it
disinterestedly it has become so, and is desired and cherished, not as a
means to happiness, but as a part of their happiness.[40]
We may give what explanation we
please of this unwillingness; we may attribute it to pride, a name which
is given indiscriminately to some of the most and to some of the least
estimable feelings of which is mankind are capable; we may refer it to
the love of liberty and personal independence, an appeal to which was
with the Stoics one of the most effective means for the inculcation of
it; to the love of power, or the love of excitement, both of which do
really enter into and contribute to it: but its most appropriate
appellation is a sense of dignity, which all humans beings possess in
one form or other, and in some, though by no means in exact, proportion
to their higher faculties, and which is so essential a part of the
happiness of those in whom it is strong, that nothing which conflicts
with it could be, otherwise than momentarily, an object of desire to
them.[41]
Twentieth-century developments
Ideal utilitarianism
The description of ideal utilitarianism was first used by
Hastings Rashdall in
The Theory of Good and Evil (1907), but it is more often associated with
G. E. Moore. In
Ethics
(1912), Moore rejected a purely hedonistic utilitarianism and argued
that there is a range of values that might be maximized. Moore's
strategy was to show that it is intuitively implausible that pleasure is
the sole measure of what is good. He says that such an assumption:
[42]
involves our saying, for instance,
that a world in which absolutely nothing except pleasure existed—no
knowledge, no love, no enjoyment of beauty, no moral qualities—must yet
be intrinsically better—better worth creating—provided only the total
quantity of pleasure in it were the least bit greater, than one in which
all these things existed as well as pleasure.
It involves our saying that, even if the total quantity of
pleasure in each was exactly equal, yet the fact that all the beings in
the one possessed in addition knowledge of many different kinds and a
full appreciation of all that was beautiful or worthy of love in their
world, whereas none of the beings in the other possessed any of these
things, would give us no reason whatever for preferring the former to
the latter.
Moore admits that it is impossible to prove the case either way, but
he believed that it was intuitively obvious that even if the amount of
pleasure stayed the same a world that contained such things as beauty
and love would be a better world. He adds that, if a person was to take
the contrary view, then "I think it is self-evident that he would be
wrong."
[42]
Act and rule utilitarianism
In the mid-twentieth century a number of philosophers focused on the place of rules in utilitarian thinking.
[43]
It was already accepted that it is necessary to use rules to help you
choose the right action because the problems of calculating the
consequences on each and every occasion would almost certainly result in
you frequently choosing something less than the best course of action.
Paley had justified the use of rules and Mill says:
[44]
It is truly a whimsical supposition
that, if mankind were agreed in considering utility to be the test of
morality, they would remain without any agreement as to what is useful,
and would take no measures for having their notions on the subject
taught to the young, and enforced by law and opinion… to consider the
rules of morality as improvable, is one thing; to pass over the
intermediate generalisations entirely, and endeavour to test each
individual action directly by the first principle, is another… The
proposition that happiness is the end and aim of morality, does not mean
that no road ought to be laid down to that goal… Nobody argues that the
art of navigation is not founded on astronomy, because sailors cannot
wait to calculate the Nautical Almanack. Being rational creatures, they
go to sea with it ready calculated; and all rational creatures go out
upon the sea of life with their minds made up on the common questions of
right and wrong.
However, rule utilitarianism proposes a more central role for rules
that was thought to rescue the theory from some of its more devastating
criticisms, particularly problems to do with justice and promise
keeping. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, articles were published both
for and against the new form of utilitarianism, and through this debate
the theory we now call rule utilitarianism was created. In an
introduction to an anthology of these articles, the editor was able to
say: "The development of this theory was a dialectical process of
formulation, criticism, reply and reformulation; the record of this
process well illustrates the co-operative development of a philosophical
theory."
[45]
Smart
[46] and McCloskey
[47]
initially used the terms 'extreme' and 'restricted' utilitarianism but
eventually everyone settled on the terms 'act' and 'rule'
utilitarianism.
The essential difference is in what determines whether or not an action is the right action.
Act utilitarianism
maintains that an action is right if it maximizes utility; rule
utilitarianism maintains that an action is right if it conforms to a
rule that maximizes utility.
In 1956, Urmson published an influential article
[48]
arguing that Mill justified rules on utilitarian principles. From then
on, articles have debated this interpretation of Mill. In all
probability, it was not a distinction that Mill was particularly trying
to make and so the evidence in his writing is inevitably mixed. A
collection of Mill's writing published in 1977 includes a letter in
which he says:
[49]
I agree with you that the right way
of testing actions by their consequences, is to test them by the
natural consequences of the particular action, and not by those which
would follow if everyone did the same. But, for the most part, the
consideration of what would happen if everyone did the same, is the only
means we have of discovering the tendency of the act in the particular
case.
