Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) gave the first systematic account of Utilitarianism in Introduction to The Principles of Morals and Legislation. Later thinkers like John Stuart Mill and Henry Sidgwick revised the original version of Utilitarianism to meet the criticisms it faced. In the process, the original ideas of utilitarianism underwent change, and the doctrine became more varied.
Utilitarianism proposes that human actions should aim at promoting the greatest happiness of the greatest number of people. According to Bentham, “Nature has placed mankind under the governance 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”. Let us suppose that in a given situation, a moral agent faces three alternative courses of action A1, A2 and A3. Which one of these should he select? Utilitarianism
answers that the moral agent has to choose that one which maximises the pleasure and minimizes
the pain. The right action for an individual to perform on any occasion is that which will produce the greatest pleasure and the least pain to those affected by it including himself.
In the words of J.S. Mill (1806–1873), the utilitarian principle is “ . . . 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 [meant] pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation [deprivation] of pleasure.” Mill believes that pleasure is necessarily a good
i.e. anything that leads to happiness is good. Utilitarianism as an ethical rule of conduct applies to individual moral agents, institutions and governments. Further, good life according to utilitarianism will be one spent in maximizing the happiness and minimizing the pain in the world.
Bentham elaborated a ‘hedonic calculus’, which distinguishes between different aspects of pleasure and pain. He thought that pleasures fromvarioussources can be measured and compared. The seven aspects of pleasure are – its intensity or strength; its duration or length; its certainty; its nearness in time (how soon or how late); its fecundity or likelihood of leading to other pleasures; its purity or freedom from pain; and its extent or the number of people it will include. Incidentally, utilitarianstend to use ‘happiness’, ‘pleasure’, ‘utility’and‘welfare’ interchangeably.
Mill gives an argument to show that happiness is the ultimate value. X is visible if people can see it; Y is audible if people can hear it. Likewise, happiness or utility is desirable if people desire it. And, common experience shows that people desire it. However, Mill’s argument is invalid. In the first part of the argument, ‘see’ and ‘hear’ mean ‘capable of being seen’ and ‘capable of being heard’. But ‘desire’ can be interpreted in two ways: ‘capable of being desired’ and ‘worthy of being desired’. It is the latter meaning that is relevant in determining whether a desire is moral.
Utilitarianism, Egoism and Altruism
Beforeproceeding further, we need to notetherelationbetween egoism, altruismand utilitarianism. Utilitarianism does not imply or endorse an egotistical attitude to life. It does not give any special status to the pleasure or happiness of the individual whose actions it is to guide. Bentham says that in applying the principle, each individual is to count for one and no one for more than one. The moral agent’s own pleasures (and pains) will be exactly on par with those of others affected by the action.
Egoism or self-centeredness is an attitude by which an individual gives a privileged status to his own welfare. As opposed to this, Utilitarians treat everyone’s welfare as equal. Hence, Utilitarianism is not an egotistical doctrine.
But at the same time, Utilitarianism is not altruistic. Altruism is the doctrine that the interests of others should be put before our own interests. Altruism is often considered central to morality. This is because Christianity which influenced Western moral traditions, strongly regards self–denial as a virtue. However, if what counts is happiness in general,one’sown happiness is as important as anyone else’s. But it is not any more important. This feature of utilitarianism is usually called its attitude of ‘generalized benevolence’, which differs from both altruism and egoism.
The relation between utilitarianism and egoism was seen clearly by later thinkers. However, whenBenthampropoundedutilitarianism, criticsfeltthat he had elevated human selfishness to the status of a moral principle. Utilitarians then elaborated and clarified their concept of pleasure to include general happiness in it. However, this was seen as unconvincing. John Dewey argues:
“There is, accordingly, no direct road from individualistic hedonism (private pleasure) to universalistic hedonism (generalpleasure). …Happiness is always a particular condition of one particular person. Whosehappiness is desirable and to whom? Because my happiness is intrinsically desirable to me, does it follow that your happiness is intrinsically desirable to me? Indeed, in the hedonistic psychology, is it not nonsense to say that a state of your feeling is desirable to me?”
