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Evaluating Utilitarianism
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This document contains notes on Utilitarianism as well as summaries of relevant readings.
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EthicsWeek 1
Lecture notes:
This course is a normative ethics course focusing on Utilitarianism.
Utilitarianism is currently experiencing a resurgence thanks to the Oxford University
Effective Altruism Centre, which has caught the attention of Silicon Valley.
● How should I live my life? (Socrates question)
● What has intrinsic value (good in and of itself) and what has instrumental value
(good in that it produces some other thing)?
Rightness: of actions… what we ought to do
Value: The goodness and badness of things/states of affairs
Virtue: what kind of people we should be/what ought to be our character
Different Ethical Theories emphasise the above components differently. Often identifying
one of them as a priority and considering the other 2 in terms of the 1st. E.g.Defining a right
action as that which a virtuous person would do.
Utilitarians view value as a fundamental concept. They aim to produce a certain state of
affairs. Therefore it is a Consequentialist theory. Utilitarians are interested in net
goodness… considered in terms of welfare, well-being and happiness (these are the only
things Utilitarians feel hold intrinsic value). In this way Utilitarianism is Welfarist.
Utilitarianism is imperialist in that it infiltrates all parts of your life. For every situation at
every time, Utilitarianism demands that we calculate the best possible action we could take.
Contractualism is another ethical theory. It claims that ethics is derived from agreements
(Rawls and Scranton). Therefore what is right is what people might reasonably be expected
to agree to (explicitly or implicitly). ‘That which no one can reasonably reject as a basis for
informed, unforced general agreement’ Scanlon
Virtue Ethics says what is good is what a virtuous person would do. It emphasises virtue
and deemphasises rightness.
Utilitarianism -John Stuart Mill
What is Utilitarianism?
● ‘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’ (P9-10)
● What is included in pleasure and pain is up for debate
● Pleasure and freedom from pain are the only things desirable as ends in themselves.
Epicurean Utilitarianism equates our pleasures to those of animals. But Mill believes that
human beings have ‘more elevated’ (P11) faculties. And that once they become conscious
nothing short of these will suffice as happiness. In general, utilitarians emphasize mental
over bodily pleasures, due to their circumstantial (not intrinsic) nature. Of two pleasures if
there is one that almost everyone prefers, it is the more important pleasure. Few people
would sacrifice their uniquely human capacities for the fullest allowance of a beast's
pleasures:
, ● A being with higher faculties requires more to be happy and is more capable and
susceptible than they are to acute suffering. Nonetheless, they would not want to give
it up… Why?
■ Mill prefers dignity, which is possessed by all human beings roughly in
proportion to their higher faculties
Those who lose touch with their higher pleasures do not do so consciously it is due to Their
position in life and the society in which they were born. Men submit to their lower pleasures
because they are the only ones to which he has access or the only ones he is still capable of
enjoying
Utilitarian Standard/Greatest happiness principle: The greatest amount of
happiness altogether. Even if a person does not choose to pursue higher pleasures, it still
makes other people happier and so is necessary to produce the ultimate end:
‘An existence exempt as far as possible from pain and as rich as possible in
enjoyment, both in point of quantity and quality’ (P17)
Measuring quality against quantity: preference by those who in the opportunity to
experience
This standard of morality forms the rules and precepts for human conduct
Unattainable happiness objection:
1. Happiness, in any form, is unattainable
a. ‘The assertion, if not something like a verbal quibble, is at least an
exaggeration
2. The rational purpose of human life must be attainable
3. Happiness is not the rational purpose of human life
a. Avoidance of unhappiness is another aspect of utility and the emphasis of
utilitarianism can shift towards this.
Would humans, if taught to consider happiness at the end of life be satisfied with only a
moderate share of it?
The main components of a satisfied life are tranquillity and excitement. A cultivated
mind- ‘any mind to which the fountains of knowledge have been opened…taught to
exercise its faculties-finds sources of inexhaustible interest in all that surrounds
it’(P20)
Utilitarian demands that the positive evils of life can be overcome and mitigated. The
‘disappointments of worldly circumstances’ are a consequence ‘of imprudence, of
ill-regulated desires and of bad or imperfect social institutions’ (P22) which can be
conquered by human care. And though these problems may not be eased for generations to
come a cultivated being finds ‘noble enjoyment (P22). In order to ease unhappiness the laws
and society should emphasize happiness as the interest of every individual and the whole;
and, education should socialise children to associate their own happiness with happiness on
the whole.
Men can survive without happiness, all noble beings have experienced not being happy and
are noble because they learned that renunciation is the beginning and necessary condition of
all virtue
● It is possible to do without happiness and it is possible to sacrifice one's personal
happiness, but this is surely in favour of someone else's happiness or other requisites
of happiness. Sacrifice is not valuable in itself; it is valuable only to the extent that it
contributes to the net happiness
Strict and prescriptive Objection: It is too much to ask that people always act in the
interests of general society
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