DP Barrett - Utilitarianism: Jeremy
Bentham & JS Mill
“The greatest good for the
greatest number.”
The founder of Utilitarianism
was Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832). 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. The way we
judge whether and action is good or bad is through the Utility Principle, which Bentham
describes thusly:
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.
Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction
to the Principles of Morals and Legislation
The word ‘utility’ means
‘usefulness’ so essentially Bentham thinks actions are good if they are useful,
in particular, if they are useful for creating happiness and reducing its
opposites – pain and suffering. Utilitarianism is a theory which takes the view
that the primary good in life is pleasure, and that this is what all human
beings naturally desire, and that we naturally desire to avoid pain. This view
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.
Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction
to the Principles of Morals and Legislation
Utilitarianism is a naturalistic theory, meaning that it
tries to explain morality in terms of natural properties rather than appealing
to religion. In Bentham’s view to call something ‘good’ is to say that it is
pleasurable, or that it is useful for creating pleasure. Pleasure is good
because it is what all of us naturally desire, so right and wrong do not depend
on religion.
Utilitarianism attempts to
appeal to objective criteria for
telling us what is right or wrong independent of any culture, tradition, or
personal preference, it is therefore what we call a Universalist theory according to which
the rules of right and wrong are the same for all people no matter where they
are in the world. Jeremy Bentham and JS Mill would both say that the Utility
Principle should be used as the measure for right and wrong in every country and
culture.
The Utility Principle states
that an action is good if it is intended to create “the greatest good for the
greatest number.” This means that Utilitarianism is an altruistic theory because when a person
is making a decision he should not just consider the effects on himself and aim
for his own benefit, he should consider the effects on everyone and do whatever
pleases or benefits the most people, even if this has bad effects for himself.
Utilitarianism bases itself on a principle of equality: each person’s happiness and
needs count for as much as any other person’s happiness and needs. It is
perfectly fine and natural to seek your own pleasure and happiness, but often we
might have to sacrifice our personal happiness for the sake of other 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.
Based on his Utilitarian
principles, Bentham campaigned for the abolition of slavery, the death penalty,
and corporal punishment, as well as the decriminalisation of homosexuality and
for better treatment of animals. He believed that all of these laws caused far
more pain and suffering than benefit, and that practices needed to be
reformed.
Examples of Act Utilitarianism
in action:
These examples show how
Utilitarian thinking can be used to make moral decisions. Consider which of
these decisions you would agree with, and which you would not, and
why.
1)
If
there was a large city which needed a new water reservoir, and the only place to
locate it was where a small village could currently be found, it would be
acceptable to build the reservoir there and destroy the village. The unhappiness
of the 200 villagers would be lamentable, and avoided if possible, but it would
be outweighed by the huge benefits in quality of life to the 500,000 city
dwellers.
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, if there was a brutal dictator who was making people’s lives a misery through terror, taxation, and murder of political enemies, then it would be acceptable to kill him on Utilitarian grounds as this would free his people from the suffering he causes.
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) 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 there were bad social effects as a consequence of children being raised in impoverished environments, such as crime. Abortion was legalised in 1967 to prevent the unhappiness of women having children they want, and to prevent women dying; it also lowered crime and poverty levels. Abortion, therefore, was justified and legalised on Utilitarian grounds.
5) Utilitarians would be in support of voluntary euthanasia. They take the view that all suffering is bad, and that quality of life is important. If a person’s life has become nothing but pain and suffering, and there is no hope of a medical cure for their condition, then euthanasia would be the best option. This is because it reduces the amount of pain in the world, taking away the pain of the sufferer and also the mental anguish of their friends and family.
6) In World War II the Americans produced the first atomic bombs. It was known that the use of these would cause tens of thousands of deaths, largely of civilians. Two bombs were dropped killing around 150,000 people, and the war ended within days. This was justified on Utilitarian grounds because if the war had been allowed to continue for months or years to come, it could have cost millions of lives.
