Utilitarianism

Probably the most persuasive ethical theory in contemporary ethical debates in the media and in politics is utilitarianism. Here philosopher Stephen Buckle, of the Australian Catholic University, analyses its main features.

Utilitarianism is one of the most prominent of modern moral philosophies, and the most controversial. Its denial that moral rights are the basic currency of moral thinking – and the manifold consequences of this denial in a wide range of significant practical issues – is well known. What is not so well understood, however, is where utilitarianism came from, and why, under the more general rubric of "ethical consequentialism", it now enjoys such respect in academic meta-ethical debates. This paper aims to throw some light on these issues, and, by doing so, to identify utilitarianism’s fundamental commitments – and to indicate why the academic preoccupation with "ethical consequentialism" is a distraction from the main issue.

What is Utilitarianism?

Utilitarianism, as a distinct moral doctrine, is commonly traced to the writings of Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832). His book, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, published in 1789, the year of the French Revolution, can be considered to have launched utilitarianism upon the (Anglophone) world. This conjunction of events brought Bentham considerable fame, since utilitarianism was thought to capture the progressive spirit of the Revolution. His reformist writings made him the godfather of a group called the Philosophic Radicals, who advocated a series of reforms based on utilitarian principles. Prominent amongst the Radicals was James Mill, the father of John Stuart Mill.

Bentham’s utilitarianism proclaimed that the worth of any action lay entirely in its usefulness (or utility) for human beings. Hence the doctrine’s name. But the distinctive character of the doctrine depended on his further specification of what counted as useful: he claimed that human happiness was the measure, and further stipulated that happiness was not some abstruse philosophical ideal, but merely pleasure. His further stipulation that each person’s pleasure counted for the same gave the doctrine the practical edge which has always been, for its advocates, one of its primary attractions: it meant that alternative courses of action could be assessed for their moral worth simply by adding up their consequences in terms of the pleasure (+1) or pain (–1) imposed on those affected. The best course of action was simply the course of action that generated the highest score. Moral mathematics was born.

Utilitarianism thus construed can be divided into two component parts: its form and its content. The formal component is its model of reasoning, that is, its consequentialism: the conviction that alternative courses of action are to be measured purely by their consequences. This element has become the main focus of attention in recent years, and explains why "consequentialism" has become the preferred mode of self-description amongst philosophical sympathizers. But things were not always so. In the beginning, it was utilitarianism’s content that was the more striking and (to its followers) more attractive component of the theory. The absence of any appeal to higher authorities or to metaphysical ideals made it appear the ideal theory for a new secular age.

The principal source of complaint from its sympathetic critics lay in the thought that the secularism achieved was too crude, psychologically speaking. The reduction of happiness – and, by extension, all human ideals – to the mere quantity of (physical) pleasure led John Stuart Mill to describe Bentham’s position as moral philosophy reduced to the "principles which regulate trade". So Mill proposed a compromise view – indebted to the hierarchical moral psychology of Plato – in which pleasures could be divided into higher (intellectual) pleasures and lower (physical) pleasures, such that the higher always trump the lower. (He famously observed: "It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied".) But this proposal found little favour amongst his fellow-utilitarians, because it destroyed what most found so attractive about the new theory: its promise of mathematically-certain moral conclusions.

The pursuit of this promise – principally in the hands of twentieth-century economists – led to a significant change in the theory itself. The basic currency of utilitarianism, pleasure, allowed only very limited, and indeed misleadingly limited, quantification. Bentham had "solved" the problem by stipulating that everyone was to count for one. As a principle of basic human equality, this may be all very well. But as a principle of moral mathematics, it allowed only the crude measures: pleasure = +1, pain = –1. But pleasures and pains come in degrees, so, even if everyone is equal in general value, the intensities of their pleasures and pains, and therefore their specific values, need not be. So any serious attempt to measure the highest utility must fail. A different measure was therefore needed.

The new measure proposed dispensed with the theory’s prior focus on subjective satisfactions (i.e. on happiness or pleasure). It replaced this hidden standard with a thoroughly public one: preference-satisfaction, or, in cruder terms, getting what you want. The advantage of this change is entirely to do with quantifiability: while it is impossible to measure the degree of happiness or pleasure achieved by a certain action or policy, it is perfectly possible to measure the extent to which preferences have been satisfied. If Person A wants a new Mercedes every year, whereas Person B wants good hospitals, it will be obvious to all whether, or to what extent, a given action or social policy delivers them the objects of their desire. It will even be possible to measure various alternative social policies by the number of preferences each can be predicted to satisfy. The dream of moral mathematics can thus be saved; so the economists, and, following them, the utilitarian philosophers, came to advocate the greatest level of preference-satisfaction as the practically-rational – and thus the moral – standard by which possible actions or social policies are to be judged. This theory is known as "preference utilitarianism", to distinguish it from the original, hedonic, theory. (Perhaps the best-known version of preference utilitarianism is Peter Singer’s ethical theory.)

Consequentialism and the form of practical reasoning

"Consequentialism" is the name for the formal part of the utilitarian doctrine: the view that all practical reasoning is in terms of consequences, such that the best course of action is necessarily that course of action that produces the best consequences. It is distinct from utilitarianism in that it resists stipulating what those consequences are. As such, it can be thought of as an all-embracing doctrine about what decisions or actions must be like to be practically rational – and so is commonly adjudged by philosophers to provide a sophisticated background test for all practical decision-making.

Since consequentialism does not tell anyone what to do – it cannot, because it resists telling us which consequences count – it is not itself an ethical theory. But it is plainly not neutral with respect to ethical theory, since it rules out – as irrational – any variety of ethical thinking that fails to fit the consequentialist pattern. Consequentialism thus seems to provide powerful background support for utilitarianism, by removing all non-consequentialist theories from serious consideration. Given that most traditional ethical doctrines are not obviously fitted to the consequentialist mould, the upshot is that traditional ethical values – the source of criticisms of utilitarian doctrines – can be set aside as mere prejudice obstructing the implementation of progressive moral opinion. Consequentialist practical rationality thus sweeps the field clean for utilitarianism’s triumph.  

Consequentialism and rational choice theory

In this light, it is plainly important to examine the credentials of the consequentialist theory of practical rationality. In brief, it can be described as the view that rational choice consists in choosing some good outcome; that it is more rational to choose the best amongst alternative possible goods; and so rational choice and action is to be defined in terms of maximizing good outcomes. Ethics then plugs into this basic framework by specifying in what terms the good outcomes are to be understood, i.e. in terms of happiness or desire-satisfaction or character-development or even some variety of ideal-attainment. Ethically good action will therefore be the attempt to maximize the specified good outcome.

Rationality is thus defined purely in terms of the maximizing tendency, and not at all in terms of the actual values pursued: the rational choice conception is neutral with respect to actual values. This is commonly taken to be the strength of this conception of rationality: its neutrality is attributed to its degree of abstraction and so also of explanatory power. This is, however, only half true. For varieties of choice and action that uncontroversially fit into this pattern, the abstraction and so explanatory power of this conception of rationality is undeniable. But it is certainly not the case that ethics uncontroversially fits the pattern: as mentioned above, traditional ethics is not purely consequentialist, and so needs to be redefined in order to fit. Traditional norms or duties have to be reconceived as desires (and perhaps also, as an intermediate step, as values). Such reconception is plainly not a neutral process, so why should it be accepted?