Ethics: Utilitarianism Essay

Ask a passerby to describe his personal morality, and youll seeming bemuse a complicated explanation filled with ifs, ands, and buts. Ask a utilitarian, and he can give a six-word response superlative tidy for the greatest number. Of course, utilitarianism is not that simple. Like both(prenominal) philosophical system, it is the subject of unceasing debate. Still, for the average reader who is unfamiliar with the jargon that characterizes most philosophy, utilitarianism can be a useful tool in decision making before an action mechanism whether or not to carry it out or, after an action, whether or not a moral choice was made.Most credit the economist Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) as utilitarianisms principal author. Bentham described his thinking as the greatest satisfaction principle, and his idea was elaborated upon in the nineteenth century by buns Stuart loaf in his classic work, Utilitarianism (1863). In that book, Mill develops three vital comp unmatchednts of utilita rianism an emphasis on results, individual comfort, and enumerate felicitousness (by which he promoter the happiness of every peerless affected by an action).Results Mill expanded Benthams definition of utilitarianism to argue that actions are right in proportion as they fly the coop to promote happiness wrong as they tend to produce the turnaround of happiness. 1 This means that utilitarians care only about the results of an action. Other factors that we typically cover when reservation moral judgments about an action, including a persons pauperization or his expectations about the results, do not matter in utilitarianism. A utilitarian would say that a man who shoots another by hazard is guilty of murder, whether or not the shooting was an accident.Conversely, the man with murder in his heart who tries to shoot another but misses cannot be held chastely responsible for the act. In utilitarianism, only the results matter. Individual happiness The second component of util itarianism is Mills idea of happiness, by which he means pleasure. As individuals fashioning moral choices, we should seek to act in ways that maximize happiness and minimize pain (which Mill defines as the reverse of happiness).In promoting the maximum happiness, Mill is not advocating a life of food, sex and sleep. He specifically states that not all pleasures are created equal Few gentleman creatures would consent to be changed into any of the lower animals, he writes, for a control of the fullest allowance of a beasts pleasures no intelligent military personnel being would consent to be a fool, no instructed person would be an ignoramus. 2 For Mill, a hierarchy of pleasures exists, with human pleasures such as screw advance to the top of the list.Falling in love or being travel by a song or poem are greater goods to a utilitarian than eating a delicious sandwich, not because love and music and poetry are different in kind than the physical pleasure of eating, but because t hese are especially profound pleasures. Total happiness The third defining aspect of utilitarianism is its emphasis on the natural happiness, by which Mill means the happiness of all people affected by an action. To decide if an action is moral, a utilitarian will conduct an explanation of the pleasure and pain associated with that act.If the sum total of pleasure outweighs the sum total of pain, the action is considered moral if not, immoral. Take as an example the case of price-fixing, the government activitys setting of minimum prices for goods such as milk to defend farmers from ruin. Is price-fixing moral? Utilitarians would think through this question as follows When the government (as foreign to the free market) sets the bottom-line price for milk, every consumer suffers moderate pain since the government unnaturally raises the apostrophize of milk above what the marketplace, operating according to the laws of supply and demand, would other than charge.Large consumers w ho depend on milk (for example, ice skim over manufacturers) whitethorn suffer severely if the price is kept artificially high. And that increase cost would no doubt be passed on to millions of consumers in the form of change magnitude costs for ice cream. But if the dairy farmers dont get price protection, they may go bankruptin which case a far greater cost would be paid no one would be able to buy milk or milk products. wrong fixing, then, helps farmers stay in business at the expense of ice cream manufacturers and consumers. Is that expense justified?Utilitarians would answer on a case-by-case grounding after a careful balancing of benefits to a few with the increased (though small) cost to the many. 3 Individuals as well as governments can be steer by utilitarian thinking. Take the question of organ gratuity. Is it moral for the family piece of a recently (and perhaps tragically) deceased person to grant doctors permission to harvest their loved ones organs? Utilitariani sms greatest happiness principle demands any personal sacrifice in which the total amount of pleasure produced outweighs the costs in pain, even if the person making the choice receives none of the benefits.Other philosophers place a priority on individual liberty and object to using one person (even a dead person or dead persons carcass parts) for anothers benefit. Utilitarians, by contrast, conclude that such actions are morally necessary. The emotional pain of a family that has lost a loved one is very real. But to utilitarians, the extra pain caused by organ donation is a measure of pain on top of the pain of having already lost a family member.That extra measure of pain must be less than the happiness that results when a life is carry throughd through a transplanted organ. Thus, if the family uses the principle of greatest happiness to guide its decision, then they will make water to the harvesting of organs. A more controversial example of using utilitarianism to make mora l decisions involves the ethics of torture. It is sometimes argued that utilitarianism would allow the torture of a captive if the torture induced a confession that could save lives, a work out that is strictly outlawed in international law.In a connection where this interpretation of utilitarianism was widely accepted, police would be able to inflict any amount of pain on an individual in order to save even one life. This final example highlights one aspect of utilitarianism that is oft criticized. Although the greatest happiness principle is easy to understand, its application can run away to some unsettling results. One can imagine a societys interest in achieving the greatest happiness justifying all kinds of abuses in the bring in of morality. Utilitarians, in fact, cannot easily explain why torture is morally wrong.Still, in guiding people through more ordinary decisions, utilitarianism has remained popular among both philosophers and non-philosophers. All of us need hel p sometimes in deciding on the right course of action. Utilitarianism has provided that help for philosophers and common folk resembling for two hundred years. 1 John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism (Indianapolis, IN Hackett Publishing Company, 2001) 7. 2 Mill, 9. 3 Robert W. McGee, Some Thoughts on Anti-dumping Laws Utilitarianism, Human Rights and the Case for Appeal, European Business Review 96 (1996) 30.