This seems to tip the balance in favour of saying that Mill is best classified as an act utilitarian.
Some school level textbooks and at least one UK examination board
[50]
make a further distinction between strong and weak rule utilitarianism.
However, it is not clear that this distinction is made in the academic
literature.
It has been argued that rule utilitarianism collapses into act
utilitarianism, because for any given rule, in the case where breaking
the rule produces more utility, the rule can be refined by the addition
of a sub-rule that handles cases like the exception.
[51]
This process holds for all cases of exceptions, and so the "rules" have
as many "sub-rules" as there are exceptional cases, which, in the end,
makes an agent seek out whatever outcome produces the maximum utility.
[52]
Two-level utilitarianism
In
Principles (1973),
[53] R. M. Hare
accepts that rule utilitarianism collapses into act utilitarianism but
claims that this is a result of allowing the rules to be "as specific
and un-general as we please." He argues that one of the main reasons for
introducing rule utilitarianism was to do justice to the general rules
that people need for moral education and character development and he
proposes that "a difference between act-utilitarianism and
rule-utilitarianism can be introduced by limiting the specificity of the
rules, i.e., by increasing their generality."
[53]:14
This distinction between a "specific rule utilitarianism" (which
collapses into act utilitarianism) and "general rule utilitarianism"
forms the basis of Hare's two-level utilitarianism.
When we are "playing God or the ideal observer", we use the
specific form, and we will need to do this when we are deciding what
general principles to teach and follow. When we are "inculcating" or in
situations where the biases of our human nature are likely to prevent us
doing the calculations properly, then we should use the more general
rule utilitarianism.
Hare argues that in practice, most of the time, we should be following the general principles:
[53]:17
One ought to abide by the general
principles whose general inculcation is for the best; harm is more
likely to come, in actual moral situations, from questioning these rules
than from sticking to them, unless the situations are very
extra-ordinary; the results of sophisticated felicific calculations are
not likely, human nature and human ignorance being what they are, to
lead to the greatest utility.
In
Moral Thinking (1981), Hare illustrated the two extremes.
The "archangel" is the hypothetical person who has perfect knowledge of
the situation and no personal biases or weaknesses and always uses
critical moral thinking to decide the right thing to do; the "prole" is
the hypothetical person who is completely incapable of critical thinking
and uses nothing but intuitive moral thinking and, of necessity, has to
follow the general moral rules they have been taught or learned through
imitation.
[54]
It is not that some people are archangels and others proles, but rather
that "we all share the characteristics of both to limited and varying
degrees and at different times."
[54]
Hare does not specify when we should think more like an
"archangel" and more like a "prole" as this will, in any case, vary from
person to person. However, the critical moral thinking underpins and
informs the more intuitive moral thinking. It is responsible for
formulating and, if necessary, reformulating the general moral rules. We
also switch to critical thinking when trying to deal with unusual
situations or in cases where the intuitive moral rules give conflicting
advice.
Preference utilitarianism
The concept of preference utilitarianism was first proposed in 1977 by
John Harsanyi in
Morality and the theory of rational behaviour,
[55] but preference utilitarianism is more commonly associated with
R. M. Hare,
[54] Peter Singer[56] and
Richard Brandt.
[57]
Harsanyi claimed that his theory is indebted to
Adam Smith, who equated the moral point of view with that of an impartial but sympathetic observer; to
Kant,
who insisted on the criterion of universality, which may also be
described as a criterion of reciprocity; to the classical utilitarians
who made maximizing social utility the basic criterion of morality; and
to "the modern theory of rational behaviour under risk and uncertainty,
usually described as Bayesian
decision theory".
[55]:42
Harsanyi rejects hedonistic utilitarianism as being dependent on
an outdated psychology saying that it is far from obvious that
everything we do is motivated by a desire to maximize pleasure and
minimize pain. He also rejects ideal utilitarianism because "it is
certainly not true as an empirical observation that people's only
purpose in life is to have 'mental states of intrinsic worth'."
[55]:54
According to Harsanyi, "preference utilitarianism is the only
form of utilitarianism consistent with the important philosophical
principle of preference autonomy. By this I mean the principle that, in
deciding what is good and what is bad for a given individual, the
ultimate criterion can only be his own wants and his own preferences."
[55]:55
Harsanyi adds two caveats. People sometimes have irrational
preferences. To deal with this, Harsanyi distinguishes between
"manifest" preferences and "true" preferences. The former are those
"manifested by his observed behaviour, including preferences possibly
based on erroneous factual beliefs,
or on careless logical analysis, or on strong emotions that at the
moment greatly hinder rational choice" whereas the latter are "the
preferences he would have if he had all the relevant factual
information, always reasoned with the greatest possible care, and were
in a state of mind most conducive to rational choice."
