Away MAVE

The Distance Mode of MA in Values and the Environment at Lancaster University

401 Ethical Theory and Philosophical Method

Problems with Utilitarianism

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	1. The Experience Machine		4. The Separateness of Persons
	2. The Possibility of a Calculus		5. Shortcomings of Cost and Benefit Analysis
	3. Responsibility for Actions

1. The Experience Machine

The usual reaction of students towards Utilitarianism is that it makes perfect sense. What could possibly be wrong with increasing happiness and decreasing pain? If you think so too, the following thought experiment might lead you to doubt your initial certainties (adapted from Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia, Blackwell, Oxford, pp.42f).

Robert Nozick (1938-2003)

Imagine a sophisticated, unbreakable, reliable machine that could give you any experience you desired. Your brain would be so stimulated that you thought and felt as though you were writing a Booker Prize novel, dating Jennifer Lopez or Brad Pitt, reading your favourite book for the first time, beaming through the universe in command of the Entreprise ("Engage!"), writing a distinction essay about Wittgenstein etc. But all the time, you would be floating in a tank with electrodes attached to your brain.

Think

Would you plug into the machine? If not, why not? What else matters other than happiness and how could you possibly achieve any more happiness?

Recently, the philosophical dilemma behind the experience machine was explored in a Hollywood Production about the life of Truman. The same question suggests itself. Would you want to be Truman who is perfectly happy but whose happy experiences are engineered by a producer using Truman like a marionette? Probably not. Human beings want reality and genuineness in life. If they want to experience nature, they do not want to sit in the cinema however real a simulation can be produced. They want to sit in a meadow or on the bank of a river, on top of a mountain listening to the sounds around them.

Also, pleasurable experiences are not everything human beings desire. According to Robert Nozick who used the example of the experience machine first, human beings want to DO certain things and they want to BE a certain person; a person that is courageous, witty, intelligent or kind, for instance. They do not just want to be somebody who is connected to a machine and experiences pleasure. And classical utilitarianism clashes in other respects with many people’s moral intuitions as the following questions show:

• Would it be acceptable for a utilitarian to kill people suffering from terminal, painful illnesses silently in the night to reduce overall suffering?
• Can a “loner” with no family and friends be killed to provide a kidney for a genius child with an extended family?
• Could genetic engineering be used to create human slaves who would be happy with their lot?

On a strict hedonist utilitarian perspective, these questions would have to be answered in the affirmative. Hence, it seems that something other than happiness and the maximisation of pleasure plays a role in human life. We have seen in the last section that Utilitarianism in its most popular current form is preference Utilitarianism. To have a real experience instead of a simulated experience is a preference, which classical Utilitarianism cannot cater for. Hence, the experience machine throws doubt on older versions of Utilitarianism rather than the modern form of preference Utilitarianism.

Let us therefore now look at criticism which would also affect preference Utilitarianism.

2. The Possibility of a Calculus

Utilitarianism relies on the ability of decision-makers to predict the outcome of an action and to evaluate its benefits and losses in an attempt to maximise benefits. To do so, they need a calculus.

It is not hard to see why someone should want a calculus. It is a method by which anyone, given a set of data about the outcomes of alternative actions, can work out mechanically which outcome is best. This is the dream of the administrator, and it is the inspiration of Bentham's calculus.

The essential prerequisite of such a calculus is a common measure which allows outcomes to be compared and graded. In Bentham's case pleasure is taken to be a homogeneous commodity, of which people's experiences contain different amounts. Pains can be measured on the same scale as pleasures, as negative quantities. Thus it is possible to aggregate the pleasures/pains experienced by each person, and then aggregate the pleasures/pains of a number of people affected by some action, in this way arriving at a single result which gives the total utility of that action.

However, Bentham's calculus is already in difficulties when two variables, duration and intensity, must be measured: How to compare two pleasures, one mild but long-lasting, the other short but intense? But these are not the only variables. Pleasure is not a single value. A long cool drink at the end of a long hot walk, a philosophical conversation with a congenial colleague, thinking about the successful rearing of a brood of rare birds that one has helped to protect - these do not share in some common property of pleasurableness.

Mill's insistence that pleasures differ in quality and not only in quantity is in effect a criticism of Bentham: if he is right there can be no arithmetic calculus of pleasures. But he suggests an alternative method by which pleasures can be compared: pleasant experiences are desired, and some are desired more than others. Two pleasures as disparate as poetry and pub crawling may still be compared, and one rated more valuable than the other, the criterion being whether it is preferred (desired more).

Contemporary utilitarians tend to assess consequences in terms of preference satisfaction. If one assumes that individuals are the best judges of what will satisfy them or give them pleasure, then by collecting information about their preferences one can assess the likely effects of alternative actions upon their happiness. Although preference utilitarianism has therefore made it easier to evaluate benefits and losses of certain actions (one can, for instance, ask people), a number of questions remain.

Can you think of any?

