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Utilitarianism
Teleological – Morality is dependent on outcomes and not concerned with action motives or intentions. End justifies the means.
Jeremy Bentham’s ethical theory of utilitarianism The Principles of Morals and Legislation
What drove human beings. What goodness/badness is all about. The principle of utility Hedonic calculus. Measures how good/bad a consequence is.
Motivation of human beings Hedonist – he believes humans are motivated by pleasure and pain. “Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure”. Pain is sole evil, pleasure sole good.
The principle of utility Rightness/wrongness of an action depends on it’s ‘utility’ or usefulness. Usefulness refers to the amount of pleasure caused. ‘An action is right if it produces the greatest good for the greatest number’. Good = maximum pleasure and minimisation of pain. Bentham says you should choose to act in a way that causes maximum pleasure for most people.
Hedonic calculus A tool for weighing up consequential pleasure and pain from an action to work out if it’s good or not.
Certainty – How certain is it there will be pain/pleasure? Duration – How long will the sensation last? Extent – How wide are it’s effects? Intensity – How intense is resulting pain/pleasure? Purity – How free from pain is it? Remoteness (propinquity) – How near is resulting pain/pleasure? Richness (fecundity) – Will it lead to further pleasure?
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Act utilitarianism Whenever possible, the principle of utility should be applied to each individual situation. Rightness/wrongness of individual acts are calculated by the amount of resulting happiness. E.g. lying in one situation might bring happiness, but not in another.
+ve – Flexible, you can take into account individual situations at any given moment.
-ve – Can justify virtually any act if it results in the most happiness. E.g. gang rape. -ve – Impractical to measure every moral choice every time, might not have all info needed for hedonic calculus. -ve – Can have extreme results. E.g. someone is on the way to the cinema, sees someone collecting for charity on the way and gives over all their money so has to go home. Same thing happens next week, and the next. Greatest good for greatest number but all leisure activity would end.
John Stuart Mill Happiness most effectively gained when individuals are free to pursue their own ends, subject to rules that protect the common good of all. Accepted utility principle of greatest good for greatest number, but if this was quantitive the pleasure of one person can be extinguised if the majority gained pleasure from an act. Aware that utilitarianism was being criticised as promoting only desire and pursuit of pleasure, and lowered human nature to that of swine.
Higher and lower pleasures Higher pleasures are qualitatively better and more important than lower pleasures. A happiness which did not include a higher pleasure shouldn’t be considered a happiness by humans at all. We should seek higher, qualitatively better pleasures over lower, more quantitative ones even if we have a higher level of dissatisfaction due to a lower quantity. “It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied”. Socrates = Greek philosopher. Better to be intellectually aware of the world and sometimes dissatisfied than blissfully ignorant and content.
Higher pleasures = Mind stimulating pleasures, e.g. enjoying poetry, making music, learning Latin. Lower pleasures = Bodily pleasures e.g. food, drink, drugs and sex.
In Mill’s view, the greatest happiness is a life as far away from pain as possible and as rich as possible in enjoyments both qualitatively and quantitatively.