While recognizing the difficulty involved in the transition from individual happiness to general happiness, utilitarians argued that human beings are not utterly selfish and indifferent to the happiness of their fellow men. This is so because sympathetic and social feelings are naturally ingrained in human character; further, men become enlightened in some degree due to education and culture. These factors enable men to transcend their egoism.
Critics also found fault with utilitarianism for what they regarded as its vulgar conception of happiness. Responding to such criticism Mill observes that in seeming to imply “that life has…no higher end than pleasure” utilitarianism is a “doctrine worthy only of swine.” Mill says that “the accusation supposes human beings to be capable of no pleasures except those of which swine are capable.” He introduces a distinction between higher and lower pleasures, with higher pleasures, including mental, aesthetic, and moral pleasures. Higher pleasures differ from lower pleasures not in degree (amount of pleasure) but in kind (as a different order of pleasure). He also says that “to do as you would be done by, and to love your neighbour as yourself, constitute the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality.” In this way, he includes the Christian golden moral rule in utilitarianism.
Utilitarians argue that happiness or utility is the only end that people seek. This view fails to explain many aspects of human conduct. It does not explain the selfless care of parents for children, the sacrifice of soldiers for their comrades in arms and the asceticism of saints. Utilitarians try to explainthese examples by saying that some peoplederivehappiness by making sacrifices forothers. However, acts of sacrifice and altruism cannot be explained as attempts at deriving personal pleasure. In such acts, people sacrifice personal happiness for other ends. Thus people value other things as ends in themselves and not as means to happiness.
We have so far considered two criticisms which question the utilitarian ethical criterion, namely happiness.But evenif we accepthappiness as theultimatevalue,it givesriseto a problem.Maximization of happiness involves measuring happiness, adding happiness and comparing happiness. There are no units(likegrams)for measuringhappiness.Hencehappinesswhicharisesfromvariousactionscannot be added. Further, the happiness which individuals derive from the same action or from different actions cannot be compared. Thus the pleasure which Hari gets from drinking a cup of coffee cannot be compared with the pleasure which Giri gets from drinking an identical cup of coffee. This is because happiness is an individual’sstate of mind. In economics,this is known as the problem of interpersonal comparability of utility.
Utilitarians answer this point in the following general terms. It is true that happiness is not amenable to mathematical calculations. However, people have an intuitive sense of relative degree of utility or pleasure which can be derived from various things. Everyday human decisions involve comparing pleasure or happiness or utility. Utilitarian doctrine involves ranking of different human pleasures, and taking a broad view of the circumstances in which they will be higher or lower.
Untenable Results of Utilitarianism
We now turn to a different type of problem which utilitarianism involves. Philosophers have cited instances in which application of the utilitarian principles leads to totally unacceptable moral consequences. The situations are imaginary, but they serve as counter examples to show the inapplicability of utilitarian rules of conduct. Their purpose is to show that general moral principles have exceptions.
One such scenario imagines three eminent men – Nobel laureates in physics, medicine and genetics – who are critically ill, and in desperate need of organ transplant. One needs a kidney;
another needs a heart; andthethird a pancreas.But the neededorgans are unavailable. As surgeons are agonizing over the problem, a completely unconscious drunken tramp without family, friends or home is brought to the hospital. The surgeons decide to remove the organs from the tramp and transplant them in the three noble laureates. Let us assume that the surgeons are assured of legal immunity for their act.
The question is whether utilitarianism can justify the act of the surgeons. In answering the question, let us ignore all moral principles other than utilitarianism. We need to isolate all other moral criteria and see the answer which we get from the utilitarian criterion. As we know, this involves calculating the total pleasure or utility to society from two alternatives: (i) removing the tramp’s organs and transplanting them in the bodies of the noble laureates and (ii) allowing the tramp to walk away after he regains consciousness. It is clear that the social utility or happiness of alternative (i) will clearly exceed that of alternative (ii). For after all, what is the worth of a tramp’s life compared to that of three Nobel laureates?
