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Utilitarianism is an ethical theory holding that the proper course of action is the one that maximizes the overall "happiness". It is thus a form of consequentialism, meaning that the moral worth of an action is determined only by its resulting outcome, and that one can only weigh the morality of an action after knowing all its consequences. The most influential contributors to this theory are considered to be Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill.
Utilitarianism was described by Bentham as "the greatest happiness principle".[1] This principle is an example of using an idea beyond its proper sphere or even abusing it. Bentham elaborated John Smith's idea laissez-faire (leave alone) which meant the opposition to govermental interference in the economy of the nation and supposed whatever was correct for the majority, particularly in regard to the economic profit, to be correct for everyone...[2]
Utilitarianism can be characterised as a quantitative and reductionist approach to ethics. It is a type of naturalism.[3] It can be contrasted with deontological ethics (which do not regard the consequences of an act as a determinant of its moral worth), pragmatic ethics, virtue ethics (which focuses on character) and deontological varieties of libertarianism, as well as with ethical egoism and other varieties of consequentialism.
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aponia · ataraxia · Eudaimonia · Happiness · Hedone · Pain · Pleasure · Sensation · Suffering · Tetrapharmakos
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Act utilitarianism states that, when faced with a choice, we must first consider the likely consequences of potential actions and, from that, choose to do what we believe generates the most pleasure. The rule utilitarian, on the other hand, begins by looking at potential rules of action. To determine whether a rule should be followed, he looks at what would happen if it were constantly followed. If adherence to the rule produces more happiness than otherwise, it is a rule that morally must be followed at all times. The distinction between act and rule utilitarianism is therefore based on a difference about the proper object of consequential calculation — specific to a case or generalized to rules.
Rule utilitarianism has been criticized for advocating general rules that, in some specific circumstances, clearly decrease happiness if followed. Never to kill another human being may seem to be a good rule, but it could make self-defense against malevolent aggressors very difficult. Rule utilitarians add, however, that there are general exception rules that allow the breaking of other rules if such rule-breaking increases happiness, one example being self-defense. Critics argue that this reduces rule utilitarianism to act utilitarianism and makes rules meaningless. Rule utilitarians retort that rules in the legal system (i.e., laws) that regulate such situations are not meaningless. Self-defense is legally justified, while murder is not.
However, within rule utilitarianism there is a distinction between the strictness and absolutism of this particular branch of utilitarianism. Strong Rule Utilitarianism is an absolutist theory, which frames strict rules that apply for all people and all time and may never be broken. John Stuart Mill proposed Weak Rule utilitarianism, which posits that, although rules should be framed on previous examples that benefit society, it is possible, under specific circumstances, to do what produces the greatest happiness and break that rule. An example would be the Gestapo asking where your Jewish neighbours were; a strong rule utilitarian might say the "Do not lie" rule must never be broken, whereas a weak rule utilitarian would argue that to lie would produce the most happiness.
Rule utilitarianism should not be confused with heuristics (rules of thumb), but many act utilitarians agree that it makes sense to formulate certain rules of thumb to follow if they find themselves in a situation whose consequences are difficult, costly or time-consuming to calculate exactly. If the consequences can be calculated relatively clearly and without much doubt, however, the rules of thumb can be ignored.
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 sophisticated by the addition of a sub-rule that handles cases like the exception.[4] 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.[5]
Two-level utilitarianism states that one should normally use 'intuitive' moral thinking, in the form of rule utilitarianism, because it usually maximizes happiness. However there are some times when we must ascend to a higher 'critical' level of reflection in order to decide what to do, and must think as an act utilitarian would. Richard Hare supported this theory with his concept of the Archangel, which holds that if we were all 'archangels' we could be act utilitarians all the time as we would be able to perfectly predict consequences. However we are closer to 'proles' in that we are frequently biased and unable to foresee all possible consequence of our actions, and thus we require moral guidelines. When these principles clash we must attempt to think like an archangel to choose the right course of action.