[55]:55 It is the latter that preference utilitarianism tries to satisfy.
The second caveat is that antisocial preferences, such as sadism,
envy and resentment, have to be excluded. Harsanyi achieves this by
claiming that such preferences partially exclude those people from the
moral community:
Utilitarian ethics makes all of us
members of the same moral community. A person displaying ill will toward
others does remain a member of this community, but not with his whole
personality. That part of his personality that harbours these hostile
antisocial feelings must be excluded from membership, and has no claim
for a hearing when it comes to defining our concept of social utility.[55]:56
More varieties of utilitarianism
Negative utilitarianism
In
The Open Society and its Enemies (1945),
Karl Popper
argued that the principle "maximize pleasure" should be replaced by
"minimize pain". He thought "it is not only impossible but very
dangerous to attempt to maximize the pleasure or the happiness of the
people, since such an attempt must lead to totalitarianism."
[58] He claimed that:
[59]
there is, from the ethical point of
view, no symmetry between suffering and happiness, or between pain and
pleasure… In my opinion human suffering makes a direct moral appeal,
namely, the appeal for help, while there is no similar call to increase
the happiness of a man who is doing well anyway. A further criticism of
the Utilitarian formula "Maximize pleasure" is that it assumes a
continuous pleasure-pain scale that lets us treat degrees of pain as
negative degrees of pleasure. But, from the moral point of view, pain
cannot be outweighed by pleasure, and especially not one man's pain by
another man's pleasure. Instead of the greatest happiness for the
greatest number, one should demand, more modestly, the least amount of
avoidable suffering for all...
The actual term
negative utilitarianism was introduced by
R.N.Smart as the title to his 1958 reply to Popper
[60]
in which he argued that the principle would entail seeking the quickest
and least painful method of killing the entirety of humanity.
Negative
total utilitarianism, in contrast, tolerates suffering that can be compensated within the same person.
[61][62]
Negative
preference utilitarianism avoids the problem of
moral killing with reference to existing preferences that such killing
would violate, while it still demands a justification for the creation
of new lives.
[63] A possible justification is the reduction of the average level of preference-frustration.
[64]
Others see negative utilitarianism as a branch within modern
hedonistic utilitarianism, which assigns a higher weight to the
avoidance of suffering than to the promotion of happiness.
[65]
The moral weight of suffering can be increased by using a
"compassionate" utilitarian metric, so that the result is the same as in
prioritarianism.
[66]
Pessimistic representatives of negative utilitarianism can be found in the environment of
Buddhism.
[67]
Motive utilitarianism
Motive utilitarianism was first proposed by
Robert Merrihew Adams in 1976.
[68] Whereas act utilitarianism requires us to choose our actions by calculating which action will maximize
utility
and rule utilitarianism requires us to implement rules that will, on
the whole, maximize utility, motive utilitarianism "has the utility
calculus being used to select motives and dispositions according to
their general felicific effects, and those motives and dispositions then
dictate our choices of actions."
[69]
The arguments for moving to some form of motive utilitarianism at
the personal level can be seen as mirroring the arguments for moving to
some form of rule utilitarianism at the social level.
[70]
Adams refers to Sidgwick's observation that "Happiness (general as well
as individual) is likely to be better attained if the extent to which
we set ourselves consciously to aim at it be carefully restricted."
[71] Trying to apply the utility calculation on each and every occasion is
likely to lead to a sub-optimal outcome. Applying carefully selected
rules at the social level and encouraging appropriate motives at the
personal level is, so it is argued, likely to lead to a better overall
outcome even if on some individual occasions it leads to the wrong
action when assessed according to act utilitarian standards.
[72]
Adams concludes that "right action, by act-utilitarian standards,
and right motivation, by motive-utilitarian standards, are incompatible
in some cases."
[73] The necessity of this conclusion is rejected by
Fred Feldman
who argues that "the conflict in question results from an inadequate
formulation of the utilitarian doctrines; motives play no essential role
in it…(and that)… Precisely the same sort of conflict arises even when
MU is left out of consideration and AU is applied by itself."
[74] Instead,
Feldman proposes a variant of act utilitarianism that results in there being no conflict between it and motive utilitarianism.
Criticisms
Because
utilitarianism is not a single theory but a cluster of related theories
that have been developed over two hundred years, criticisms can be made
for different reasons and have different targets.
Quantifying utility
The
main objection to utilitarianism is the inability to quantify, compare,
or measure happiness or well-being. Ray Briggs writes in the
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
[75]
One objection to this
interpretation of utility is that there may not be a single good (or
indeed any good) which rationality requires us to seek. But if we
understand “utility” broadly enough to include all potentially desirable
ends—pleasure, knowledge, friendship, health and so on—it's not clear
that there is a unique correct way to make the tradeoffs between
different goods so that each outcome receives a utility. There may be no
good answer to the question of whether the life of an ascetic monk
contains more or less good than the life of a happy libertine—but
assigning utilities to these options forces us to compare them.
