Utilitarianism
Philosophy 1
Spring, 2002
G. J. Mattey
John Stuart Mill
• Born 1806
• Son of philosopher
James Mill
• Learned Greek and
Latin as a child
• Administrator in East
India Company
• Member of Parliament
• Died 1873
Mill’s Contributions
• Defended phenomenalism, the view that physical
objects are “permanent possibilities of sensation”
• Developed “Mill’s methods” for inductive
reasoning
• Applied scientific method to social sciences
• Refined and defended the principle of utility
• Defended a strong libertarian principle
• Argued for the equality of women
• Promoted environment, population control
The Method of Ethics
• No progress has resulted from all the work in
philosophy directed toward finding the nature of
the good
• A problem is that we ought to know what right and
wrong are before we can tell whether an action is
right or wrong
• But this is the reverse of scientific procedure,
which begins with the particular and works toward
general principles
Moral Sense
• Some recent philosophers have postulated the
existence of a moral sense or intuition
• But a moral sense is not supposed to detect
particular cases of right and wrong action, only
general principles
• So if there is a moral sense, ethics still proceeds
differently from the sciences
• Moreover, the intuitive school of ethics has never
produced an adequate set of moral principles
A Priori Ethics
• Some recent philosophers have held that the
general principles of morality are discovered a
priori
• Most do not provide a single moral principle
• Kant did produce one: the categorical imperative
• But he could not successfully deduce actual duties
from that principle
• There is no logical contradiction in thinking a bad
maxim as universal, only consequences no one
would choose to incur
The Greatest Happiness
Principle
• Actions are right in proportion to their
tendency to produce happiness
• We cannot prove that happiness is the
ultimate end of human action
• But we can provide rational grounds for
accepting that happiness is such an end
• Mill begins with examples designed to clear
up misconceptions
Utility
• Utility is pleasure and absence of pain
– It is not what is merely useful
• Pleasure and the absence of pain is happiness
• Human pleasure is not that of a swine, so the end
of human action is not the pleasure of a swine
• Human pleasure includes pleasures of
– The intellect
– Feelings and imagination
– Moral sentiments
A Hierarchy of Pleasures
• Some of these pleasures are higher than others
• The difference is in quality
• It is measured in terms of preferences of all or
nearly all people
• Some pleasures are so preferred that a
considerable amount of discomfort is tolerated for
their sake
• Those of the higher faculties are preferred in this
way by the competent, from their sense of dignity
The Base Life
• “It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a
pig satisfied”
• People do sink into a base life, but this is because
they have lost their higher capacities
• These are difficult to establish and easily wither
away
• Many distractions can drag us down
• The preference for higher pleasures by at least the
majority is good reason to think they are better
The Possibility of Happiness
• The greatest happiness principle makes the
ultimate end happiness, extended as much as
possible to all humans or sentient creatures
• Is happiness possible in human beings?
– Mitigation of pain at least is possible
– Happiness is not a life of rapture, but a varied life of
pleasures mixed with few pains
– If not for “the present wretched education and wretched
social institutions,” this would be attainable by all
Two Chief Forms of Happiness
• Most people have been satisfied by less than “a
moderate share” of happiness
• This is due to the fact that happiness has two
forms
– Tranquility
– Excitement
• Those with plenty of one can tolerate a large
deficiency in the other
• The two are complementary to each other
Conditions for Happiness
• The greatest impediment to happiness is
selfishness
• The greatest aid to happiness is cultivation
• Mental culture ought to be available to everyone
living in a civilized country
• Most of the great evils in the world can be
eliminated
– Poverty, by society and charity
– Disease, by education and sanitation
Nobility
• It is argued that it is moral to give up
happiness and behave nobly
• But noble action concerns the happiness or
requirements for the happiness of others
• The “noble” person who has some other
ends “may be an inspiring proof of what
men can do, but assuredly not an example
of what they should.”
The Golden Rule
• The rule, “to do as you would be done by”
is a utilitarian rule
• It expresses that the happiness of the whole
of humanity is paramount
• Utility would influence social institutions to
promote happiness
• And it would influence education to do so
as well
Too High a Standard?
• It has been objection that maximizing happiness is
too high a standard for action
• But ethics does not require that acting according to
its standard should be one’s sole motivation
• Utilitarians have always held that the motive of an
action is not the basis of its morality, though it
reveals the moral worth of the agent
• Private utility, not universal utility, motivates most
actions
Applying Standards
• Utilitarianism seems to deem the coldly
calculating person most estimable
• But there is no necessary connection between
virtues of character and goodness of action
• All systems of morality have the problem that they
seem to promote extreme behavior
• It is better to err on the side of utility than the side
of disutility
Godless?
• Utilitarianism is charged with being a
godless ethics
• But it promotes happiness, which
presumably is God’s end for humans as well
• Strict versions of divine law are a matter of
interpretation of God’s will
• The utilitarian can interpret it as favoring
happiness
Calculation
• There is not enough time to calculate the effects
on happiness of all our actions
• But the whole history of humanity has made the
calculations for us
• When one considers murder or theft, this is not the
first time it has occurred to someone
• The beliefs which have come down through
history are the rules of morality for the masses,
subject to refinement by philosophers
Conflicting Considerations
• A final charge is that utilitarians can do
what they please in the name of utility
• But every system of morality allows for
exceptions due to conflicting obligations
• These are the real difficulties in ethics
• Utility can be invoked to resolve conflict
• There is no way to do so in other systems
The Sources of Obligation
• The question, “What is the source of obligation?”
is common to all moral theories
• Only conventional morality escapes it, due to its
familiarity
• For utilitarianism, it is a question as to why
happiness should be promoted
• The question would not arise if people became
accustomed to promoting happiness
Sanctions
• Utilitarianism has the same external sanctions as
do other theories
– Hope of favor and fear of displasure
• Of fellow humans
• Of God
• Internal sanctions are those of conscience, which
are very complex
• Conscience is a subjective feeling in our minds
• For utilitarians, this is a feeling for humanity
• Even for Kant, there is only a feeling of duty
Society
• Moral feelings may be innate or acquired
• There is no objection to a feeling for humanity
being innate
• Mill believes the feeling for humanity is acquired,
through development of our natural feelings
• This is based on society among equals, which
promotes the utilitarian principle
• Social people pay regard to others “of course”
• The moral feeling is strengthened with the
advance of political improvement
Proof of the Principle of Utility
• The only way to prove that happiness is the
ultimate end of human actions is to note that it is
what people actually do desire
• This is compatible with the desire for virtue,
which is part of happiness
• The same holds for money, power, fame
• Each contributes to happiness, which is “not an
abstract idea but a concrete whole”
• Virtue is higher, since it is never obnoxious
Justice
• People think our feeling of justice indicates that it
is objectively real
• We get a conception of what we feel to be just by
considering its many applications to
–
–
–
–
–
–
Liberty
Moral right of possession
Desert
Good faith
Impartiality
Equality
• What do they have in common?
Justice Defined
• Justice is commonly confused with ordinary
morality
• Its distinctive feature is that it involves a
claim from someone as a moral right
• We can only make this claim on someone
who has a perfect duty to perform or not to
perform an act
• So, it is not unjust not to be beneficent
Rule and Sanction
• The rule of justice is intended for the good of
humanity
• It is more vital to human well-being than any other
principle of action
• The feeling of justice is the sentiment that
sanctions the rule: a desire for punishment of those
who violate it
• It arises from the impulse of self-defense and the
feeling of sympathy