Utilitarianism I

 

1. Utilitarianism and the division of ethics. 

.

• Two parts of utilitarianism: The Theory of the Right, and the Theory of the Good.  Right = “Whatever maximizes the good.”  Good = “Total happiness.” 
• Will talk specifically about act utilitarianism for most of this class, as that is the most popular theory.
• Other ethical theories besides utilitarianism share the same theory of the right, but differ in what the good is.  For instance, can have a Nietzschean theory: Maximize the excellence (artistic, etc.) of the most excellent persons!  (The good, according to this theory, being the excellence of the elite.)  Or else can have an egoist theory on which the only thing that is good is my happiness.
• The idea of consequentialism certainly sounds pretty plausible:  There is something good.  What should we do?  Well, surely, the more good, the better.  So what we should do is maximize the good.  Surely it would not be good to minimize the good, or to go for something mid-way.  The right thing to aim for is the maximum good.
• What makes all these theories consequentialistic is that to figure out whether some action is right or wrong, they simply look at what results from the action and figure out if this action is the one that best contributes to the good.
• Observe how this differs from Aristotelian or Natural Law ethics.  For instance, we saw that Thomas thought you could not kill yourself even if society’s lot would improve by this.  You couldn’t do it, because by doing it you would be setting yourself directly against the basic good of life.  Moreover, to the consequentialist it does not matter which of the consequences are intended and which are not, but all that matters is just what results from the action.
• Obviously, every ethical theory worth its salt has to take consequences into account in some way.
• Utilitarianism is a consequentialist ethical theory whose theory of the good identifies the good with total happiness of all (in Mill, “all”=”all humans”;  in Singer, “all”=”all conscious beings”), or, more precisely, total happiness minus total unhappiness (we can count unhappiness as negative happiness).  So what is the one and only one first principle of the utilitarian?  The one commandment?  “Maximize everybody’s happiness!”
• Technical term: utility = happiness minus unhappiness.  So, the utilitarian tries to maximize utility.  We sometimes use the word utility as just meaning usefulness.  That’s not what’s meant here.  Mill also notes that we sometimes use utilitarian just to mean useful, with no frills, Spartan.  Again, that’s not what is meant.  According to Mill, anything that gives lots of pleasure and no pain is utilitarian.
• Note the similarity in utilitarian calculations of what maximizes happiness to a businessman’s calculations of what brings profit.  Take the benefits and subtract the costs!  One crucial difference (another is that money is not happiness!) is that the businessman may just calculate profit for herself while the utilitarian calculates what brings happiness to all.
• Finally, there is a question of what happiness is.  We’ve seen that the question was one that mattered a lot to Aristotle.  The utilitarian can’t just agree with Aristotle that happiness = the exercise of virtue.  The reason she can’t say this is that it would become circular.  For according to the utilitarian:
• The exercise of virtue is doing what is right (in the right way).
• What is right is maximizing happiness.

And so if we add that happiness is the exercise of virtue, then we get the idea that the exercise of virtue is maximizing virtue.  But this is plainly circular and leaves completely unclear what the point of the maximization of virtue is.

• So the utilitarian can’t be an Aristotelian at the same time.  Instead, she needs to give another definition of happiness.  According to Mill, happiness = pleasure + absence of pain.  This is hedonistic utilitarianism.  There are also non-hedonistic utilitarianisms on which happiness might be living a life that is objectively fulfilling or satisfying as many of one’s desires as possible or having and satisfying as many desires as possible.
• The act utilitarian is the beast we're interested in most.  The act utilitarian's theory of the right is that an action is right provided that under the circumstances this is the action that produces the best outcome.  (Rule utilitarians say that we should choose rules based on which rules produce the best outcome.  Problem: What if the rules are custom-made to each situation?)
• Examples:  From earlier  classes:  Stealing in general is wrong because it produces bad consequences, but when it produces good consequences overall, it acceptable.  Lying is fine according to the utilitarian if it produces the best consequences.  The right statement to make is not necessarily the true one, but the one that makes for the best consequences.
• Note that for the most part, utilitarianism produces the right kinds of moral results.  Murder is wrong, since it decreases total happiness by cutting somebody off from it.