In this example, we have ended with a moral evaluation which no civilized society will accept. The example delineates a situation involving a single act. We understand ‘act’ here as comprising a single moral transaction. We should not get distracted by the ordinary meaning of ‘act’ involving various activities of doctors and nurses before, during and after operations. The situation which the example depicts is known as ‘act utilitarianism’. Act utilitarianism refers to the moral evaluation of individual actions. Obviously, when utilitarianism is applied to individual acts, it yields unacceptable results.
Act Utilitarianism and Rule Utilitarianism
To avoidcounter-examplesofthiskind, a distinction is usuallymadebetween‘act’utilitarianismand ‘rule’ utilitarianism. Act utilitarianism, the version of Bentham, says that every action must accord with the greatest happiness principle. Rule utilitarianism (which Mill mentioned) says that one should act in accordancewiththose rules of conduct that are mostconducive to thegreatest happiness. This distinctionimpliesthat in certain circumstances an obviously abhorrent act would contribute more to thegeneral happiness than another decent act. But theabhorrent act losesits utilitarian sanction because it is contrary to a rule which itself is most conducive to the greatest happiness.
We can now examine our example from other angles – firstfrom the point of view of law which is only a set of rules backed by State sanction. Killing an individual for his body organs is murder, pure and simple. It is a legal crime. Even if the surgeons can escape the law, they are guilty of a grave breach of morality. In almost all systems of morals, human life is sacrosanct. Moreover, surgeons are bound by the Hippocratic Oath which prescribes that a physician should only help a patient and never harm him. Even if they want to help the noble laureates, it cannot be at the cost of another human being.
The example contains an element of moral dilemma. However, in a genuine moral dilemma any decision involves choice between two or more equally important moral criteria. Hence the moral agent finds himself on the horns of a difficult moral dilemma. In our example, the choice is quite clear. The surgeons ought not to harm the drunken tramp even to save the lives of noble laureates.
Before leaving the example, we can restate rule utilitarianism. Men have to be guided by general rules. And the only acceptable criterion for general rules is a utilitarian one: act in accordance with
those rules which, if generally acted upon, will lead to the greatest happiness. Rule utilitarianism is immune to the type of counter-examples which can be easily brought against act utilitarianism, because it can explain, always in terms of utility, why some actions are forbidden in general, even if they satisfy the greatest happiness principle.
Teleological and Deontological Moral Theories
At this stage, we can conveniently consider the manner in which utilitarianism approaches morals. Normative ethical theories are classified as teleological and deontological. These two types of theories differ in how they determine the moral worth of an action – whether an action is morally right or wrong, permissible or impermissible. The teleological approach is also called “consequentialism”.
It determines the moral worth of any action by the consequences or outcomes of that action. An action is good if its consequences are good; an action is wrong if its consequences are bad. Hence, for judging an action morally, we have to consider its actual or likely results. Ethical egoism and utilitarianism are teleological.
In contrast to the teleological approach, the deontological approach rejects that the moral worth of any actiondepends on itsconsequences.Deontological approach to ethics holdsthat moral agents have to rigorously fulfil their moral duties or obligations unmindful of the consequences. Moral agents have to honour human rights and meet moral obligations even at the cost of an optimal outcome. Deontology argues that the moral worth of an action does not depend on its consequences, but that a different criterion should be used. In a later section we will consider two such theories, Kantianism and contractarianism.
Utilitarianism as Consequentialism
Utilitarianisminvolvesanotherquestion in that it requires a moral agent to foreseetheconsequences of his action. In any given situation, he has to consider the available alternative courses of action and select that course which will result in the maximum utility or the minimum disutility. But the consequences of acts are difficult to foresee. Let us look at an example which Gordon Graham gives in Eight Theories of Ethics.
