Utilitarianism

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Utilitarianism
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Counting Costs Making Tough Calls

• Military decision-making, and public policy
  generally (including economic policy), frequently
  make use of outcomes-based reasoning
• The right decision, action, or policy is
  defined as the one that optimizes the balance of
  benefits over harms for all affected. For
  example
• President Trumans decision to use nuclear force
  on Hiroshima
• Churchill and the Bombing of Coventry
• lifeboat dilemmas
• medical triage decisions

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Crimson Tide
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Problems and Pitfalls

• Do the ends justify the means?
• Familiar Soviet proverb If you want to make an
  omelet, you have to break a few eggs
• Are the requirements of justice and protections
  of human rights negotiable at the bottom line?

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Utilitarianism

• The utility (usefulness or moral rightness) of
  a policy is measured by its tendency to promote
  the good (or to prevent harm).
• Act utilitarianism Jeremy Bentham
  the good is simply pleasure
• Rule utilitarianism John Stuart Mill
  the good is happiness, a more complex
  notion, achieved by living a principled and
  prudent life

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Benthams Act Utilitarianism

• Nature has placed mankind under the governancy
  of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It
  is for them alone to point out what we ought to
  do, as well as to determine what we shall do.
• The principle of utility . . . Is 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
• By utility is meant that property in any object,
  whereby it tends to produce benefit, advantage,
  pleasure, good, or happiness, or to prevent the
  happening of mischief, pain, evil, or
  unhappiness. . .

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Net Utility

• For every human action, X, there is a quantity
  u(X) associated with that action, called the net
  utility of that act.
• This net utility of X is the sum of all the
  benefits (B) minus the harms (H) of the action X
• The net utility of X must be calculated for all
  individuals, i, affected by X thus
• u (X) 3 B(x) - H(x), for all i
• An action is morally right if it has a higher
  net utility than any alternative.

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Benthams Hedonistic CalculusPrin of Morals
Legislation, Ch IV

• Bentham envisioned an actual calculus of pain and
  pleasure, something like the following
• For every act (or choice), x (where xs effects
  are a function of time), there is a quantity
  U(x), the net utility of X for time t, such that

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Let I intensity of XD duration of XC
certainty of XP propinquity of XF fecundity
of XR purity of XE extent or distribution
of X, thenUx(t)
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Criticisms of Benthams Approach

• Hedonism a moral theory fit for swine
• Atheistic leaves out God (and by extension, any
  higher-order moral considerations)
• Promotes selfishness calculus of pure
  self-interest

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Modern Criticisms

• Quantification and measurability of the good
• Incommensurate notions of the good
• Ignores other, morally relevant considerations
  (e.g., human rights, and justice distribution
  of the good)
• Difficult and often inconsistent in practice to
  solve for U(x) and maximize this variable
• Obligation overload (no supererogation)

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John Stuart Mills Revisions Rule
Utilitarianism

• Doctrine of the Swine how DO we determine
  what sorts of actions or activities are the
  things that bring genuine happiness?
• ANS consult those with experience and expertise
  to judge the wisdom of humanity
• Utilitarianism is NOT equivalent to selfishness.
  Mill writes
• . . .between his own happiness and that of
  another, utilitarianism requires that one be
  strictly impartial as a disinterested and
  benevolent spectator.

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Mills Response to Atheism

• In the golden rule of Jesus of Nazareth, we read
  the complete spirit of the ethics of utility. To
  do as you would be done by, and to love your
  neighbor as yourself, constitute the ideal
  perfection of utilitarian morality.
• Utility is NOT a godless doctrine. If it be a
  true belief that God desires, above all things,
  the happiness of his creatures, and that this was
  his purpose in their creation, utility is not
  only not a godless doctrine, but more profoundly
  religious than any other.

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Mills Innovations Qualitative Happiness versus
mere Quantitative Pleasure

• Happiness is NOT simply equivalent to pleasure
• lower quality pleasures (shared with other
  animals e.g., food, sex)
• higher quality pleasures, uniquely human,
  involving our so-called higher faculties
• Notions like rights and justice are merely
  rules of thumb that represent underlying
  calculations of overall utility (rule
  utilitarianism)

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The Principle of Utility and the Nautical Almanac

• sailors do not customarily calculate
  declinations, equations of time, or zone meridian
  passages of celestial bodies themselves, each
  time they wish to chart their position.
• Instead, these observations are calculated in
  advance from fundamental astronomical principles,
  and then printed for reference in the Nautical
  Almanac

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The Moral Almanac

• Likewise, we shouldnt have to derive right and
  wrong in specific instances each time we face a
  dilemma, directly from the basic rules of
  morality
• We, too, have a moral Almanac the rules,
  laws, religious teachings, moral traditions and
  customs of the past -- all of which reflect
  accumulated human wisdom about the kinds of
  actions and policies that tend to promote utility

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The Principle of Utility andThe Moral Almanac

• Principle of Utility performs three vital
  functions
• Explains the foundations, and offers
  justification, for our moral rules, laws, and
  customs, or
• Exposes the inadequacy of unjust laws or customs
  that do NOT promote utility and
• Offers us a means for resolving conflicts between
  rules and laws, or deciding vexing cases on
  which traditional moral rules and laws are silent