Utility understood this way is a
personal preference, in the absence of any objective measurement.
Utility ignores justice
As Rosen
[22] has pointed out, claiming that act utilitarians are not concerned about having rules is to set up a "straw man". Similarly,
Hare
refers to "the crude caricature of act utilitarianism which is the only
version of it that many philosophers seem to be acquainted with."
[76] Given what Bentham says about second order evils
[77]
it would be a serious misrepresentation to say that he and similar act
utilitarians would be prepared to punish an innocent person for the
greater good. Nevertheless, whether they would agree or not, this is
what critics of utilitarianism claim is entailed by the theory. A
classic version of this criticism was given by H. J. McCloskey:
[47]
Suppose that a sheriff were faced
with the choice either of framing a Negro for a rape that had aroused
hostility to the Negroes (a particular Negro generally being believed to
be guilty but whom the sheriff knows not to be guilty)—and thus
preventing serious anti-Negro riots which would probably lead to some
loss of life and increased hatred of each other by whites and Negroes—or
of hunting for the guilty person and thereby allowing the anti-Negro
riots to occur, while doing the best he can to combat them. In such a
case the sheriff, if he were an extreme utilitarian, would appear to be
committed to framing the Negro.
By "extreme" utilitarian, McCloskey is referring to what later came
to be called "act" utilitarianism. He suggests one response might be
that the sheriff would not frame the innocent negro because of another
rule: "do not punish an innocent person". Another response might be
that the riots the sheriff is trying to avoid might have positive
utility in the long run by drawing attention to questions of race and
resources to help address tensions between the communities.
In a later article, McCloskey says:
[78]
Surely the utilitarian must admit
that whatever the facts of the matter may be, it is logically possible
that an 'unjust' system of punishment—e.g. a system involving collective
punishments, retroactive laws and punishments, or punishments of
parents and relations of the offender—may be more useful than a 'just'
system of punishment?
Predicting consequences
Some
argue that it is impossible to do the calculation that utilitarianism
requires because consequences are inherently unknowable.
Daniel Dennett describes this as the
Three Mile Island effect.
[79] Dennett
points out that not only is it impossible to assign a precise utility
value to the incident, it is impossible to know whether, ultimately, the
near-meltdown that occurred was a good or bad thing. He suggests that
it would have been a good thing if plant operators learned lessons that
prevented future serious incidents.
Russell Hardin rejects such arguments. He argues that it is
possible to distinguish the moral impulse of utilitarianism (which is
"to define the right as good consequences and to motivate people to
achieve these") from our ability to correctly apply rational principles
that, among other things, "depend on the perceived facts of the case and
on the particular moral actor's mental equipment."
[80]
The fact that the latter is limited and can change doesn't mean that
the former has to be rejected. "If we develop a better system for
determining relevant causal relations so that we are able to choose
actions that better produce our intended ends, it does not follow that
we then must change our ethics. The moral impulse of utilitarianism is
constant, but our decisions under it are contingent on our knowledge and
scientific understanding."
[81]
From the beginning, utilitarianism has recognized that certainty
in such matters is unobtainable and both Bentham and Mill said that it
was necessary to rely on the
tendencies of actions to bring about consequences.
G. E. Moore, writing in 1903, said:
[82]
We certainly cannot hope directly
to compare their effects except within a limited future; and all the
arguments, which have ever been used in Ethics, and upon which we
commonly act in common life, directed to shewing that one course is
superior to another, are (apart from theological dogmas) confined to
pointing out such probable immediate advantages…
An ethical law has the nature not of a scientific law but of a scientific prediction: and the latter is always merely probable, although the probability may be very great.
Demandingness objection
Act
utilitarianism not only requires everyone to do what they can to
maximize utility, but to do so without any favouritism. Mill said, "As
between his own happiness and that of others, utilitarianism requires
him to be as strictly impartial as a disinterested and benevolent
spectator."
[83]
Critics say that this combination of requirements leads to
utilitarianism making unreasonable demands. The well-being of strangers
counts just as much as that of friends, family or self. "What makes this
requirement so demanding is the gargantuan number of strangers in great
need of help and the indefinitely many opportunities to make sacrifices
to help them."
[84]
As Shelly Kagan says, "Given the parameters of the actual world, there
is no question that …(maximally)… promoting the good would require a
life of hardship, self-denial, and austerity…a life spent promoting the
good would be a severe one indeed."
