Dowling College: PHL 002: Utilitarianism

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Dr. Christian Perring
Dowling College
PHL 002 Western Philosophy 2

THE UTILITARIANS

Jeremy Bentham

Born in London, 1748. Son of a prosperous Tory. He trained as a lawyer. But he was disgusted by the state of the law, and so set out to criticize it rather than be a part of the legal profession.
In 1776 he published Fragment on Government, a criticism of a legal commentary. This is where he first set out his utilitarian view.
In 1785 he went to Russia for 3 years.
In 1789 he published Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, his most important philosophical work.
He designed a new model for a prison, the Panopticon. This prison would be circular, so the warden could sit in the center and observe all the prisoners. It was also be privatized.
He had many other practical suggestions, such as trains of carts between London and Edinburgh, a Panama canal, and frozen peas.
In 1808, he met James Mill and his two year old son John Stuart. The Mill family came to live near Bentham in London.
Until 1818, the Mill family spent six months of each year with Bentham at Ford Abbey, in Somerset.
He worked steadily on proposals for legal reform and exposing abuses of government during his lifetime.
He died in 1832.

John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)

Mill was a child prodigy. His father taught him Greek at the age of 3 or 4. He started arithmetic and Latin at 8 years, logic at 12, political economy at 13. Until he was 14, he saw no one of his own age, and mixed only with his father’s utilitarian friends. He was also required to teach his younger brothers what he had learned from his father.
At the age of 14, he began to study law, but he gave it up after 3 years. He became a clerk instead.
At the age of 20, he fell into a two year depression. He attributed his recovery to his discovery of the poetry of Wordsworth.
In 1830 he met Harriet Taylor. They married in 1851, after her first husband's death. She died of tuberculosis in 1858.
On Liberty was published in 1859, Utilitarianism in 1861.
In 1865 he became a member of parliament for Westminster, a borough of central London. He was a political liberal. He lost the next election 3 years later.
The Subjection of Women was published in 1869.
He moved to France with his step-daughter Helen Taylor, and died in 1873.

Utilitarianism

This theory says that when you are faced with different options, morally speaking you should chose the one which will result in the most happiness for society. "The greatest happiness for the greatest number."
Your own happiness should not count any more or any less than anyone else's in your calculations.
This guide was meant to apply both to individual people and also to governments.

Bentham on Government

The Utilitarians used their theory to argue for parliamentary reform, prison reform, the extension of the right to vote, full legal rights for women, greater democracy, ways of making government officials accountable, and changes in punishment. In their day, the Utilitarians were seen as radicals.
Bentham argued that punishment of criminals could only be justified if it did more good than harm. Punishing criminals causes them to be unhappy, and this must be added into the utilitarian calculation. Punishment must deter crime if it is to be justified, and if two available punishments have equal deterrence, then the lesser punishment must be chosen.
From his experience at trying to reform the prison system, Bentham concluded that governments generally do not act in the people's best interest, but instead act selfishly. He concluded that the people should be able to vote on all decisions that affect them. The people, following their own interests, will vote for what brings the greatest happiness to the greatest number.
Bentham saw his work as the clarifying of ideas, such as good and bad, rights and duties, and punishment. Clarifying these will then clarify the law, and provide a secure foundation for it. Statements about good and bad can be seen as translatable to statements about happiness and unhappiness. Rights can be explained as corresponding to duties, and duties can be explained as what you must do if you want to avoid punishment.
This goes with his rejection of the widely accepted "natural law" theory -- the view that law and ethics are basically the same. "Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense, nonsense upon stilts."
Bentham's view was that the law and ethics are very distinct realms. The law should be ethical, but (unfortunately) it is not always so. Laws are commands backed up by sanctions. The only rights that he recognizes are legal rights, and these rights are justified because they promote the general happiness. But they are not inalienable: if they start to do more harm than good, then they should be abolished.
So he was critical of the justifications given for the American and French Revolutions, which appealed to the "Rights of Man," although he was sympathetic to the cause of the revolutionaries.
Similarly, Bentham was critical of social contract theories. He thought that the only real contracts are legal ones. A legal system must already exist for contracts to be possible, so the legal system cannot be justified in terms of a contract. The only legitimate justification of a legal system, in his view, is that it promotes the general happiness.

Bentham believed that governments should promote equality among people, because this is the best way to increase the general happiness. His main justification for this was that people who already have goods get less happiness when they are given more of them than people who don't have them in the first place. For instance, consider two possibilities: I give everyone in the class (of 15 students) $10 each, or I give one person in the class $150. Which will promote the most total happiness? The more equal distribution. Justifying Utilitarian Theory

Happiness comes in various kinds. The only realistic way to measure happiness is in terms of pleasure and pain. There are pleasures of sense, wealth, skill, a good reputation, piety, power, memories, and so on. There are many kinds of pain too. Pleasure and pain can be described in terms of their:

Intensity - how strong the feeling is.
Duration - how long the feeling will last
Avoidability - whether we can take steps to not feel pain.
Expected time of occurrence
Fecundity - how much further pleasure or pain come with them.
Purity (pleasure not mixed with pain)
Extent (how many people experience the pleasure or pain.)

