Utilitarianism

This expanded edition of John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism includes the text of his 1868 speech to the British House of Commons defending the use of capital punishment in cases of aggravated murder. The speech is significant both because its topic remains timely and because its arguments illustrate the applicability of the principle of utility to questions of large-scale social policy.

1. Overview

John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism sets out a moral system that bases the good of any decision on the degree to which it promotes pleasure for the greatest number of people. By pleasure, Mill means not only those lower pleasures associated with the appetites, but also, the higher pleasures of "superior beings" that are associated with the enjoyment of understanding. The smallest amount of higher pleasure is greater than any amount of lower pleasure, for "It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied."

For Mill, then, there is no inherent good in any particular object; goodness is based on each object's utility in creating pleasure. All values are thus based on feelings and sensations. There are no normative principles in human nature that we can explore as we seek to discover what creates human happiness. Rather, in determining the good, we are to determine the sums of pleasure and pain for the aggregate of society and thereby discover which of the array of options before any one decision-maker is the one that promotes the greatest amount of pleasure. The moral decision-maker will choose that course of action that leads to the greatest amount pleasure for the greatest number of people.

2. Critique of Mill

Mill's theory on ethics is riddled with problems. One of them is the inherent difficulty involved in calculating the aggregate pleasures and pains of all of the people that will be affected by a particular decision. It is a burdensome and impractical way of coming to make decisions. Even if one could come up with general rules of conduct, the calculation as to when exceptions should be applied is similarly impractical. Similarly, it is nearly impossible to ascertain the degree of pleasure to be assigned to other individuals when determining whether a particular decision should be undertaken. Individuals who appreciate the "superior pleasures" will assign many more points to a chamber orchestra concert than will those who appreciate only the base pleasures. How can one determine with certainty the degree of pain and pleasure that third parties will experience, especially when the author of a particular decision does not personally know some of these third parties?

3. The "Utilitarian" Golden Rule?

Mill writes that "a utilitarian who believes in the perfect goodness and wisdom of God, necessarily believes that whatever God has thought fit to reveal on the subject of morals, must fulfill the requirements of utility in a supreme degree." He even suggests that utilitarianism is line with Christianity when he writes that "In the golden rule of Jesus of Nazareth, we read the complete spirit of the ethics of utility. To do as you would be done by, and to love your neighbour as yourself, constitute the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality." However, Mill's generalization is problematic. Although it is often true that the pain of one's sacrifice is outweighed by the aggregate pleasure of all of those who benefit from the sacrifice (as the case of the eternal happiness of all who are saved in Christ outweighing the pain that Christ suffered on the cross), it is not always the case. For example, there would be no incentive for a utilitarian to take a bullet for another person, since the pain of the utilitarian would equal the pleasure of the person being saved. Thus, whereas the golden rule of Jesus is a rule of unconditional love, Mill's utilitarian principle allows for self-sacrifice only in those circumstances where the aggregate of the pleasure outweighs the aggregate of the pain of all those affected by a particular decision.

"Utilitarianism" gets assigned in freshman philosophy classes because it's short, well-written, and hugely influential. What else does one need to say? Perhaps only this:

For sure, Mill's argument has holes. (Basically, he argues that maximizing the sum of happiness in the world must be the first principle of morals since all human actions aim at happiness. Yet even if we accept Mill's premise, his conclusion is a real leap.) And, sure, when utilitarianism is pressed to its limits, it gives rise to paradoxes beloved by philosophy profs. (Is it good for sadists to torture masochists? Can one person be killed to harvest organs for five persons? Should a judge put an innocent man in jail to defuse a lynch mob? And so forth.) But I'd still take Mill, with all his faults, over cautious, hairsplitting philosophy any day. His vision of a utilitarian society of high culture and universal benevolence was revolutionary in the Victorian Era. It still inspires today. And in the end, Mill got a lot right. Impartiality IS a key characteristic of the moral point of view. And we DO resolve many moral dilemmas by appealing to utility. It's easy to get hung up on the logical gaps in Mill's argument and ignore the core of truth. Any moral theory that doesn't give a big place to utility is seriously other-worldly.

Bottomline: "Utilitarianism" is a great introduction to basic concepts of moral philosophy. Every educated person should read it. Six stars!

Utilitarianism is a moral theory based on the principle that "Actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness."

Mill sees happiness as humans' primary desire; hence, it is the basis for morality and justice. In defense of utilitarianism, Mill defines and tries to validate his position by relating justice and utility and arguing that happiness is the foundation of justice. While the whole argument can be presented in many ways, Mill tried to vindicate Utilitarianism from accusations such as: not protecting individual rights, measuring every thing in life with the same standard, and over simplifying happiness.

