Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism

Jenny Gonzales

Darlene Tala

John Michael Bernardo

Utilitarianism

• “(from the Latin utilis, useful) is a theory of ethics based on quantitative maximization of some good for society or humanity. It is a form of consequentialism. This good is often happiness or pleasure, though some utilitarian theories might seek to maximize other consequences. Utilitarianism is sometimes summarized as "The greatest happiness for the greatest number."

History

• Can be traced back to Hedonism• Hedones - greek• Pain is the essence of life• Will to live – overcome pain

• Planting food• Pleasure

• Jeremy Bentham• John Stuart Mill

• Utilitarianism

UTILITARIANPHILOSOPHERS

David Hume

• The concept of right and wrong is not rational but arises from a regard for one's own happiness. The supreme moral good, according to his view, is benevolence, an unselfish regard for the general welfare of society that Hume regarded as consistent with individual happiness

William Godwin

• One of the first exponents of utilitarianism

• Concerned with individual moral perfectibility, couched in the language of utility rather than strictly utilitarian

Richard M. Hare

• Hare holds that utilitarianism is the product of conceptual analysis rather than of moral intuition.

Richard M. Hare

• Hare claims that we ought to as act utilitarians.

• The approach to ethical decisions that will serve us best in practice is not act utilitarianism, but rule utilitarianism

James Mill

• Developed a systematic statement of utilitarian ethical theory.

• Defended the general principle that right actions are those that tend to produce the greatest happiness of the greatest number of people.

Henry Sidgwick• His masterpiece, Methods of

Ethics, has influenced the culmination of of the classical utilitarian tradition - “the greatest happiness of the greatest number” as the fundamental normative demand”

Benthamite Concept

• Postulated by Jeremy Bentham

• Based on the concept of the greatest happiness of the greatest number in the community.

Benthamite Concept

• Bentham’s theory is that while an individual is part of a politically organized society, nevertheless, there remains a element of his individuality that is not merged into society of which he is a constituent part.

• This is the stage that started individualist utilitarianism

Nature Basis

• Bentham advocated a formula to determine whether an act is good or bad.

• He utilized the ancient point of teleogical jurisprudence

• “what pleasures ought not to be sought and what pains ought to be avoided”

Two Ideas of Bentham

1. Nature has placed human beings under a regime of pleasures and pains. These are sensations that are quite natural to human beings because they feel them the most.

2. Every act or conduct is done to procure the happening of some good (pleasure) or to prevent the occurrence of some evil (pain)

2 ways of Measuring Utility

1. Composed of several factors:• extensity – refers to the number of person affected• Intensity –refers to the degree of the pleasantness

at a given time or over a period of time• Duration –refers to the period of time the pleasure

or pain lasts

• Propinquity – refers to the influence of the more immediate rather than the remote pleasures or pains

• Fecundity – refers to the tendency to produce or lead to either pleasures or pains

• Purity – refers to the tendency not to produce either pleasure or pains

Ways of Measuring Utility

2. Composed of several factors which have a great deal to do with personal or individual differences as to sensibility to pleasures or pains.

Examples ( temperament, health, strength, religion, physical defect, relationship)

Application in the Legal Order

• The good refers to that which causes happiness, not necessarily happiness itself, while bad refers to that which causes misery, not necessarily the misery itself. Hence, acts whether public or private and their consequences are to be measured by the calculus of pleasures and pains, that which tends, to the greatest happiness of the greatest number of individuals.

Application in the Legal Order

• The ultimate test of goodness or badness of an act or conduct is the quantum of happiness or justice (pleasure) or misery or injustice (pain) that it yields

Jherinian Concept• Launched by Rudolf von

Jhering

• Emphasized the general interest, all things being considered in their broad social context rather than upon individual interests

Jherinian Concept

• “the law should address the realization of the partnership of the individual and society”• While individual persons have their interests to

consider they cannot be more important than the society of which they are parts.

• “there should be concurrence of selfish individual interests with the general purposes

Jhering’s Social Utilitarianism

1. Purpose is the prime mover of both individual and social wills

• Means that purpose is decisive when choices and decisions are to be made

All physical determinations are described in the traditional concept of cause and effect. Ex. A stone falls to the ground because of the

pull of gravity

Law of purpose

Posits the idea that the world of human conduct is determined by a “for” a Ex. A debtor resolves or decides to pay his creditor

for the purpose of liquidating his account “proximate cause” must be understood in the light of

the law of purpose which means a law should be classified as good or bad in the light of its purpose

Jhering’s Social Concept

2. Selfish tendency of furthering individual purposes does not work for the good of the greatest number but only when all purposes are focused upon the same social objectives that the happiness of the individual and that of the community are realized.

