Utilitarianism

1
Utilitarianism
Clark Wolf Director of Bioethics Iowa State
University jwcwolf_at_iastate.edu
2
Argument for Analysis

• Utilitarians suppose that we can consider all
  the alternative actions available to us and
  figure out which one will have the best
  consequences which will result in the greatest
  balance of pleasures over pains. But we simply
  cant do it we dont have a happiness meter
  that we can apply to our actions and choices, and
  no one knows all the consequences of any action
  undertaken. The world is simply too uncertain.
  If one really tried to follow the advice of the
  Utilitarian, one would be paralyzed with
  indecision, unable to act at all because of all
  the unknowns involved.

3
Argument for Analysis

• Utilitarians suppose that we can consider all
  the alternative actions available to us and
  figure out which one will have the best
  consequences which will result in the greatest
  balance of pleasures over pains. But we simply
  cant do it we dont have a happiness meter
  that we can apply to our actions and choices, and
  no one knows all the consequences of any action
  undertaken. The world is simply too uncertain.
  If one really tried to follow the advice of the
  Utilitarian, one would be paralyzed with
  indecision, unable to act at all because of all
  the unknowns involved.
• Interpretation
• 1) Utilitarianism requires that we do what will
  produce the greatest balance of pleasures over
  pains.
• 2) We simply cant know which action will
  produce the greatest balance of pleasures over
  pains.
• 3) We cant know what actions are recommended by
  the utilitarian principle.
• 4) So we cant follow the principle of utility.
• Conclusion Utilitarianism is an unacceptable
  ethical theory.

4
Argument for Analysis

• Utilitarianism is a moral doctrine only fit for
  pigs. Human beings have higher capacities
  intellect, nobility, sensitivity to beauty,
  loyalty and fellow feeling. These capacities are
  good in themselves, and we recognize them as good
  qualities of people who possess them whether
  those people are happy or not. To suppose, as do
  the Utilitarians, that human beings have no
  higher goal, no loftier pursuit than pleasure is
  to put human beings on the level of pigs, of mere
  beasts.

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Argument for Analysis

• Utilitarianism is a moral doctrine only fit for
  pigs. Human beings have higher capacities
  intellect, nobility, sensitivity to beauty,
  loyalty and fellow feeling. These capacities are
  good in themselves, and we recognize them as good
  qualities of people who possess them whether
  those people are happy or not. To suppose, as do
  the Utilitarians, that human beings have no
  higher goal, no loftier pursuit than pleasure is
  to put human beings on the level of pigs, of mere
  beasts.
• COMMENTS
• (i) This author is trying to persuade you of
  something what is it? Is the conclusion that Ut
  is only for pigs, or is it rather that Ut is an
  unacceptable moral theory.
• (ii) Why does the author regard Ut as
  unacceptable? Because it fails to account for our
  and appropriately value our higher capacities
  the things that distinguish us from animals..

6
Argument for Analysis

• Utilitarianism is a moral doctrine only fit for
  pigs. Human beings have higher capacities
  intellect, nobility, sensitivity to beauty,
  loyalty and fellow feeling. These capacities are
  good in themselves, and we recognize them as good
  qualities of people who possess them whether
  those people are happy or not. To suppose, as do
  the Utilitarians, that human beings have no
  higher goal, no loftier pursuit than pleasure is
  to put human beings on the level of pigs, of mere
  beasts.
• An interpretation of the argument
• P1) Human beings have higher capacities that
  distinguish us from mere animals.
• P2) Any acceptable moral theory should properly
  account for the special moral of value these
  capacities.
• P3) Utilitarianism values people only for their
  capacity for pleasure and pain.
• P4) The capacity for pleasure and pain are not
  among our higher capacities they are capacities
  we share with animals.
• P5) Utilitarianism does not properly account for
  the special moral value of our higher human
  capacities.
• Conclusion Utilitarianism is an unacceptable
  moral theory.
• COMMENT This interpretation departs, in
  important ways, from the words of the passage
  itself. Is it an appropriate interpretation of
  the argument the original author had in mind?
  Can you see the relationship between the
  interpretation and the original?
• COMMENT How would Mill respond to this
  objection?

