Transcript Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism
John Stuart Mill
When an objection is raised:
• When some objection is raised to a moral
theory, if that objection is a good one, the
proponent of the moral theory has a few
general options:
– Abandon the theory
– Modify the theory to accommodate the objection
– Accept the objection, but deny that the theory has
to be abandoned.
The Swine Objection
• Aristotle (among others) objected that
utilitarianism would be a bad moral theory
because it holds that the best life for a person
is the life of a pig in slop—the life of physical
pleasure only.
• Mill deals with this objection by modifying
Utilitarianism from the form that he inherited
from Bentham.
Quality
• Mill contends that what is good for a pig is not
necessarily what is good for a person.
• He claims that there are “higher” and “lower”
pleasures. That is “a beast’s pleasures do not satisfy a
human being’s conceptions of happiness” (p.331)
• He means to say that things like friendship,
accomplishment, appreciation of art and culture and
humour are all things that people but not pigs are not
capable of.
• This is new. There was no element of the Quality of
pleasures in Bentham, only quantity.
How to tell when a pleasure is high or low:
• Mill offers what is termed the “competent judge”
test to determine which pleasures are higher than
others.
• Any person who has a good deal of experience with
two kinds of pleasure will prefer one over the other.
The one they prefer is then indicated as the higher
pleasure.
• Note that nobody would make themselves stupider
or more uncouth, no matter how much pleasure
morons or jesters might experience.
What about those who appear to
choose low over high pleasures?
• Everyone at some point chooses to sit on the
couch and eat chips and watch TV sometimes,
though they could be developing their intellects.
What of this?
• Mill responds in two ways:
– Everyone has occasional moments of weakness or
laziness, that doesn’t mean that anyone thinks the
low pleasures really are better.
– Sometimes people in bad circumstances get so used
to having only low pleasures that they lose their
ability to appreciate higher pleasures. This is tragic.
Some further objections to utilitarianism
that Mill thinks aren’t very good:
• The following are common objections that
Mill answers in Chapter 2.
• He thinks that none of them is a good enough
objection to require modifying or rejecting
utilitarianism.
People will not share happiness
Objection
response
• “The objectors…may doubt
whether human beings, if
taught to consider happiness
as the end [goal] of life would
be satisfied with such a
moderate share of it.” (334)
• In other words, people won’t
regard everyone else’s
pleasures to be as valuable as
their own, and there isn’t
enough to go around.
• Read 334 :“Now there is
absolutely no reason in the
nature of things why an
amount…” through “…ample
earnest of what the human
species be made.
• In other words, there is more
than enough pleasure to go
around and every civilized
person, of which there are
overwhelmingly many, cares
for other persons and for
society at large.
Are sacrifices morally required?
objection
response
• For the Utilitarian, it seems that
there will be some cases in which
someone will create the best
consequences by making huge
sacrifices of themselves.
• If that means that those sacrifices
are morally required of anyone in
that situation, then util. is a tough
pill to swallow.
• Also, we tend to view sacrifice as
morally praiseworthy, but not
morally required. For Util. there is
no such distinction.
• Mill grants that sometimes this is
the case, and that when it is the
case, the good utilitarian will
unhesitatingly do what actually
makes the world best off, even if
it is not best for them.
• This doesn’t happen often, but
when it does, it is not the
sacrifice itself that is good or bad,
but its consequences.
• If a sacrifice didn’t make the
world better to an extent greater
than any other available action,
then the sacrifice is wasted. (see
335-336)
The Overridingness objection:
objection
response
• Perhaps the utilitarian demands
too much of people.
• Should every single action of ours
be always considering the
maximum possible good for
everyone else? Can’t a person
just make breakfast in the moning
without having to make sure that
they couldn’t be spending that
time incrasing total happiness?
• It is rare that any single person
can be a serious benefit to society
at large.
• It is better for everyone to
consider only their own actions
and the people most directly
affected. If everyone does this,
then happiness multiplies. If
people try and consider the
whole world, they just get
decision paralysis, which does not
lead to the best consequences.
The “expediency” objection
objection
response
• Utilitarianism cannot provide a
categorical statement that
murder, theft, rape, pillage, and
lying are wrong, because
sometimes one of these things
might lead to the best
consequences overall.
• Choosing when you get to lie (for
example) and when you don’t
then looks like choosing the more
expedient (convenient) option.
• The utilitarian’s choice of when to
lie or not to lie is anything but
arbitrary. Whatever actually
makes the world better by adding
pleasure to it is the moral action.
• The only reason we say that lying,
murder, rape, pillage, etc. are bad
is because these things are
overwhelmingly likely to generate
bad consequences. In those
possible instances in which they
don’t, why say they are bad in
that case?
Study Questions
• Is Mill’s ‘competent judge’ test a good test of
the quality of pleasures? Why or why not?
• What is the greatest difference between Mill’s
version of Utilitarianism and Bentham’s
• Bentham once wrote that push-pin (a simple
game of petty gambling played by young men
and boys of the time) could be better than
poetry because it simply produces more
pleasure. What would Mill say to this?