UTILITARIANISM

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1 Introduction

Utilitarianism is an appealing and highly respected

normative moral theory, with plenty of contemporary

defenders. It can trace its roots back to Ancient Greece, and

the philosopher Epicurus in particular, but is more commonly

associated with the English Victorian philosophers Jeremy 1 From Maxley Brooke (1924). Coin Games and Puzzles. Dover: New York. p. 65

Bentham, John Stuart Mill, and Henry Sidgwick. Among

contemporary moral philosophers the most famous

utilitarian is Peter Singer (others include Samuel Scheffler,

David Brink; Peter Railton, Geoffrey Scarre, Jonathan Glover,

and plenty more).

Historically, utilitarians have been among the most radical of

moral philosophers and have often campaigned for changes

in received attitudes and practices (for instance, Bentham

campaigned for prison reform; John Stuart Mill campaigned

for equality for women; and Peter Singer campaigns for

equality for animals). But what, exactly, is utilitarianism?

Utilitarianism is the view that our basic moral duty is to

ensure we bring about the maximum quantity of utility.

Utility is variously understood as happiness, or the

satisfaction of preferences (there are other ways of

understanding utility too – but in these notes we’ll be

focussing on the main two – happiness and preference

satisfaction). In a nutshell, utilitarianism says that we owe it

to ourselves and others to create as much happiness in the

world as we can, as well as minimise the amount of

unhappiness.

Let’s first look at parallels between utilitarianism and ethical

egoism.

2 How utilitarianism is different

Hopefully you noticed that utilitarianism is a monistic theory

(so it consists of one basic principle) and is consequentialist

(it is the outcome that determines the rightness or

wrongness of an action).

But despite these similarities, the utilitarian thinks the

ethical egoist makes a mistake. The ethical egoist thinks we

ought to maximise our own personal happiness. But the

utilitarian holds that taking the moral perspective involves

recognising that your own happiness is no more or less

important than anyone else’s. If maximising your own

happiness is the rational thing to do when you were focussed

only on your own happiness, maximising general happiness

Utilitarianism shares two characteristics with ethical egoism. What are they?

must be the rational thing to do when you recognise that

your own happiness is no more or less important than

anyone else’s.

We are going to discuss what happiness might be said to

consist in later in this section.

3 Some attractions of utilitarianism

Utilitarianism (like ethical egoism ) is a simple theory. All of

morality is (supposedly) captured by one principle: maximise

general utility.

But does it provide guidance? Well, many people’s first

response to utilitarianism is to point out that it is difficult to

measure and quantify happiness. To find out what course of

Reading: Mill, J. S. (1863). Utilitarianism. London, England: Parker. [An extract]

Summarise Mill’s outline of utilitarianism.

action to follow we need to compare different people’s likely

happiness levels (the problem of comparing happiness is

known as the problem of ‘interpersonal comparisons of

utility’). Now, certainly there is a problem here. But I don’t

think it is a particularly grave one, for while it may

sometimes be difficult to know the impact one’s actions will

have on the happiness of others (or, indeed, oneself) we are

not at a complete loss here, and sometimes it will be obvious

that a particular act will cause more displeasure than

pleasure. To that extent, utilitarianism offers considerable

practical guidance.

A business analogy might be helpful. A business tries to

maximise profits and minimise costs. Businesses are

effectively utilitarians about money. A business will carefully

assess the costs and benefits associated with any given

course of action, and pursue it only if they judge the benefits

to outweigh the costs. Of course, mistakes can and are

made. Sometimes there are hidden or unexpected costs. But

while there is always a degree of uncertainty, it is not

crippling uncertainty. It would be ridiculous to argue that as

it is sometimes unclear which policy will or will not be

profitable, or which path is the most profitable, that we are

therefore at a complete loss. We can still make sensible,

informed guesses and arrive at intelligent strategies. Of

course, there’s room for disagreement over what the best

policy is (and this may vary according to circumstances).

Utilitarians do indeed disagree over how best to maximise

happiness (Bentham, for instance, thought capital

punishment was not utility maximising whereas John Stuart

Mill thought it was). But the difficulties we have measuring

happiness do not render utilitarianism false nor render it

unusable any more than difficulties establishing the best

way to maximise profits make knowledge of that goal

unhelpful. But anyway, try it out by engaging in the

following exercise.

1. Your sensitive friend Jennifer has just bought a new dress. She looks fairly

awful in it. However, she’ll be wearing it among friends (at a wedding) and

she’s already bought it and worn it so cannot return it to the shop or

afford to buy another. She asks you for your opinion. Should you tell her it

looks great or tell her the truth?

2. You are in a country where euthanasia (mercy killing) is legal

(Switzerland). Your friend is terminally ill and is clearly suffering terribly.

Reflect on the following cases and see if the instruction ‘maximise happiness’ provides you with any guidance.