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Argument for Analysis

• Some things are in our control, and some things
  are not. It is useless and pointless to worry
  about things that are not in our control.
  Therefore, if something is not in our control we
  should not concern ourselves with it. Death is
  not in our control we cannot make ourselves
  immortal by wishing not to die. Therefore, we
  should not concern ourselves about death it is
  irrelevant to us.
• -Adapted from Epictetus, Encheiridion.
• (Note This argument is importantly different
  from the one offered by Epicurus the one you are
  analyzing for your homework assignment. While
  the two arguments have the same conclusion, that
  we should not fear death, the reasons offered
  are quite different.)

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Epictetus on Death An Interpretation of the
Argument

• P1) Some things are in our control, and some
  things are not.
• P2) It is useless and pointless to worry about
  or concern ourselves with things that are not in
  our control.
• P3) Death is not in our control.
• Conclusion We should not fear death.
• (Epictetus argues that we should not even
  concern ourselves about it).
• Conclusion Fear of death is irrational and
  unnecessary.
• Comments Is the second conclusion supported?
  We havent been given an account of whats
  rational or whats necessary. Whats the
  relation between worry and fear? What would
  we need to add to make the argument for the first
  conclusion deductively valid?)

9
Utilitarianism
Clark Wolf Director of Bioethics Iowa State
University jwcwolf_at_iastate.edu
10
Division of Moral Theories

• Consequentialist Theories The consequences of
  an action are the only thing that is relevant in
  determining whether an action is right.
  (Shorthand Only consequences matter.)
• Non-Consequentialist Theories Consequences are
  not the only thing that matters.
• What might matter other than consequences?
• Virtues?
• Principles of right?
• Rights?
• Are there other morally significant
  considerations?

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Maximizing Consequentialism

• Theory of Right An actions is right iff(df)
  it has optimally good consequences.
  (Optimific)
• That is, an act is right if and only if its
  consequences are at least as good as those
  associated with any alternative action.
• What makes consequences good?

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Maximizing Consequentialism

• Theories of the Good A theory of the good is
  a theory about the evaluation of consequences.
• Intrinsic Good Something that is good in itself.
• Instrumental Good Something that is good only
  because its achievement is instrumental to the
  achievement of some intrinsic good.

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Maximizing Consequentialism

• Hedonism Only is intrinsically
  .
• Eudaimonism Only happiness is intrinsically
  good. But happiness is complex, not simply
  resolvable into pleasure and pain.
• (Need to say more?)
• Pluralism There are several different things
  that are intrinsically good. No simple theory is
  adequate to account for the wide range of things
  that have intrinsic value.

14
Utilitarianism

• Consequentialist theory of right Actions are
  right iff they have optimific consequences.
• Evaluation of Outcomes Consequences are better
  if they have more happiness and less unhappiness,
  worse as they have more unhappiness and less
  happiness.
• Question Is this one principle or two? What if
  the aim to maximize happiness supports
  different actions than the aim to minimize
  unhappiness?
• Equal Consideration of Interests Everyones
  happiness counts equally.

15
Jeremy Bentham

• 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.

16
John Stuart Mill

• According to the Greatest Happiness Principle
  the ultimate end, with reference to and for the
  sake of which all other things are desirable
  (whether we are considering our own good or that
  of other people), is an existence exempt as free
  as possible from pain, and as rich as possible in
  enjoyments.

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Mill on Equal Consideration

• This, being, according to the utilitarian
  opinion, the end of human action, it is
  necessarily also the standard of morality, which
  may accordingly be defined, as the rules and
  precepts for human conduct, by the observation of
  which an existence such as has been described
  might be, to the greatest extent possible,
  secured to all mankind and not to them only, but,
  so far as the nature of things admits, to the
  whole of sentient creation.

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Classical Utilitarianism (Mill)

• Actions are right in proportion as they tend to
  promote happiness, wrong as they tend to promote
  the reverse of happiness. By happiness is
  intended pleasure and the absence of pain by
  unhappiness, pain and the privation of pleasure."

