Utilitarianism

The Principle of Utility

The Principle of Utility (or the Greatest Happiness Principle) states that we should seek "the greatest happiness for the greatest number", because happiness is the greatest good.

Two implications of the Principle of Preventing Bad Occurrences

The principle takes "no account of proximity or distance" (p. 519). One might say that there's an important difference between saving the drowning the child and the child in another corner of the world: the former is right in front of you, the latter is far away from you. But what is the difference between helping a person who is a neighbor's child and a Bengali child you'll never meet? Certainly, there is a psychological difference, but no moral difference whatsoever. 2) "The principle makes no distinction between cases in which I am the only person who could possibly do anything and cases in which I am just one among millions in the same position" (p. 520). One might say that, unlike the case of the drowning child, there are millions of other people in the world in the same position as me: why am I the one who has to help children in other continents? Again, the difference is psychological, but not moral: you only feel less guilty because you're not the only one who's doing nothing. But wouldn't you help the child drowning in the pond if other bystanders noticed the child and did nothing to save him?

Utilitarianism

is the most famous version of consequentialism. It holds that the goodness and the badness of the consequences of an action depends on the effect on the happiness or welfare of sentient beings.

Peter Singer

"[...] if it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it. [...] It requires us only to prevent what is bad, and not to promote what is good, and it requires this of us only when we can do it without sacrificing anything that is, from the moral point of view, comparably important". (Singer, p. 519) Singer argues that there's no moral difference between getting your clothes muddy in order to save the drowning child and send money to an aid agency instead of spending it on new clothes. Singer founded an organization, "The Life You Can Save", which provides information about how to spend money in the most effective way to reduce world poverty. https://www.thelifeyoucansave.org/

4th Objection: Forgotten Rights

"[...] utilitarianism has forgotten rights; it allows no right to a man because he is innocent or because he has worked hard or has been promised or injured, or because he stands in any other relation to us. It thinks only of duties or rather of a single duty, to dump happiness wherever we most conveniently can." (Carritt, p. 502) With this regard, Carritt gives two examples of situations where the utilitarian is committed to do an injustice by violating someone's right: Breaking a promise nobody knows about. Hanging an innocent man for a greater good.

2nd Objection: an Unjust Distribution of Happiness

According to Carritt, utilitarians "make no room for justice", because it is "hard on their principle to allow for the admitted obligation to distribute happiness "fairly," that is either equally or in proportion to desert" (Carritt, p. 500) Since utilitarians care about happiness for the greatest number, they do not take into account if someone deserves more or less happiness than others. Utilitarianism is indifferent to how happiness is distributed.

duty

is something that you ought to do; you are morally obliged to perform a certain action.

A Non-Utilitarian Objection to Rule Utilitarianism: the Problem of Justice (again)

But one could say that the utilitarian is missing the point of why it is wrong to punish an innocent person. It is wrong to punish innocent people, not because this generally leads to bad consequences, but because they are innocent and purposefully punishing innocent people is always unjust. As Carritt would say, the problem with utilitarianism is that "it makes no room for justice".

3rd Objection: Mill's Utilitarianism and the Quality of Pleasures

Carritt criticizes Mill's version of utilitarianism as inconsistent. If Mill says that there are some pleasures of higher qualities than others and that we have a duty to promote these pleasures more than lower pleasures, than he is implying that we should seek these pleasures not for their pleasantness, but for some other value they have. And therefore happiness isn't the greatest good we should seek. According to Carritt, the reason why utilitarians like Mill hold this kind of view is because "we do not think some pleasures, such as that of cruelty, good at all" (Carritt, p. 501).

Rethinking the Distinction between Duty and Charity

Given the principle of preventing bad occurrences, Singer claims that donating money in order to prevent people from starving is not a generous or charitable action, but a duty that we have.

A Utilitarian Objection to Rule Utilitarianism:the Inconsistency of Act Utilitarianism

In "Extreme and Restricted Utilitarianism", J. J. C. Smart argues against act utilitarianism or as he calls it, "restricted utilitarianism". His argument is that, even if we find a criterion for what counts as a rule (something that he doubts), the rule utilitarian is committed to prefer to follow the rule, even if it would be better to break the rule. According to Smart, this is something inconsistent with the utilitarianism itself, according to which the best action is the one that maximizes happiness. Smart claims that following the rules, no matter what, is a form of "superstitious rule worship".