She wishes her misery to end but is unable to kill herself. She requests

that you kill her by turning off her life support machine.

3. There’s a runaway train trolley heading towards five happy workmen on a

railway track. There’s no way of warning them. If the trolley hits them

they’ll all be killed. However, you are stood at an intersection and can

divert the trolley by pulling a lever. Unfortunately there is one happy

workman on the other line. If you divert the trolley it will strike him

instead, killing him. What should you do?

4. You are the president of the USA. You know a bomb has been planted

somewhere in a busy shopping precinct, but you have no idea which one.

The terrorist responsible for planting the bomb has been caught but he is

not giving up any information. Your secret services want to be given

permission to administer a truth-drug to him. The drug is completely

reliable. The only problem is the drug has a side effect: it induces tortuous

suffering for several hours. Should you give the go ahead?

4 Intuitively plausible?

I think it is fairly clear what utilitarianism would judge you

ought to do in the above cases. And utilitarianism seems to

deliver acceptable judgements – ones you can acknowledge

might well be correct. It seems morally right to lie in the

dress case. It seems morally right to divert the trolley (does

to me and to most people, anyway). The final case is more

controversial. But it is at least plausible that it is right to

administer the drug (which is not the same as saying that it

is a decision that should be taken lightly, and a good

utilitarian will almost certainly want the person who makes

the decision to be very uncomfortable about doing so,

precisely in order to ensure that this kind of decision is only

ever taken in extreme circumstances).

Utilitarianism also provides a plausible rationale for these

judgements. The reason you ought to lie about the dress is

because telling the truth would cause someone suffering.

The reason you ought to divert the trolley is because in doing

so you minimise the amount of harm done (only one person

loses their life rather than five) and likewise in the truth-

drug case.

But perhaps there are other cases where applying

utilitarianism will yield more troubling verdicts.

Consider the following thought experiments and say what you think utilitarianism will judge the right course of action to be in each case.

1. You need a root canal filling in a tooth. There are two dentists in town.

Both are equally professional and equally competent (you can trust them

both only to give you treatment you really need). However, one of these

dentists is a sadist and derives pleasure from the discomfort of others.

(Rest assured, his professionalism prevents him from subjecting patients

to any unnecessary pain – but root canals involve some unavoidable

discomfort). So, your level of discomfort will be the same whichever

dentist you visit. If you’re a Utilitarian, which dentist ought you to visit?

2. You are a surgeon in a hospital. Mr Seinfeld, a fit but unpopular man,

has come into casualty with a broken toe. Mr Mitchell is a very popular

man and would be fit and well if it were not for a serious heart condition

that will kill him unless a replacement heart is found soon. Mr Webb is

another very popular man and he too would be fit and well were it not

for his dodgy liver. He needs a new liver and will die unless he receives a

replacement. Both Mr Mitchell and Mr Webb will, if they receive their

replacement organs, be returned to full health and will be able to

continue their upstanding, sober, virtuous lives. Mr Seinfeld’s heart and

liver fit the bill. If you’re a Utilitarian surgeon should you kill Mr Seinfeld

so that you can give Mr Mitchell his heart and Mr Webb his liver?

3. You have $15 surplus money. You could go to the cinema and watch the

latest blockbuster or you could donate the money to a charity working in

the third-world. If you spend the $15 on yourself, you’ll derive some

pleasure from watching the film. But if you donate the $15 to charity it’ll

alleviate a considerable amount of suffering. In fact, shouldn’t you give

all of your spare money away – and furthermore, shouldn’t you spend all

of your spare time ministering to the poor and needy? Wouldn’t that be a

more utile use of your time?

5 Indirect utilitarianism

Are the judgements you reached in the above cases

intuitively acceptable? You must judge. But perhaps (and

maybe you already considered this in your answers to the

above) we are applying the theory too crudely. Above I

asked you to directly apply the Utilitarian principle –

maximise happiness – to each case. But perhaps we

shouldn’t apply utilitarianism directly all of the time. For

instance, if the direct application of the utility principle

means that surgeons will be inspired to routinely dismember

people in order to provide organs for some greater number

of patients this will cause widespread feelings of insecurity

and will make for less happiness overall (even if on a

particular occasion the utility profile favours taking such

action).

So, applying the principle of utility directly could easily be

counter-productive. Perhaps the strategy most likely to

maximise happiness involves adhering to certain ‘rules of

thumb’ (don’t lie, don’t punish the innocent, don’t

dismember people, etc.). If maximising happiness is our goal

then we might do well to all but forget about the principle of

utility in everyday life, and only remember to apply it in

cases where it is blindingly obvious that following the rule of

thumb will yield a colossal amount of disutility, or in cases

where our rules of thumb conflict (and so cease providing us

with guidance; in such cases we must consult the master

principle, but otherwise we must leave it well alone). The

everyday moral rules of thumb that constitute common-

sense morality contain ‘the wisdom of ages’ and should only

very rarely be overruled (if you’re interested in this strategy

see R. M. Hare’s book Moral Thinking and R. G. Frey’s article

“Act-utilitarianism” in The Blackwell Guide to Ethical Theory

(La Follette, ed.)).