All these factors should be taken into account in measuring how good the effects of an action will be. The measurement can be somewhat scientific, given in rough quantities.
A crucial disagreement among Utilitarians: Are there different kinds of pleasure? Bentham said no: "quantity of pleasure being equal, push-pin is as good as poetry." But Mill said yes: some pleasures are worth more than others. (See Utilitarianism, Chapter 2.)
Different people will have different opinions about which kinds of pleasure are best: when there is disagreement, the majority (of experienced people who have knowledge of the comparison) should rule, according to Mill.
Bentham and Mill agree that there is no simple way to prove utilitarianism is the right moral theory, because it is a theory about ultimate ends, and there is no disputing ultimate ends. It is the first principle of morality, so there is no prior principle with which to prove it.
But Bentham says that the only competitors to utilitarianism are asceticism and sympathy, and both can be shown to be inadequate.
Asceticism says that some actions which deny pleasures are right. For example, self-denial. If it were really true that some actions which do not maximize pleasure are the best ones, then utilitarianism would be mistaken. However, Bentham observes that often the justification for the rightness of such ascetic actions is that they will provide happiness in the long run. For example, if I deny myself more food now, I will not have a stomach ache later on. He also points out that asceticism makes no sense when applied to government policy: we would never agree with a government that caused public suffering unless it could show that the suffering would lead to greater happiness in the long run.
Using sympathy to justify morality is to say that something is right if people approve of it. Bentham says that this is totally arbitrary.
Mill argues against several objections to his Greatest Happiness Principle.
Objection: Happiness is not possible.
Reply: Happiness is possible: it doesn't have to be a constant state of elation; what we aim for is moments of rapture, "in an existence made up of few and transitory pains, many and various pleasures, with a decided predominance of the active over the passive, and having as the foundation of the whole, not to expect more from life than it is capable of bestowing." (U, Ch 2) People might not be happy now, but that is due to the "present wretched education, and wretched social arrangements."
Objection: Utilitarianism expects too much of people.
Reply: A moral theory is meant to set standards of behavior. It does not expect ordinary individuals to do more than they can.
Objection: Utilitarianism would make people cold and calculating in their actions.
Reply: Utilitarianism is not saying that morality is the only important thing in life.
Objection: Utilitarianism is godless.
Reply: Utilitarianism may well be setting out God's morality.
Objection: there often is not enough time to calculate the happiness that will result from different options.
Reply: one might as well argue that one should not be a Christian because there is no time to read the Bible before performing an action. There is plenty of time to prepare for action, and formulate subordinate principles.
Mill argues that the ultimate reason for believing in Utilitarianism is that it is captures people's feelings. People do in fact care about the general happiness. If there is one individual who does not share these feelings, then the has no reason to accept Utilitarianism. (U, Ch. 3)
He does not know for certain whether the feelings are caused by society or are innate, although he suspects that they are acquired. Humans are capable of being brought up differently and having different moral feelings. But having utilitarian feelings contributes to a society without strife. People need to cooperate with each other, so it is natural to care about each other's good.

Mill on Liberty

‘The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any members of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.’ (Ch. 1)
He is not applying his principle to children: there we can decide what is good for them and force them to do what we decide.
‘Those who are still in a state to require being taken care of by others, must be protected against their own actions as well as against any external injury.’ (Ch. 1)
Mill gives two defenses of this principle of liberty. (These both ultimately appeal to the Principle of Greatest Happiness.)

First that it enables individuals to realize their own individual potential in their own way, and
second, by liberating talents, creativity, and dynamism, it sets up the essential pre-condition for moral and intellectual progress.

For example, when it comes to freedom of expression, Mill argues that no ideas should ever be stifled. "The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race." (Ch. 2)
If a person's opinion is right but silenced, then the person loses the chance to correct everyone else.
If the person's opinion is wrong and silenced, she loses the chance to learn the truth through debate.
It is only through having an open debate about issues that we can have confidence in our ways for finding out what is true or false.
Although we should not prevent people from living how they want to (so long as they do not harm others) that does not mean that we should not express our opinions to them about their values and lifestyle.
What about difficult cases? E.g., gambling, drunkenness, incontinence, idleness, or uncleanliness. (Ch. 4) These hurt other people, not just the person who is living that lifestyle. Mill is ready to allow interference in some of these cases: if someone neglects his family due to drunkenness, then he should be punished. But he should be punished for the neglect, not for drinking. He should equally be punished if he neglects his family by spending too much time studying philosophy! "No person ought to be punished simply for being drunk."
Even though society in general may be harmed by people not taking care of themselves, those people should not be punished so long as they do not harm particular individuals. Society has control over people during their childhood, and if it cannot teach people to care for themselves during that time, it has only itself to blame if people do not contribute to society once they are adults.
The strongest argument that Mill has against society interfering with people's behavior for their own good is that society will most likely just make matters worse.
Some people say they have been injured simply by knowing that other people behave in ways of which they don't approve. "But there is no parity between the feeling of a person for his own opinion, and the feeling of another who is offended at his holding it; no more than between the desire of a thief to take a purse, and the desire of the right owner to keep it. And a person's taste is as much is own particular concern as his purse" (Ch. 4)