7) Utilitarians often argue that soft drugs should be legalised. Drugs such as cannabis are found pleasurable by many people and are not particularly any more risky than legal drugs like alcohol, if not safer. Meanwhile, keeping drugs illegal means that they must be bought from dealers who are involved in other criminal activities, so prohibition fuels organised crime. Additionally, buying it from reputable suppliers will mean that there is less chance of moving on to harder and more damaging drugs, something which many illegal dealers will encourage. It will also allow soft drugs to be taxed, contributing to provision of health services, education, and policing.
Criticisms of Act
Utilitarianism
Utilitarianism is a theory
which attempts to make the world a better place, and which accepts that this may
sometimes come at a cost in human suffering, it is therefore 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
There is an obvious problem
with Utilitarianism in that it tries to please the majority – minorities will
always be over looked, and could even be abused. Imagine that an old lady lives
next door to a young man who is constantly having parties at his house, making
noise and disturbance several times a week until the early hours of the morning.
Whilst 30 or 40 people are enjoying themselves only one person is having a bad
time, so Utilitarianism would surely have to conclude that the young man is
right to have his parties, and the old woman is wrong to complain about them,
she should just put up with it for “the greater good.” How can this conclusion
be correct?
Loud music may seem like a
trivial example, but what about slavery? 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, surely this would bring about “the greatest good
for the greatest number” and yet this does not seem moral at all. Simply put,
Act Utilitarianism cannot safeguard minorities, and may actually encourage abuse
of them. This need not be a racial minority, it could be any group that is
selected: prisoners, the elderly, or just a few randoms selected by lottery; so
long as the majority are happy minorities can be abused.
2) Taking pleasure directly
from pain
A commonly cited example of
the minorities problem above is gang rape: if 10 men were to abduct one person
(either male or female, that point is irrelevant) and rape them, then surely
this means that 10 people are getting pleasure whilst only one person is
experiencing pain and misery. A similar example which is less controversial and
emotionally charged is that of 10 sadists abducting a person to torture them for
their own amusement. Another example is gladiators, where thousands of people
gain pleasure from seeing a small number of people fight to the death. Seemingly
a Utilitarian would have to agree with these actions because they make the
larger number of people happy. Abuse of minorities or individuals is bad enough,
however, with the rape, torture, and gladiators examples we have an added
problem: some people take pleasure directly from seeing others suffer. At first glance it seems Utilitarianism would
support these actions. How can this be right?
One suggestion in defence is
that this is a misreading of Utilitarianism based on the ‘word of the law’
rather than the ‘spirit of the law.’ The driving force behind Utilitarianism is
meant to be the idea that all pain is bad, so it would be contradictory for
Utilitarians to approve of those who enjoy seeing others suffer. Utilitarianism
is also meant to be a theory according to which everyone’s happiness matters
equally, so surely the correct Utilitarian recommendation should be that these
rapists and sadists ought to care about the victim and do all they can not to
harm him or her. In short, causing pain is meant to be avoided unless it is the
only way to achieve a legitimate goal needed for happiness; to take pleasure
directly from another person’s suffering is contrary to the spirit of
Utilitarian principles.
3) With Act Utilitarianism
there are no rights
This criticism is heavily
related to the first criticism, but it is expressed in a different way. 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 in to 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. The thought occurs to him that he could kill the
unemployed man, harvest his organs, and save four lives. This would of course be
painful for the murdered man and rob him of his future happiness, but it would
save four lives and make hundreds of other people happy. Surely an Act
Utilitarian would have to conclude that the doctor ought to murder the
unemployed man as this will certainly bring about “the greatest good for the
greatest number.”
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 in to slavery, literally anything, just so
long as it brings a net gain in happiness for society as a whole. Indeed,
Bentham called all talk of rights “dangerous nonsense” and “nonsense on stilts.”
So far as he was concerned governments existed to benefit their people, and if
that meant taking people’s rights away, so be it. Yet don’t we strongly feel
that some actions are absolutely wrong, and that they should never be allowed,
and that people should be protected from them at all costs? If Utilitarianism
does not grant people rights, can we really accept it as the correct moral
theory?