Some that often spring to mind are:

How can the preferences of future generations be established today?
How can preferences of different people be brought onto one scale?
How much pleasure for one person is needed to make up for how much pain for another?

We will see in the last section how cost benefit analysis can be criticised, which will take up some of the above issues.

3. Responsibility of Action (Bernard Williams)

Philosophical texts are notorious for being difficult to read and full of obscure examples. This could certainly be said of Bernard Williams's Against Utilitarianism (of which you will find an extract in the reader, pp.133-142). However, his criticism is one of the most important and certainly worth getting into.

Simplified, Williams claims that Utilitarianism does not sufficiently distinguish two types of actions. First, actions that bring about an outcome straightforwardly ("me" or "you" having planned, wanted and undertaken it). Second, actions that bring about an outcome indirectly ("me" or "you" having failed to prevent it, for instance). These two actions correspond to different degrees of responsibility for Williams. First, the weaker responsibility where a person does not prevent something bad from happening or is forced into something bad that s/he would not haven chosen to do otherwise. Second, the stronger responsibility of having planned and executed a morally bad deed. Utilitarianism does not differentiate between these two types of responsibility (direct and indirect), according to Williams. It does not make people especially responsible only for what they do, but also for what other people to whom they are linked do.

One element of this debate is the acts and omission distinction. If you bring about the same amount of unhappiness by performing an action or by omitting to perform an action, are you responsible to the same degree?

For instance, imagine you came across a car crash scene that was the result of an attempted murder. The victim was still alive and could be saved if an ambulance was to arrive on time. You decide not to call an ambulance. Did you kill the person, because s/he would have lived had you called the ambulance or is the person who brought about the car crash responsible for the death? And if both are responsible are there any differences of degree? For Williams there are as the passer-by has “only” failed to prevent something bad from happening whereas the person who caused the crash planned and executed the deed.

To get a clearer picture of what Williams means by different levels of responsibility, it is best to look at his example of Jim and the Indians (not the most politically correct example, but possibly the most well-known in 20th century ethics).

Jim finds himself in the central square of a small South American town. Tied up against the wall are a row of twenty Indians, most terrified, a few defiant, in front of them several armed men in uniform. A heavy man in a sweat-stained khaki shirt turns out to be the captain in charge and, after a good deal of questioning of Jim which establishes that he got there by accident while on a botanical expedition, explains that the Indians are a random group of the inhabitants who, after recent acts of protest against the government, are just about to be killed to remind other possible protestors of the advantages of not protesting. However, since Jim is an honoured visitor from another land, the captain is happy to offer him a guest's privilege of killing one of the Indians himself. If Jim accepts, then as a special mark of the occasion, the other Indians will be let off. Of course, if Jim refuses, then there is no special occasion, and Pedro here will do what he was about to do when Jim arrived, and kill them all. Jim, with some desperate recollection of schoolboy fiction, wonders whether if he got hold of a gun, he could hold the captain, Pedro and the rest of the soldiers to threat, but it is quite clear from the set-up that nothing of that kind is going to work: any attempt at that sort of thing will mean that all the Indians will be killed, and himself. The men against the wall, and the other villagers, understand the situation, and are obviously begging him to accept. What should he do?

What would you do in that situation?

Or what do you think Jim should do?

Williams's point with this example is that there are different degrees of responsibility for actions. Jim does not want to kill anybody, he is not the one who rounded up villagers in order to shoot them, he is merely a passer-by forced by a stranger into a no-win situation. If he shoots an Indian, with the utlilitarian motive to save 19, he has killed a human being directly. If he refuses to shoot anybody, he will not have killed anybody directly. Pedro will do so and the story could be twisted to say that Jim is responsible, but he is not. Pedro pulls the trigger. He could decide against it, on grounds of integrity or empathy, but he might not. Utilitarianism does not differentiate between these two types of responsibility (direct and indirect). It does not make people especially responsible only for what they do, but also for what other people to whom they are linked do.

Exercise

Make up your own example to distinguish between the two types of responsibility.

4. The Separateness of Persons (John Rawls)

John Rawls, probably the most important political philosopher of the 20th century, criticised utilitarianism in his A Theory of Justice (1971, Oxford University Press, the essence of his critique is on pages: 22-33).

Rawls’ main thesis against utilitarianism is that it does not take the separateness of persons seriously and he arrives at this claim as follows.

The main idea behind utilitarianism is that a society is rightly ordered if the greatest net balance of satisfaction is achieved over the individuals belonging to it. To reach this aim, it is necessary to assume an impartial spectator endowed with the power of sympathy and imagination who maximises interest satisfaction over all those concerned. In some instances, it might be necessary for one person to suffer a loss in order for another to experience a greater gain.

This is something that individuals do all the time, accepting a sacrifice at one moment in time for greater gain in the future in order to maximise interest satisfaction (e.g. deferred gratification). Hence, the well-being of one person is constructed from satisfaction gained and dissatisfaction suffered at different moments in time.

