Morality, Utilitarianism & Moral Considerability – Detailed Lecture Notes

Course Context and Road-Map

• Lecture belongs to Units 6–7 ("Morality 1" & "Morality 2"), but ethics will re-appear in later units (political philosophy, applied topics, etc.).
• Philosophy asks the fundamental question “How should we live?”—hence the centrality of ethics.
• Today’s two-part agenda
  • Part 1 (≈ first half): Detailed study of Utilitarianism (a major form of consequentialism) → plausibility and objections.
  • Part 2 (≈ second half): Competing theories of moral considerability (Who/what counts?).

Ethics & Political Philosophy Connection

• Political philosophy investigates “the best way to organise society.”
• Hard to separate from ethics because judgments about desirable social orders are moral judgments writ large.
• Ethics operates on multiple “scales”
  • Interpersonal / intimate level
  • Generalised level of principles for anyone
  • Society-wide level in political theory

Consequentialism – The Larger Family

• Core claim: Only the consequences of an action determine its moral status.
  • Consequences = effects in the future (immediate or remote).
  • Different versions diverge on (i) Which consequences matter? (ii) Who is included in the calculus?

Utilitarianism – The Flagship Version

• Golden Rule: “Always act so as to produce the greatest amount of happiness.”
  • Happiness ≈ positive experience / pleasure; suffering ≈ negative experience.
  • $\text{Net Happiness} = \text{Sum of Positive Experiences} - \text{Sum of Negative Experiences}$
• Universal scope: Count all beings affected who are capable of pleasure/pain (humans + most animals, possibly insects, etc.).
• Anti-egoistic: No special moral weight to agent’s own welfare per se (unless justified by impartial happiness calculus).
• Differentiation possible: More intense or longer lives, broader relational webs, etc., may legitimately receive higher weighting.

Hedonic Calculus & Expected Utility

• Moral deliberation resembles probabilistic cost–benefit analysis: $EU(\text{Action}) = \sum<em>{i=1}^{n} P</em>i \times V_i$
  • $P_i$ = probability of consequence $i$
  • $V_i$ = hedonic value (positive or negative) of consequence $i$
• Multiply by probability to avoid overweighting unlikely outcomes (e.g.
  execution for attempted rescue has $P\approx0$).

Illustrative Cases

• Holding the door → immediate tiny positive; paradigmatic consequentialist intuition.
• Investment example → delayed payoff illustrates future-orientation.
• Drowning baby in shallow pond
  • Pros: rescue avoids baby’s agony & parental grief; preserves lifetime of future happiness.
  • Cons: wet shoes, tiny risk of misconstrual → negligible when weighted by probability.
  • Result: Rescue is obviously obligatory under utilitarianism.
  • Meta-point: Excessive real-time number-crunching can hinder prompt moral action.

Objections to Utilitarianism (I) – Principled

Slogan: “The ends don’t (always) justify the means.”

1. Promise-Keeping Case
   • Promise is a past fact; breaking it seems wrong even when net happiness favours doing so.
   • Utilitarian must reduce its force to future-oriented effects only.
2. Organ-Harvesting Thought Experiment
   • Sacrifice one healthy patient to save five lives → raw utilitarian math says "Do it".
3. Trolley Problem
   • Pulling lever to kill 1 instead of 5 reveals same tension.

Utilitarian Replies

• Bad-Consequences Response: In real life, breaking promises or harvesting organs destroys trust, healthcare, etc. → net negative.
• Bite-the-Bullet Response: If truly 1-for-5 with no systemic harms, moral duty is to do it; squeamishness ≠ morality.
• Rule-Consequentialism
  • Formulate rules whose adoption maximises happiness in general.
  • Individuals usually follow rules without on-the-spot maximizing.
  • Problem: If a rule breach would clearly maximise utility this time, why not break it?

Objections to Utilitarianism (II) – Practical / Epistemic

• Super-Hitler Scenario
  • Hitler’s genocide unintentionally prevents birth of future tyrant who would kill billions.
  • Shows we cannot know total long-term consequences — hence cannot know if we maximised happiness.
• Utilitarian Counter-move
  • Moral deliberation is always probabilistic; perfect foresight is impossible for any ethic.
  • We rely on historically reliable tendencies: mass murder almost always brings colossal suffering.

Moral Agents vs Moral Patients

• Moral Agent: Capable of doing right/wrong via reflective choice.
• Moral Patient: Capable of being affected (helped or harmed) by moral agents.
• Important: Theories of moral considerability should at least include patients.

Theories of Moral Considerability

Application Highlights

• Abortion debate under Sentientism/Utilitarianism
  • Moral status of fetus increases sharply at onset of sentience (neurological threshold).
  • Post-threshold abortions require weighing maternal, social, fetal hedonic stakes.
• Environmentalism
  • Anthropocentric mainstream rhetoric (“save planet for us”) differs from stricter ecocentrism or biocentrism.
• Animal Ethics
  • Bentham’s dictum: “The question is not Can they reason? nor Can they talk? but Can they suffer?”
  • Historical influence on Humane Society & modern animal-rights movement.

Key Formulae & Concepts Summary

• Expected Utility (probabilistic hedonic calculus): $EU = \sum P<em>i V</em>i$
• Net Happiness: $H_{net}=H^{+}-H^{-}$
• Probabilistic weighting essential because outcomes are uncertain.

Practical Take-Aways

• Be aware of scale: personal vs. societal.
• Distinguish agent test (rational reflection) from patient test (capacity to suffer/enjoy).
• Utilitarianism provides clear action-guides but collides with deeply-held intuitions about rights & means.
• Predictive limits force humility; moral theories must grapple with epistemic uncertainty.