Note that by employing this kind of indirect strategy the

utilitarian can explain why our motives are very important.

Granted, our motives do not ultimately determine the

rightness or wrongness of our deeds, but nevertheless our

motives provide evidence of our character, and certain

character traits and dispositions are more conducive to the

maximisation of happiness than others. So it turns out to be

vitally important that we cultivate certain dispositions and

not others, and condemn those who act from certain motives

even if, on a particular occasion, their badly motivated deed

produces more pleasure than harm.

I leave it to you to assess whether indirect utilitarianism can

achieve intuitively palatable results or indeed, whether we

ought to simply reject some of our common sense intuitions

in deference to the judgements of utilitarianism. (Note:

many utilitarians will point out that we really shouldn’t place

too much confidence in our common-sense moral intuitions:

they might embody prejudice. We should regularly ‘audit’

our common sense judgements to make sure they’re really

promoting maximum happiness.)

So, maybe either by ‘indirect’ application or rejecting some

commonsense moral intuitions (or a judicious use of both

strategies) utilitarianism can achieve an acceptable level of

intuitive plausibility.

Reading: Ryder, R. (2009). Painism versus

Utilitarianism. Think, 821), 85-89.

What do you think of Ryder’s criticism of utilitarianism and do you think his amended version is an improvement?

6 Utility

What, exactly, does utility consist in? Utility is normally

understood as ‘happiness’. But not all utilitarians agree

either about what happiness consists in, or whether utility

should be understood in this way at all. It would be beyond

the scope of this section to distinguish between all the

different varieties of utilitarians, so we’ll focus on the most

prominent. We’ll distinguish between hedonistic utilitarians

and preference utilitarians.

7 Hedonistic utilitarianism

Hedonistic utilitarianism is the view that utility consists in

happiness. But what does happiness consist in? The

utilitarian Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) thought that

Reading: Regan, T. (2003). Animal rights, human wrongs. Oxford, England: Rowman and Littlefield. [An extract]

What is Regan’s argument and do you think it highlights a serious flaw in utilitarianism?

happiness consists in pleasure and the absence of pain. So,

according to him, our moral duty is to create the most

amount of pleasure and minimise pain.

Bentham devised a useful ‘hedonic calculus’ to help you

figure out the ‘utility profile’ of prospective courses of

action:

Intensity: the more intense the pleasure your action

causes, the better.

Duration: the longer the pleasure lasts, the better.

Fruitfulness: a pleasure that opens up opportunities for

further pleasure is to be preferred to one that does not.

For instance, educating yourself might be pleasurable

in itself and it opens up the possibility of future

pleasures, whereas taking drugs probably doesn’t.

Likelihood: when trying to figure out what to do, we

must not just focus on the amount of pleasure an

option will yield, we must also factor in the likelihood

that it will yield it. Putting all your savings on a horse

will yield considerable pleasure – considerable utility –

if the horse wins. You’ll not have to go to work

anymore. However, it is unlikely to win, so probably

better to make do with less utility, than take the risk of

having even less for the vain hope of a great gain.

Note that what matters is the quantity and intensity of a

pleasure, not its source. Some people get pleasure going to

the opera. Others get pleasure playing on their ‘Xbox’

computer machines. I love listening to quality europop such

as the musical stylings of ‘September’ (Petra Marklund). My

partner prefers Mozart and Beethoven. But each is as

valuable as the other if the quantities of pleasure being

generated are the same. (Bentham applied this thought to

sexual morality and arrived at the, then scandalous, view

that homosexual relationships are just as valuable and

worthwhile as heterosexual ones. He also thought, and this

is something that contemporary utilitarian Peter Singer has

rigorously defended, that animal pains and pleasures matter

and that our duty to minimise suffering means radically

altering our practices with respect to animals).

John Stuart Mill thought Bentham’s account of happiness

was faulty. Mill was a hedonist too, but he thought that the

quality of a pleasure matters in addition to its quantity.

Pleasures from certain sources are of a lower quality than

others. Animal pleasures (eating, drinking, sex) are of a

lower quality than intellectual pleasures. For instance, the

overall amount of pleasure derived from having sex may be

the same as from reading a good novel, but the pleasure

derived from reading a good novel is of a better quality.

What was his reason for thinking this? Well, he held that

anyone who has experienced both kinds of pleasure will

judge the ‘higher pleasures’ to be superior.

