Philosophy-Discussion Forum 2

chapter 5

Utilitarianism

While the egoist pursues his own self-interest, the utilitarian is concerned with maximizing the benefits for the maximum number of people. In one form or another, this was probably the most influential ethical approach in English-speaking philosophy during the twentieth century. Its attraction, I think, is severalfold. First, it still appeals to self-interest in that most of us, of course, stand to benefit by the maximizing of good consequences for society at large.

Second, utilitarianism was originally addressed to social policy, as a basis for penal reform and for legislation. It also is of keen interest in economics. [1]  In effect, the rise of utilitarianism has been tied to the rise of the empirical social sciences. If we can develop empirical generalizations or “covering laws” about the consequences of a certain kind of legislation, economic policy or form of punishment, then we should be able also to make decisions that maximize the good consequences and minimize the bad. In regard to punishment, for example, Jeremy Bentham argued from the supposedly empirical generalization that a poten tial criminal will act so as to maximize the pleasure associated with his action and minimize the pain. If we ensure enough pain to outweigh the pleasure, we should then be able to deter him from criminal action.

The question we must address before exploring such applications, however, is whether the utilitarian principle is sufficient for an adequate and workable ethic, particularly a Christian ethic. Can moral judgments properly be reduced to the question of maximizing benefits?

Needed: One Nonconsequential Judgment

If we desire an action A1 to facilitate A2, then to be entirely consequentialist we must have chosen A2 to facilitate A3, and likewise A3 for the sake of A4 and A4 for the sake of A5, and so on. But a chain of consequences that has no end is absurd: why choose that chain and not another? A decision is needed as to which set of consequences to prefer, a decision that cannot be based entirely on consequences because that would take us back again to the infinite regress. A nonconsequential decision is therefore needed as to the kind of consequence we are to seek. The quality of consequence is really the decisive thing, not just the quantity; and in actuality the utilitarian wants to maximize consequences of a certain kind, good consequences rather than bad. But deciding what consequences to regard as good is itself a nonconsequential judgment.

Bentham took the good to be pleasure. He was a hedonist. But pleasure is a general and vague concept, and hedonism makes it sound as if we were just passive beings, either pained or pleased. Mill therefore qualifies his hedonism, preferring the higher pleasures (aesthetic and intellectual, for instance) to the lower, physical ones. Better a human dissatisfied, he claimed, than a pig satisfied.

Two difficulties surface immediately. First, Bentham says he chooses pleasure because in fact everyone seeks pleasure. But this poses the “is-ought” problem again: we cannot directly deduce any “ought” from an empirical generalization alone. Second, why prefer higher pleasures? Mill’s choice is not a purely consequential matter, but appeals to the dignity and desirability of what is distinctive about humans. Later utilitarians like G. E. Moore took the good to be an intuitive concept, not empirically defined, whose scope extends to a wide variety of cultural and social satisfactions which we seek for their own sake. Here again is a nonconsequential basis. In effect, the question of whichconsequences are good is always answered on nonconsequentialist grounds.

Suppose that the utilitarian has settled this question and now wants to maximize consequences of the sort he has decided are good. He now faces a second problem: how shall we calculate consequences?

Calculating Consequences

Bentham proposed a “hedonic calculus.” For each alternative action or policy, we can quantify the pleasure involved in terms of its intensity, duration, certainty or uncertainty, propinquity or remoteness, fecundity, purity (no admixture of pain), and extent (the number of persons affected). Then we can likewise quantify the pain and simply subtract the sum of pain from the sum of pleasure. At this point it should be easy to identify the path of maximum surplus pleasure.

Is it that easy, however? Mill’s qualitative distinction between kinds of pleasures forced him to reject Bentham’s calculus: quality is not reducible to quantity. The prior question is, what kind of pleasure do we want? And if not pleasure, then what other kind of good are we after? Can that be completely quantified?

Precisely what consequences should we consider in the calculation? Should we include only the intended consequences of an action, or other predictable consequences also, or just the actual consequences? The last of these will not help us make judgments in advance. As to the first, are intended consequences alone enough? Should not other predictable outcomes be weighed too? But our empirical predictions concerning social consequences and human happiness are extremely limited in both their extent and their probability. Consider the unforeseen effects of high-rise public housing in our cities, for instance, and of where and how we store waste chemicals like dioxin. Just how probable should a consequence be before it is taken into account? Why should more weight be given to immediate consequences (propinquity) than to more distant ones (for instance, in regard to the disposal of nuclear waste or climate change)? Do we bear “negative responsibility” for consequences we allow by doing nothing?

To make judgments that involve calculations of these sorts is at best a complex matter, subject to varying decisions about what consequences to weigh and how much weight to give each. All of this assumes that we know how to objectively evaluate the consequences under consideration, an assumption that is dubious given the disagreements over what is really “good.”

