Utilitarianism 

Utilitarianism is a theory of morality, which advocates actions that foster happiness or pleasure and opposes actions that cause unhappiness or harm. When directed toward making social, economic, or political decisions, a utilitarian philosophy would aim for the betterment of society as a whole.

Utilitarianism, in normative ethics, a tradition stemming from the late 18th- and 19th-century English philosophers and economists Jeremy Benthem and John Stuart Mill according to which an action is right if it tends to promote happiness and wrong if it tends to produce the reverse of happiness—not just the happiness of the performer of the action but also that of everyone affected by it. Such a theory is in opposition to egoism, the view that a person should pursue his own self-interest, even at the expense of others, and to any ethical  theory that regards some acts or types of acts as right or wrong independently of their consequences. Utilitarianism also differs from ethical theories that make the rightness or wrongness of an act dependent upon the motive of the agent, for, according to the utilitarian, it is possible for the right thing to be done from a bad motive. Utilitarians may, however, distinguish the aptness of praising or blaming an agent from whether the act was right.

The Goodness of an action came in how much utility it produced rather than the inherent characteristics of the action.

Video 1 - this is excellent as explains the idea of Utilitarianism really well. 

Utilitarianism is a word we hear from time to time, but few of us know what it means. Utilitarianism is the method most people use to decide whether an action is right or wrong. We decide the moral merits of what we do on whether the consequences of that action are good or bad. But utilitarianism has recently been in the firing line of the press and radio and by some moral philosophers.

Utilitarianism has been around a long time. John Stuart Mill,, the 19th-century moral philosopher who was its greatest protagonist, calls it the happiness principle, which he stated as follows:

Actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.

The reverse of happiness is giving pain to others, or harming them. On harm, Mill says :

The moral rules which forbid mankind to hurt one another (in which we must never forget to include wrongful interference with each other’s freedom) are more vital to human well-being than any maxims, however important …

And a little later in his book Utilitarianism, Mill argues:

A person may possibly not need the benefits of others; but he always needs that they should not do him hurt.

We cannot help but agree with those statements – that each of us has a major need, perhaps our dominant need, not to be harmed. But also, if we have suffered some harm, some wrong, we want that harm to be redressed.

The harm could come in any of a dozen different ways. Directly, by physical damage. Or indirectly, by being misled by a false advertisement, or by an email scam. And if we are suffering, or in difficulties, we deeply appreciate help to relieve those difficulties.

Mill claims in fact that utility embodies the Golden Rule, “Do unto others as …”

Utilitarianism under attack

But utilitarianism is under attack. In a recent article for the ABC Religion and Ethics website, Thomas Wells tore apart Peter Singer’s plea for humane treatment of animals.

In the article, Wells attacked Singer’s path-breaking book Animal Liberation. Wells describes Singer’s “official utilitarian argument” as “flawed”, “mistaken”, “incoherent” and “implausible”. He repeats that the book carried a “utilitarian line” or “utilitarian argument” on several occasions.

The title of Wells’ attack is also a little incomprehensible. “Does the utilitarian argument for vegetarianism add up?” Utility, as Wells should be informed, does not advocate vegetarianism.

Another attack came in a University of Melbourne supplement carried by Fairfax media a few days later. Laura Soderlind argued that utilitarianism, “which still influences current ethical thought”, is often summarised as the outcome that produces “the greatest good for the greatest number”.

That means that we can torture people to get information helpful to a good cause, she tells us. Or that an assassination of Adolf Hitler, which would have saved millions of lives, would have been morally justified.

Unfortunately for Soderlind’s argument, utility does not say that. We are to treat even an Adolf Hitler, or a terrorist, as a member of the human race. Mill’s assertion, “the moral rules which forbid mankind to hurt one another”, is buried deep in human emotions. They are the reason there has been such an outcry against the CIA torturing detainees at Guantanomo Bay.

The last attack to mention is more serious, for it is in a “best-selling” textbook by an internationally known ethicist Will Kymlicka, used by students taking courses in justice and in ethics across our universities. Kymlicka gives several types of utilitarianism, concentrating his attack on Jeremy Bentham, a forerunner to Mill, and on Singer. He makes no mention at all of Mill’s “do no harm”.

Misrepresenting utilitarianism today

Bentham gave us “the greatest good for the greatest number”, an aphorism that no moral philosopher has endorsed since, and that even Bentham may have back pedalled on.  . It is also the version that Soderlind says gives us approval to torture.

Singer advocated a version termed preference Utilitarianism in his book Practical Ethics. Singer asserts that we should try to meet peoples’ preferences. Kymlicka makes no mention at all of Mill’s “do no harm”, although it is a universal prescription for moral action.

Video 2 - slightly dull but it does explain Utilitarianism.  

The following video is a simple but superb explanation of some aspects of Utilitarianism.