Whether one takes Bentham’s view or Mill’s, there’s a

problem for hedonistic accounts (though exactly how serious

a problem is a matter of debate).

What do you think: is it the pleasure-yield that counts and not the source? Try and think of an example where it seems the source matters

Suppose there were an experience machine that would give you any

experience you desired. Superduper neuro-psychologists could stimulate

your brain so that you would think and feel you were writing a great novel,

or making a friend, or reading an interesting book. All the time you would be

floating in a tank, with electrodes attached to your brain. Should you plug

into this machine for life, pre-programming your life’s experiences? If you

are worried about missing out on desirable experiences, we can suppose

that business enterprises have researched thoroughly the lives of many

others. You can pick and choose from their large smorgasbord of such

experiences, selecting your life’s experiences for, say, the next to yours.

…Of course, while in the tank you won’t know that you’re there; you’ll think

it is all actually happening. Others can also plug in to have the experiences

they want, so there’s no need to stay unplugged to serve them. Ignore

problems such as who will service the machines if everyone plugs in. Would

you plug in?2

2 Robert Nozick (1974). Anarchy State and Utopia. Blackwell Publishing: Oxford, pp. 42-43

Read the famous quote below from philosopher Robert Nozick (supposedly the inspiration behind the film the ‘Matrix’). Then explain why you would/wouldn’t ‘plug-in’. What would a hedonistic Utilitarian say you ought to do?

8 Preference utilitarianism

According to the preference-satisfaction account of utility

what matters is not having pleasurable experiences per se

but having our desires or preferences satisfied.

In 1954 Olds and Milner of McGill University implanted electrodes in rats’ brains. The electrodes were wired up to a lever in the rat’s cage. If the rat pressed the lever an electric current would be passed into the rat’s brain. Olds and Milner had originally assumed that the current would cause the rats pain.

In fact, they had inadvertently discovered the pleasure centres of the brain. Every time the rats pressed the lever they received a burst of pleasure. So they kept pressing their levers. And pressing them. And pressing them.

In fact, they were so obsessed with pressing the lever they neglected to eat and drink and eventually died of exhaustion!! Surely a hedonist utilitarian should be on the phone to Olds and Milner right away asking to be plugged in. Obviously, one would want some kind of arrangement of drips so that one stays alive. But assuming we could rig all of that up, a life of endless pleasure awaits us. Surely this is the ultimate goal of the hedonist utilitarian. Sound good? (Me: actually, it kind of sort of does! Where’s the phone!)

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So, our life is going maximally well when all our preferences

are being met. Note: It isn’t the satisfaction that comes from

having one’s preferences met that makes one’s life go better

(not on the preference-satisfaction account anyway). It is

just the brute fact that our preferences are being met.

According to preference utilitarianism our duty is to satisfy

as many preferences as possible (both our own and those of

others) and minimise the frustration of preferences.

Hopefully your answer to the above exercise was something

like the following. Living a life hooked up to an experience

machine would leave many of our preferences unsatisfied:

our preferences to actually do the things we are

experiencing. We do not just want to experience falling in

love, or experience having a successful career, we actually

want to do those things. So, while hooking up to the

experience machine would satisfy your preference for the

experience of falling in love etc., it would not satisfy your

What would a preference utilitarian say about hooking up to the experience machine?

preference to actually fall in love with someone. (Note: If

we’re in the experience machine then we don’t realise that

lots of our preferences are not being met. But that doesn’t

matter. They are not being met regardless of whether we

realise this or not.) For this reason some think the

preference account of utility is preferable (ha ha) to the

hedonistic account. It seems to combine the simplicity of the

hedonistic view while accommodating most people’s

aversion to a future spent plugged into an experience

machine.

The hedonistic and preference accounts of utility are not the

only accounts of utility. But they are the most prominent. In

practice, it will rarely make a difference which version of

utilitarianism one subscribes to.

9 Still a contender

We haven’t finished with utilitarianism yet. We’ll be

returning to it when we look at different approaches to

punishment.

But despite all the criticisms that are made against

utilitarianism (and there are a lot), it remains an attractive

moral theory that continues to win committed support from

philosophers.

The one thing you can’t accuse a utilitarian of is prejudice. It

is a no nonsense approach, which is seen by many as crude

and insensitive. Nevertheless utilitarians don’t allow

themselves to get distracted by irrelevancies such as

tradition and prevailing attitudes and are always ready and

willing to subject received views to a consequentialist audit.

(Historically, utilitarians have nearly always been the first

among moral philosophers to highlight what we now

acknowledge to be moral mistakes – such as prejudices

against races, women, homosexuals, and more recently,

animals.) So historically utilitarianism has provided a

remarkable degree of moral insight.

Optional Reading: Kymlicka,W. (1990).Contemporary political philosophy. London, England: Clarendon. [An extract]