Motive utilitarianism, first developed by Robert Adams (Journal of Philosophy, 1976), can be viewed either as a hybrid between act and rule or as a unique approach all on its own terms. The motive approach attempts to deal realistically with how human beings actually function psychologically. We are indeed passionate, emotional creatures, we do much better with positive goals than with negative prohibitions, we long to be taken seriously, and so on and so forth. Motive utilitarianism proposes that our initial moral task be to inculcate within ourselves and others the skills, inclinations, and mental focuses that are likely to be most useful (or in less perfectionist terms, merely highly useful) across the spectrum of real-world situations we are likely to face, rather than the hypothetical situations seemingly so common in philosophical publications. Indeed, motive utilitarianism can even be seen as a response to this unofficial rule against textured real-world examples. For example, similar to the 80-20 rule in business and entrepreneurship, we might be able to most improve the future prospects of all sentient creatures if we do a large number of activities in open partnerships with others, rather than a few perfect things done sneakily.Two examples of motive utilitarianism in practice might be a gay person coming out of the closet and a politician publicly breaking with a war. In both cases, there is likely to be an initial surge of power and confidence, as well as a transitional period in which one is likely to be losing old friends before making new friends, and unpredictably so on both counts. Another example might be a doctor who is a skilled diagnostician. Such a physician is likely to spend most of their serious study time or continuing education time on current research, direct skills for running a successful practice, etc., and only occasionally return to first principles—that is, only occasionally do something as an interesting study in biochemistry, and then as much as a hobby as anything else.
Most utilitarian theories deal with producing the greatest amount of good for the greatest number of people. Negative utilitarianism (NU) requires us to promote the least amount of evil or harm, or to prevent the greatest amount of suffering for the greatest number. Proponents like Karl Popper, Christoph Fehige and Clark Wolf argue that this is a more effective ethical formula, since, they contend, the greatest harms are more consequential than the greatest goods. Karl Popper also referred to an epistemological argument: “It adds to clarity in the fields of ethics, if we formulate our demands negatively, i.e., if we demand the elimination of suffering rather than the promotion of happiness.”.[6] In the practical implementation of this idea the following versions can be distinguished:
1. R.N.Smart, an advocate of the utilitarian principle, was quick to suggest that the ultimate aim of NU would be to engender the quickest and least painful method of killing the entirety of humanity, as this ultimately would effectively minimize suffering. NU would seem to call for the destruction of the world even if only to avoid the pain of a pinprick.[7]
2. Negative preference utilitarianism avoids the problem of moral killing, but still demands a justification for the creation of new lives.[8] Optimistic negative utilitarians believe that, in time, the worst cases of suffering are defeated and a world of minor suffering can be realized. The principal agents of this direction can be found in the environment of abolitionism (bioethics).[9]
3. Finally there are theoreticians who see NU as a branch within classical utilitarianism, which assigns a higher weight to the avoidance of suffering than to the promotion of happiness.[10] However, a theory that increases the moral weight of suffering relative to happiness (without giving it an absolute priority) can better be characterized as prioritarianism.
Total utilitarianism advocates measuring the utility of a population based on the total utility of its members. According to Derek Parfit, this type of utilitarianism 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.[11]
Average utilitarianism, on the other hand, advocates measuring the utility of a population based on the average utility of that population. It avoids Parfit's repugnant conclusion, respectively the mere addition paradox, 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.[12] Most utilitarians consider this type of argument as flawed or merely hypothetical, however, since a real-world society allowing the non-consensual elimination of people would inevitably create severe amounts of suffering and unhappiness.
Peter Singer, along with many animal rights activists, has argued 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 (disciminatory against non-humans) in ethical matters. Bentham made a similar argument, writing "the question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?".[1]
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[13] (and this aspect of seeking better alternatives is a prominent part of utilitarianism).
