[SIZE="5"]Utilitarianism [/SIZE]
Utilitarianism is a philosophical principal that can be summed up quickly, yet to understand it and its flaws in more depth it takes some serious thinking. In short, it is explained with one familiar statement “The greatest good for the greatest number“. Put simply, this means that an action or consequence (the difference of which will be explored later) is deemed “good” if it benefits more people than it hinders. This raises some interesting questions and ethical issues, and multiple schools of thought have sprung up over the issue.
[SIZE="4"]Hedonic Principal[/SIZE]
Formed by a man named Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) in his writing Introduction to the principles of morals and legislation, and later expanded upon by John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), the Hedonic principal is the most basic form of Utilitarianism. It basically states that all human morals should be guided solely by the “two sovereign powers of nature”, otherwise known as “pleasure” and “pain”. Things that bring pleasure to an individual or a group are good, and things that inflict pain to the same person/s are bad. This skips the common themes of morality, such as looking to God for guidance. There is no ultimate evil or definite good; the Hedonic Principal discards all external sources except those two of nature, and they alone decide what action one should choose.
While this seems all right, it raises some important criticisms. When Bentham stated the two natural guides, pleasure and pain, he assumed that they were in fact opposites. Pain and pleasure have other differences that keep them from being opposites; pain is always experienced when a painful event takes place, but the same is not necessarily true for pleasure. If you have eaten too much, eating is no longer pleasurable. But if you trip and hit your head, then you will always experience the pain associated.
Another criticism that can be raised is that Bentham implied that pleasure and happiness are the same thing. Long term happiness, or lack thereof, can coexist with pleasure and pain; you can be fired from you job, and react by getting drunk or experiencing a pleasurable sensation. In this case, you are experiencing pleasure, yet are not happy. The opposite is also true. You can win a boxing match by enduring large amounts of pain – you are happy, but you are not experiencing pleasure as a result of your wounds.
Leaving that aside, the Hedonic principal has more problems. “The greatest good for the greatest number” seems to make sense, but there are many examples that can prove otherwise with just that simple phrase. If a car full of rowdy teenagers is moving down the street on a rainy day, and a man is standing at the bus station, then by Bentham’s unrefined principal, the teenagers should swerve into the puddle and soak the man with muddy water for amusement.
This is where John Stuart Mill (the next person to seriously argue in favour of this version of Utilitarianism) comes into the Hedonic theory. In response to scenarios like the above, Mill would argue that pleasure and pain must be measured regarding the intensity of the experience, such that quality of the experiences is just as important as quantity. He would say that the man getting soaked creates a form of pain that outweighs the small pleasures of the teenagers, despite being outnumbered. This means that the teenagers are not morally right even if the action has creates pleasure for more people than it caused pain for.
While the many examples are refuted by this argument, it also creates an unsolvable hole in the theory. How do you measure intensity of pleasure and pain? Who could tell whether the pain of the wet man outweighed the teenagers (maybe they were laughing for hours, helping them to get over their unrelated crash a minute later, for instance). Unfortunately, this problem is unsolvable, as you can’t measure experience numerically to calculate the moral choice. This is where the Hedonic Principal falls flat on its face.
[SIZE="4"]Consequentialist principal[/SIZE]
This principal builds on from the original Hedonic principal, but the former does not necessarily need to be believed for the Consequentialist theory to make sense. In this school of thinking, the things that determine the “goodness” of an action are not the actions themselves, but the consequences they bring. If the outcome of an action is overall positive, then the action itself is irrelevant, and the inverse is also true. It is not necessarily concerned with the ideas of pleasure and pain, but simply the best outcome to a given situation for all involved (which, unlike the Hedonic principal, could mean the lesser of two evils).
But before anything happens, the boundaries of the theory must be set up. Unfortunately for the consequentialist theory, even this step cannot be explained to a satisfactory level. Any consequence will cause more consequences after it, which in turn will cause more consequences, and the cycle will be indefinite. Therefore, to judge responsibility and the moral worth of an action by looking at its consequence, it must first be decided what consequence the line shall be drawn at. But who draws this line? What if there is disagreement? There is no ultimate morality such as God to fill this position, so the Consequentialist principal fails to even define itself properly
But apart from that, and for the sake of discussion, the general idea makes sense, and in the long run if outcomes are good the future will be a positive place. But there are several more problems for the theory. The first of these is best highlighted with an example; let’s say that a person (we’ll call him Bob) opens his car door play a joke on the a passing bicycle rider he recognises; to avoid this, the cyclist swerves, running into a fold-out sign for the café, causing a dog that was tied to the sign to run onto the road, resulting in a car crash. If we go by the pure consequentialist theory, then it is Bob’s fault that the accident took place.
Still, opponents of the theory argue that the only thing you can blame on Bob is the cyclist’s swerve and eventual collision with the sign. By looking at the consequences in this case (which are negative, the car-crash hurt all parties involved), we still cannot conclude whether Bob was morally responsible for the end result. Bob didn’t intend for the crash to take place, and due to this it is immoral under this principal to lay the blame on him.
