PRINCIPLE OF UTILITY

9. 26.23/3.11.24
Objectives
• Understand the principle of utility

• Distinguish Bentham from Mill’s understanding of the

principle of utility

• Apply the distinction

 THINK: The Principle of Utility
• Jeremy Bentham stated, “Our actions are governed by
two sovereign masters – pleasure and pain, given by
nature.”
• The principle of utility is about our subjection to this two
masters.
• First, this principle is about the motivation of our actions
as guided by our avoidance of pain and our desire for
pleasure. This is tantamount to saying we do what is
pleasurable, we do not do what is painful.
• Second, this principle also refers to pleasure as good if
and only they produce more happiness than
unhappiness.
• It is not enough to experience pleasure, it is also to
enquire whether the things we do make us happier,
not just happy. Jeremy Bentham equated happiness is
the same manner as pleasure.
• Bentham was born in London, England in 1748,
February 14.
• Before he died at age 84 in June 6, 1832, he donated
his corpse to the University College of London.
• He does not believe in individual rights nor he
agreed with natural law.
• Known of his penal management system called
panopticon, Bentham advocated economic
freedom, women’s rights, and the separation of
the church and state.
• He also advocated animal rights and the abolition
of slavery, death penalty, and corporal
punishment for children.
• His student James Mill supported Bentham’s principle of utility
who propagated the idea of moral good as happiness and as a
result, happiness is a pleasure.
• According to him, if we find our actions pleasurable, it is because
they are inherently pleasurable in themselves or they eventually
lead to the promotion of pleasure and avoidance of pain.
• To understand the nature of pleasure and pain, Bentham
identified the natural preferability of pleasure which according
to Mill a theory of life.
• The pursuit for pleasure and avoidance of pain in the view of
Bentham and Mill, are not only important principles, they are in
fact the only principle in assessing an action morally.
 IS WIRE-TAPPING AND OTHERS
JUSTIFIABLE
• Wire tapping in the cases of treason, rebellion, espionage, and sedition, is
justifiable because of the principle of utility – that is, to increase happiness
and decrease pain.
• This is also true with building schools and hospitals, alleviate poverty,
eliminate criminality, or improve the quality of life.
• The next question is, what kind of pleasures is morally preferrable and
valuable? Are all pleasures necessarily and ethically good? Does it mean
that because eating or exercising is good, it is morally acceptable to eat and
exercise excessively?
• While supporters of utilitarian principle do not condone excessive pleasure
at the expense of suffering, it cannot be justified on the ground of
utilitarian principle why some people indulged in extravagant pleasures at
the expense of others.
• While Bentham and Mill agree on the value of pleasure, they,
however differ in view of them.
• Mill, born on May 6, 1806, Pentonville, London, United
kingdom, he studied Greek at age three and Latin at age
eight, and wrote a history of Roman Law at age 11. He
suffered nervous breakdown at age 20, then married to
Harriet after 21 years of friendship.
• He died on May 8, 1873 (age 67) in Avignon, France of
erysipelas. His ethical theory and defense of utilitarian view is
contained in his long essay called Utilitarianism.
• He had a strong disagreement with Bentham in that he
distinguish pleasure qualitatively and not just quantitatively.
• Utilitarianism cannot promote pleasure appropriate to pigs and other
animals.
• He understood that there are higher intellectual and lower base pleasure.
• As moral agent, we are capable of searching and desiring higher
intellectual pleasures more than pigs are capable of. We undermine
ourselves if we only and primarily desire sensuality, because we are
capable of higher intellectual pleasure.
• As for crude bestial pleasure, Mill thinks it is degrading because we are by
nature not easily satisfied by pleasures only for pigs.
• Human pleasure are qualitatively different from animal pleasure. It is,
according to Mill, quite compatible with the principle of utility to
recognize the fact that some kinds of pleasure are more desirable and
more valuable than others….the quantity of pleasure should depend on
the quality.
OPPOSITE VIEW OF BENTHAM
• Bentham developed a framework for evaluating pleasure called Felicific
Calculus which a common currency framework that calculates the
pleasure of some actions can produce.
• This framework calculates actions on the basis of intensity or strength
of pleasure, duration, and length of experience pleasure, certainty or
uncertainty, or the likelihood that pleasure will happen, proximity or
remoteness, and how soon there will be pleasure.
• In this way, the indicator allows to measure pleasure and pain in action,
but need to evaluate the tendency to choose these actions by two more
dimensions: fecundity (chance is has of being followed by sensations of
the same kind), and purity (chance it has of not being followed by
sensations of the opposite kind).
• When considering the number of person affected by pleasure or pain,
another dimension is needed – extent.
• Felicific calculus allows the evaluation of all actions and their resultant
pleasure. The actions are evaluated on this single scale regardless of
preferences and values.
• It is in this case that pleasure and pain can only qualitatively differ but
not quantitatively.
• In our analysis, it seems that Mill favors quality over against Bentham on
quantity. For Mill, it is important to experience both and discover which
one is actually more preferred. In the experiment of Mill, it appeared
that actual choices of knowledgeable persons point to higher intellectual
pleasures is more preferrable than purely sensual appetites.
EXPERIENCE
• Put your self in a dire circumstance that forces you to kill an innocent
person in order to prevent many innocent people from dying.
• In considering the principle of utility, what do you think is the right
thing to do?
• The question above arise from The Queen v. Dudley and Stephen, an
English case involving four men stranded in a lifeboat without food
and water (1984). One of them decided to kill the other in order to
eat his flesh for the purpose of surviving or preserving his life. In the
court, the one who killed was charge of murder.
• If you are the judge, how we should judge the action of Dudley and
Stephen killing the boy?
ASSESS
• CONSIDER THIS CASE:

• If there are 15,000 informal settlers live next to nuclear factory in a

country torn by civil war, will you bomb the nuclear factory?

• If you don’t bomb it, it will produce nuclear bombs that can annihilate
one hundred thousand innocent in another country.
CHALLENGE

• Considering the principle of utility, when the only way to prevent

harm to the large number of people is to harm a smaller number of

people, is it always permissible to harm a small number in order to
prevent harm to a large number?
HARNESS
• DISCUSSION WITH YOUR CLASSMATES:

• In the view of Jeremy Bentham’s principle of utility, we should always do whatever produce
the greatest amount of happiness.

• Is that right?

• Suppose we have to choose between building a sports stadium and building a hospital.

Should we build the biggest stadium in the country because there are many sports fans
compared with sick people?

• What do you think?