All the same, 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 sentient or not. According to utilitarianism, most forms of life (i.e. non-animals) are unable to experience anything akin to either enjoyment or discomfort, and are therefore denied moral status. 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 as far as indirect, contingent value, it most probably does.
To overcome perceived shortcomings of both systems, several attempts have been made to reconcile utilitarianism with Kant's categorical imperative. James Cornman proposes that, in any given situation, we should treat as "means" as few people as possible and as "ends" as many as are consistent with those "means". He refers to this as the "utilitarian Kantian principle". In How to Make Good Decisions and Be Right All the Time: Solving the Riddle of Right and Wrong (2008), Iain King develops a quasi-utilitarian system compatible with consequence, virtue and act based accounts of ethics.[14]
Other consequentialists may consider happiness an important consequence but argue in addition that consequences such as justice or equality should also be valued, regardless of whether or not they increase happiness.
It has been suggested that sociobiology, the study of the evolution of human society, provides support for the utilitarian point of view. For example, in The Expanding Circle: Ethics and Sociobiology, the utilitarian philosopher Peter Singer argues that fundamentally utilitarian ethical reasoning has existed from the time primitive foraging bands had to cooperate, compromise, and make group decisions to survive. He elaborates: "In a dispute between members of a cohesive group of reasoning beings, the demand for a reason is a demand for a justification that can be accepted by the group as a whole." Thus, consideration of others' interests has long been a necessary part of the human experience. Singer believes that reason now compels the equal consideration of all people's interests:
| “ | "If I have seen that from an ethical point of view I am just one person among the many in my society, and my interests are no more important, from the point of view of the whole, than the similar interests of others within my society, I am ready to see that, from a still larger point of view, my society is just one among other societies, and the interests of members of my society are no more important, from that larger perspective, than the similar interests of members of other societies… Taking the impartial element in ethical reasoning to its logical conclusion means, first, accepting that we ought to have equal concern for all human beings." | ” |
This conclusion – that everybody's interests should be considered equally when making decisions – is a core tenet of utilitarianism.
Singer elaborates that viewing oneself as equal to others in one's society and at the same time viewing one's society as fundamentally superior to other societies may cause an uncomfortable cognitive dissonance. This is the sense in which he means that reason may push people to accept a broader utilitarian stance. Critics (e.g., Binmore 2005) point out that this cognitive dissonance is apparently not very strong, since people often knowingly ignore the interests of faraway societies quite similar to their own. They also note that the "ought" of the quoted paragraph applies only to someone who has already accepted the premise that all societies are equally important. Singer has responded that his argument in Expanding the Circle wasn't intended to provide a complete philosophical justification for a utilitarian categorical imperative, but merely to provide a plausible explanation for how some people come to accept utilitarianism.
One possible criticism of utilitarianism is that it is not "proven" to be the correct ethical system by either science or logic. Utilitarians claim that this is common to all ethical schools and even formal logic itself. As anyone attempts to justify a claim (e.g. "we ought to maximize the pleasure of conscious creatures") they must appeal to other facts, which themselves must be justified. Eventually one is forced to justify their system of justification. This is called the regress argument and philosophers have attempted to address it in various ways.
In light of the regress argument, some philosophers make a sort of appeal to common sense or practicality. In that vein, during discussions on philosophy of law, H.L.A. Hart mentions that foundational philosophical definitions are not "true" but rather agreed upon;[15] for example, discussions cannot reasonably begin unless all parties simply accept basic laws of thought. This may be the case for discussions of morality; a philosopher does not discover and share the true nature of morality, but rather invites other philosophers to define words like "good" (in the case of ethics) a certain way. Philosophy, and moral systems, thus involve a sort of scientific process of operationalization.
It might instead be argued that almost all political arguments about a future society use an unspoken utilitarian principle, all sides claiming that their proposed solution is the one that increases human happiness the most.
