Utilitarianism - Strengths & Weaknesses

Happiness

It seems right that happiness if given intrinsic value. How can happiness be a bad thing?

Harm

again, Utilitarianism seems to be in line with our intuitions that harming people is intrinsically wrong

Greatest Good

It does follow from the above that the right course of action is one that leads to the most happiness and least harm - it makes sense

Improvements

The theory has been adapted and improved over time

Modern Utilitarian’s have a much better theory than Bentham’s

Quality

Mill answered a valid criticism of Bentham’s theory, that the pleasure of sadistic torturers is not good

He said the quality of pleasure was important - an improvement to the theory

Intention

Sidgwick answered Kant’s criticism that the consequence of an action can’t make the action right

He said the intention to bring about the greater good was important - another improvement

Preferences

Singer realised that people have different ideas of what ‘happiness’' is, and that some don’t even choose happiness

Instead, he thought that our preferences are important - a further improvement

If you disagree with what Singer does, that’s just one preference that needs to be weighted against all others

Secular

Utilitarianism doesn’t rely on specific beliefs about God

In the modern, multicultural society with a range of religious beliefs and a growing number of atheists, a secular theory is most useful

Easy to use

Weighing up the positive and negative effects of our actions is straightforward - we learn to do this from our early childhood onwards

Anyone can apply the principle of utility

Democratic

The fairest way to run a country is to balance everyone’s different interest

We see this happening in all modern democracies - governments use the principles of Utilitarianism to determine what is right

Objective

The positive and negative consequences of our actions can be measured

This gives us an objective, independent way of deciding on what is right and wrong

Universal

Every culture has it’s own rules, which shows that deontological theories are wrong about universal rules

However, the principle of utility, reducing harming and increasing happiness, is universal, and applies in every culture

It works

If Utilitarianism is properly applied, it works

People criticise it by describing negative consequences of Utilitarianism

However, if there are negative consequences, that just means the theory hasn’t been properly applied

Other goods

‘Happiness’ is not the only thing that is of intrinsic worth

For example, love, human life, freedom

Mechanical

Utilitarianism reduces morality to simple maths

It loses a sense of what truly valuable in life

The ends don’t justify the means

Imagine I killed one healthy person and gave their organs to save 5 others

The balance of happiness over harm supports doing this, but we know that is not right

Unpredictable

You can’t actually know what is going to happen in the future, so it is wrong to base our ethical choices on what may or may not come about in the future

Immeasurable

You can’t assign a value to an amount of pleasure

It is impossible to compare the pleasure of getting a new job with the joy of having sex or the satisfaction of washing your car

Incalculable

Even if you could give each possible pleasure a numerical value, the consequences of even the smallest of our choices on everyone are so vast that we couldn’t possibly calculate them all

Motivation

Knowing that something would promote the ‘greater good’ is not enough to motivate me to do it

Singer hits this problem when trying to convince people to give more to developing countries

We know our money could do so much more in Africa, we just don’t care enough to give more

People can’t be trusted

If you get rid of rules and allow people to choose to act in the greater good, they will actually act selfishly, then try to justify their actions by claiming they were in the greater good

Justice

Our view of justice is that everyone should be treated fairly

Utilitarianism allows us to sacrifice individuals for the greater good

Many people would see this as unfair

Tyranny of the majority

For example, if most people feel strongly against homosexuality, this would justify laws against practicing homosexuality

This is confusing what is popular with what is right

Subjective

We all have different definitions of happiness

Even with Singer’s talk of ‘preferences’, we would all differ in the weight we gave to say, a Muslim’s preference to wear a hijab in public against another person’s preference to ban hijabs in public places

Naturalistic Fallacy

Just because people desire pleasure, this doesn’t make pleasure desirable

Put another way, just because the majority of people would prefer something, doesn’t meant that they ought to prefer it or that it’s right to do it

Wrong

Utilitarianism is just wrong about ethics

Eg. a group of policemen passed around photos of an abused woman for their own enjoyment

When it was exposed, the consequences were very bad. But would it have been right if no one else found out? It wasn’t the bad consequences that made it wrong, it was the act itself