Utilitarianism

In consequentialism, the consequences of actions are central to the moral judgment of those actions.
An action in itself is not right or wrong; it is only the consequence of action that is morally relevant. We
shall limit ourselves to one type of consequentialism: utilitarianism. Utilitarianism is characterized by
the fact that it measures the consequences of actions against one value: human pleasure, happiness
or welfare.

The only moral criterion for good and bad lies in the utility principle: the greatest happiness of the
greatest number (of the members of the community). This principle is the only and sufficient ground
for any action – both for individuals and collectives (e.g. companies or government). It gives us a
reason to act morally. Moral terms like ‘proper’, ‘responsible’, and ‘correct’ only are meaningful if they
are used for actions that are in agreement with the utility principle. The greatest happiness can be
determined quantitatively according to the founder of utilitarianism Jeremy Bentham. He believed that
we can calculate the expected pleasure or pain and can even indicate quite accurately how much will
be produced by a given action. Here, pleasure and pain are given in terms of a measurable result,
which can be made suitable for calculation. So, utilitarianism requires drawing up a moral balance
sheet or a cost-benefit analysis to determine what the action with the best consequences is. The costs
and benefits for each possible action must be weighed against each other. The action with the best
result (providing the most utility) is the one to be preferred. According to Bentham, money can even
be used to express quantities of pleasure or pain, because these experiences can (almost) always be
bought and sold. The idea behind the calculation above is quite simple: an action is morally right if it
results in pleasure, and it is morally wrong is it gives rise to pain.

To find out which action leads to the most happiness for the greatest number of people, we need to
count the pleasure and pain of all individuals. This is no simple matter, because pleasure cannot be
measured objectively. First, the pleasure of different people cannot be compared; pleasure is a rather
subjective term. A person can enjoy a composition by Mozart, while someone else experiences this
quite differently. Second, it is not easy to compare actions: is reading a good book worth more than
eating an ice cream? While applying this hedonistic calculus this will often lead to problems, because
it is not clear how much pleasure a given experience produces for each person. How much pleasure
do social contacts, our health, or our privacy give us? Since this is not clear, making moral judgments
about human actions becomes hard.

One of the main criticism is that that the position of individuals cannot always be protected if the
calculation indicates that the pleasure of the majority outweighs the unhappiness of a few individuals.
This could result in the exploitation and abuse of minorities, because classic utilitarianism does not
say anything about the division of pleasure and pain among people. To deal with this problem, John
Stuart Mill (1859) has formulated the freedom principle: "everyone is free to strive for his/her own
pleasure, as long as they do not deny or hinder the pleasure of others". Mill illustrates this principle
using the example of drunkenness. The right to interfere with someone who is drunk only arises when
the person who is drunk starts to do harm to others.The freedom principle is also known as the no-
harm principle: "one is free to do what one wishes, but only to the extent that no harm is done to
others". However, the principle can hardly ever be applied in full, since any moral problem involves
possible harm to others, or at least the risk of harm.

Next to this there is the problem of distributive justice. Distributive justice refers to the value of having
a just distribution of certain important goods, like income, happiness, and career. Utilitarianism can
lead to an unjust division of costs and benefits, even under Mill’s freedom principle. It is a tricky
question because numerous issues in technology are concerned with this problem, such as how the
risks and benefits of technology should be justly distributed (see module 9).

Finally, certain actions are morally acceptable even though they do not create pleasure and some
actions that maximize pleasure are morally unacceptable. In the next reading we will see that Kant
always considers lying to be morally wrong, even if it results in more or maximal pleasure in certain
situations. According to utilitarianism, even the most fundamental rules, such as the human rights
formulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), can be broken if the positive
consequences are greater than the negative ones: ‘the end justifies the means’. On utilitarian grounds,
an engineer could be asked to bend a fundamental rule of professional conduct because of the positive
consequence it would have. Say, for example, that an engineer is asked to falsify the measurements
he gave in a report by the party commissioning the work, because the correct measurement results
would have major negative consequences, such as the payment of damages or bankruptcy. According
to the traditional utilitarian view, this behaviour would be justified in a certain situation. This traditional
view is known as act utilitarianism (Bentham's utilitarianism) because it judges the consequences of
individual acts. A solution to this problem is proposed by one variant of utilitarianism: rule utilitarianism.
Rule utilitarianism recognizes the existence of moral rules, if only because life would be very
complicated without them. For each situation we would have to judge whether it was morally correct
or not, because each situation is slightly different from another. Rule utilitarianism looks at the
consequences of rules (in contrast with actions) to increase happiness. Though the falsifying of
measurements may increase societal utility in a specific situation, a rule utilitarian will not allow it
because the rule ‘measurement data should be presented correctly’ generally promotes happiness
within society. If such a rule withstands the test of promoting happiness then it turned into a moral rule.

Reference

Mill, J.S. (1859). On liberty. London: John W. Parker and Son.