Mill's own argument for utilitarianism holds that pleasure is the only thing desired and that, therefore, pleasure is the only thing desirable. Critics counter argue that Mill is neglecting things that are "morally desirable" even though humans may not desire them. Indeed, there may be things that humans cannot desire that are "morally desirable". This criticism, however, reads desirable as able to be desired rather than worth being desired. That is, the utilitarian may contend that only pleasure can be meaningfully said to be desirable.
The is-ought problem may remain yet another barrier to proving any ethical system, although ethical naturalists reject this problem.
John Rawls gives a critique of utilitarianism in A Theory of Justice that rejects the idea that the happiness of two distinct persons could be meaningfully counted together. He argues that this entails treating a group of many as if it were a single sentient entity, ignoring the separation of consciousness.[16] Animal rights advocate Richard Ryder calls this the ‘boundary of the individual’, through which neither pain nor pleasure may pass.[17] 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. However, it should be noted that the apparent separation of individual consciousnesses, which is both a strong human intuition and an implicit premise in this critique, is itself a subject of debate in the philosophy of mind.
One classical liberal defense against Rawl’s criticism can be made by asking the simple question: who must figure out the exact sum of all individuals' happiness? No subjectively calculated measure of aggregate happiness is necessary nor useful for society. To doubt the ability (for someone) to add up individuals’ feelings, is to suggest that there necessarily is someone (a person, a bunch of persons, or computers) whose job is to figure out that sum, before a related social decision can be made. If there were such "someone", the situation would be analogous to a centrally-planned economy, where a few socialist bureaucrats constantly struggle to figure out what, how much, by whom, and for whom goods are to be produced.[18]
Daniel Dennett uses the case of the Three Mile Island accident as an example of the difficulty in calculating happiness.[19] Was the near-meltdown that occurred at this nuclear power plant a good or a bad thing (according to utilitarianism)? He points out that its long-term effects on nuclear policy would be considered beneficial by many and might outweigh the negative consequences. His conclusion is that it is still too early, 32 years after the event, for utilitarianism to weigh all the evidence and reach a definite conclusion. Utilitarians note that utilitarianism seems to be the unspoken principle used by both advocates and critics of nuclear power. That something cannot be determined at the moment is common in science and frequently resolved with later advancements.
Utilitarians, however, are not required to have perfect knowledge; indeed, certain knowledge of consequences is impossible because consequences are in the unexperienced future. Utilitarians simply try their best to maximise happiness (or other forms of utility) and, to do this, make their best estimates of the consequences. If the consequences of a decision are particularly unclear, it may make sense to follow an ethical rule that promoted the most utility in the past. Utilitarians also note that people trying to further their own interests frequently run into situations in which the consequences of their decisions are very unclear. This does not mean, however, that they are unable to make a decision; much the same applies to utilitarianism.
Anthony Kenny argues against utilitarianism using the "standard argument" against free will. The argument supposes that determinism is either true or false: if it is true, we have no choice over our actions; but if it is false, the consequences of our actions are unpredictable, not least because they depend upon the actions of others whom we cannot predict. This may render incoherent claims about moral responsibility.[20] On the other hand, a hard determinist utilitarian see no problem for moral responsibility. They suggest that certain notions of "retributive justice" for its own sake may now be incoherent, but there remain other, more reasonable purposes for punishment.
Utilitarianism has been accused of looking only at the results of actions, and disregarding the desires or intentions that motivate them. Intentions seem somehow important: it seems undesirable to call an action intended to cause harm but that inadvertently causes good "overall good".
Many utilitarians argue that utilitarianism, although it is consequentalist, is not so simply restricted. While the results of a hatefully motivated action may indeed be "good", this does not suggest that the motivation of "hate" should be normatively advocated in society. Put simply, when using utilitarianism to decide which practices or even values to promote in a society, one might consider whether "hate" normally leads to "good" or "bad" outcomes. This may allow utilitarianism to become a much more complex and rich moral theory, and may align far more closely with our moral intuitions. In this sense, intentions are important to utilitarians, in as much as they tend to lead to certain actions, which themselves lead to certain outcomes. One classic philosopher to take this view is Henry Sidgwick, in his main work The Methods of Ethics (1874).