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Implications of Utilitarianism

• Euthanasia
• Animals

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Euthanasia

• Eu Thanos Good Death.
• (Sometimes called mercy killing)
• Sometimes, perhaps, continued life is worse
  than death The value of life depends crucially
  on what life contains. When those we love suffer
  a living hell, we may be moved by compassion to
  wish that they could be released from their
  suffering. To kill someone out of compassion in
  this way is euthanasia.

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Morality and Policy

• Attitudes toward Euthanasia In the US,
  euthanasia is simply murder, though perpetrators
  are often not convicted and when they are they
  often receive a light sentence. Obviously this
  is because people empathize with those who kill
  others out of compassion.
• Policy toward Euthanasia The policy question
  may be somewhat separate from the moral question.
  Even if one thinks that euthanasia is morally
  permissible (or morally required) in some
  circumstances, it does not follow that one must
  think that euthanasia should be legally
  permissible.

22

• The Utilitarian View Euthanasia is morally
  required where there is no alternative that will
  produce more happiness than misery. Note that
  euthanasia is not merely permissible on the
  utilitarian view. Sometimes it is a moral
  obligation.
• What Considerations are Missing? Critics charge
  that this view leaves out many morally relevant
  considerations. Defenders of utilitarianism
  argue that Utilitarianism recommends the most
  humane policies.

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Second Example Nonhuman Animals

• Aquinas Hereby is refuted the error of those
  who said it is sinful for a man to kill dumb
  animals for by divine providence they are
  intended for mans use in the natural order.
  Hence it is no wrong for man to make use of them,
  either by killing them or in any other way
  whatever. (97)
• Comment In any way whatever? Where does he
  get this absurd claim? So if we want to amuse
  ourselves by torturing animals (common in the
  Middle ages, still done in some places) then
  were using animals as God intended?

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Second Example Nonhuman Animals

• More Aquinas If any passages of Holy Writ
  seem to forbid us to be cruel to dumb animals,
  for instance, to kill a bird with its young this
  is either to remove mans thoughts from being
  cruel to other men, and lest through being cruel
  to animals one becomes cruel to human beings or
  because injury to an animal leads to the temporal
  hurt of man, either the doer of the deed, or of
  another. (97)
• Aquians view is that animals are here for our
  use, and it is permissible to use them in any way
  we like. He acknowledges that we should not
  treat animals cruelly, but says that this is
  because we would become cruel to other human
  beings. (Moral spillage argument.)

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Robert Nozick on Moral Spillage

• Some say people should not be arbitrarily cruel
  to animals because such acts brutalize them and
  make them more likely to take the lives of
  persons, solely for pleasure. These acts that
  are morally unobjectionable in themselves, they
  say, have an undesirable moral spillover.
  (Things then would be different if there were no
  possibility of such spillover-- for example, for
  the person who knows himself to be the last
  person on earth.) But why should there be such a
  spillover? If it is, in itself, perfectly all
  right to do anything at all to animals for any
  reason whatsoever, then provided that a person
  realizes the clear line between animals and
  persons and keeps it in mind as he acts, why
  should killing animals tend to brutalize him and
  make him more likely to harm or kill persons? Do
  butchers commit more murders? (Than other
  persons who have knives around?) If I enjoy
  hitting a baseball squarely with a bat, does
  this significantly increase the danger of my
  doing the same to someones head? Why should
  things be different in the case of animals? To
  be sure, it is an empirical question whether
  spillover does take place or not, but there is a
  puzzle as to why it should, at least among
  readers of this essay, sophisticated people who
  are capable of drawing distinctions and
  differentially acting upon them.

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Jeremy Bentham on the Moral Significance of
Animals

• The day may come when the rest of the animal
  creation may acquire those rights which never
  could have been witholden from them but by the
  hand of tyranny. The French have already
  discovered that the blackness of the skin is no
  reason why a human being should be abandoned
  without redress to the caprice of a tormentor.
  It may one day come to be recognized that the
  number of legs, the villosity of the skin, or the
  termination of the os sacrum are reasons equally
  insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to
  the same fate. What else is it that should trace
  the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of
  reason, or perhaps the faculty of discourse? But
  a full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison
  more rational, as well as a more conversable
  animal, than an infant of a day or a week or even
  a month old. But suppose they were otherwise,
  what would it avail? The question is not, Can
  they Reason? nor Can they talk? but Can they
  suffer?

