UTILITARIANIS

M
Jeremy Bentham

1748 – 1832
 Brief
• Born in London, England
Biography
• A child prodigy: read as a young
toddler and studied Latin at age
three
• Studied law at Queen’s College,
Oxford, England
• Instead of practicing law, he spent
his life looking for and writing about
ways in which existing laws could be
improved.
 Historical
Background
• Economic, Political, and
Ideological
• The industrial revolution in
England in the second half of
the 18th to 19th century.
• Revolution in Ethics
 Scientific
advancement
 Revolutions (the
American and
French)
 Exploration and
Colonization
 Social and Religious
reform
 Industrialization
 New Modes of
Transportation
 Impacts to
Bentham
• reason and science to explain
human behavior.
• His ethical system was an
attempt to quantify
happiness and the good so
they would meet the
conditions of the scientific
method.
 Defining
AnUtilitarianism
ethical theory that argues for
the goodness of pleasure and the
determination of right behavior
based on the usefulness of the
action’s consequences.
One’s actions and
behavior are good
inasmuch as they are
directed toward the
experience of the greatest
number of people.
 How did the theory
come about?
 Utilitarianism has its origins in the
hedonism of the ancient Cyrenaics (4th
century BCE), and Epicureans
Epicurus (341–270 BCE).
 Bentham lived in a time where many
people lived in squalid conditions as a
result of moving from the self sufficient
country in to the new industrial towns
looking for a better life.
 Bentham’s Contention
and Goal
 He believed that it was wrong
for the masses to live in
unhappiness while the minority
were well off.
 He also wanted to make ethics
quantitative, as Sir Isaac
Newton had made science.
 The Fundamentals of
Utilitarianism
• All humans by nature seek to
attain pleasure and avoid
pain.
“Nature has placed mankind under the
governance of two sovereign masters, pain
and pleasure. It is for them alone to point
out what we ought to do, as well as to
determine what we shall do. On the one hand,
the standard of right and wrong, on the other,
the chain of causes and effects, are fastened
to their throne. They govern us in all we do, in
all we say, in all we think: Every effort we can
make to throw off our subjection, will serve
but to demonstrate and confirm it. In words a
man may pretend to abjure their empire: But,
in reality, he will remain subject to it all the
while.”
Jeremy Bentham, Principles of Morals and Legislation
The Principle of
Utility
• The rightness or wrongness
of an action is judged by its
utility or usefulness to
produce pleasure.
• Because pleasure produces a
feeling of happiness, it is used
interchangeably.
The Principle of
Utility
• The action that produces the
most happiness is the most
moral.
The Hedonistic
Calculus
This is the idea of how to calculate
happiness by adding up the
happiness and subtracting the pain.
This is done by using 7 different
criteria.
 How strong is the pleasure/pain?
1. Intensity How deep or superficial is it?

2. Duration How long will it last? Is it temporary

or permanent?

3. Certainty How likely is it to occur?

4. Propinquity How soon will it occur?

5. Fecundity How likely is the action to produce

more pleasure?

6. Purity Will the pleasure be mixed with

pain?
7. Extent
 Stakeholders: General Public

Rural Life Urban Life

Intensity 2 4
Duration 2 4
Certainty 2 4
Propinquity 5 2
Fecundity 5 2
Purity 5 2
Extent 1 1
TOTAL 22 19
What do we
calculate?
Hedons (positive)/dolors
(negative) may be defined in
terms of:
• Pleasure
• Happiness
• Ideals
• Preferences
 How do we
• calculate?
How many people will be affected,
negatively (dolors - a standard unit
of pain) as well as positively
(hedons - a standard unit of pleasure)
• How intensely they will be affected
• Similar calculations for all available
alternatives
• Choose the action that produces the
greatest overall amount of utility
(hedons minus dolors)
 Exampl
e:
Debating the school lunch program
Benefits
• Increased nutrition for x
number of children
• Increased performance, greater
long-range chances of success
• Incidental benefits to
contractors, etc.
 Benefits
• Cost to each taxpayer
• Contrast with other programs that
could have been funded and with
lower taxes (no program)
Multiply each factor by
• Number of individuals affected
• Intensity of effects
How much can we
quantify?
Pleasure and preference
satisfaction are easier to
quantify than happiness or
ideals.
 Can everything be
quantified?
• Some would maintain that some of
the most important things in life
(love, family, etc.) cannot easily
be quantified.
• Other things (productivity,
material goods) may get
emphasized precisely because they
are quantifiable.
 
Danger
: If it can’t be counted, it doesn’t
count.
Measuring happiness
Most people think that earning lots
of money will make them happy, so
the best utilitarian choice is to
ensure that everyone has a good job
and prosperity.
However, scientific studies show that money
only brings happiness in the short term, and
that it works better for some people than
others. As human beings, then, we actually
don’t know how to make ourselves happy? So
how can we trust ourselves to make moral
decisions on this basis?
Hypothetical story told by Harvard
psychologist Fiery Cushman
When a man offends two volatile
brothers with an insult, Jon wants
to kill him; he shoots but misses.
Matt, who intends only to scare
the man but kills him by accident,
will suffer a more severe penalty
than his brother in most countries.

Are you satisfied with this

assessment of responsibility?
Why or why not?
The Big Man in the
Cave
If utilitarianism is true, the people in
the cave should use the dynamite to
blow the Big Man out of the cave
opening.

Therefore, utilitarianism is not true.

The people in the cave should not

use the dynamite to blow the Big
Man out of the cave.
 The Organ
Harvest
If utilitarianism is true, then the
doctor’s act of killing the janitor
for his organs was morally right.
The doctor’s act of killing the
janitor for his organs was not
morally right.

Therefore, utilitarianism is not

true.
 Human
Rights
With the consequences being the
emphasis of utilitarianism, the problem
that arises is the disregard for human
rights contending that the results are
far greater than the life sacrificed.
There is no moral justification for the
killing of someone other than self
defense.