E. F. Carritt, Criticisms of Utilitarianism

In his text, Carritt presents four objections to utilitarianism: he disagrees with the first one, whereas he agrees with the other three.

The Value of Pleasure and Pain for one Person

Its intensity. Its duration. Its certainty or uncertainty. Its propinquity or remoteness. Its fecundity. Its purity. Bentham says that some of these properties belong to the pleasure or pain itself (1-4) and others to the acts that produce the pleasure or pain (5-6).

The Value of Pleasure and Pain for a Number of People: the Felicific or Utility Calculus

Its intensity. Its duration. Its certainty or uncertainty. Its propinquity or remoteness. Its fecundity. Its purity. Its extent. Once defined these values, Bentham gives instructions on how to calculate if a certain action will produce more pleasure or more pain with regard to a certain community.

Practical Objection 2 to Singer

Objection: We have an overpopulation problem and helping the poor means only postponing starvation. Reply: Singer agrees that there might be a problem of overpopulation in the future, but accepting this does not free us from the obligation to feed those who are starving now. What we can say is that the best way to prevent hunger in the future is through population control, but not that we do not have any duty to feed the hungry now.

The two 'sovereign masters' of mankind

Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure

Objection 1 to Singer

Objection: His moral view is too different from ordinary people's moral scheme. Reply: How is supposed to be relevant what most people think? Singer claims that this says nothing about the validity or soundness about his moral argument.

Objection 2 to Singer

Objection: This moral view requires people to behave too differently from how they actually behave. It is too demanding. Reply: Singer says that this is not a criticism of his view but rather of our ordinary moral behavior.

Practical Objection 1 to Singer

Objection: World poverty should be a government's problem. If citizens will try to privately fix the problem, the government will do nothing about it. Reply: Singer agrees that governments ought to play an important role in solving the problem. However, he seriously doubts that if nobody will donate money, governments will do more than what they're doing now. Unless there is very good evidence that by refusing to donate one would drive governments to give more money, people who do not donate money refuse to prevent a certain amount of suffering.

1st Objection: How do we Measure Pleasure and Pain?

Objection: pleasures and pains cannot be measured or weighed. Reply: this is true, but even if pleasures and pain are not measurable, they are usually comparable. All the utilitarian needs to know is if a certain pleasure or pain is greater than another pleasure or pain. For example, "We have a well-founded belief that starvation hurts most people more than a shortage of grapefruit, and no knowledge of how much more it will hurt even ourselves to-morrow; and it is on such beliefs that we have to act [...]" (Carritt, p. 500)

A Possible Reply to Carritt's 4th Objection

There's a distinction between act (or direct or extreme) utilitarianism and rule (or indirect or restricted) utilitarianism. Bentham is usually considered an act utilitarian, whereas Mill is considered a rule utilitarian. Direct or act utilitarianism: the best action is the one that produces the most happiness. Indirect or rule utilitarianism: the best action is the one that conforms to a rule that more often than not produces the most happiness. If we endorse indirect utilitarianism, therefore we won't convict an innocent person, because in general convicting an innocent person produces more harm than good.

Mill's version of Utilitarianism: the Quality of Pleasures

Together with Bentham, John Stuart Mill (1806-1837) is the leading philosopher of classical utilitarianism. One importance difference with Bentham is that Mill has a different notion of pleasure. According to Mill, there are pleasures of higher quality such as those "of the intellect, of the feelings and imagination, and of the moral sentiments" (Utilitarianism, X: 211) Thus, not only the quantity, but also the quality of the pleasure matters.

The goodness of an action

has to be measured by its effect on the happiness of sentient beings, which Bentham identifies with pleasure and absence of pains.

An action is good

if it produces happiness or if it prevents unhappiness.

charitable, generous , supererogatory action

is an act which would be good to do, but not wrong not to do.

Jeremy Bentham

is considered the founder of utilitarianism

Consequentialism:

the morality of an action is determined by the goodness or badness of the consequences of that action.