[85]
Hooker describes two aspects to the problem: act utilitarianism requires
huge
sacrifices from those who are relatively better off and also requires
sacrifice of your own good even when the aggregate good will be only
slightly increased.
[86]
Another way of highlighting the complaint is to say that in
utilitarianism, "there is no such thing as morally permissible
self-sacrifice that goes above and beyond the call of duty."
[86]
Mill was quite clear about this, "A sacrifice which does not increase,
or tend to increase, the sum total of happiness, it considers as
wasted."
[83]
One response to the problem is to accept its demands. This is the
view taken by Peter Singer, who says: "No doubt we do instinctively
prefer to help those who are close to us. Few could stand by and watch a
child drown; many can ignore the avoidable deaths of children in Africa
or India. The question, however, is not what we usually do, but what we
ought to do, and it is difficult to see any sound moral justification
for the view that distance, or community membership, makes a crucial
difference to our obligations."
[87]
Others argue that a moral theory that is so contrary to our deeply held moral convictions must either be rejected or modified.
[88] There have been various attempts to modify utilitarianism to escape its seemingly over-demanding requirements.
[89] One approach is to drop the demand that utility be maximized. In
Satisficing Consequentialism,
Michael Slote argues for a form of utilitarianism where "an act might
qualify as morally right through having good enough consequences, even
though better consequences could have been produced."
[90] One advantage of such a system is that it would be able to accommodate the notion of supererogatory actions.
Samuel Scheffler takes a different approach and amends the requirement that everyone be treated the same.
[91]
In particular, Scheffler suggests that there is an "agent-centered
prerogative" such that when the overall utility is being calculated it
is permitted to count our own interests more heavily than the interests
of others. Kagan suggests that such a procedure might be justified on
the grounds that "a general requirement to promote the good would lack
the motivational underpinning necessary for genuine moral requirements"
and, secondly, that personal independence is necessary for the existence
of commitments and close personal relations and that "the value of such
commitments yields a positive reason for preserving within moral theory
at least some moral independence for the personal point of view."
[92]
Robert Goodin takes yet another approach and argues that the
demandingness objection can be "blunted" by treating utilitarianism as a
guide to public policy rather than one of individual morality. He
suggests that many of the problems arise under the traditional
formulation because the conscientious utilitarian ends up having to make
up for the failings of others and so contributing more than their fair
share.
[93]
Harsanyi argues that the objection overlooks the fact that
"people attach considerable utility to freedom from unduly burdensome
moral obligations… most people will prefer a society with a more relaxed
moral code, and will feel that such a society will achieve a higher
level of average utility—even if adoption of such a moral code should
lead to some losses in economic and cultural accomplishments (so long as
these losses remain within tolerable limits). This means that
utilitarianism, if correctly interpreted, will yield a moral code with a
standard of acceptable conduct very much below the level of highest
moral perfection, leaving plenty of scope for supererogatory actions
exceeding this minimum standard."
[94]
Aggregating utility
The objection that "utilitarianism does not take seriously the distinction between persons"
[95] came to prominence in 1971 with the publication of
John Rawls'
A Theory of Justice. The concept is also important in
animal rights advocate
Richard Ryder's
rejection of utilitarianism, in which he talks of the "boundary of the
individual", through which neither pain nor pleasure may pass.
[96] However, a similar objection was noted in 1970 by
Thomas Nagel
(who claimed that consequentialism "treats the desires, needs,
satisfactions, and dissatisfactions of distinct persons as if they were
the desires, etc., of a mass person"
[97]),
and even earlier by David Gauthier, who wrote that utilitarianism
supposes "that mankind is a super-person, whose greatest satisfaction is
the objective of moral action. . . . But this is absurd. Individuals
have wants, not mankind; individuals seek satisfaction, not mankind. A
person's satisfaction is not part of any greater satisfaction."
[98]
Thus, the aggregation of utility becomes futile as both pain and
happiness are intrinsic to and inseparable from the consciousness in
which they are felt, rendering impossible the task of adding up the
various pleasures of multiple individuals.
A response to this criticism is to point out that whilst seeming
to resolve some problems it introduces others. Intuitively, there are
many cases where people do want to take the numbers involved into
account. As Alastair Norcross has said, "suppose that Homer is faced
with the painful choice between saving Barney from a burning building or
saving both Moe and Apu from the building…it is clearly better for
Homer to save the larger number, precisely because it is a larger
number… Can anyone who really considers the matter seriously honestly
claim to believe that it is worse that one person die than that the
entire sentient population of the universe be severely mutilated?
Clearly not."
[99]
It may be possible to uphold the distinction between persons
whilst still aggregating utility, if it accepted that people can be
influenced by
empathy.
