Notes on Utilitarianism

Hi, all. Many of you will be out for the next couple of days, so I am posting my entire set of notes on Utilitarianism for you. Please see me if you have any questions and especially if you get lost or confused.

Utilitarianism:
The value of consequences determines moral rightness. But consequences for whom? Maximize goodness for all people.

Intrinsic and Extrinsic Value: the possession of properties intrinsic to a thing or properties by virtue of a thing’s relation to other things. A thing’s value is based on either its intrinsic or extrinsic properties. Pleasure has intrinsic value. Epicureanism (hedonism) says yes. Pleasure is the highest good of happiness. But what of virtue (Stoics) a good will (Kant) or knowledge (Ross)?

“Ideal” Utilitarianism recognizes a plurality of things that are intrinsically good, such as virtue and knowledge.

Problems for Utilitarianism:
1) How can we predict the actual as opposed to intended consequences of our actions for all people who might be affected by them and for all acts available to us in a given situation, since the actual consequences are what determines rightness?

2) What about cases where the consequences seem irrelevant, such as truth telling and keeping promises? Truth telling and promise keeping are distinct from their consequences. If they are morally relevant, then utilitarianism has not taken morally relevant factors into consideration.

3) What about rights and justice? What happens when fundamental rights conflict with duty? If there are human rights, then having them doesn’t depend on the consequences of honoring them. Otherwise, not doing so can be justified if a greater good would come about by violating some or all of those rights in a given situation. Also, sometimes the greater good results from acting unjustly or unfairly. Is utilitarianism committed to saying that injustice would be worth it?

Mill tried to handle problem one, which shows how to solve two as well. To stop and calculate the problem of every task would be impossible. We need not do this for all people in general, nor only those involved. Rather, it is enough to apply rules which have come about form experience as what act should be chosen for the greater consequences.

Rules of morality are generalizable, but also improvable (“subordinate principles”, or secondary rules, are enough; we need not always appeal to the principle of utility, and our subordinate principles can and should be revised wherever possible).

The sub. prin. of keeping promises has proven over time to contribute to the overall maximization of happiness than breaking promises, thus we ought to keep promises, even if in a particular case the consequence will not work out beneficially. The general rule will bring about the greatest good for the greatest number on the whole over time.

All things being equal, however, no decision could be made as to which is better, breaking or keeping a promise. The strict deontologist considers all consequences irrelevant; the moderate deontologist argues that it becomes difficult to determine how much value certain consequences have. In all, though, what is the justification of holding to subordinate principles in a given situation if the consequences of such an action will be worse than not holding to the principle? This solution only makes sense if the consequences of such a decision are not known.

Act and Rule Utilitarianism (AU and RU): The use of rules is a concession to these objections, without giving up util. RU states that even if the consequences are greater in a particular situation, following the rule will have the greatest utility yield in the long run.

AU: An act is right if and only if it produces the most good

RU: An act is right if it accords with a rule that generally produces greater good consequences.

Actual Rule Utilitarianism (ARU) and Ideal Rule Utilitarianism(IRU)
Are the rules actual or ideal? The actual rules of society, or the ideal rules that would be greater if followed? Mill, Moore, and S. Toulmin—Actual Rules.

ARU and IRU can produce conflicting results, but both tend to appear less than consequentialist. With ARU, it is no longer the consequence of a particular situation that matter, but the consequences following the general rule.

Why sacrifice the good in particular situations? And how else would a rule improve if we did not take into consideration the consequences of particular situations. (Whether we known the result before hand is crucial. If we do, then the argument stands; if we do not, then we have an answer to the question.) ARU has the danger of defining what is right by virtue of the rule and not the consequence.

IRU has the same problem even more. Acting on Ideal rules means ignoring consequences for the sake of the rule, which is no longer consequentialist.

Richard Brandt argues that to adopt IRU and maintain its consequentialism is to act on AU. There is then no difference between the two.

AU, like egoism (EE), faces the challenge of the claims of competing groups. If AU is for all people then, AU creates an impossible conflict to resolve. IRU does not have this problem, since all people would in the long run be better off by following the ideal rule.

G.E. Moore’s Criticism:
In order to know if an act is right, we need to know all the consequences of an act, and every other possible (relevant) acts. It is obvious that many seemingly inconsequential things may change the world in many ways. If this is true we can never know what all the consequences are in an indefinite series of events that could affect thousands of people. Therefore, we cannot know the right or wrong of a particular act.

Mediated and Unmediated consequences: Should we count mediated consequences when making moral assessment? What if your contribution was virtually meaningless and unknowing? E.x., simply giving someone directions, is it relevant if they are going to rob a bank?

“Ripple in the Pond” postulate: that our effect on consequences gradually reduces to zero. There seems no non-self-serving reason to accept this.

What counts as a consequence? Throwing a stone through a window and the hidden Jew example: The two consequences are different, but how? In the latter, other actors are involved that can affect the outcome. How could you know all the outcomes? And whose act is the act a consequence of?

An obvious problem is that mediated consequences, if relevant, leave open the possibility that we become responsible for things outside of our control. For example, gay couple holding hands leads to their being attacked. Are they responsible? Absurd to thing it the couple’s fault. It makes a cause out of something that is not. Do we really bare the responsibility of someone else’s moral failure for such simple facts?

Counting mediated consequences makes it so that any one can make any of our actions bad simply by acting consequently badly on account of them. Which consequences become relevant for moral consideration is an important moral choice. How, and on what basis can it be decided?