Consequentialism

Consequentialism evaluates actions on the basis of how much good they produce. This raises two issues:

1. Good for whom?

2. What counts as good?

For (1), we could say that the only individual who counts is the agent (ethical egoism), or the agent plus the agent’s group, or all persons, or all sentient beings, including animals (utilitarianism).

For (2), we could say that there is only one good thing, happiness, and that everything else is good only as a means to happiness; or we could say that there are several goods such as happiness, knowledge, virtue, or pleasure.

Leaving (1) aside for the moment, with respect to (2) there are at least three reasonable options available: 

1. Hedonistic consequentialism, which identifies the good with pleasure and absence of pain (this is utilitarianism).

2. Subjectivist consequentialism, which identifies the good with the satisfaction of individual preference.
Problem: It collapses the desirable into the desired.  But the two at times don't coincide.  For example:

o People often don't know what's good for them or are unable to choose it because of lack of information, irrationality, false consciousness, or weakness of the will.

o One might argue that some things, e.g., love, beauty, friendship, are good, no matter whether they be desired or not.

3. Welfare consequentialism, which identifies utility with the satisfaction of interests rather than mere preferences.
Problem: it's hard to come up with a list of ‘true’ (vs. merely perceived) interests.

Utilitarianism: John Stuart Mill

1) The basic principle of Mill's Utilitarianism is the greatest happiness principle (PU): an action is right insofar as it maximizes the good (Utility), which Mill identifies with happiness.
NOTES:

• Each person's happiness, including the agent’s, counts as much as anyone else's; what one should do is to maximize the aggregate amount of happiness. Hence, Utilitarianism is not a form of ethical egoism.
• PU introduces a gradation of right and wrong actions.  However, the best action (the one we should engage in) is that which, among the available options, maximizes general utility.  Consequently:
1. If act X produces much happiness, it doesn't follow that X the moral (i.e., the best) act.  There may be other available options which produce more general utility.
2. If act X produces unhappiness, it doesn't follow that X not the moral act.  All the available options, including doing nothing, may be bad, and X may be the 'least bad', as it were.

2) Happiness is:

1. Pleasure and absence of pain
2. The only desirable end, the final good. Every other desirable thing is so either for the pleasure it provides or as a means to pleasure.
   Objection: "Happiness is pleasure" is a doctrine worthy of swines.
   Utilitarian reply:

1. Bentham: Pleasures are all qualitatively alike; however, they can be graded on the basis of intensity, length, certainty, temporal closeness, fruitfulness and purity.  It turns out that higher pleasures are ultimately better and therefore should be preferred on the basis of UP.
2. Mill:

• pleasures can be distinguished not only quantitatively, but qualitatively as well.
• It turns out that those who are equally acquainted with both higher and lower pleasures prefer the former.
• the best explanation of this preference is that humans have a sense of dignity in some proportion to their higher faculties, and that dignity is an essential component of happiness, so that any pleasure conflicting with it is rejected.
  Problems:
  What's the evidence that people well acquainted with both higher and lower pleasures prefer the former?
  Is the appeal to dignity in appropriate?  In particular, what's the evidence that a sense of dignity is an essential component of happiness? Does Mill run the risk of making the satisfaction of the sense of dignity a final good on a par with pleasure?

Note that since the maximization of pleasure is at the root of PU, Utilitarians take into consideration not only persons but other sentient creatures (non-human animals) as well.

3) "Proof" of PU
No strict proof can be given in issues of ultimate ends because it would involve evaluating basic values, which cannot be done.
However, some evidence that general happiness (i.e., pleasure & absence of pain) is the ultimate good can be given:

1.   The only proof X is visible is that it's actually seen. Similarly, the only proof X is desirable is that it's actually desired.
2.   No reason can be given that happiness desirable but that it's actually desired.
3.   Each person desires his own happiness as the ultimate end, since all we desire we desire for the sake of happiness.
4.   Hence, happiness is the ultimate good for each person.
5.   Hence, general happiness is the ultimate good for the aggregate of all persons.

Problems:

• is-ought fallacy; from the fact that something is desired it doesn't follow that it is desirable.  (Normally, descriptive statements don't entail normative statements)
• fallacy of composition from (4) to (5).
  Reply: perhaps, Mill's point is that since X's happiness is an intrinsic good for X, each person's happiness is intrinsically good for each person because of the universalizability principle.
• Happiness is unattainable in this life; hence it can't be our ultimate end, because pursuing what's unattainable is irrational.
  Reply: De facto, happiness through time isn't raptuous pleasure, which can last just a few moments or some unattainable pleasure. What one means by a happy life is one of some raptuous moments, as few pains as possible, many and various pleasures, with a "predominance of the active over the passive."  Hence, happiness is attainable.

4)  The hedonistic calculus follows the pattern of cost-benefit analysis (CBA), which involves 5 basic steps:

1. Determine the alternative courses of action
2. Determine the consequences of each alternative
3. Assign value to the consequences of each alternative
4. Calculate the net benefit (cost) for each alternative
5. Choose the alternative which optimizes net benefits
   
   

Problems:

• Step (1): How does one know that all the feasible alternatives have been considered?  This is especially true in policy decisions because CBA is very expensive.
• Step (2): Often it's very hard to determine the consequences of an action or a policy. In fact, strictly speaking it’s impossible
  Reply:
  We do what we can.  If the objection were good, then there would be no point in planning ahead or in distinguishing a wise man from a fool.
• Because we cannot know the future with certainty, we can never know with certainty that we have done the right thing, which means that we can never know we have been moral

Reply: M. distinguishes

o the morality of the action, which depends only on the consequences and not on the agent’s intentions

o the morality of the agent, which depends on the intention of the agent and not on the consequences of the action.