Yet consequentialists have an answer to this. Intentions are not consequences, so to keep under the banner of Consequentialism, the consequences must still be the thing considered. But they manage to work the “intention” condition cleverly; only the consequences that can be reasonably anticipated are the ones that must be judged. Now it is still possible to follow the consequentialist principal and conclude that Bob was not responsible for the car crash.
While one fault has been eliminated, several others rear their heads. The first of these is related to the consequences that did not occur because a person did not do a certain action. If a piano is rolling down a steep alleyway, an unaware old man is walking from the opposite direction, and a woman on a balcony is observing the scene, should she be held accountable for failing to warn the man when he gets crushed by the piano? Can someone be blamed for the consequences caused by not doing something? Even if one argues that the woman is responsible for failing to warn the man, according to the consequences (the man dying) she is just as responsible as if she let the piano go herself deliberately. Consequentialists would explain that the woman would only be responsible in the second case, as she directly caused the death of the man. This is dubious logic, because deliberately not telling the man could also be argued as a cause, yet she is not directly responsible. The principal is weak on this aspect.
The last criticism is that of Justice. If, to save the lives of his patients in his critical condition ward when the fuse box explodes, a doctor jams his nurse’s finger into the socket, completing the connection and restoring power, then he would be doing the moral thing according to the consequentialist theory. In short, the criticism explains that under this principal, people can be used “as a means to an end”, even if they are innocent. This also means that Justice is irrelevant, and the person being used for the greater good can be perfectly innocent, as in the case of the nurse.
So this creates a conflict. If you support the Consequentialist principal, then you are actively supporting Justice taking a back seat. Unfortunately for the theory and its followers, many people are not willing to do that as it conflicts with their basic values. This is a significant weakness is the consequentialist principal. In response, supporters have argued that you should stick to the principal even in the above case, because it is the most logical thing to do even if it circumvents justice.
General Benevolence
While the Hedonic principal is focused on pleasure and pain, and the consequentialist principal focuses on responsibility, this particular aspect is the part of Utilitarianism that is probably most widely known. It breaks down the original statement: “The greatest good for the greatest number”.
[SIZE="4"]General Benevolence[/SIZE]
The Hedonic principal defaults an Egoistic approach to situations, which means that each person looks out only for their own pleasure and pain, sometimes at the expense of others. “General Benevolence” means that one should not take this Egoistic approach, but should neither take the Altruistic position in which you put other people’s interests above your own. The point is that each person should look out for the greater good, and not put their pleasures and pains above or below anyone else’s. When judging a situation, everyone is just another person in the equation, including the judge.
Basically, the principle here is “the best outcome is that in which the most people are happy”. That makes sense, but this principal is challenged by the very concept of pleasure and pain: why bother with everyone else? Unless you get a joy out of helping others, then there is no personal pleasurable gain in the General Benevolence principal. It doesn’t have supporting logical reasons why people should adhere to it as a moral code along with the other principals of Utilitarianism, so it is more wishful thinking than moral principal.
Utilitarianism: Does it work?
Utilitarianism is the perfect example of something that looks great on paper. “The greatest good for the greatest number” can hardly be refuted as a positive idea, but it is in explaining itself that the three principals fall apart:
The Hedonic principal, that the only moral guidelines are pleasure and pain, seems logical enough. But pleasure is not the opposite of pain, and is not necessarily happiness. So even if you believe the Hedonic principal, then that does not mean that you know the key to happiness. It is also impossible to measure pleasure and pain, so in calculating the greatest outcome to serve the Utilitarian view the principal cannot even deliver results. It is for this reason that it cannot be used practically.
However, the consequentialist theory can survive on its own, so it seems that Utilitarianism still has a chance. If we use the consequences to judge the goodness of something, then it seems we have a working order. Yet, with any ultimate decider such as God deliberately thrown out the window, there is no one to draw the line on with consequences we will consider, as the chain is endless, and there are so many other potential consequences that could have happened if people like Bob had acted differently. This means that this principal views a direct murder as morally the same as refusing to save a child from a fire.
The consequentialist principal also circumvents our sense of justice, and it allows people to do whatever is necessary to achieve the greatest good, even if this is at the expense of the innocent. This is hard to agree with; you can not easily use people as a means to an end. Even when supporters argue that following the rules of wherever you are morally overrides using innocent people as a means, it still isn’t a strong argument, as in dire circumstances even these rules must be broken for the greatest good. There is simply nothing that can save Consequentialism except specification beyond comprehension, in which case it could not properly serve as a moral principal anyway.
Considering the General Benevolence theory is a refined extension of the other two principals (It simply states that valuing each human equally is more moral, yet to put it in practice you would still need to look at the consequences in relation to overall pleasure and pain), and considering they haven’t managed to get off the ground, Utilitarianism is out of cards.
While it looks great in theory, with a slew of opposing examples ruining its ideas, and a failure to even define its own boundaries, Utilitarianism just doesn’t have enough philosophical firepower to be acceptable as an ethical approach to life.