4) Pleasure is not
quantifiable
Many people would argue that
pleasure and pain cannot be easily measured, at least not in any precise or
scientific way. It is fair to say that pleasure and pain are roughly measurable,
for example, a person may well enjoy both Italian food and Chinese food, but
they may prefer Chinese food and find it more enjoyable, or they may like
watching films more than they enjoy reading books, so even though they do both
they watch films more often. But, surely pleasure and pain are not quantifiable
in the precise way that Utilitarians need? How can we quantify what causes more
pain and suffering, cutting one finger off of 20 people’s hands, or cutting one
man’s whole hand off? For a start each person has different tastes and finds
different things pleasurable. How can we decide whether the long-term pleasure
of one person is greater than the short-term pleasure of five people? This makes
Utilitarianism impractical; how can we justify harming people for a social goal
if we cannot be sure that the pleasure created outweighs the pain
caused?
5)
With Utilitarianism there is no justice
We tend to think that principles such as
justice matter, a deontological idea, but Act Utilitarianism would reject this –
principles like justice can be ignored if ignoring them brings about “the
greatest good.” One argument for the death penalty is that it is a deterrent
against crime, that by executing murderers we can prevent others from killing
out of fear. It is not proven that this works, but let’s suppose it does; let’s
suppose that every time we execute a murderer five murders are deterred. If this
is the case then it would be acceptable, on Utilitarian grounds, to frame and
execute an innocent man. Yes an innocent man would be dead, but five other lives
would be saved, so on the balance it’s the best thing to do. This is not only
unjust but also dishonest, so how can it be right? Utilitarianism is what we get
when we take the moral principle of benevolence and put it on a pedestal to the
exclusion of every other moral principle, such as justice and honesty, but
surely principles like justice matter too?
6) Individual unhappiness
It can be argued that trying
to follow Utilitarianism will actually lead to individual unhappiness. Think
back to the example above of giving money away to charity instead of spending it
on a treat for yourself, such as a takeaway meal. A devoted Utilitarian would
surely end up with rather a joyless life, for whenever there is the possibility
for some form of personal pleasure, such as going to the theatre or buying a
computer game, it will always be the case that giving the money away to charity
instead will lead to more happiness for humanity as a whole. It seems reasonable
to say that a good person should sometimes put other people’s needs before his
own pleasures, and so give generously instead of satisfying his own desires, but
Utilitarianism seems to demand that we always do this, especially if we are
wealthy. Ayn Rand argued that
altruistic theories like Utilitarianism essentially add up to slavery to other
people, and that they do not reward those who work hard to make themselves
better off. Of course, if everyone in rich countries did a little then no
specific people would have to give up everything, but we know this is not
realistically going to happen.
7) You cannot predict
consequences accurately
This was one of the major
criticisms of teleological theories from Immanuel Kant. 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 thinks it is far
better to stick to the rules and tell the truth.
8) 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, meaning that there are no strict
rules. Every time you have to choose between two or more possible courses of
action you would have to make a detailed calculation as to what you thought the
effects would be, and decide which was better. This seems impractical. On top of
this it is often difficult to guess precisely what the outcome of your actions
will be, and people might act with good intentions but actually do a lot of
damage. Arguably, might it not be better to simply have rules for people to
follow? Imagine a legal system based on Act Utilitarianism, a system which would
let people go free for crimes like murder just so long as they could show that
they intended to create “the greatest good for the greatest number.” Surely such
a legal system would be an impractical disaster?
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 inadequate for daily life and impractical, it is far better to have rules
that are followed by the average people in their daily lives; this is the basis
of JS Mill’s version of the theory,
Rule Utilitarianism.
9)
Utilitarianism is 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 only
make her family and friends happy, whereas saving the scientist could
potentially make millions happy.
Utilitarianism states that each other person
should be treated as precisely equal, so you have no more obligations to a
friend or family member than you have to a total stranger. Utilitarianism
insists that you act in an unbiased and impartial manner, and this means that
you should not think of your own mother as any more important or deserving of
help than anyone else. 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. When it is a choice between your mother and
the scientist, Utilitarians would actually say you should save the scientist and
let your mother drown as this is the action with the most utility. But surely
our common view of morality would have to disagree, yes we have some obligation
to help others, but surely you have more obligation to help friends and family,
people who mean something to you and to whom you owe gratitude.
