Utilitarianism

INTRODUCTION

You can breathe a sigh of relief as this is the last discussion on moral philosophy. We've studied the two families of moral thinking: moral objectivism and moral nonobjectivism. Today's topic doesn't fit well into either family, but is still a popular moral framework. I'm sure you've been exposed to this idea and could probably briefly explain it. Today is utilitarianism.

UTILITARIANISM DEFINED

Here's our working definition. Utilitarianism: the doctrine that an action is right insofar as it promotes happiness, and that the greatest happiness of the greatest number should be the guiding principle of conduct."

You're probably familiar with Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill who are the famous proponents of the idea. John Stuart Mill said of utilitarianism "[T]he 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."

So utilitarianism suggests that what is moral is what creates the greatest good. And therefore, the ends justify the means.

EVIDENCE FOR UTILITARIANISM

How can we defend this idea? Here's some thoughts:

First, seeking the greatest good is how we make day-to-day decisions. We're constantly weighing the pros and cons to make conclusions of what to do. Utilitarianism simply applies this process to morality.

Second, utilitarianism is always seeking the good of others. This is a very appealing idea as we all consider that to be a good thing.

And third, utilitarianism provides a reasonable framework for a society to operate morally and simultaneously eliminate the need for God. One of my friends proposed to me that, because of our secular society and non-theistic government, we should find an ideology for basing our morality on that doesn't include God. He submitted utilitarianism to be a plausible option.

PROBLEMS WITH UTILITARIANISM

Although utilitarianism may sound good, it has it's drawbacks.

To begin, it requires too much of people. If it's wrong to not seek the greatest good, then you must always be seeking the greatest good if you want to live morally. So, even though it would be good to give $100 to charity, if you could give $150 dollars it would be wrong for you to only $100. It would also make you feel guilty for relaxing and doing some things for yourself.

Also, the greatest good can be too difficult to calculate. Continually factoring the overall affects of your decisions on the planet can be time-consuming and nearly impossible because you must assign values to certain results and weigh every positive and negative value and you'd better get it right or else you risk committing a moral fault. Besides, who assigns the numbers and values in the first place? What can you appeal to to learn if you value someone's life, happiness, comfort, emotional stability, or physical safety more or less than one of the others. In short, it's no easy task to know the "greatest good."

Who determines "the greatest good"? This is a similar argument, but consider a hypothetical example. Suppose I'm in line somewhere (let's say for Black Friday shopping) and there's a thousand people in line behind me and one homeless man in front of me who, let's suppose, has no family and who will not be missed by anyone. If I were to kill the man (or to be less morbid: shove him out of the way), my happiness may increase as well as the thousand people behind me because we will all get through the line faster. No one will miss the man though his happiness may decrease (though you could argue that since he's dead he wouldn't care). In the end, wouldn't be best to kill the man for the sake of the masses or should I wait? Who decides what's better in that scenario from a utilitarianism standpoint?

The example above raises another problem for utilitarianism. It seems to allow for all kinds of "evil" to be acceptable. Since the ends justify the means, if killing or stealing or lying or abuse will bring about a greater good, it should be good to do.

During the discussions, it was also mentioned that utilitarianism, while serving the majority, would, in fact, ignore the minority which could be problematic.

RULE UTILITARIANISM DEFINED

To resolve some of these difficulties. Some have proposed a variant of "normal" utilitarianism (clarified as "act utilitarianism") called "rule utilitarianism." Rule utilitarianism takes into account "rules" which are determined to include actions that, when broadly applied, would generally promote happiness or unhappiness. Thus, since murder generally promotes unhappiness a "rule" under rule utilitarianism would be "don't murder." And since helping others generally promotes happiness, "help others" would be a rule under rule utilitarianism.

BENEFITS OF RULE UTILITARIANISM

The benefits of this idea are that it takes into account commonly held moral beliefs like not murdering, stealing, lying, etc. Also, it resolves some of the tensions of [act] utilitarianism (like killing to promote good).

PROBLEMS WITH RULE UTILITARIANISM

However, some problems remain.

Most noticeably, the question arises, "where do these rules come from?" There's two possible sources: either independently of utilitarianism or simply from concluding "this rule promotes the greatest good." Let's examine each of these.

If the source is outside of utilitarianism, then utilitarianism is not the over-arching and final authority on morality. Perhaps they're appealing to natural law or divine command or cultural beliefs or something else. Making rules from anything other than utilitarianism undermines rule utilitarianism.

But suppose the rules come from the conclusion that "this rule promotes the greatest good" then it would seem that rule utilitarianism simply boils down to act utilitarianism since that's how act utilitarianism determines morality: by determining what promotes the common good.

In the end, rule utilitarianism doesn't seem to be that much better since it runs into philosophical troubles and doesn't eliminate all the problems of act utilitarianism.

CONCLUSIONS

Here's what we can conclude.
- Utilitarianism CAN be helpful as it can guide in decision making. But...
- Complete utilitarianism is nearly impossible to live by.
- Utilitarianism doesn't hold water as an all-encompassing moral philosophy.
- Utilitarianism has the potential to allow almost anything.