Act Utility

• 'Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure.' Jeremy Bentham

  • Humans are Hedonistic
• 'Push pin is of equal value with the arts and sciences of music and poetry'
• Definition and type of theory

  Deontological

  Secular

  Teleological

  An ethical theory that states that the morally right action is the action that produces the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest amount of people.
• Act Utility

  You must act in the immediate circumstances to bring about the action with the most amount of pleasure and least amount of pain.
• Hedonic/Felicific Calculus


  A way of calculating the benefit or harm of an act through seven criteria:

  • Fecundity
  • The snowball effect, rather than one instance of pleasure, will the act lead to others?
  • Intensity:
  • How intense is the pleasure/pain
• Jeremy Bentham


  Aimed to bring about equality, he wanted society to be based on utilitarianism.

  1748-1852

  Equates hedonism with happiness

  Developed Utilitarianism.
• Context

  Bentham wanted reform w/o the need for religious authority

  At the time of development, there were radical social changes due to the industrial revolution.

  Farmers moved to the city but eventually became abusive factory owners.

  Oppression, poverty, homelessness and alcoholism.

  Society believed that God placed you in the class you were in and there is nothing you can do to change that. God chose people to be rich or poor.

  Modern-day 'liberalism' can be traced back to Bentham and Mill.
• Jim and the Indians - Bernard Williams


  Jim (an explorer) finds twenty Indians tied up, the captain explains that the Indians will be killed. If Jim kills one Indian, then one dies. If he doesn't, they all get shot.

  Utilitarianism would say kill one.

  Williams was arguing that our ethical life is too untidy to be captured by any systematic moral theory.
• Trolley Problem

  Train heads towards five workers, or switch the line and only kill one worker. What if the worker has a cure for cancer? What if the worker is your mother?

  Utility: Kill one, save more. It is impartial, doesn't consider personal attachments.
• Strengths of the Calculus

  Impartial

  Democratic

  Every person is counted as one
• Weaknesses of the calculus

  Is quantifying happiness possible?

  Cumbersome, hard to apply when faced w/ an immediate dilemma.

  Teleological, based on predictions

  Pleasure and Pain are subjective
• David Hume and Hutchinson's Influences

  HUME:

  • Ethics should be based on what is most useful

  HUTCHINSON:

  • 'Greatest happiness for the greatest number of people'.

  Neither Hume nor Hutchinson were utilitarians as it is the joining of the idea of usefulness and happiness that makes this ethical theory.