10) Problems with
hedonism
Hedonism is often defined as
the view that pleasure or happiness is the ultimate goal of life, but are
pleasure and happiness actually the same thing? Many people would argue that
there is a difference between the two, for example, a life of pleasure is not
necessarily a happy life; you could spend all of your time enjoying good food,
interesting company, and other delights, and yet 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 have very little pleasure,
and yet somehow they are still happy and satisfied with life. Utilitarianism is
subject to the objection that it is a morality fit for swine because there
should be more to human life than just pleasure.
A second problem with hedonism
is Robert Nozick’s ‘experience
machine’ thought experiment. Suppose that a scientists managed to develop a
virtual reality machine so advanced that people who were plugged in to 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 in to the
experience machine and have an absolutely wonderful life where everything goes
right for you; your business ventures succeed and you strike it rich, you are
popular and have plenty of friends; your desires come true, but always in a
believable way. Let’s further suppose that your memory will be tampered with so
that you have no recollection of entering the machine, meaning that your really
won’t know that any of it is fake. If pleasure is the one and only goal in life,
as hedonists like Bentham argue, then the best thing to do would be to plug in
to the machine, even to force other people to do so, after all, it would make
them happy. But many people would reject this and refuse to plug in to the
experience machine, we want to live real lives. If this is the case then it
suggests that there is more to life than simply seeking pleasure and avoiding
pain.
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.
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 by multiplying intensity, duration. 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.
The Hedonic Calculus directly
combats criticism (4), the problem of pleasure not being measurable, 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? 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) and (2): the
abuse of minorities 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), we must also consider duration and intensity. The pleasure of the
sadists will only last a short time, but the suffering of the victim could well
be lifelong, leading to depression, misery, feelings of worthlessness and
violation, and so on. This alone is enough to show that the pain caused by the
act is far greater than the pleasure caused. There is also the matter of the
intensity, for we might argue that the depth of the victim’s pain will be deep
and intense, whilst the pleasure of the sadists will be shallow and petty. In
short, the long intense pain of one person can outweigh the short and shallow
pleasures of 100 or even more.
This defence is only partially
successful; it shows that the suffering of one person can outweigh the pleasure
of a larger number, so that in most cases the abuse of the few will be wrong,
for example, that the benefits of slavery such as cheap goods are simply not
worth the human cost. However, what if we compare the suffering of one person to
the pleasure of hundreds or even thousands? What if once a week we got two
prisoners to fight to the death whilst twenty million people around the world
watched it on TV – surely there would come a point when the net gain in pleasure
would outweigh the suffering of the minority?
Karl Popper: Negative
Utilitarianism
According to this version of
Utilitarianism the goal is not to maximise pleasure in the world, but rather, to
minimise the pain and suffering in the world. In other words it is not about the
positive task of creating happiness, but the negative task or removing sources
of pain and misery. Arguably this approach makes sense because we tend to think
that we have obligations to strangers not to hurt them, and to save them from
dire poverty and pain, but we would not tend to think we were obliged to
actually make them happy. For example, perhaps we have an obligation to provide
people in poorer countries with polio vaccines, but we don’t normally think we
have an obligation to supply our neighbours with a new TV.
There are several points in
favour of this approach. Firstly it can be argued that pain and misery are more
easily quantifiable than pleasure, which helps to tackle criticism (4).
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. Secondly, the burden on the
individual to sacrifice his or her own happiness for the sake of other people is
reduced, helping to mitigate criticism (6). A third strength is that argument
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, these things are not equivalent. If
you were given the chance for an hour of pleasure, but only at the expense of an
hour of pain, you would probably turn the offer down; it would take many hours
of pleasure to make the pain worth it.
Fourthly, Negative
Utilitarianism allows us to avoid criticism (2), the problem of sadists and
rapists who cause pain for their own amusement. Negative Utilitarianism does not
care if the sadists or gang rapists are enjoying themselves, it only cares that
the victim is suffering and it would insist that this is ended. Negative
Utilitarianism would sometimes mean that minorities or individuals have to be
sacrificed for the benefit of the majority, so it does not fully solve problems
(1) and (3), but the number of cases in which rights could be taken away or
minorities abused would be dramatically decreased: it remains acceptable to
cause some pain in order to remove a greater cause of pain, for example killing
a tyrannical dictator and his soldiers to free his people, but we may not cause
pain for the sake of creating happiness. 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.
