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DPES 2 – Ch. 7 Eight Theories of Ethics

Utilitarianism
(doctrine that actions are right if they are useful or for the benefit of a majority)

 Consequentialists may differ over what kind of consequences they regard

as good, but they must agree in thinking that, since consequences are
what matter, the end does justify the means
1. We cannot sensibly speak of the consequences of an action. Even if we
agree what to regard as the relevant consequences of an action, we
cannot explain responsibility simply by following chains of consequences;
we also need to consider aims and intentions
2. Exclusive pursuit of good consequences seems to require us to undertake
courses of action that run counter to our sense of justice  dilemma (we
feel)

The Nature of Happiness

 Greatest Happiness Principle (GHP)  people wonder what exactly
happiness is.
 Bentham and Mill  both identify happiness with pleasure; Aristotle
convincingly show this to be a mistake
 Application of utilitarianism to everyday life does not really need an explicit
account of happiness. It is enough to identify happiness and unhappiness
in ourselves and others, and able to distinguish between happy or
unhappy resolutions to difficulties and alternative resolutions with different
merits or demerits (cth: org bisa bedain yg nikahnya bahagia sama yg
nikahnya ngga bahagia)
 There is no one thing that we can label ‘happiness’. Different activities and
styles of life appeal to different people and what makes one person happy
may make another miserable

Measuring Happiness
 We must have some way of estimating and adding up the happiness that
each individual will get as a result of alternative courses of action if we are
to achieve the greatest happiness
 ‘Hedonic calculus’ a list of dimensions along which pleasure should be
measured.
o He distinguishes between different sources of pleasure according to
their intensity, duration and so on, and suggests how these are to be
ranked in importance
 It is true that later utilitarians did use numbers, especially those who
introduced utilitarian conceptions and ideas into economics. Indeed the
principal achievement of one of the most prominent, an English econ-
omist called Jevons, was just to introduce mathematical techniques to
economic theory, and one of the effects of this was the practice of
representing interpersonal comparisons by graphs. The term used by the
economists was not pleasure or happiness, but ‘utility’, and it is this term
that has stuck.
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o But it is easy to mistake the true role of numbers here. No serious

philosopher or economist has supposed that either pleasure or
happiness can be measured in the way that sugar, or rainfall, or earth
tremors can.
 In general human beings have to make comparisons of pleasure in a host
of different contexts, not just for themselves but for others.
 Comparative judgements can be made, and can be represented in
numbers. This is all that need be meant by the phrase ‘measuring
happiness’, and if so, another standard objection to the hedonic focus of
utilitarianism falls.

Distributing Happiness
 GHP tells us that every action we perform should promote the greatest
happiness of the people affected by it. For the moment let us accept this
recommendation. In deciding what to do with respect to any action,
however, there is still a matter to be resolved. How is the happiness which
I produce to be distributed?
 So individual choice must be restricted for the greater happiness of all.

Mill’s ‘Proof’ and Preference Utilitarianism

 The utilitarian doctrine is, that happiness is desirable, and the only thing
desirable, as an end; all other things being only desirable as means to that
end.
 We might express the whole doctrine not in terms of happiness but in
terms of desire satisfaction or preferences – the right action is that
which leads to the satisfaction of the greatest number of desires. This
version of utilitarianism, generally known as preference utilitarianism.
 It seems right to say that happiness is a value, and hence the creation of
happiness a good thing. The question is whether it is the only, or the
supreme value. But it is not obvious that desire satisfaction in itself is a
value at all, just because some desires are bad.

Motivation and the Limitless Moral Code

 First within utilitarianism moral questions and moral demands are
constant.
 Secondly, if happiness is what matters, it cannot matter whose happiness
it is.
 Basis of morality is social agreement, and the other that morality is
ultimately rooted in religion