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Singer on Animal Testing An Example of
Unjustifiable Animal Use?

• At Harvard University R. Solomon, L. Kamin, and
  L. Wynne tested the effects of electrical shock
  on the behavior of dogs. They placed forty dogs
  in a device called a shuttlebox which consists
  of a box divided into two compartments, separated
  by a barrier. Initially the barrier was set at
  the height of the dogs back. Hundreds of
  intense electric shocks were delivered to the
  dogs feet through the grid floor. At first the
  dogs could escape the shock if they learned to
  jump the barrier into the other compartment. In
  an attempt to discourage one dog from jumping,
  the experimenters forced the dog to jump into
  shock 100 times. They said that as the dog
  jumped he gave a sharp anticipatory yip which
  turned into a yelp when he landed on the
  electrified grid. They then blocked the passage
  between the compartments with a piece of plate
  glass and tested the same dog again. The dog
  jumped forward and smashed his head against the
  glass. Initially dogs showed symptoms such as
  defication, urination, yelping and shrieking,
  trembling, attacking the apparatus and so on,
  but after ten or twelve days of trials dogs that
  were prevented from escaping shock ceased to
  resist. The experimenters reported themselves
  impressed by this, and concluded that a
  combination of the plate glass barrier and foot
  shock were very effective in eliminating
  jumping by dogs. (100)

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But what about us?

• But for the sake of some little mouthful of
  flesh, we deprive a soul of the sun and light,
  and of that portion of life and time it had been
  born into the world to enjoy."
• --Plutarch, CE. 120, Moralia

29
Robert Nozick Again

• If some animals count for something, which
  animals count, how much do they count, and how
  can this be determined? Suppose (as I believe
  the evidence supports) that eating animals is not
  necessary for health and is not less expensive
  than alternate equally healthy diets available to
  people in the United States. The gain, then,
  from the eating of animals is pleasures of the
  palate, gustatory delights, varied tastes. I
  would not claim that these are not truly
  pleasant, delightful, interesting. The question
  is do they, or rather does the marginal
  addition in them gained by eating animals rather
  than only non-animals, outweigh the moral weight
  to be given to animals lives and pain? Given
  that animals are to count for something, is the
  extra gain obtained by eating them rather than
  non-animal products greater than the moral cost?
  How might these questions be decided?
• We might try looking at comparable cases,
  extending whatever judgments we make on those
  cases to the one before us. For example, we
  might look at the case of hunting, where I assume
  that its not all right to hunt and kill animals
  merely for the fun of it. Is hunting a special
  case, because its object and what provides the
  fun is chasing and maiming and death of animals?

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Utilitarianism The Classical Version

• Rachels Three Propositions (Really four)
• 1) Actions are to be judged right or wrong
  solely by virtue of their consequences.
• 2) In assessing consequences, the only thing
  that matters is the amount of happiness or
  unhappiness that is created. Everything else is
  irrelevant (from the moral point of view).
• 3) Each persons happiness counts the same.
• 4) Right actions are those that produce the
  greatest possible balance of happiness over
  unhappiness, with each persons happiness counted
  as equally important.

31
What does this mean?

• Add up all the happiness produced, subtract out
  all the unhappiness. The result is the balance
  of happiness over unhappiness.
• What if theres more unhappiness than happiness?
  Then presumably we minimize unhappiness.
• What do we do when we cant do the figures?

32
Does this sound weird?

• Economists typically assume utilitarianism
  without much thought or consideration of
  alternatives.
• Utilitarianism has been effective not only as a
  philosophical movement, but as a social movement
  The utilitarians were social reformers who put
  their views into practice.