2. Mill starts off by surveying the state of ethics in the first chapter.  There have been disagreements among philosophers about the foundations of ethics for more than two thousand years, and we are no closer to agreement.

• There is similar disagreement in other fields, for instance in mathematics, but this doesn’t prevent one from knowing mathematical truths.
• This might seem a little puzzling.  After all, doesn’t “everyone” agree that 2+2=4, that the sum of the angles in a euclidean triangle is 180 degrees, etc.?  Yes, but likewise in ethics “everyone” agrees that murder and theft are generally wrong.
• The problem in mathematics and in ethics is with foundations: With the basic principles. 
• To do arithmetic, we need concepts such as number or addition.  How do we define these concepts?  What are numbers?  We might be used to thinking of mathematics as all full of certainty and without controversy, but there is a lot of controversy here.  What is the number three?  Is it a collection of three physical objects?  If so, which ones?  And what about numbers so large that there just aren’t that many physical objects in the universe?  Are they just things we create ourselves?  But if we create them ourselves, don’t we get to decide the rules for operating on them?  But surely we don’t get to decide that 2+2=4!  Or are numbers some curious kinds of non-physical objects, something abstract but real, so that reality includes not just the concrete but also the abstract?  Or maybe numbers are ideas in the mind of God?
• Mill, however, thinks ethics is different from mathematics.  Because our actions are for a purpose, we ought to know what the ultimate purpose of our actions is before we do them.  (Aquinas thinks we do know this purpose, namely the pursuit of the good, though we do not always know it clearly.)

3. Mill, Chapter 2.  “By happiness is intended pleasure and the absence of pain;  by unhappiness, pain and the privation of pleasure.”  (p. 7)

