Utilitarianism

John Stuart and Harriet Taylor Mill

She was a great influence on his intellectual work; some have suggested that she was in fact a co-author.
John Stuart Mill was born in London on May 20, 1806, and was the eldest of son of James Mill. He was educated entirely by his father, James Mill, and was deliberately shielded from association with other boys of his age. From his earliest years, he was subjected to a rigid system of intellectual discipline. As a result of this system, according to his own account, he believed this gave him an advantage of a quarter of a century over his contemporaries. Mill recognized, in later life, that his father's system had the fault of appealing to the intellect only and that the culture of his practical and emotional life had been neglected, while his physical health was probably undermined by the strenuous labor exacted from him. James Mill's method seems to have been designed to make his son's mind a first-rate thinking machine, so that the boy might become a prophet of the utilitarian gospel. He had no doubts at the outset of his career. On reading Bentham (this was when he was fifteen or sixteen) the feeling rushed upon him "that all previous moralists were superseded." The principle of the utility, he says, understood and applied as it was by Bentham, "gave unity to my conception of things. I now had opinions; a creed, a doctrine, a philosophy; in one among the best senses of the word, a religion; the inculcation and diffusion of which could be made the principle outward purpose of a life." Soon afterwards he formed a small Utilitarian Society, and, for some few years, he was one of "a small knot of young men" who adopted his father's philosophical and political views "with youthful fanaticism." A position under his father in the India Office had secured him against the misfortune of having to depend on literary work for his livelihood; and he found that office-work left him ample leisure for the pursuit of his wider interests.

He was already coming to be looked upon as a leader of thought when, in his twenty-first year, the mental crisis occurred which is described in his Autobiography. This crisis was a result of the severe strain, physical and mental, to which he had been subjected from his earliest years. He was "in a dull state of nerves;" the objects of his life for which he had been trained and for which he had worked lost their charm; he had "no delight in virtue, or the general good, but also just as little in anything else;" a constant habit of analysis had dried up the fountains of feeling within him. After many months of despair he found, accidentally, that the capacity for emotion was not dead, and "the cloud gradually drew off". Another important factor in his life was Mrs. Taylor, who co-authored pieces with him. He maintained a close relationship with her for many years while she was married. When her husband died, Mill married her in 1851. His work in connection with the literary journals was enormous. He wrote articles almost without number and on an endless variety of subjects (philosophical, political, economic, social). They began with The Westminster Review and extended to other magazinesespecially The London Review and, afterwards, The London and Westminster Review. They were valuable as enabling us to trace the development of his opinions, the growth of his views in philosophy, and the gradual modification of his radicalism in politics.

His first great intellectual work was his System of Logic, R atiocinative and Inductive, which appeared in 1843. This was followed, in due course by his Essays on some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy (1844), and Principles of Political Economy (1848). In 1859 appeared his little treatise On Liberty, and his Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform. His Considerations on Representative Government belongs to the year 1860; and in 1863 (after first appearing in magazine form) came his Utilitarianism. In the Parliament of 1865-68, he sat as Radical member for Westminister. He advocated three major things in the House of Commonswomen suffrage, the interests of the laboring classes, and land reform in Ireland. In 1865, came his Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy; in 1867, his Rectorial Inaugural Address at St. Andrews University, on the value of culture; in 1868, his pamphlet on England and Ireland; and in 1869, his treatise on The Subjection of Women. Also in 1869, his edition of his father's Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind was published. Mill died at Avignon in 1873. After his death were published his Autobiography (1873) and Three Essays on Religion: Nature, the Utility of Religion, and Theism (1874), written between 1830 and 1870.
 
 

 

The intution behind utilitarianism is that what makes an act right or wrong is its effect on human happiness or welfare. The morality of anything we do should be judged by whether it makes people better off or worse off. What counts as "welfare" or "happiness" is something over which utilitarians differ. The most influential version of utilitarianism is that given by the 19th century English philosopher, John Stuart Mill. He called his thesis "The Greatest Happiness Principle," and it defined welfare or happiness as pleasure. The major competitors to this view are (a) a view that says that welfare is measured by the extent to which one has his or her desires satisfied and (b) a view descending from Aristotle which holds that welfare is a kind of flourishing or thriving, doing well in one’s life overall. See Aristotelean Ethics for an idea of what he thought this flourishing was.

The Greatest Happiness Principle: [the GHP] :

Actions are preferable1 in proportion as they tend2 to produce3 the greatest balance4 of pleasure5 over pain for all6 , undesirable insofar as they tend to produce the greatest balance of pain over pleasure for all.

GLOSS:

[1] The GHP is prescriptive: it tells us what we should do

[2] The GHP assesses how much pleasure/pain an action tends to produce, that is the pleasure or pain caused by an action of that type, or the pleasure/pain caused by that kind of action as a rule, NOT how much pain/pleasure will be produced by that particular act in this time at this place.. (So if I want to know whether I should lie, I ask: What does my experience tell me the results usually are if people lie in similar circumstances, NOT what will be the result if I lie this time.)

                ACT UTILITARIANISM: We judge the rightness or wrongness of an act by the actual consequences that it produces.

                RULE UTILITARIANISM: We judge the rightness or wrongness of an act by the typical or usual consequences of doing that kind of act.

[3] the GHP judges the rightness and wrongness of acts by what they produce, by their consequences, not by any characteristic of the act itself. So no matter what kind of act we’re evaluating from lying to rape, whether that kind of act is right or wrong depends on the consequences that flow from it. A utilitarian cannot say that lying or rape are just plain wrong, no further questions. The wrongness or rightness of any kind of act is always conditional on how things turn out.

[4] It is not the action that tends to produce the most pleasure that is to be chosen, but that which tends to produce the greatest balance of pleasure over pain. An action that produces a great deal of pleasure but also a great deal of pain would not be preferred over an action that produced less pleasure but no pain at all.

[5] Happiness=pleasure or absence of pain. Mill is a hedonist. Other utilitarians consider that other things are good, not pleasure, or not just pleasure.

[6] : It is the pleasure of all that counts, not just my pleasure. Who counts as "all?" All sentient beings, all beings capable of feeling pleasure and pain, which includes some animals.

So when an ACT-UTILITARIAN is trying to determine  what s/he morally ought to do:

 1. She determines  what the options are before her.

(and there may be several something else's that could be done.)

2. For each option, she calculates the costs and benefits to all those who are affected by it.

3. She then subtracts the costs from the benefits.

4. She compares this net amount with the net amount for the other options.

5. The right thing to do is the option that has the greatest balance of benefits over cost. If she is in the unfortunate position where all her options have greater costs than benefits, the right thing to do is the option that has causes the smallest balance of cost over benefit.

When a RULE-UTILITARIAN is trying to determine what he morally ought to do.

1. He determines what kinds of acts are possible for him to do in this situation and then he formulates the various general rules that cover those kinds of acts.

(and there may be several other kinds of act that could be done in situations like this.)

2. For each rule, he then calculates the likely or usual or expected costs and benefits to everyone affected of everyone following it in similar situations.

3. He then subtracts the likely or typical or expected costs of following each rule from the likely or typical or expected benefits of following it

4. He compares this net amount with the net amount for the other rules.

5. The right rule is the one that has the greatest balance of benefits over cost of everyone following it. If he is in the unfortunate position where all  the rules  have greater costs than benefits, the right rule is the one that has the smallest balance of costs over benefits of everyone following it.

6. The right thing to do in this situation is the act that the right rule says you should do. (This is true even if an act-utilitarian calculation would say to do something else.)

The Face of Human Suffering

Shari Sims "O' the Irish Troubles"