33
Mill Utilitarianism

• Mill begins by noting that there is little
  agreement about the basis of ethics, but that
  everyone agrees that ethics is important. Its a
  bad state of affairs. Only if we know what were
  pursuing can we make sensible ethical choices
• All action is for the sake of some end, and
  rules of action, it seems natural to suppose,
  must take their whole character and color from
  the end to which they are subservient. When we
  engage in a pursuit, a clear and precise
  conception of what we are pursuing would seem to
  be the first thing we need, instead of the last
  we are to look forward to. A test of right and
  wrong must be the means, one would think, of
  ascertaining what is right or wrong, and not a
  consequence of having already ascertained it.
  (Ch 1 Par 2)

34
Mill Utilitarianism

• Notice the section in which Mill refers to Kant
  Well come back to it later, after youve read
  some Kant.
• I cannot help referring, for illustration, to a
  systematic treatise by one of the most
  illustrious of them, the Metaphysics of Ethics,
  by Kant. This remarkable man, whose system of
  thought will long remain one of the landmarks in
  the history of philosophical speculation, does,
  in the treatise in question, lay down a universal
  first principle as the origin and ground of moral
  obligation it is this "So act, that the rule on
  which thou actest would admit of being adopted as
  a law by all rational beings." But when he begins
  to deduce from this precept any of the actual
  duties of morality, he fails, almost grotesquely,
  to show that there would be any contradiction,
  any logical (not to say physical) impossibility,
  in the adoption by all rational beings of the
  most outrageously immoral rules of conduct. All
  he shows is that the consequences of their
  universal adoption would be such as no one would
  choose to incur. (Ch 1, Par 4)

35
Mill Utilitarianism

• Defining the Theory
• The creed which accepts as the foundation of
  morals, Utility, or the Greatest Happiness
  Principle, holds that actions are right in
  proportion as they tend to promote happiness,
  wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of
  happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and
  the absence of pain by unhappiness, pain, and
  the privation of pleasure. (Ch 2, par 2)

36
Mill Utilitarianism

• The Doctrine of Swine Objection
• Mill Some people object that To suppose that
  life has (as they express it) no higher end than
  pleasure- no better and nobler object of desire
  and pursuit- they designate as utterly mean and
  grovelling as a doctrine worthy only of swine
  (Ch 2 Par 3)

37
Mill Utilitarianism

• Mills Response to the Doctrine of Swine
  objection Some pleasures are better than
  others Human happiness requires that we pursue
  happiness that is appropriate for creatures like
  us, with our unique capacities
• Of two pleasures, if there be one to which all
  or almost all who have experience of both give a
  decided preference, irrespective of any feeling
  of moral obligation to prefer it, that is the
  more desirable pleasure. If one of the two is, by
  those who are competently acquainted with both,
  placed so far above the other that they prefer
  it, even though knowing it to be attended with a
  greater amount of discontent, and would not
  resign it for any quantity of the other pleasure
  which their nature is capable of, we are
  justified in ascribing to the preferred enjoyment
  a superiority in quality, so far outweighing
  quantity as to render it, in comparison, of small
  account.
• (Ch 2 par 5)

38
Mill Utilitarianism

• Mill on the Value of Higher Pleasures
• 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 a different opinion, it is
  because they only know their own side of the
  question. The other party to the comparison knows
  both sides. (Ch 2, Par 7)

39
Mill Utilitarianism

• Questions about Mills Complex Conception of
  Happiness
• 1) Is Mills view overly intellectualized? By
  valuing intellectual pleasures more, does he
  offer a theory only an intellectual could accept?
• 2) Currency Problem Is Mills view consistent?
  Is it plausible to say that theres only one
  currency (pleasure) but that some items of
  currency have more real value even though they
  have the same face value?

40
Mill Utilitarianism

• Objection Not all competent judges seem to go
  for the higher pleasures. Some people become
  selfish and lazy when they get older.
• Mills Response Our ability to make refined
  judgments can be killed by misuse
• Capacity for the nobler feelings is in most
  natures a very tender plant, easily killed, not
  only by hostile influences, but by mere want of
  sustenance and in the majority of young persons
  it speedily dies away if the occupations to which
  their position in life has devoted them, and the
  society into which it has thrown them, are not
  favourable to keeping that higher capacity in
  exercise. Men lose their high aspirations as they
  lose their intellectual tastes, because they have
  not time or opportunity for indulging them and
  they addict themselves to inferior pleasures, not
  because they deliberately prefer them, but
  because they are either the only ones to which
  they have access, or the only ones which they are
  any longer capable of enjoying. It may be
  questioned whether any one who has remained
  equally susceptible to both classes of pleasures,
  ever knowingly and calmly preferred the lower
  though many, in all ages, have broken down in an
  ineffectual attempt to combine both. (Ch 2, Par
  9.)