Utilitarians argue that justification of slavery, torture or mass murder would require unrealistically large benefits to outweigh the direct and extreme suffering to victims. Utilitarianism would also require the indirect impact of social acceptance of inhumane policies to be taken into consideration, and general anxiety and fear could increase for all if human rights are commonly ignored.
Act and rule utilitarians differ in how they treat human rights themselves. Under rule utilitarianism, a human right can easily be considered a moral rule. Act utilitarians, on the other hand, do not accept human rights as moral principles in and of themselves, but that does not mean that they reject them altogether: first, most act utilitarians, as explained above, would agree that acts such as enslavement and genocide always cause great unhappiness and very little happiness; second, human rights could be considered rules of thumb so that, although torture might be acceptable under some circumstances, as a rule it is immoral; and, finally, act utilitarians often support human rights in a legal sense because utilitarians support laws that cause more good than harm.
A reason for an egoist to become a utilitarian was proposed by Peter Singer in Practical Ethics. He presents the paradox of hedonism, which holds that, if your only goal in life is personal happiness, you will never be happy: you need something to be happy about. One goal that Singer feels is likely to bring about personal happiness is the desire to improve the lives of others; that is, to make others happy. This argument is similar to the one for virtue ethics.
Karl Marx, in Das Kapital, writes:
| “ | 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 criticise 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 naiveté 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 line!," piled up mountains of books.[21] | ” |
Marx's accusation is twofold. In the first place, he says that the theory of utility is true by definition and thus does not really add anything meaningful. For Marx, a productive inquiry had to investigate what sorts of things are good for people—that is, what our nature, alienated under capitalism, really is. Second, he says that Bentham fails to take account of the changing character of people, and hence the changing character of what is good for them. This criticism is especially important for Marx, because he believed that all important statements were contingent upon particular historical conditions.
Marx argues that human nature is dynamic, so the concept of a single utility for all humans is one-dimensional and not useful. When he decries Bentham's application of the 'yard measure' of now to 'the past, present and future', he decries the implication that society, and people, have always been, and will always be, as they are now; that is, he criticizes essentialism. As he sees it, this implication is conservatively used to reinforce institutions he regarded as reactionary. Just because in this moment religion has some positive consequences, says Marx, doesn't mean that viewed historically it isn't a regressive institution that should be abolished.
Marx's criticism is more a criticism of Bentham's views (or similar views) of utility, than utilitarianism itself. Utilitarians do not deny that different things make different people happy, and that what promotes happiness changes over time. Neither would utilitarians deny the importance of investigations into what promotes utility.
Contemporary philosophers such as Matthew Ostrow have critiqued utilitarianism from a distinctly Wittgensteinian perspective. According to these philosophers, utilitarians have expanded the very meaning of pleasure to the point of linguistic incoherence. The utilitarian groundlessly places pleasure as his or her first principle, and in doing so subordinates the value of asceticism, self-sacrifice or any other "secondary" desire. The utilitarian denies that this is a problem, either by claiming that "secondary" desires amount to different paths to achieving the first desire of pleasure or that any practice of asceticism that does not create pleasure either for the ascetic or for others is valueless.
Such an argument may seem tautological ("What is it that people want? Pleasure. But what is pleasure? What people want.") The utilitarian therefore has no ultimate justification for why we ought to primarily value pleasure. If this is the case, utilitarianism would be reduced to a form of dishonest ethical intuitionism, unable to recognize or acknowledge its own groundlessness. This is unlikely. For the ethically naturalistic utilitarian, operationalization easily terminates processes of circular defining ("What is it that people want? Pleasure. And what is that? Pleasure is X neural correlates).
John Paul II, following his personalist philosophy, considers that a danger of utilitarianism is that it tends to make persons, just as much as things, the object of use. "Utilitarianism 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".[22]
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