What Is Utilitarianism?

What does utilitarianism say?

Utilitarianism is a form of consequentialism: whether an action is right or wrong depends on its effects, and the only effects that count are the good and bad results it produces.^[4] It rests on a single principle, "do what produces the best consequences", which utilitarians describe as maximizing utility.^[4]

For the classical utilitarians, Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, the good to be promoted was pleasure.^[1] This view, called hedonism, holds that pleasure is the only thing good in itself and pain the only thing bad in itself.^[3] The theory is also impartial: everyone's happiness counts the same.^[1]

It is often summed up as "the greatest happiness for the greatest number", but the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy calls that slogan misleading: an act could make most people happier and still fail to produce the most good overall if the smaller group loses much more than the larger group gains.^[3]

How did Jeremy Bentham measure pleasure and pain?

The philosopher and jurist Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) developed the first systematic account of utilitarianism.^[6][1] In A Fragment on Government (1776) he called it a "fundamental axiom" that "it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong".^[2] He held that people are ruled by "two sovereign masters", pleasure and pain, and set out the theory's basic elements in An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, printed in 1780 and published with additions in 1789.^[1][2]

To measure the value of a pleasure or pain, Bentham listed seven dimensions, commonly called the "felicific calculus" (a term he did not use) or the "hedonic calculus".^[2][1][4]

Bentham presented this as a model of the ideal calculation, not a routine for every act, and treated past experience as a sufficient guide in most situations.^[2]

How did John Stuart Mill change Bentham's theory?

John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) was a follower of Bentham who disagreed with him about the nature of happiness.^[1] His book Utilitarianism first appeared in 1861 as three articles in Fraser's Magazine and was published as a separate book in 1863.^[5] In it he stated the "Greatest Happiness Principle": actions are right "in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness".^[1]

Bentham had held that pleasures differ only in quantity, not in quality.^[1] Some contemporaries of Bentham and Mill objected that hedonism lowered human life to the level of animals, since, as Bentham said, a simple game such as push-pin is as good as poetry if it gives as much pleasure.^[3] Mill replied that some pleasures are more valuable in kind, including "the pleasures of intellect, of the feelings and imagination, and of the moral sentiments", and he ranked pleasures by the preferences of people who had experienced both.^[5][3] In one of his most famous sentences, he wrote that it is "better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied".^[5] Many philosophers have argued that this "qualitative hedonism" is not a consistent position.^[5]

What is the difference between act and rule utilitarianism?

Act utilitarians apply the principle of utility case by case: the right action is the one that creates more well-being than any other action available.^[4] They accept rules of thumb but say a rule should be broken whenever breaking it does more good.^[4]

Rule utilitarians apply the principle to rules instead: an action is justified if it follows a justified moral rule, and a rule is justified if including it in the moral code would produce more utility than other possible rules or no rule at all.^[4] The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy compares rule utilitarianism to a stop sign, which tells every driver to stop, and act utilitarianism to a yield sign, which leaves the decision to each driver.^[4]

According to the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, the contrast was not sharply drawn until the late 1950s, when Richard Brandt introduced the terms, so Bentham and Mill sometimes applied the principle to actions and sometimes to rules, and scholars still debate which view they held.^[4][1]

What are the main objections to utilitarianism?

Justice and rights. In a thought experiment called Transplant, five hospital patients will die without new organs, and a sixth patient who is in for routine tests could be killed to save all five.^[3] With the right details filled in, killing the one seems to maximize utility, a result most people find abominable.^[3] Some rule utilitarians reply that a public rule allowing doctors to do this would undermine the trust that medicine depends on.^[3] A similar case involves a judge who could stop deadly riots by punishing an innocent person.^[4]

Demandingness. Critics also say the theory demands too much: on a strict reading, buying a $100 pair of shoes instead of giving the money to a charity that could save a life would be wrong.^[3] Some utilitarians, including Peter Singer, accept the demand: in a famous article, Singer argued that people should keep giving to those in dire need until giving more would harm them more than it helps the recipients.^[3][4] Another response, often called "satisficing" consequentialism, gives up maximizing and requires only doing enough good.^[3]

Measuring happiness. It has often been said that applying Bentham's calculus is impractical.^[2] Comparing different people is another problem, especially for preference utilitarians: asking what each person would choose does not show whose preference is stronger, and each proposed solution has drawn criticism.^[3] Making the case for act utilitarianism, the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy answers that people measure well-being all the time, such as when choosing which of two sufferers gets the only medicine.^[4]

Who developed utilitarianism after Mill?

Henry Sidgwick (1838–1900) wrote The Methods of Ethics (1874), one of the best-known works of utilitarian philosophy.^[1] It compared egoism, intuition-based morality and utilitarianism, treated utilitarianism as the more basic theory, and raised the question of whether to aim at total or average happiness.^[1] G. E. Moore later rejected the classical view that only pleasure is good, arguing that beauty is also good in itself.^[1]