Historians tell us that the event which triggered the First World War was the assassination of Austrian Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo. Leaving aside the deeper causes of the War, let us assume that the assassination causedthe War.The assassins succeededbecause of a mistake of the Archduke’s driver, who drove up to a dead end and was forced to turn back. As the car halted in order to turn, the assassins got the opportunity of firing at the Archduke. Thus, had the driver not made the fateful error, Ferdinand would have been driven safely home. Of course, this did not happen. We have imagined a historical ‘might have been’ in the example.
We can arrange the momentous consequences of the driver’s mistake schematically. Archduke’s death Æ outbreak of the First World war Æ slaughter of millions Æ Russian revolution Æ Treaty of Versailles Æ its harsh treatment of Germany Æ dissatisfaction in Germany Æ rise of Hitler Æ holocaust and the Second world War Æ development of nuclear weapons Æ dropping of atomic
bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In taking a wrong turn into the blind alley, the driver appears to have committed the greatest error in history.
The example deliberately exaggerates the consequences of the driver’s mistake to highlight the problems in tracing the consequences of actions. First, consequences form a series; or an action leads to secondary effects like the ripples which a stone dropped into a pond creates. The first effect leads to a second effect, the second to a third and so on. This problem, though difficult, is not intractable. For practical purposes, we have to draw a somewhat arbitrary line when estimating consequences. Normally, the range of consequences for deciding whether an action is good or bad will be short formanyactions.
Besides the unending chain of consequences, one has to consider the agent’s responsibility. In analyzing problems, it is often necessary to separate consequences from responsibility. Ordinarily, people will be disinclined to pin responsibility on the driver in the example for the cataclysmic consequences. It is unreasonable to say that people have acted badly because of consequences which were not merely unforeseen but unforeseeable.
Forecasting Consequences of Decisions
In studying the consequences, one has to distinguish between expectations and outcomes, or between anticipated and actual consequences. When contemplating any action, we visualize ex ante or beforehand its likely consequences; but actions are assessed ex post facto based on their actual consequences. But while making decisions, we cannot rely on hindsight.
How do we then make decisions whether in moral or other contexts? The answer is that we have to rely upon generalizations about cause and effect and follow general rules. We estimate the likely consequences of a proposed course of action on the basis of past experience, and we summarize our experience in useful general rules of conduct. In simple terms, we have to project the likely consequences of an action, based on past experiences of similar events. These are embodied in general rules which point to cause and effect relations. Action X is likely to have such and such consequences. For example, we know that driving at breakneck speed will cause accidents and injure people.
Moral agents have to diligently consider the consequences of their actions. For instance, one will be irresponsible in pushing boulders from a hill top without looking down. As we mentioned before, one has to predict the likely consequences based on experience of similar actions in the past. In uncertain situations, one has to rely on the relative probabilities of different alternative actions. These probabilities can be derived from accurate statistics, if available. Otherwise, one has to rely on intuitive sense of probabilities. Utilitarianism casts a responsibility on the moral agent to seek diligently the available information and make informed decisions for maximizing welfare. Any one making decisions without considering conscientiously the available information will fall short of the moral standards.
Here, we need to separate two questions which arise in situations involving moral decisions. One question is how to select an appropriate course of action. As we have seen, moral agents, according to utilitarian principles will have to follow the principle of the greatest happiness. The second question is about the responsibility of the moral agent – whether he deserves praise or blame for his action. We are only too ready to fasten blame on others, especially when things go wrong.
Utilitarians argue that moral agents should not be blamed straightaway for the bad consequences of their actions. The question is whether their actions are well–intentioned or not. The presumption is that actions undertaken in good faith are likely to have good consequences. However, one has to bear in mind the caution that the path to hell is paved with good intentions. As we have seen, people are under a moral obligation to be diligent in foreseeing the likely outcomes of their actions. However, if they havetakenadequatecare,theycannot be heldresponsibleforthebad consequences of their acts. This is the concept of bona fide error.