VALUE

Of the

UTILITY SUPPLEMENT

1. Not confined to mere abstract suppositions.

2. Applicable to and of good use in the science and art of legislation.

SCIENCE OF LEGISLATION

- The knowledge of the good for the community.

ART OF LEGISLATION

- The finding of ways and means to realize or accomplish that good.

ULTIMATE END OF LEGISLATION• The happiness of the greatest

number in the community.

Individual interests

Collective purposes

END or OBJECT of the SCIENCE and ART of LEGISLATION

3. Employed with fruitful application in the field of human rights.

EQUALITY as main

aspect of LAWRight of Life

Personality

Dignity

Collective PURPOSES in the conservation of HUMAN RESOURCES

4. Jhering’s SOCIAL UTILITARIANISM

• Sought a BALANCE between INDIVIDUAL PURPOSES and the PURPOSES OF SOCIETY

ROSCOE POUND

Theory of Social Engineering of the Conflicting or Overlapping Interests

JHERING’S CLASSIFICATION

OF PURPOSES

Individual

Political

Social

CRITICISMS

1. DISTASTEFULNESS• No room for special moral obligations to one’s family and close

friends.• Problem of personal loyalties.

Greatest happiness of the greatest number of people Regards all happiness as equally good, regardless of who gets it.

Does not provide enough support for individuals’ rights (what is a right and what is its justification?)If the justification of right depends on its tendency to

promote happiness and prevent suffering, then it is redundant since this is the sole purpose of utility.

• The proponent of ethical rights has very unclear thinking as to what rights are and why they exist – and it is therefore of unclear importance that utilitarianism does not support them.

• Problem of Distributive Justice or Unjust Consequences

In utilitarianism one considers only the sum total of pains and pleasures, not their distribution. Even though the sum total of units of happiness might be the same, it might be distributed "unfairly" in various societies.

Society A    Society B Society C

10 15 15

10 15 15

10 15 15

10 5 5

10 5 5

10 5 6

Total 60 net units of pleasure

Total 60 net units of pleasure

Total 61 net units of pleasure

The total amount and the average units of value are the same in Societies A + B but distributed unevenly. The total amount of value in Society C is greater than that in Society A where the distribution is even. Even rule utilitarianism must approve this distribution --even slavery, if this is what is involved.

Motives

Utilitarianism has been criticized for only looking at the results of actions, not at Utilitarianism has been criticized for only looking at the results of actions, not at The desires or intentions which motivate them, which many people also considerThe desires or intentions which motivate them, which many people also considerimportant. An action intended to cause harm but that inadvertently causes goodimportant. An action intended to cause harm but that inadvertently causes goodresults would be judged equal to the result from an action done with good results would be judged equal to the result from an action done with good intentions.intentions.

2. IMPOSSIBILITY• it is impossible to apply - that happiness cannot be quantified or measured,

that there is no way of calculating a trade-off between intensity and extent, or intensity and probability, or comparing happiness to suffering.

1. Variability of Human Experience - Differences between people.2. Number of Variables in Any Situation

3. Consequences - ability to discern what they are, what counts and the limit to causality.4. No Time to Calculate

5a. Happiness is unobtainable. One cannot exist constantly in rapture. Besides poverty, disease, death and other evils prevent total happiness.

5b. People can do without happiness.6. Why should other people's happiness be the standard of morality?

7. What about other values such as freedom, love? Are they not at least as important as happiness?

Many of the early utilitarian proponents hoped that happiness could somehowbe measured quantitatively and compared between people through felicific calculus, although no one has ever managed to construct a detailed one inpractice. It has been argued that the happiness of different people is incommensurable, and thus felicific calculus is impossible, not only in practice, but even in principle.

IMPRACTICALITY• The demands of political reality and the complexities of political

thought are obstinately what they are, and in the face of them the simple-mindedness of utilitarianism disqualifies it totally. The important issues that utilitarianism raises should be discussed in contexts more rewarding than that of utilitarianism itself.

• Utilitarianism gives no special moral weight to things like promises and contracts.

INSUFFICIENCY (of scope)• it fails to consider some sources of value, and that it will therefore

produce the wrong results when these different sources conflict. There is potential for confusion here - sometimes "utilitarianism" is used specifically for "hedonistic utilitarianism"; and, sometimes, it means a particular class of ethical theory (something like "value-maximizing consequentialism").

So, theories which have other intrinsic values than happiness and exemption from suffering can be accommodated within a utilitarian scheme.