So, if I acted because I felt duty-bound to maximize general happiness and strove to do it, then I am a moral agent irrespective of whether my action is moral or not.

• Often there's no time to perform any sort of calculation.
  Reply:
  Then we can use rules of thumb which a long experience has shown to be usually successful.  This is why even if a rule of thumb fails in a particular case, we don't automatically discard it.

An example of utilitarian decision: sending the flowers to the old lady instead of buying the ticket for the soccer match.

Thought Questions: 

· From a utilitarian point of view, was the US morally justified in dropping atomic bombs on Japan?

· Is the death penalty morally justified?

· Should I keep a promise if breaking it would maximize happiness?

5) The sanctions of PU.
What is the motive for following PU?

· External sanctions:

o human, to the extent society is rational.

o divine, since God is good and wants our happiness.

• Internal sanction:
  the feeling of duty towards the happiness of our fellow creatures.  This feeling probably not innate but in accordance with the social feelings of humankind. 

6) Mill distinguishes two types of moral duties:

1. Imperfect duties, the particular performance of which is left to our own decision, as in the duty of charity

2. Perfect duties, virtues such that a correlative right is possessed by person or persons, as in the duty to respect property, which is associated to a right to property.

Justice is associated with perfect duties, and PU determines which rights are possessed by individuals. For Utilitarianism, rights are parasitic on general happiness.  So, for Mill one has a right only if society benefits from it.  This may be sufficient to guarantee certain rights, e.g., to security (otherwise vigilantism), to free speech (society is better off with free market of ideas), property (more goods to go around) etc. So, Mill can claim that certain acts are not just wrong because they don't maximize utility, but unjust as well because they impinge on one's right.

7) General problems with Utilitarianism. Some of the problems below overlap.

A) Distribution Justice:

PU tells us to maximize happiness.  But one can (perhaps surreptitiously) maximize total utility irrespective of distributive justice, need or merit e.g., by making few undeserving and already happy people fabulously happy at the expense of many rather unhappy, deserving people.  Conversely, PU might require radical, and many would say unjust, redistribution of property from the minority to the majority.  
Replies:

· Society does not distribute happiness but goods (e.g., money) which generate happiness in people who have them.  But, the law of diminishing marginal utility tells us that goods produce more happiness in those who have few of them than in those who have many (if you give $ 1,000 to Bill Gates, he won't even notice; if you give them to me, I'll be ecstatic).  Hence, other things being equal, people in need should be satisfied before people with no need.  S

· Since gaining desert involves disutility (e.g., work, stress etc.), other things being equal, deserving people are capable of greater marginal utility than non-deserving   ones, and hence should be satisfied before non-deserving ones. 

· The need for stability and security in the planning of one's life would drastically limit any radical redistribution of property to the majority.

· We want to give people incentives to do things that produce happiness, and this may include appropriate rewards.

NOTE: these are, however, contingent reasons; nothing in utilitarianism is essentially against drastic redistribution of any sort.

B) The end justifies the means:

Replies:

1. Paley’s distinction between particular and general consequences of an action

2. Distinction between Act Utilitarianism and Rule Utilitarianism (not in Mill):

· Act Utilitarianism, which evaluates an individual act A on the basis of its predicted actual consequences.  Whether other people would also perform A is relevant only to the extent that it is likely they would.

· Rule Utilitarianism, which evaluates an individual act A by appealing to a rule R, and R on the basis of its predicted consequences if everyone were to follow R.
NOTE: R here is not a mere rule of thumb, but an essential component of the evaluation of A.
Problem: Do exceptions to rules (e.g., stealing if starving) make Rule Utilitarianism degenerate into Act Utilitarianism?

C) Rights:

PU tells us to maximize general happiness. But happiness might be maximized by trampling on someone’s or some group's rights. This is very bad because the moral obligations involving rights are especially stringent. It’s true that Utilitarianism has a theory of rights, but many have questioned its power

Some controversial cases:

• The magistrate and the threatening mob
• The fat man in the cave.
• The organ harvesting case
• Omelas
  
  

Thought Question: Could Paley help here? Rule Utilitarianism? 

D) Replaceability (impersonality).

Utilitarianism seems to view people as vessels of pleasure and pain rather than as persons: as long as utility is transferred from one subject to the other without spillage, as it were, the utility level remains the same.  This seems to be the source of problems (A) and (B).
Reply: Impersonality guarantees impartiality, namely that each individual is treated the same when it comes to happiness.
Duplication: Impersonality is not a necessary condition for impartiality. Impartiality can be achieved otherwise, e.g., by analogues of Rawls’s original position.

E) Integrity (B. Williams’ essay)

F) Supererogation:

There is a traditional distinction among:

1. morally permissible acts, e.g., having a drink before going to sleep.  These are, one might say, morally neutral acts which common morality neither commands nor forbids save in special circumstances.
2. morally obligatory acts, e.g., refraining from murder or telling the truth.  These are the sort of actions morality legislates about.
3. morally supererogatory acts, e.g., jumping (vs. merely throwing a line) into a raging river to save a perfect stranger.  Here too common morality has little to say, since nobody can be asked to be a hero, save in special circumstances.

Utilitarianism seems to collapse (1) and (3) into (2).  Every act has some consequences, and hence comes under the purview of PU.
Reply:
It may be the case that people are happier if morality doesn't mold every aspect of their lives. If so, then PU may demand that (1) and (3) not be collapsed into (2).