• One common objection to this view is that it is supposedly swinish.  It’s a philosophy fit for pigs.  Animals, not humans, are supposed to be driven towards pleasure alone.  Humans have higher things to achieve.  A fulfilling human life is not merely a life of pleasure, but a life of knowledge, friendship, virtue and activity.  People like Epicurus, Bentham and Mill who equate happiness with pleasures equate humans with pigs.
• Mill replies that it is his opponents that equate humans with pigs, because they seem to think that the only pleasures available to humans are piggish pleasures, the lower pleasures, like those of food, drink and sex.  But we have higher pleasures.  Knowledge, friendship, virtue and activity are pleasant to us.  The reason the charge of pig-philosophy is made, according to Mill, is that the animal pleasures do not satisfy us.  But if I acknowledge that they don’t satisfy us, then I am acknowledging that other things are needed for a pleasant human life.
• In the past, utilitarian writers like Bentham have argued for the superiority of higher pleasures by saying that these pleasures have greater:
• intensity;
• duration;
• certainty;
• nearness (why does this matter??);
• fecundity (i.e., the pleasure gives birth to more pleasure);  and
• purity (i.e., the pleasure does not give birth to pains.)
• It is important to note that fecundity and purity also refer to whether the pleasure gives birth to pleasures/pains in other people.
• Why?  Well, the pleasure of food may be somewhat intense, but it does not last that long (think of eating a chocolate!), nor does it have that much certainty—circumstances could take it away.  More importantly, though, eating good food does not give birth to more pleasure.  Well, maybe it makes you a gourmet and helps you appreciate food more intensely, but that’s all.  Anyway, after you eat, you get sated, and aren’t able to experience the pleasure of food again for a while.  As for purity, the pleasure of food can lead to being overweight, which can lead to health problems that are painful.  Moreover, the pleasures of food even if fecund at all, only give birth to more pleasure for you, while the hedonistic utilitarian is trying to maximize pleasure for everyone.
• On the other hand, the pleasure of reading a good book may be very intense;  it lasts long;  it is fairly reliable (if you can’t read it, at least you can remember the plot in your mind).  It is fecund, in two ways: it helps you appreciate more good literature, plays and movies in the future, and it makes you give more pleasure to other people by being a more interesting conversation partner.  And it doesn’t lead to pain.  (What of reading a sad book?  Somehow, maybe, the tears in reading it are pleasant?  But at least we think they’re worth it!)
• Mill agrees with all that, but thinks one can take a higher moral ground.  The higher moral ground is of saying that the higher pleasures are in fact better in kind.  Bentham’s considerations are all quantitative.  But Mill thinks that in addition to the quantitative considerations, there is a qualitative consideration.  Reading a good book is not better only because of the quantitative considerations, but it is qualitatively better.
• How do we know this?  We know it because people who have tasted both the higher and the lower pleasures prefer the higher.
• So the idea seems to be this.  Let’s even suppose that by eating a very good dinner we can get 25 units of pleasure, even after we count up all the pleasures and pains that the dinner leads to, but from having an interesting conversation with a friend we can get only 16 units, even after we count up all the pleasures and pains that the conversation can lead to.  Still, the conversation is qualitatively better and it wins out.  We know it’s a better kind of pleasure precisely because people who have tried both almost always prefer it. 
• “[N]o intelligent being would consent to be a fool, no instructed person would be an ignoramus…”
• Reading Mill literally, it may sound that any amount of a higher pleasure is to be preferred to any amount of a lower pleasure. 
• But at the top of p. 9, Mill only says that the higher pleasure makes the quantity be of small account, and not of no account.  Imagine that you could have one extra minute of interesting conversation with a friend, but at the cost of never having the least bit of the lower pleasures in life.  For all of the rest of your life, you would never enjoy any of the lower pleasures.  The food you would eat would have to be bland, etc.  You might not think this is worth it!  But if the difference in quantity is less radical, then Mill thinks that you do in fact prefer the higher pleasure.
• Mill considers the objection that the kind of person who is attuned to the higher pleasures is less likely to be fully satisfied with life.  She will always see something as lacking.  This is true, he says, but it is “better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.”  It’s worth having these dissatisfactions if they are the price of higher pleasures.  (pp. 9-10.)  Discussion.
• Mill also considers the objection that sometimes people do go for lower pleasures instead of higher ones (p. 10).  He says that this is due to “infirmity of character”.  People often look at the nearer pleasure.  (And the higher pleasures may be more long-term.)  They even do this when looking at lower pleasures.  Take the person who smokes even though she knows that this will cause her greater pain in the future.  The nearer pleasure looms greater to her than the distant pain.  Discussion?
• This leads to two questions:
• What about the person who herself prefers the lower pleasures, who in fact finds them more pleasant?  Should she go for the higher ones because they are better?  Or should she go for the lower ones?  What does Mill think?  Discussion. 
• He doesn’t tell us straight out here, but it sounds like he thinks she should go for the higher ones.  After all, the judgment of the majority of the right kinds of judges has figured out that the higher ones are better.  This person is just wrong about what is a better pleasure than what.  But, on the other hand, maybe Mill would have to allow that in her present state, the right thing to do would be to go for the lower pleasures. 
• Actually, I think what Mill would say is that what she should do is to educate herself to enjoy the higher pleasures, because they are pleasures that can be enjoyed more, and so she would be better off then.  But what if she couldn’t get to enjoy these pleasures more?  What if her brain was hooked up in such a funny way that eating chocolate cake gave her a long-lasting and terribly intense pleasure?
• Is Mill a hedonistic utilitarian?  A hedonistic utilitarian thinks pleasure is the only value there is.  But isn’t Mill implicitly acknowledging other values like knowledge and using them to judge between pleasures?  If Mill truly values only pleasure, is he entitled to a distinction between higher and lower pleasures other than the one in Bentham?  Discussion.  Because of this, some people have called Mill a semi-hedonistic and semi-non-hedonistic philosopher.