CHAPTER 8

• Jeremy Bentham


  Actions are right if they tend to produce happiness and wrong if they tend to produce pain
• Introduction

  1. Discuss the moral theory of Utilitarianism

  2. Look at basic principles of utilitarianism

  3. Evaluate morality of individual and societal moral decisions

  4. Learn Bentham's act-utilitarianism and Mill's rule-utilitarianism

  5. Examine criticisms against utilitarianism

  6. Evaluate moral situations based on utilitarianism's principles
• Jeremy Bentham was born in Houndsditch, London, England, in 1748
• Jeremy Bentham learned Latin and Greek at the age of four and completed his bachelor's and master's degree at Queen's College, Oxford
• Utilitarianism was founded in the 18th century and is still considered one of the most influential moral theories
• Learning Outcomes

  1. Define utilitarianism and distinguish between Bentham and Mill's versions, particularly act and rule utilitarianism

  2. Examine criticisms on utilitarianism

  3. Evaluate strengths and weaknesses of utilitarianism

  4. Apply utilitarianism in analysing moral issues in daily life or society
• Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill are introduced in the chapter on utilitarianism
• Bentham equates utility with happiness or pleasure
• Utilitarianism


  • Consequences and Happiness as the Bases of Morality
• Bentham's principle of utility states that actions are judged based on their tendency to augment or diminish the happiness of the party involved
• Jeremy Bentham advocated for equal rights of women, animal rights, abolition of slavery, physical punishment, and the death penalty
• Maximizing happiness means calculating the consequences of actions and choosing the action that produces the greatest happiness
• Bentham contends that the right thing to do is to choose the action that will make everyone affected by the action happier than its alternative
• Nobody in their normal state of mind wants to experience pain for pain's sake
• For Bentham, utility or happiness is the main criterion by which we should judge whether an action is right or wrong
• For Bentham, happiness should be the ultimate criterion of morality
• Philosophers such as Epicurus, Aristotle, and Socrates have identified happiness as the motivation and end of human actions
• Bentham argues that we ought to maximize happiness and choose actions that produce greater happiness
• Socrates believes that when we act, we do so with the hope that it will make us happy
• Utility is what produces happiness or pleasure and what prevents pain or unhappiness
• Bentham uses the hedonic calculus to measure the total amount of happiness based on seven factors: intensity, duration, certainty or uncertainty, propinquity, fecundity, purity, and extent
• These philosophers regard happiness as an intrinsic human desire and believe that we all love pleasure and abhor pain
• Utility

  Property in any object that tends to produce benefit, advantage, pleasure, good, or happiness, or to prevent the happening of mischief, pain, evil, or unhappiness
• The hedonic calculus measures the quantity of happiness by evaluating each possible action in view of factors like intensity, duration, certainty, and extent
• Epicurus believes that the good life consists in the life of pleasure, free from any form of physical and bodily pain
• Jeremy Bentham: '"When a man attempts to combat the principle of utility, it is with reasons drawn, without his being aware of it, from the very principle itself"'
• Utilitarianism involves calculating pain over pleasure to make decisions based on maximizing happiness
• Intensity of action

  The more intense the action, the better it is
• Bentham's Classic Act-Utilitarianism requires performing hedonistic calculations for each possible action in every particular situation
• Duration of happiness

  The longer the happiness lasts, the better it is
• Extent of people affected by an action

  An action that makes more people happy than unhappy must be preferred
• Certainty of action

  The more certain an action is to produce happiness, the better it is
• Bentham argues that the maximization of happiness is the ultimate principle by which we judge the morality of an action
• Classic act-utilitarianism considers every single action as unique and requires unique calculation based on the possible results of particular actions
• Act-utilitarianism needs no rules or norms to be taken into consideration in the calculation, as in the case of rule-utilitarianism
• Act-utilitarianism involves a crude calculation of pain and happiness
• Objections to Bentham's Utilitarianism
• Utilitarianism is concerned with the direct consequence of an action
• Consider the case of lying


  Its rightness or wrongness depends on its results
• Utilitarianism lacks the moral force to condemn actions that are considered intrinsically wrong, regardless of the amount of happiness they produce