Yet that is not the only problem in making utility calculations work. In light of the vast complexity of utilitarian calculations, should everybody try to make decisions this way—every business person, investor, physician, politician, parent, social worker, voter? Or should utilitarian calculations be left to the few knowledgeable experts with access to all the statistics and detailed scenarios bearing on the decision? It appears that the more practicing utilitarians we have, the less the overall utility; and the fewer utilitarians there are in the world, the greater the utility! Utilitarianism is hardly an ethic for everyone.

The Problem of Distributive Justice

What does it mean to “maximize the good”? Is it enough to take the sum of all the surplus of good over bad for all the people involved? Or should we average it all across an entire population?

Or should we consider different segments separately? If 100 people each receive 10 “bens” (units of benefit), then the sum total is 1000 “bens” and the average is 10. But if we increase the benefit for 10 people to 100 bens each, give the next 60 people their original 10 “bens,” and the remaining 30 no “bens” at all, then the total benefit is 100 + 600 + 0 = 1600 “bens”; and the average is up to 16. But the distribution is now extremely unequal. Which of these two is the morally better distribution of benefits?

The example is overly simplified, but it raises questions about distributive justice and equal rights. Does the sum total of well-being justify ignoring inequities? Does an average income tell us all that matters? And can the utility principle by itself tell us how best to distribute benefits?

Mill talked at length about equal justice. But he still thought it a matter of maximal utility, so that we should respect the rights and liberties of others for the sake of maximizing the common good and only restrict those liberties to avoid harm to others. But is that principle sufficient to ensure equal justice for all?

Consider, for example, the lengths to which a state might go “for the common good.” As long as the ultimate appeal is only to the general good, what guarantees minority rights? Does the end justify any means at all? Why not repress dissent? Why not punish the innocent to deter others? Why not let social engineering go on unhampered by scruples about individual rights? What is morally wrong in Huxley’s Brave New World or in C. S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength?

Suppose that two acts, A and B, would each produce the same surplus of good over evil consequences. Yet suppose too that A involves breaking a promise or discriminating against a minority while B does not, and that the consequences of these features in A have been figured into the calculation. Then the utilitarian would have no basis for preferring A to B or B to A, despite the fact that common morality would opt unequivocally for B.

Suppose now that A involves a slightly larger balance of good than does B, while still requiring the broken promise or injury to a minority. The utilitarian would then have to choose A over B, even though most people would be quite dubious about that choice.

What utilitarianism lacks is a principle of distributive justice that is not subject to and cannot be manipulated by the principle of utility. William Frankena, therefore, proposes an ethic in which the principle of beneficence (which utilitarians emphasize) is supplemented by an independent principle of justice. [2]  John Rawls’s highly influential book A Theory of Justice argues that a well-ordered society will not only be designed to advance the good of its members, but will also be effectively regulated by a conception of justice as fairness that benefits the least advantaged. Justice must not be subordinated to other goods we want to pursue.

The Problem with Empiricism

It is questionable whether a principle of distributive justice could be supplied by the empirical methods that gave birth to modern utilitarianism. The empiricist regards a person as a bundle of experiences, both actual and possible. Mill explicitly took this view, having no place in his thinking for any enduring entity like a mind or soul, and a contemporary utilitarian like J. J. C. Smart or Peter Singer adds little to it in his materialistic view of persons. [3]  What value, then, has a person to herself other than the satisfaction of experiencing what she experiences, and what value to somebody else other than the satisfaction he finds in his experience with her? The value of persons is then measured entirely in terms of people’s experiences, individually and collectively, and their actions are evaluated in terms of empirical consequences. The value of a minority, too, is not seen in other terms, such as the intrinsic rights of human beings in God’s image, and the value of keeping a promise has nothing to do with moral integrity or respect for persons for their own sake.

Consider further moral integrity. In our earlier example of two actions, A and B, where A involved breaking a promise or discriminating against a minority, the utilitarian concerned himself only with the consequences. Why does common moral sense tend to disagree, saying there is more to discrimination against minorities than its consequences? I suggest it is because moral integrity is involved in how we treat others. I am concerned not only about the beneficial or adverse consequences of my actions, but also about being just. If people are more than collections of experiences and of physical causes and effects, and if I am also a responsible moral agent, then respecting the integrity of persons—both myself and others—is important in itself. This is not just a matter of consequences, but also of motives and actions and the value of persons.

We can see now the breadth of the problem with empiricism in ethics. It is not just the problem of defining the good, calculating consequences or providing an unwavering basis for distributive justice. It is also the problem of ascribing sufficient value to persons, and so of grounding moral integrity and moral duty. In Immanuel Kant’s terms, not all moral imperatives are hypotheticalones, related to whatever consequences we may desire: “If you want to succeed and be happy, then work hard.”

A categorical imperative is unconditional. It commands us independently of our desires or utilitarian concerns. We simply ought to treat people as ends in themselves and not just as means.

But purely empirical and consequentialist approaches cannot talk to us in such categorical terms. We need what is called a deontological element in our ethic, an emphasis on moral obligation that is not simply a function of desires or circumstances. For this we now turn more directly toward a Christian ethic.