41
Mill Utilitarianism

• The judgment of those with appropriate
  experience is the only place we can hope to find
  a verdict
• From this verdict of the only competent
  judges, I apprehend there can be no appeal. On a
  question which is the best worth having of two
  pleasures, or which of two modes of existence is
  the most grateful to the feelings, apart from its
  moral attributes and from its consequences, the
  judgment of those who are qualified by knowledge
  of both, or, if they differ, that of the majority
  among them, must be admitted as final. (Ch 2
  par 10)

42
Mill Utilitarianism (Start here Tues 14th)

• Some Objections Mill Considers in Chapter Two
• (i) Happiness is an unattainable goal!
• (ii) Happiness isnt our right we dont deserve
  to be happy! (Carlyle)
• (iii) Only by renunciation (Entsagen) can we
  achieve virtue and nobility.(Carlyle)
• (iv) Utilitarianism is a Godless Doctrine.
  (Surely not A good God would desire the
  happiness of his creatures. And those who are
  religious often attribute utilitarian motives to
  God.)
• (v) Utilitarianism is an immoral doctrine of
  expediency! (This is just a mis-use of words.
  Utility doesnt recommend that people do whats
  easiest or convenient.)
• (vi) Theres not time to weigh the effects of our
  actions on general happiness.

43
Mill Utilitarianism

• Some Objections Mill Considers in Chapter Two
• (i) Happiness is an unattainable goal!
• (ii) Happiness isnt our right we dont deserve
  to be happy! (Carlyle)
• (iii) Only by renunciation (Entsagen) can we
  achieve virtue and nobility.(Carlyle)
• (iv) Utilitarianism is a Godless Doctrine.
  (Surely not A good God would desire the
  happiness of his creatures. And those who are
  religious often attribute utilitarian motives to
  God.)
• (v) Utilitarianism is an immoral doctrine of
  expediency! (This is just a mis-use of words.
  Utility doesnt recommend that people do whats
  easiest or convenient.)
• (vi) Theres not time to weigh the effects of our
  actions on general happiness.
• (Well spend time on objections one and six.)

44
Mill Utilitarianism

• Mill on attainable happiness (Objection i)
• Of this the philosophers who have taught that
  happiness is the end of life were as fully aware
  as those who taunt them. The happiness which they
  meant was not a life of rapture but moments of
  such, in an existence made up of few and
  transitory pains, many and various pleasures,
  with a decided predominance of the active over
  the passive, and having as the foundation of the
  whole, not to expect more from life than it is
  capable of bestowing. (Ch 2, Par 14)
• Next to selfishness, the principal cause which
  makes life unsatisfactory is want of mental
  cultivation. A cultivated mind - I do not mean
  that of a philosopher, but any mind to which the
  fountains of knowledge have been opened, and
  which has been taught, in any tolerable degree,
  to exercise its faculties- finds sources of
  inexhaustible interest in all that surrounds it
  in the objects of nature, the achievements of
  art, the imaginations of poetry, the incidents of
  history, the ways of mankind, past and present,
  and their prospects in the future. It is
  possible, indeed, to become indifferent to all
  this, and that too without having exhausted a
  thousandth part of it but only when one has had
  from the beginning no moral or human interest in
  these things, and has sought in them only the
  gratification of curiosity. (Ch 2, par 15)
• Mill further insists that there is no reason why
  happiness should be available only to a lucky
  few unhappiness results only from ignorance,
  poverty imprudence, injustice, and faulty social
  institutions

