Utilitarianism
• Bentham’s Quantitative Utilitarianism
• Mill’s Qualitative Utilitarianism
- Ranking Pleasures
- Dignity
- The Golden Rule?
• Is pleasure (happiness) the only desirable end?
• Williams Critique
- Two Cases: George & Jim
- Integrity
- Negative Responsibility
- Happiness: evaluative term linked with
projects/commitments
Bentham
1748 - 1832
• Principle of Utility:
Scientific Approach to
Law & Morality
• Utilitarian Calculus:
intensity, duration,
certainty/uncertainty,
nearness/farness,
fecundity, purity
• Theft vs. sexual
preference and private
behavior
Greatest Happiness Principle
GHP: the Utilitarian Standard
Right Actions: promote happiness
Wrong: the reverse
• Happiness: + pleasure, - pain
• Unhappiness: + pain, - pleasure
Greatest Happiness Principle
GHP: the Utilitarian Standard
•
•
GHP: community of individuals
Not the agent’s own greatest happiness but the
greatest amount of happiness altogether
Theory of Life
• Pleasure & Freedom from pain: only desirable ends
• All x’s (desirable things) are desirable
1. Pleasure inherent in x
2. As means to promoting pleasure (and preventing
pain)
Theory Worthy of Swine
Pig on Rodeo Drive
Mill (1806 - 1873)
Higher vs. Lower Pleasures
• Intellect, Feelings, Imagination vs. Mere Sensation
• Principle of Utility is compatible with ranking
pleasures
• Some x’s are more desirable/valuable than others
• Quality (not simply quantity) is relevant
Competing x’s
• Preference determines which is the more
desirable (given experience with both x’s)
Dignity
the unwillingness of beings of higher faculties to
sink into a lower grade of existence
Better to Be Socrates
“It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a
pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a
fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are of a
different opinion, it is because they only know their
own side of the question. The other party to the
comparison knows both sides.”
The End of Human Action
• Existence exempt (as far as possible)
from pain and as rich (as possible) in
pleasure (quantity & quality)
Jesus Christ Superstar
The Golden Rule
“In the golden rule of Jesus of Nazareth, we read the
complete spirit of the ethics of utility. To do as you
would be done by, and to love your neighbor as
yourself, constitute the ideal perfection of utilitarian
morality.”
Pleasure (Happiness)
The Only Desirable End?
Bernard Williams
A Critique of Utilitarianism
1929 - 2003
Two Cases
George
Jim
(1) George
– PhD in Chem. – wife – children
Utilitarian Bottom Line
(2) Jim
the botanist – gets lost on an expedition in South America
Jim: “an honored guest”
Utilitarian Bottom Line
Act Utilitarianism vs. Rule
Utilitarianism
What about the Value of
Integrity?
• Special Responsibility for one’s own actions
(rather than those of others)
Strong Doctrine of Negative
Responsibility (DNR)
DNR: if I know that if I do x, y will result and if I don’t
do x, z will, and z is worse than y, then I am
responsible for z if I refrain voluntarily from doing x.
Wirehead Hedonism
Wired Rats
Wired Society
Happiness: evaluative term in part. Don’t we have to or feel we
should approve of a person’s being happy
By what standard?
Projects/Commitments
• Happiness doesn’t consist only in making others
happy.
• Happiness consists in being involved in projects.
• Projects are a pursuit of something other happiness
(happiness is only a by-product).
• A person “is identified with his actions as
flowing from projects and attitudes which in
some cases he takes seriously at the deepest
level, as what his life is about…”