Lecture 31: Utilitarian Theory, Pt. II
Lecture objectives:
 To review the essential features of utilitarian
theory
 To distinguish psychological hedonism from
moral hedonism
 To clarify the particular form of utilitarian
theory that Bentham advocates
 To identify the distinguishing features of Mill’s
account
Review:
 Consequentialist theory
 Utility + Standard of Value (Happiness) =
Greatest Happiness Principle
 Impartiality (universality)
 Individualist
Bentham’s Utilitarianism (1748-1832, British)
Psychological hedonism: the theory that every human
being seeks by nature to attain pleasure and to avoid
pain
“Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two
sovereign masters, pain and pleasure… They govern us in all
we do, in all we say, in all we think: every effort we can make to
throw off our subjection, will serve but to demonstrate and confirm
it. In words a man may pretend to abjure their empire: but in
reality he will remain subject to it all the while.”
Moral hedonism: the normative claim that pleasure and
pain are the morally relevant criteria in determining the
moral character of actions
Objective criterion of morality: “the greatest happiness of
all those whose interest is in question, as being the right and
proper, and only right and proper and universally desirable, end
of human action”
Hedonistic calculus:
 the ends of our moral decisions should be pleasure
and the avoidance of pain
 pleasure and pain are themselves the instruments we
have to work with in determining how we should
act.
 Quantitative standards for calculating relative
weight of pain and pleasure: Intensity, duration,
certainty/uncertainty, propinquity or remoteness, fecundity,
purity
 Given his concerextent, that is, “the number of persons
to whom it extends; or in other words, who are affected by
it.”
Bentham is concerned with the common interest.
 the common interest is aggregative
Interest of the community = “the sum of the interests of the
several members who compose it” (I.iv)
 government should act in the public interest; it
ought to be directed toward the common interest or
good.
 hence, an act of legislation or government is
said to conform with or be dictated by the principle of
utility when:
“the tendency which it has to augment the happiness of the
community is greater than any which it has to diminish it”
J.S. Mill’s Utilitarianism (1806-1873, British)
Utilitarianism is:
 Not egoistic because: happiness in the moral
context “is not the agent’s own greatest happiness, but the
greatest amount of happiness altogether”.
 Not expedient because: what drives utilitarianism
is an orientation to what is right not what is
expedient
Agrees with Bentham on the following:
1. Happiness is universally recognized to be a good:
“Each person’s happiness is a good to that person, and the
general happiness, therefore, a good to the aggregate of all
persons”.
2. Happiness is not merely a good but the good.
3. The principle of utility cannot be proved by
deduction from any more ultimate principle or
principles:
“questions of ultimate ends do not admit of proof, in the
ordinary acceptation of the term”.
Mill begins to depart from Bentham:
Quantitative approach (Bentham) v. Qualitative
approach (Mill)
Mill grants that:
“utilitarian writers in general have placed the superiority of
mental over bodily pleasures chiefly in the greater permanency,
safety, uncostliness, etc., of the former – that is, in their
circumstantial advantages rather than in their intrinsic nature”.
But he goes on to argue that:
“ It is quite compatible with the principle of utility to
recognize the fact, that some kinds of pleasure are more desirable
and more valuable than others. It would be absurd that while, in
estimating all other things, quality is considered as well as
quantity, the estimation of pleasures should be supposed to depend
on quantity alone”
In Dissertations and Discussions:
 “It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig
satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool
satisfied”.
 “Man is conceived by Bentham as a being susceptible to
pleasures and pains, and governed in all his conduct partly
by the different modifications of self-interest, and
occasionally antipathies, towards other beings. And here
Bentham’s conception of human nature stops … Man is
never recognized by him as a being capable of pursuing
spiritual perfection as an end; of desiring, for its own sake,
the conformity of his own character to his standard of
excellence, without hope of good or fear of evil from other
source than his own inward consciousness”.
In On Liberty:
 “I regard utility as the ultimate appeal on all ethical
questions; but it must be utility in the largest sense,
grounded on the permanent interests of man as a progressive
being”
 “the end of man is the highest and most harmonious
development of his powers to a complete and consistent
whole”.
Why is the general happiness desirable?
“no reason can be given why the general happiness is desirable,
except that each person, so far as he believes it to be attainable,
desires his own happiness”.
What connection exists between the agent’s happiness
and the general happiness?
Like Bentham, Mill argues: “Each person’s happiness is a
good to that person, and the general happiness, therefore, a good
to the aggregate of all persons”
But they differ in their conceptions of human beings.
Bentham:
 we are individual systems of attractions and
repulsions in response to pleasure and pain
 we are rational calculators of pleasure and pain
Mill:
 we are individuals and social beings with “social
feelings of mankind”
“the desire to be in unity with our fellow creatures, which is
already a powerful principle of human nature, and happily one
of those which tend to become stronger, even without express
inculcation, from the influences of advancing civilization. The
social state is at once so natural, so necessary, and so habitual
to man, that, except by some unusual circumstances, or by any
effort of voluntary abstraction, he never conceives himself
otherwise than as a member of a body.”