45
Mill Utilitarianism

• On Utilitarianism as a Godless Doctrine Mill
  responds that (i) a benevolent God would take a
  utilitarian perspective on the happiness of His
  creatures, and (ii) Utilitarians can claim the
  Golden Rule
• 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. (Ch 2 par
  21)
• As the means of making the nearest approach to
  this ideal, utility would enjoin, first, that
  laws and social arrangements should place the
  happiness, or (as speaking practically it may be
  called) the interest, of every individual, as
  nearly as possible in harmony with the interest
  of the whole and secondly, that education and
  opinion, which have so vast a power over human
  character, should so use that power as to
  establish in the mind of every individual an
  indissoluble association between his own
  happiness and the good of the whole especially
  between his own happiness and the practice of
  such modes of conduct, negative and positive, as
  regard for the universal happiness prescribes so
  that not only he may be unable to conceive the
  possibility of happiness to himself, consistently
  with conduct opposed to the general good, but
  also that a direct impulse to promote the general
  good may be in every individual one of the
  habitual motives of action, and the sentiments
  connected therewith may fill a large and
  prominent place in every human being's sentient
  existence. (Ch 2 par 21)

46
Utilitarianism Act v. Rule

• Act Utilitarianism The principle of utility
  should be used to choose individual actions.
• Rule Utilitarianism Right actions are those that
  would have the best consequences if they were
  followed by everyone.

47
Utilitarianism Act v. Rule

• Example Why not lie?
• Act Utilitarian This lie will have bad
  consequences.
• Rule Utilitarian If everyone lied, it would be
  much worse.
• Example Why not slice up one patient to save
  five?
• Act Utilitarian If it would have the best
  consequences, you should do it.
• Rule Utilitarian The consequences would be
  better if everyone followed the rule dont kill
  others.

48
Mill Utilitarianism

• Objection vi Theres not time to weigh the
  effects of our actions on general happiness.
• Mill The answer to the objection is, that
  there has been ample time, 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. People talk as if the
  commencement of this course of experience had
  hitherto been put off, and as if, at the moment
  when some man feels tempted to meddle with the
  property or life of another, he had to begin
  considering for the first time whether murder and
  theft are injurious to human happiness. Even then
  I do not think that he would find the question
  very puzzling but, at all events, the matter is
  now done to his hand.
• (Ch 2, Par 28)

49
Mill Utilitarianism

• 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, as well
  as on many of the far more difficult questions of
  wise and foolish. And this, as long as foresight
  is a human quality, it is to be presumed they
  will continue to do. Whatever we adopt as the
  fundamental principle of morality, we require
  subordinate principles to apply it by the
  impossibility of doing without them, being common
  to all systems, can afford no argument against
  any one in particular but gravely to argue as if
  no such secondary principles could be had, and as
  if mankind had remained till now, and always must
  remain, without drawing any general conclusions
  from the experience of human life, is as high a
  pitch, I think, as absurdity has ever reached in
  philosophical controversy. (Ch 2 par 30)
• Question Does this make Mill a Rule
  Utilitarian?

50
Mill Utilitarianism

• Mill turns out to be an Act Utilitarian
• We must remember that only in these cases of
  conflict between secondary principles is it
  requisite that first principles should be
  appealed to. There is no case of moral obligation
  in which some secondary principle is not
  involved and if only one, there can seldom be
  any real doubt which one it is, in the mind of
  any person by whom the principle itself is
  recognized.
• (Ch 2, par 31)

51
Evaluating UtilitarianismAre Consequences All
that Matter?

• Justice What if we must frame an innocent
  person in order to stop a riotous mob? (p.105)
• (Anyone else find the example on p. 105
  disturbing?)
• Rights Think back to the surgeons dilemma
  case discussed early in the term. One plausible
  moral we discussed was that people have rights
  that would be violated.
• Backward-Looking Reasons Promises,
  deservingness, gratitude, rectification of past
  wrongs These are clearly moral considerations,
  but thoroughgoing utilitarians will regard them
  as irrelevant from the moral point of view.

