UTILITARIANISM

• Utilitarianism → Moral theory that focuses on results, or consequences, of our actions. It treats intentions as irrelevant.

• Good Consequences = Good Actions

  • Actions should be measured in terms of the happiness, or pleasure, that they produce.

    • After all, happiness is our ultimate end. It’s the reason we do everything else; to achieve happiness.

  • Unlike other things that we do for the sake of something else, happiness is something you ultimately work for.

    • You study to get a good grade. You work to get money. But ultimately, good grades and money make you happy. → I want what I want because it will make me happy.

• Utilitarians believe that happiness should drive our morality.

• Utilitarians agree that a moral theory should apply equally to everyone. But they thought the way to do that was to ground it in something that’s really intuitive –and there’s nothing more basic than the primal desire to seek pleasure and avoid pain.

  • Thus, the good = equal to the pleasant. Hence, we ought to work towards happiness and pleasure, and avoid pain.

Principle of Utility

• Utilitarianism is also other-regarding

  • We should pursue pleasure or happiness, not just for ourselves, but for other people as well.

  • “We should always act so as to produce the greatest good for the greatest number.”

• However, sometimes, doing what provides the most happiness to the most people means taking one for the team = Sacrifice

  • Sacrificing your happiness in order to produce more good overall

• Principle of Utility → Choosing the action that would produce the most overall happiness for the group, even though it produced less happiness for you than other alternatives would have.

  • However, we have biases (and it’s not bad to put yourself first). But where morality is concerned, as special as you are, you are no more special than anybody else.

  • Your interests and preferences matter, but no more than anyone else’s.

• Utilitarians suggest that we make our moral decisions from the position of a benevolent, disinterested spectator who is unbiased, objective, and rational.

Utilitarianism is a very demanding moral theory

A Critique on Utilitarianism: Jim and the Indigenous People

• In a situation where Jim is given the choice to kill one and let everyone else go, or choose not to kill but everyone else will die, what should he do?

  • Utilitarianism would suggest to shoot one man and save 19

• However, it can be argued that no moral theory ought to demand the taking of an innocent life.

  • It’s not Jim’s fault that the soldier is a dirtbag. Jim should also not have to get literal blood on his hands to try and rectify the situation.

• Utilitarianism, however, states that we live in a world where sometimes people do terrible things. And if we’re the ones who happen to be there and we can do something to make things better, we must. Even if that means getting our hands dirty.

  • Utilitarianism believes that if we just sit by and watch something bad happen when we could have prevented it, that means having dirty hands anyway.

• Hence, Jim should not think about it as killing one man. The man was dead already because they were all about to be killed.

  • Instead, Jim should think about his decision as doing what it takes so save the remaining 19. Even if this means the death of one man.

Types of Utilitarianism

Act Utilitarianism (Classical Utilitarianism)

• States that, in any given situation, choose the action that produces the greatest good for the greatest number.

• But sometimes, the act that will do so can just seem wrong.

  • Ex: Five patients need organ transplants. One neighbor (with no family or friends; basically no one will miss him) is a viable candidate to donate organs. As a Utilitarian, you would sacrifice the neighbor in order to donate organs.

• It might seem harsh, but an Utilitarian will do what’s good for the greatest number of people.

  • The Greatest Happiness Principle → The basis of Act Utilitarianism, which is doing what’s good for the greatest number of people.

Rule Utilitarianism

• A version of the theory that says we ought to live by rules that, in general, are likely to lead to the greatest good for the greatest number.

• Rule utilitarianism wants us to think long-term and on a larger scale; to take into account the complexity of the situations we find ourselves in.

  • A whole society where innocent people are taken off the street to be harvested for their organs is going to have a lot less utility than one where you don’t have to live in constant fear of that happening to you.

• Thus, Rule Utilitarianism allows us to refrain from acts that might maximize utility in the short run, and instead follow rules that will maximize utility for the majority of the time.