[100] This position is advocated by
Iain King,
[101] who has
suggested
the evolutionary basis of empathy means humans can take into account
the interests of other individuals, but only on a one-to-one basis,
"since we can only imagine ourselves in the mind of one other person at a
time."
[102] King uses this insight to
adapt utilitarianism, and it may help reconcile Bentham's philosophy with deontology and virtue ethics.
[103]
The philosopher John Taurek also argued that the idea of adding
happiness or pleasures across persons is quite unintelligible and that
the numbers of persons involved in a situation are morally irrelevant.
[104]
Taurek's basic concern comes down to this: we cannot explain what it
means to say that things would be five times worse if five people die
than if one person dies. "I cannot give a satisfactory account of the
meaning of judgments of this kind," he wrote (p. 304). He argues that
each person can only lose one person's happiness or pleasures. There
isn't five times more loss of happiness or pleasure when five die: who
would be feeling this happiness or pleasure? "Each person's potential
loss has the same significance to me, only as a loss to that person
alone. because, by hypothesis, I have an equal concern for each person
involved, I am moved to give each of them an equal chance to be spared
his loss" (p. 307).
Parfit[105] and others
[106] have criticized Taurek's line, and it continues to be discussed.
[107]
Calculating utility is self-defeating
An
early criticism, which was addressed by Mill, is that if time is taken
to calculate the best course of action it is likely that the opportunity
to take the best course of action will already have passed. Mill
responded that there had been ample time to calculate the likely
effects:
[83]
...namely, the whole past duration
of the human species. During all that time, mankind have been learning
by experience the tendencies of actions; on which experience all the
prudence, as well as all the morality of life, are dependent…It is a
strange notion that the acknowledgment of a first principle is
inconsistent with the admission of secondary ones. To inform a traveller
respecting the place of his ultimate destination, is not to forbid the
use of landmarks and direction-posts on the way. The proposition that
happiness is the end and aim of morality, does not mean that no road
ought to be laid down to that goal, or that persons going thither should
not be advised to take one direction rather than another. Men really
ought to leave off talking a kind of nonsense on this subject, which
they would neither talk nor listen to on other matters of practical
concernment.
More recently, Hardin has made the same point. "It should embarrass
philosophers that they have ever taken this objection seriously.
Parallel considerations in other realms are dismissed with eminently
good sense. Lord Devlin notes, 'if the reasonable man "
worked to rule"
by perusing to the point of comprehension every form he was handed, the
commercial and administrative life of the country would creep to a
standstill.
'"
[81]
It is such considerations that lead even act utilitarians to rely on "rules of thumb", as
Smart[108] has called them.
Karl Marx's criticism
Karl Marx, in
Das Kapital,
criticises Bentham's utilitarianism on the grounds that it does not
appear to recognise that different people have different joys:
[109]
Not even excepting our philosopher, Christian Wolff,
in no time and in no country has the most homespun commonplace ever
strutted about in so self-satisfied a way. The principle of utility was
no discovery of Bentham. He simply reproduced in his dull way what Helvétius
and other Frenchmen had said with esprit in the 18th century. To know
what is useful for a dog, one must study dog-nature. This nature itself
is not to be deduced from the principle of utility. Applying this to
man, he who would criticize all human acts, movements, relations, etc.,
by the principle of utility, must first deal with human nature in
general, and then with human nature as modified in each historical
epoch. Bentham makes short work of it. With the driest naivete he takes
the modern shopkeeper, especially the English shopkeeper, as the normal
man. Whatever is useful to this queer normal man, and to his world, is
absolutely useful. This yard-measure, then, he applies to past, present,
and future. The Christian religion, e.g., is "useful," "because it
forbids in the name of religion the same faults that the penal code
condemns in the name of the law." Artistic criticism is "harmful,"
because it disturbs worthy people in their enjoyment of Martin Tupper,
etc. With such rubbish has the brave fellow, with his motto, "nulla
dies sine linea [no day without a line]", piled up mountains of books.
John Paul II's personalist criticism
Pope John Paul II, following his
personalist philosophy,
argued that a danger of utilitarianism is that it tends to make
persons, just as much as things, the object of use. "Utilitarianism," he
wrote, "is a civilization of production and of use, a civilization of
things and not of persons, a civilization in which persons are used in
the same way as things are used."
[110]
Additional considerations
Average v. total happiness
In
The Methods of Ethics,
Henry Sidgwick asked, "Is it total or average happiness that we seek to make a maximum?"
[111]
He noted that aspects of the question had been overlooked and answered
the question himself by saying that what had to be maximized was the
average multiplied by the number of people living.
[112]
He also argued that, if the "average happiness enjoyed remains
undiminished, Utilitarianism directs us to make the number enjoying it
as great as possible."