Geoff Cocksworth,
Utilitarianism, Dialogue
Magazine
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 be taken and abused by the
government for the benefit of the wider public. Mill thought that rules were
necessary for a safe and happy society, especially to protect minorities, 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 “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 laws for everyone to
stick to. We consider stealing as a general action and ask whether it should be
allowed or not, based on its regular consequences. It seems obvious that
allowing actions such as theft and violence would lead to widespread
unhappiness, so the rule ‘Do not steal’ becomes a general law which all people
are to follow, even on occasions when they think it might be beneficial to break
it. Hence Mill’s theory is known as Rule
Utilitarianism.
The adherence to rules
overcomes some of the central criticisms of Act Utilitarianism; we would not be
expected to make a Utilitarian calculation every time we acted, we would follow
the rules so this combats problem (8), the accusation that Utilitarianism is
impractical. It would also create rules which safeguard minorities, guarantee
rights, and protect people from harm, thus tackling problems (1), (2), and (3)
in one fell swoop. Actions such as slavery, torture, rape, and murder would all
be ruled out because in general they cause pain and suffering. Moreover,
allowing them to be acceptable on some occasions would just encourage people to
disrespect the law and break the rules, thus leading to unhappiness, hence we
need to stick to them even when it seems advantageous not to do so. Rule
Utilitarianism can even tackle problems such as Utilitarianism causing people to
constantly sacrifice their own happiness for that of others, criticism (6); we
could establish the rule that everyone must contribute a small amount towards
the good of others, this is essentially what is happening when things like the
NHS, education, and social security are funded through taxation.
Mill argued that the best way
to create a happy society was to give every person rights and protection, and to
give them freedom to live their lives in the way of their own choosing. In his
view the only reason why the state should interfere in people’s lives was to
prevent them from harming others.
Problems with Rule
Utilitarianism
JS Mill was suggesting a
strict set of rules, based on these being the best way to achieve the
Utilitarian goal of “the greatest happiness.” There is, however, the risk of
these rules becoming too strict and inflexible. For instance, suppose we
establish that the speed limit on a road is to be 30 MPH because this is safest
for everyone; Mill seems to be saying that no one should ever drive faster than
the proscribed limit. But what if the road is not busy and I happen to have a
very sick person in my car who needs to get to hospital as soon as possible or
they will die. Surely rules have to be a little flexible?
Mill was wise enough to admit
this problem, and argued that these special circumstances should be incorporated
into our rules and laws. As soon as a general law is established it is necessary
to consider some exceptions to it, for instance, it is illegal to kill, however,
there are special circumstances when the police are legally allowed to kill
someone. If a man was robbing a bank and was just about to kill a hostage it
would be legal for a policeman to kill him. The problem is, as soon as we start
making lists of exceptions it is difficult to know where to draw the line. If we
are guided by the “greatest good for the greatest number” principle then there
is a risk of the theory ending up being practically the same as Act
Utilitarianism, suffering death by 10,000 exceptions. For example, instead of
saying ‘torture is forbidden’ we end up with the rule ‘torture is forbidden,
unless it can bring significant public benefit such as saving people from a
terrorist attack, or getting a confession from a murderer, or......(the list
goes on).’
John Stuart Mill: higher and
lower pleasures
JS Mill attempted to defend
Utilitarianism against the criticism that hedonism is a doctrine worthy of
swine, criticism (10); 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.
JS
Mill, Utilitarianism
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: the pleasure a masochist gets from torture is so
low in quality as to be worthless; this is part of his way of tackling criticism
(2).
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 life, 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, and it therefore stands opposed
to Ethical Egoism. A central problem with this approach is that it could lead to
the abuse of minorities and the removal of rights; literally anything can happen
so long as it benefits the majority. Another problem is that we seem to lack a
genuine reason to care about the needs of others rather than just ourselves.
Attempts have been made to defend the philosophy against its critics, but the
success of these is debatable.
Suggested further
reading:
Michael Palmer, Moral Problems
Robert Bowie, Ethical Studies
Geoff Cocksworth, Utilitarianism (Dialogue Magazine)
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