Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism’s best know advocate, John Stuart Mill, characterizes utilitarianism as the view that "an action is right in-so-far as it tends to produce pleasure and the absence of pain"

The simplest version of utilitarian moral theory applies to particular actions and takes an action to be morally right if and only if it produces the highest utility of any available alternative action. Utility is traditionally taken to be pleasure and the absence of pain. So an action may be considered right if it produces the greatest amount of pleasure and the least pain of any available alternative action. This normative theory of right action is based on the theory of value that takes happiness conceived of as pleasure and the absence of pain to be the only things of intrinsic value.

The utilitarian theory places no privileged status on the pleasure of the actor or on the immediate, as opposed to the long term, effects of the action. An actions utility is the net amount of pleasure or pain that is experienced by all parties affected over the long run. If we could measure pleasure and pain, we would caluculate the utility of an action by adding up all of the pleasure produced and subtracting from that any pain that might also be produced by the action.

When we speak of utility as pleasure and the absence of pain, we need to take "pleasure" and "pain" in the broadest sense possible. There are social, intellectual and aesthetic pleasures to consider as well as sensual pleasures. Recognizing this is important to answering what Mill calls the "doctrine of swine" objection to Utilitarianism. This objection takes the utilitarian doctrine to be unfit for humans because it recognizes no higher purpose to life than the mere pursuit of pleasure. It is, according to the objection, a view of the good that is fit only for swine. Mill responds that it is the person who raises this objection that portrays human nature in a degrading light, not the utilitarian theory of right action. People are capable of pleasures beyond mere sensual indulgences and the utilitarian theory concerns these as well. Mill argued that social and intellectual pleasures are of an intrinsically higher quality than sensual pleasure.

We find a more significant objection to Utilitarian moral theory in the following sort of case. Consider Bob, who goes to the doctor for a check up. His doctor finds that Bob is in perfect health. And his doctor also finds that Bob is biologically compatible with six other patients she has who are all dieing of various sorts of organ failure. Let us assume that if Bob lives out his days he will live a typically good life, one that is pleasant to Bob and also brings happiness to his friends and family. But we will assume that
Bob will not discover a cure for AIDs or bring about world peace. And let us make similar assumptions about the six people suffering from organ failure. According to simple act utilitarianism, it looks like the right thing for Bob’s doctor to do is to kill Bob and harvest his organs for the benefit of the six patients who will otherwise die. But intuitively, this would be quite wrong. Act utilitarianism gets the wrong result in this sort of case. This case seems to provide a clear counterexample to simple act utilitarianism. Can the utilitarian view be modified to avoid this sort of counterexample.

One move open to the utilitarian is to evaluate rules for acting rather than individual actions. A version of rule utilitarianism might say that the right action is the action that follows the rule which, in general, will produce the highest utility. A rule that tells doctors to kill their patients when others require their organs would not have very high utility in general. People would avoid their doctors and illness would go untreated were such a rule in effect. Rather, the rule that doctors should do no harm to their patients would have much higher utility in general. So the move to rule utilitarianism seems to avoid the difficulty we found with act utilitarianism. Or at least it seems to when we consider just these two rules.

But here is a rule that would have even higher utility than the rule that doctors should never harm their patients: doctors should never harm their patients except when doing so would maximize utility. Now suppose that doctors ordinarily refrain from harming their patients and as a result people trust their doctors. But in Bob’s case, his doctor realizes that she can maximize utility by killing Bob and distributing his organs. She can do this in a way that no one will ever discover, so her harming Bob in this special case will not undermine people’s faith in the medical system. The possibility of rules with "except when utility is maximized" clauses renders rule utilitarianism vulnerable to the same kinds of counterexamples we find for act utilitarianism. In effect, rule utilitarianism collapses back into act utilitarianism.

In order to deal with the original problem, the rule utilitarian must find a principled way to exclude certain sorts of utility maximizing rules. I won’t pursue this matter on behalf of the utilitarian. Rather, I want to consider further just how simple act utilitarianism goes wrong in Bob’s case. Utilitarian considerations of good consequences seem to leave out something that is ethically important. Specifically, in this case, it leaves out a proper regard for Bob as person with a will of his own. This problem case of utilitarian moral theory seems to point towards the need for a non-consequentialist ethics of respect for persons. And this will be the topic of the next lecture.

Utilitarianism seems to fall short in failing to afford respect for persons. I find a compelling reason here for rejecting utilitarianism as a complete moral theory. But this is not to deny that producing happiness is important from an ethical point of view. One can take the utilitarian theory to capture something that is important about acting well even while taking respect for persons to override utilitarian reasons in cases like Bob’s where there is a conflict.