[112]
This was also the view taken earlier by Paley. He notes that, although
he speaks of the happiness of communities, "the happiness of a people is
made up of the happiness of single persons; and the quantity of
happiness can only be augmented by increasing the number of the
percipients, or the pleasure of their perceptions" and that if extreme
cases, such as people held as slaves, are excluded the amount of
happiness will usually be in proportion to the number of people.
Consequently, "the decay of population is the greatest evil that a state
can suffer; and the improvement of it the object which ought, in all
countries, to be aimed at in preference to every other political purpose
whatsoever."
[113] A similar view was expressed by Smart, who argued that all other things
being equal a universe with two million happy people is better than a
universe with only one million happy people.
[114]
Since Sidgwick raised the question it has been studied in detail
and philosophers have argued that using either total or average
happiness can lead to objectionable results.
According to
Derek Parfit, using total happiness falls victim to the
repugnant conclusion,
whereby large numbers of people with very low but non-negative utility
values can be seen as a better goal than a population of a less extreme
size living in comfort. In other words, according to the theory, it is a
moral good to breed more people on the world for as long as total
happiness rises.
[115]
On the other hand, measuring the utility of a population based on the average utility of that population avoids
Parfit's
repugnant conclusion but causes other problems. For example, bringing a
moderately happy person into a very happy world would be seen as an
immoral act; aside from this, the theory implies that it would be a
moral good to eliminate all people whose happiness is below average, as
this would raise the average happiness.
[116]
William Shaw suggests that the problem can be avoided if a
distinction is made between potential people, who need not concern us,
and actual future people, who should concern us. He says,
"utilitarianism values the happiness of people, not the production of
units of happiness. Accordingly, one has no positive obligation to have
children. However, if you have decided to have a child, then you have an
obligation to give birth to the happiest child you can."
[117]
Motives, intentions, and actions
Utilitarianism
is typically taken to assess the rightness or wrongness of an action by
considering just the consequences of that action. Bentham very
carefully distinguishes motive from
intention
and says that motives are not in themselves good or bad but can be
referred to as such on account of their tendency to produce pleasure or
pain. He adds that, "from every kind of motive, may proceed actions that
are good, others that are bad, and others that are indifferent."
[118] Mill makes a similar point
[119]
and explicitly says that "motive has nothing to do with the morality of
the action, though much with the worth of the agent. He who saves a
fellow creature from drowning does what is morally right, whether his
motive be duty, or the hope of being paid for his trouble."
[120]
However, with intention the situation is more complex. In a footnote printed in the second edition of
Utilitarianism, Mill says: "the morality of the action depends entirely upon the intention—that is, upon what the agent wills to do."
[120]
Elsewhere, he says, "Intention, and motive, are two very different
things. But it is the intention, that is, the foresight of consequences,
which constitutes the moral rightness or wrongness of the act."
[121]
The correct interpretation of Mill's footnote is a matter of some
debate. The difficulty in interpretation centres around trying to
explain why, since it is consequences that matter, intentions should
play a role in the assessment of the morality of an action but motives
should not. One possibility "involves supposing that the 'morality' of
the act is one thing, probably to do with the praiseworthiness or
blameworthiness of the agent, and its rightness or wrongness another."
Jonathan Dancy
rejects this interpretation on the grounds that Mill is explicitly
making intention relevant to an assessment of the act not to an
assessment of the agent.
An interpretation given by
Roger Crisp draws on a definition given by Mill in
A System of Logic,
where he says that an "intention to produce the effect, is one thing;
the effect produced in consequence of the intention, is another thing;
the two together constitute the action."
[123] Accordingly, whilst two actions may outwardly appear to be the same
they will be different actions if there is a different intention. Dancy
notes that this does not explain why intentions count but motives do
not.
A third interpretation is that an action might be considered a
complex action consisting of several stages and it is the intention that
determines which of these stages are to be considered part of the
action. Although this is the interpretation favoured by Dancy, he
recognizes that this might not have been Mill's own view, for Mill
"would not even allow that 'p & q' expresses a complex proposition.
He wrote in his
System of Logic I iv. 3, of 'Caesar is dead and
Brutus is alive', that 'we might as well call a street a complex house,
as these two propositions a complex proposition'."
Finally, whilst motives may not play a role in determining the
morality of an action, this does not preclude utilitarians from
fostering particular motives if doing so will increase overall
happiness.
Humans alone, or other sentient beings?
Nonhuman animals
In
An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation Bentham wrote "the question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?"
[124] Mill's distinction between
higher and lower pleasures might suggest that he gave more status to humans but in
The Methods of Ethics,
philosopher Henry Sidgwick
says "We have next to consider who the 'all' are, whose happiness is to
be taken into account. Are we to extend our concern to all the beings
capable of pleasure and pain whose feelings are affected by our conduct?
or are we to confine our view to human happiness? The former view is
the one adopted by Bentham and Mill, and (I believe) by the Utilitarian
school generally: and is obviously most in accordance with the
universality that is characteristic of their principle ... it seems
arbitrary and unreasonable to exclude from the end, as so conceived, any
pleasure of any sentient being."