52
The Charge that Utilitarianism is Too Demanding

• Peter Singers argument (To be discussed later
  in this class.)
• 1) Suffering and death from lack of food,
  shelter, and medical care are bad.
• 2) Principle Two versions.
• Version i) 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.
• Version ii) If it is in our power to prevent
  something very bad from happening, without
  thereby sacrificing anything of moral
  significance, we ought, morally to do it.
• Ex If I'm walking past a shallow pond, and I
  see a child drowning in it, I ought to wade in
  and pull the child out. COST Muddy Clothing.
  BENEFIT Child's Life
• Singer's Claim Whenever we spend on ourselves
  or our loved ones money we could use to address
  the more pressing moral issue of absolute
  poverty, we are violating a moral principle that
  we rationally/reasonably accept.
• What is the relationship between this argument
  and utilitarianism?
• Should we conclude that utilitarianism is too
  demanding, or rather that we are reluctant to do
  what we have an obligation to do?

53
Is Utilitarianism Too Demanding?

• Personal Relationships (The Near and Dear
  Objection to Utilitarianism.)
• Surely it is permissible, and perhaps even
  morally required that we sometimes give
  preference to those who are near to us.

54
The Defense of Utilitarianism

• The First Line of Defense Fanciful Examples
  Dont Matter You cant test a theory by
  imagining what it implies in unreasonable and
  fanciful circumstances. In the real world, acts
  commonly regarded as morally wrong really do have
  bad consequences.
• Rachels The response contains more bluster
  than substance. The real world contains some
  real counterexamples to the claim.

55
The Defense of Utilitarianism

• The Second Line of Defense Utility is a Guide
  for Choosing Rules, not Acts
• Rule Utilitarianism Actions are right iff they
  are consistent with rules which, if followed by
  everyone, would lead to the best consequences.
• Brandt Morally wrong means an action that
  would be prohibited by any moral code which all
  fully rational persons would tend to support, in
  preference to all others or to none at all, for
  the society of the agent, if they expected to
  spend a lifetime in that society.
• Question Is there a single moral code that all
  fully rational persons would support in
  preference to all others or to none? Or might
  there be a broader set of rationally acceptable
  codes, different but individually sufficient?
• Rachels is more sanguine about rule
  utilitarianism The theory cannot be conviced
  of violating our moral common-sense. In shifting
  emphasis from the justification of acts to the
  justification of rules, the theory has been
  brought into line with our intuitive judgments to
  a remarkable degree.

56
Is Rule Utilitarianism Self-Defeating?

• It is sometimes argued that rule utilitarianism
  is self-defeating, since commitment to the rule
  will break down whenever the rules come in
  conflict with the principle of utility.
• Consider the rule that instructs us to keep our
  promises. If I am reasonably sure that breaking
  this promise would have better consequences, then
  (the objection goes) as a good utilitarian I
  should break it. But then the rules are doing no
  work any time they come in conflict with the
  underlying principle of utility they are to be
  abandoned! So rule utilitarianism breaks down
  into act utilitarianism.
• Is this argument persuasive?
• How might a rule-utilitarian respond?

57
The Defense of Utilitarianism

• Third Line of Defense Common Sense Cannot be
  Trusted
• J.C.C. Smart Bites the Bullet So much the
  worse for Common Sense.
• Admittedly utilitarianism does have
  consequences which are incompatible with the
  common moral consciousness, but I tended to take
  the view so much the worse for the common moral
  consciousness. That is, I was inclined to
  reject the common methodology of testing general
  ethical principles by seeing how they square with
  our feelings in particular instances.
• Upshot Believe it if you can.

58
Next Does the end justify the means? Are there
some things that are always wrong, regardless of
the consequences?

• Nonconsequentialist Theories Consequences are
  not all that matter from the moral point of view.
  
• Deontological Ethics Some duties or obligations
  are absolute and unconditional.

59
Next Does the end justify the means? Are there
some things that are always wrong, regardless of
the consequences?

• Torture?
• Arbitrary imprisonment?
• Unprovoked attacks?
• Curtailing of fundamental rights?
• Slavery and oppression?
• Exploitation of others?
• Lies and deceit?
• Others?

60
Kant

• Categorical Imperative Act only such that you
  could will the maxim on which you act as a
  universal law.