Many writers argue that utilitarianism ignores the distributional aspects of happiness or utility. What thismeans is that notonlytotal happiness or welfarebut itsdistributionamong members of societyis important. Socialism, for example, advocates that wealth and income should be equally distributed in any society. As happiness and welfare are connected, the total social welfare has to be equitably shared. Otherwise, it is likely that the happiness of a tiny minority of the rich will be more than offset by the pain of the majority of the poor.
The early utilitarian thinkers generally ignored the distributional aspect of happiness or welfare. However, JS Mill took a more egalitarian view in such matters. Utilitarianism may not logically support anyparticularpattern of wealthdistribution.Oneway to make a caseforequalityfromutilitarianism is through the economic theory–diminishing marginal utility. In simple terms, this theory states that as a consumer goes on increasing the consumption of any commodity, the utility or satisfaction he derives from the extra units of its consumption goes on decreasing. Consequently, transfer of commodities from those who have too many (say R) to those who have too few (say P) will increase total satisfaction. For the satisfaction gained by P will be much more than the satisfaction lost by R.
According to economists, this argument will not apply to wealth redistribution because wealth is not a single commodity but represents command over commodities in general. In that case, the law of diminishing marginal utility will not apply. Increasing happiness through redistribution of wealth can be also logically challenged since interpersonal comparisons of utility or happiness are disallowed in economic theory. But these are theoretical considerations since egalitarianism is a moral value which many societies have adopted. Even at theoretical level, John Rawls makes a case for distributional justice in A Theory of Justice.
Mill separates justice in the sense of just action of an individual from other spheres of morality. Justice casts certain duties on us which others can expect as a matter of right. Just action is something which it is not only right to do, and wrong not to do, but which some individual person can claim from us as his moral right. X has no right to Y’s charity, though Y would do well to be charitable. But X has a right that Y should do him no harm or that Y should repay him his debt.
According to critics, political rights of individuals cannot be adequately explained within the framework of utilitarianism.Mill argued that societyought to defend theindividual rights of citizens, and gave social utility as the rationale of for such defence. John Rawls, a famous twentieth century thinker, criticized the utilitarian approach on the ground that individual rights may be violated in the name of general social good.
Summary of Utilitarianism
• Utilitarianism regards happiness as the guide for human actions.
• Individuals, institutions and governments shouldtry to maximise happiness and minimize pain.
• Good life is one which aims at achieving the maximum happiness for oneself and others.
• Utilitarianism is neither egoism nor altruism.
• Philosophers criticized utilitarianism as promoting selfish motives and gross pleasures.
• Mill introduced the concept of qualities or grades of pleasure to answer the critics.
• Mill gives a proof to show that desire for pleasure is a part of human nature.
• Utilitarians unconvincingly try to explain human behaviour involving self–sacrifice and heroism as pursuit of happiness.
• Utilitarianism faces problems since happiness is a subjective, non measurable mental state.
• Philosophers make a distinction between ‘act’ utilitarianism and ‘rule’ utilitarianism.
• Act utilitarianism involves maximisation of happiness in each action.
• Rule utilitarianism consists in following general rules which will maximise human happiness.
• Act utilitarianism can lead to actions contrary to common morality.
• Utilitarianism is a teleological as distinct from deontological theory.
• Deontological theories focus on following moral rules without regard to their consequences.
• Teleological theories concentrate on the good or bad consequences of action.
• It is difficult to foresee consequences of actions.
• Moral agents should diligently consider the likely outcomes of action based on experiences of similar actions in the past.
• Irrespective of consequences, acts done in good faith are justified.
• Utilitarianism ignores the distributional aspects of happiness or welfare.
• Individual rights cannot be adequately explained by utilitarianism.