From the man who once said: "Whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called", it seems that Mill ignored the absence of individuals' appreciation in utilitarianism. Knowing that Mill was raised in a strict utilitarian environment, and the mental struggle he went through to validate his theory is key to understanding this work. Instead of judging this work as a reasonable philosophical work, the reader should approach it as Mill's introspection through which he tried to justify his belief in utilitarianism.

The importance of J.S. Mill's Utilitarianism as a statement of the fundamental tenets of his school is indisputable. Equally unquestionable is the great influence utilitarianism has exerted upon the development of Anglo-American moral philosophy. These facts underscore the necessity of carefully considering whether utilitarianism, as articulated by Mill, offers a sensible or persuasive account of morality.

In utilitarianism, "utility" is synonymous with "happiness"; both denote "pleasure itself, together with exemption from pain." Hence utilitarianism is also referred to as the "greatest happiness principle." However, the latter slogan is misleading insofar as "greatest" is taken to refer merely to quantity. Mill holds that pleasures can be compared not only quantitatively but also qualitatively; "some kinds of pleasure are more desirable and more valuable than others." There is an hierarchy of pleasures, and the happy life will be the life that contains the "greatest" pleasures both in the sense of the "best" or "highest" as well as the "most."

Indeed, Mill argues that the higher pleasures are such that no one who has experienced them would be willing to trade them in for "any quantity" of lower pleasures. "A being of higher faculties requires more to make him happy, is capable probably of more acute suffering, and certainly accessible to it at more points," Mill says, "but in spite of these liabilities, he can never really wish to sink into what he feels to be a lower grade of existence." Note that this is an empirical argument which implicitly postulates that the pain and suffering caused by heightened sensitivities is outweighed by the pleasures brought on by the higher faculties. At the back of this postulate is the idea, not articulated by Mill but informing his thought, that the supreme pleasure is the pleasure associated with knowing (cf. Mill's statement that "[n]ext to selfishness, the principal cause which makes life unsatisfactory is want of mental cultivation"). Philosophers prior to Mill had taught that the different capacities for enjoyment derive from different capacities for knowing. Partly on that basis, those philosophers concluded that philosophy was the best (happiest) way of life for man.

But not everyone exhibits a burning desire to be a philosopher, to put it mildly. This observation points to a fallacy in Mill's argument. From the fact (assuming it to be a fact) that no one could "really wish to sink into what he feels to be a lower grade of existence," it does not follow that no one could prefer a lower grade of existence to a higher grade of existence. Even if no one wishes to fall to a lower level of existence, it does not follow that everyone wishes to rise to a higher level of existence. For the higher faculties are not developed "by nature," but "by art," ie, through human effort, and most people, as Nietzsche observed, are lazy. What most people seem to want is to retain the "grade of existence" they currently enjoy, but in better conditions (better house, better car, better spouse, bigger bank account, etc.). It will not do to advert to Mill's quip about the pig and the human being and the fool and Socrates as a rejoinder. For in Chapter IV Mill explicitly holds that there are different conceptions/objects of happiness, and it is all too clear that he has no way of rank ordering those different conceptions. That account implicitly undermines the hierarchy of pleasures that he set out to establish in Chapter II. Indeed, the three objects of happiness he lists in Chapter IV (money, power and fame) would seem to be in considerable tension with utilitarian ethics altogether.

That tension has its roots in Mill's incoherent attempt to derive ethics from psychology. This is a Humean criticism. Mill says that all men desire their own happiness. Happiness being the end of human action, it is also the standard of morality, which regulates human action for the benefit of all mankind. Hence the utilitarian standard, qua moral standard, "is not the agent's own greatest happiness, but the greatest amount [sic!] of happiness altogether." But Mill does not explain how he gets from men desiring their own happiness to men acting to make other men happy. He fails to explain how a concern with being ethical can be located within his account of human beings as desiring happiness conceived as pleasure. That is, how does being concerned with living a pleasant life for myself generate a concern for acting morally? Mill attempts to ground morality in the sentiments of sympathy and sociality, but there are severe limits on the sort of ethics that can be generated by those sentiments. What this means is that Mill's doctrine fails to explain why we would take his doctrine seriously. Bluntly stated, the fact that we take Mill's ethical writings seriously is already a proof of the false foundations of Mill's ethics.

If someone would like to know what Utilitarianism is, this is the book.

But if someone thinks to find in the Utilitarianism a moral standard to follow, this is just one of the books.

According to the Mill' theory, we should always act in a manner that will maximize overal happines and in this essay John Stuart Mill wrote which are the effects of each possible action we may perform.

The Speech on Capital Punishment tells one of this possible action.