Lecture 02: A Brief Summary

Utilitarianism is a form of consequentialism, which means that it evaluates actions in terms of their consequences.

According to Jeremy Bentham’s classical utilitarianism, happiness is the only thing that has intrinsic value, and the right action is always the one that maximizes happiness (and/or minimizes unhappiness).

Bentham’s view can be summarized in 3 propositions: First, actions are to be judged right or wrong in virtue of their consequences. Nothing else matters. Right actions are simply those that have the best consequences.

Second, in assessing consequences, the only thing that matters is the amount of happiness or unhappiness that is caused. Everything else is irrelevant. Thus, right actions are those that produce the greatest balance of happiness over unhappiness.

Third, in calculating the happiness or unhappiness caused by an action, no one’s happiness is to be counted as more important than anyone else’s. Each person’s interests and well-being are equally important. In short, everyone counts, and everyone counts equally.

The Principle of Utility (also known as ‘the Greatest Happiness Principle’) tells us that we should perform the action that produces the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number of people.

In our daily lives we use utilitarian reasoning all the time In our daily lives we use utilitarian reasoning all the time. A good example is charitable giving: we give money to charity when seeing that it would do more good for the needy than it would for ourselves.

However, questions about whether, when and how we should help others can be complicated, and how we respond to these questions may reflect differences in moral beliefs and judgments.

Take the case of Baby Jessica, an eighteen-month-old girl who in 1987 fell down a well and trapped in a steel pipe. When Jessica’s story was featured on the national news, people around the world gave a total of $800,000 for her successful rescue, a heartwarming display of generosity.

But before your heart gets too warm, in the span of time that she was trapped (two and a half days), just under 35,000 children likely died worldwide from malnutrition. How many of these lives could have been saved for the same amount of money? A lot!

We are more likely to help those people that we care about We are more likely to help those people that we care about. And most people, especially Americans, are likely to show more concern for Baby Jessica than the starving children in Africa and other third-world countries.

As far as charitable giving is concerned, the utilitarian choice is simple: we should do our best to help as many as possible, which means that it is better to donate to the Save the Children Fund (to help starving children in poor countries) rather than the effort to rescue Baby Jessica.

Peter Singer, a famous contemporary utilitarian philosopher, asks : ‘You notice a child has fallen in and appears to be drowning. To wade in and pull the child out would be easy but it will mean that you get your clothes wet and muddy. Do you have any obligation to rescue the child?’ 

Most people would rescue a drowning child from a pond, even if it meant that their expensive clothes were ruined, so we clearly value a human life more than the value of our material possessions. Singer then asks: ‘Do we also have an obligation to give at least some of our disposable income to charities that help the global poor?’

If you are interested in the topic of charitable giving, you may read Peter Singer’s essay titled ‘The Drowning Child and the Expanding Circle’ (available on the course website). Or you may check out Singer’s TED talk titled ‘The Why and How of Effective Altruism’.

For a critique of Singer’s view, you may check out an essay titled ‘Peter Singer Says You Are a Bad Person’ (also available on the course website).

Some critics of utilitarianism draw attention to the fact that utilitarian reasoning can be used to justify immoral actions. Cheating, stealing, lying, and even killing may all seem to be justified, depending on whether they maximize utility in some particular situation.

In view of the weakness of utilitarian reasoning, some philosophers propose that the classical formulation of utilitarianism has to be modified. They suggest that the Principle of Utility should be applied to ‘rules’ rather than ‘acts’.

Act utilitarianism: We consider the expected consequences of various acts and choose the one that maximizes utility. Rule utilitarianism: After comparing the expected outcomes of following various rules, we choose to follow the rule that will have the best outcome.

For rule utilitarianism to work, the rule that has been chosen must be a clearly defined rule of conduct that can be consistently followed by all members of a society, group or profession.

Broadly speaking, a ‘rule’ can be either a law, a social norm, a custom or convention, a regulation, or professional code of ethics. If following the rule has the best overall consequence for everyone, it is a rule that has to be followed at all times.