[125]
Moreover, John Stuart Mill himself, in
Whewell on Moral Philosophy,
defends Bentham's advocacy for animal rights, calling it a 'noble
anticipation', and writing: "Granted that any practice causes more pain
to animals than it gives pleasure to man; is that practice moral or
immoral? And if, exactly in proportion as human beings raise their heads
out of the slough of selfishness, they do not with one voice answer
'immoral', let the morality of the principle of utility be for ever
condemned."
[126]
The utilitarian philosopher Peter Singer and many other
animal rights activists have continued to argue that the well-being of all
sentient
beings ought to be seriously considered. Singer suggests that rights
are conferred according to the level of a creature's self-awareness,
regardless of their species. He adds that humans tend to be
speciesist
(discriminatory against non-humans) in ethical matters, and argues
that, on utilitarianism, speciesism cannot be justified as there is no
rational distinction that can be made between the suffering of humans
and the suffering of nonhuman animals; all suffering ought to be
reduced. Singer writes: "The racist violates the principle of equality
by giving greater weight to the interests of members of his own race,
when there is a clash between their interests and the interests of those
of another race. Similarly the speciesist allows the interests of his
own species to override the greater interests of members of other
species. The pattern is the same in each case ... Most human beings are
speciesists."
[127]
In his 1990 edition of
Animal Liberation,
Peter Singer said that he no longer ate oysters and mussels, because
although the creatures might not suffer, they might, it's not really
known, and it's easy enough to avoid eating them in any case
[128] (and this aspect of seeking better alternatives is a prominent part of utilitarianism).
This view still might be contrasted with
deep ecology,
which holds that an intrinsic value is attached to all forms of life
and nature, whether currently assumed to be sentient or not. According
to utilitarianism, the forms of life that are unable to experience
anything akin to either enjoyment or discomfort are denied moral status,
because it is impossible to increase the happiness or reduce the
suffering of something that cannot feel happiness or suffer. Singer
writes:
The capacity for suffering and enjoying things is a
prerequisite for having interests at all, a condition that must be
satisfied before we can speak of interests in any meaningful way. It
would be nonsense to say that it was not in the interests of a stone to
be kicked along the road by a schoolboy. A stone does not have interests
because it cannot suffer. Nothing that we can do to it could possibly
make any difference to its welfare. A mouse, on the other hand, does
have an interest in not being tormented, because it will suffer if it
is. If a being suffers, there can be no moral justification for refusing
to take that suffering into consideration. No matter what the nature of
the being, the principle of equality requires that its suffering be
counted equally with the like suffering—in so far as rough comparisons
can be made—of any other being. If a being is not capable of suffering,
or of experiencing enjoyment or happiness, there is nothing to be taken
into account.
Thus, the moral value of one-celled organisms, as well as some
multi-cellular organisms, and natural entities like a river, is only in
the benefit they provide to sentient beings. Similarly, utilitarianism
places no direct intrinsic value on
biodiversity,
although the benefits that biodiversity bring to sentient beings may
mean that, on utilitarianism, biodiversity ought to be maintained in
general.
In John Stuart Mill's essay "On Nature"
[129] he argues that the
welfare of wild animals is to be considered when making utilitarian judgments.
Tyler Cowen
argues that, if individual animals are carriers of utility, then we
should consider limiting the predatory activity of carnivores relative
to their victims: "At the very least, we should limit current subsidies
to nature's carnivores."
[130]
Application to specific issues
World poverty
An
article in the American journal for Economics has addressed the issue
of Utilitarian ethics within redistribution of wealth. The journal
stated that taxation of the wealthy is the best way to make use of the
disposable income they receive. This says that the money creates utility
for the most people by funding government services.
[131] Many utilitarian philosophers, including Peter Singer and
Toby Ord,
argue that inhabitants of developed countries in particular have an
obligation to help to end extreme poverty across the world, for example
by regularly donating some of their income to charity. Peter Singer, for
example, argues that donating some of one's income to charity could
help to save a life or cure somebody from a poverty-related illness,
which is a much better use of the money as it brings someone in extreme
poverty far more happiness than it would bring to oneself if one lived
in relative comfort. However, Singer not only argues that one ought to
donate a significant proportion of one's income to charity, but also
that this money should be directed to the most cost-effective charities,
in order to bring about the greatest good for the greatest number,
consistent with utilitarian thinking.
[132] Singer's ideas have formed the basis of the modern
effective altruist movement.
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