This, according to Rawls, is also what utilitarianism does, maximising interest satisfaction over time. In addition, it maximises interest satisfaction over a range of individuals by treating the whole of society as one entity. In Rawls’ own words (p.26):

The striking feature of the utilitarian view of justice if that it does not matter, except indirectly, how this sum of satisfaction is distributed among individuals any more than it matters, except indirectly, how one man distributes his satisfactions over time.

Hence, in utilitarianism there is no principle constraint on the possibility of causing harm to one section of the population (or an individual) in order to achieve greater benefit for another section of the population (or an individual). A small group of suffering slaves could be justified if they created a larger amount of happiness amongst their masters.

This, according, to Rawls is not justice as he understands it. In his view, persons must be viewed and treated as separate entities and the greater gains of some should not be able to compensate for the lesser losses of others. Rawls’ conclusion on utilitarianism is as follows (p.27):

The correct decision [about what is right and what is wrong in utilitarianism] is essentially a question of efficient administration. This view of social cooperation is the consequence of extending to society the principle of choice for one man, and then, to make this extension work, conflating all persons into one through the imaginative acts of the impartial sympathetic spectator. Utilitarianism does not take seriously the distinction between persons.

Exercise

You will study the rights-based approach in a separate section on Immanuel Kant. For the moment, just think of a situation where you personally would want to be treated as a separate individual and of another situation where you would prefer the maximisation of satisfaction over a range of individuals, you included.

5. Shortcomings of Cost and Benefit Analysis

If a strict utilitarian and a strict supporter of inviolable rights (Rawls, Kant) have to agree on a topic, e.g. shooting or not shooting an innocent person to save ten lives, they will not be able to compromise. Simplified, a utilitarian would shoot, a rights-defender would not. The gap is unbridgeable. However, it is possible to judge both ethical systems on their practicability. For instance, imagine you are a train driver who has lost control over the train. There are two tracks in front of you and you could choose to steer the train onto either. On both tracks, Railtrack employees are working. On the right track, a single worker is fixing a signal. On the left track, a group of workers are improving the track. None of the workers can hear you and you will have to kill somebody.

What do you do?

A utilitarian would chose the right track and kill one life. A rights-defender with strong convictions would not be able to make up his or her mind because the right to life of the Railtrack employees would be violated in both cases. Without utilitarian thinking, no preference for either track could be determined.

Utilitarian thinking leads to results and that is one of its great advantages. It leads to answers for difficult questions in everyday life, in politics, in science etc. Let us take environmental policy making as an example (taken from a forthcoming book by John O'Neill).

Environmental decisions involve conflicts between different values and interests. For instance, one person might favour forest use for the timber trade, whilst somebody else will primarily see its recreational use. As one interest involves cutting down trees which threatens the other interest, conflicts arise. The utilitarian approach argues that losses and gains of agents can be quantified and traded off with each other to decide which option produces the best outcome, e.g. money lost in timber revenues can be traded against well-being from recreational pleasure.

One of the most widely used decision making tools in economics and public policy is cost-benefit analysis. It is assumed that individuals in society have preferences whose satisfaction increases their welfare and that these can be measured by individuals' willingness to pay for their satisfaction. The analyst computes the costs and benefits of any project and decides which one outweighs the other. If benefits outweigh costs then a project is worthwhile. How could this be done in environmental policy making?

Economists have developed sophisticated means to calculate the monetary value of environmental goods. For instance, property values are employed as proxy goods to estimate the price for an environmental good. It is argued that property prices are in part a function of the quality of its environment, and by comparing similar properties in different locations one can infer how much people are willing to pay for a good environment. Once this measure is established, it can be traded off against another measure, for instance trade loss.

Exercise

Cost-benefit analysis is widely used in economics and public policy.
Are there any problems with it?
Stop and think whether you can name any?

Three main objections can be brought forward against cost-benefit analysis in public policy making.

First, a person's willingness to pay for a good is dependent upon their budget, on how much they can afford. The poor, since they have less, will generally express a lower willingness to pay for a good than the rich. Hence, their preferences might be as intense as those of the rich but they will be measured as lower and will count for less. One consequence of the use of raw monetary measures is that the 'efficient' solution will be one in which damages are born by the poor and the benefits by the wealthy.

Second, willingness to pay cannot capture those who can in principle not offer any bid: future generations and non-human animals (some cost benefit evaluations do include future generations, but this cannot be discussed here).

Third, for those who believe in inviolable rights, cost-benefit analysis offers no means to support their beliefs. If a group can be financially compensated for something they lose, and the benefits outweigh the costs, the project will go ahead. A famous example is the Narmada dam project in India, which will displace a small minority of tribal people to provide water for Indian citizens. There is no protection for minorities in cost-benefit analysis.

You have now read a brief introduction to Utilitarianism and a brief introduction to its critics. After the last section, I asked you to consider the pro's and con's of euthanasia from a utilitarian point of view. Has this section changed any of your opinions?

This section was written by Dr Doris Schroeder with the help of notes from Prof John Benson and Dr Kate Rawls