Utilitarianism

Overview

Recall questions on Bentham's hedonic calculus, Mill's higher and lower pleasures, act and rule forms, and the standard objections.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   What do utility, pleasure and hedonism mean in this theory?

   Model answer

   Utility is the property of producing benefit, pleasure or happiness and preventing pain, and here it is the measure of rightness itself rather than a means to it. The theory is hedonic: pleasure is treated as the only thing good in itself and pain the only thing bad in itself, and happiness is identified with pleasure and the absence of pain. That identification is what lets every moral question be reduced to a single quantity.

2. 2

   What conditions in Britain helped produce this theory?

   Model answer

   Industrialisation and rapid urban growth created visible mass poverty; the Enlightenment had made reason rather than revelation the test of institutions; British empiricism encouraged treating morality as a matter of observable consequences; and the law was chaotic and savage, with hundreds of capital offences. Bentham wrote as a legal and constitutional reformer in that setting, and his followers pressed for franchise, prison and poor law reform.

3. 3

   Set out Bentham's version.

   Model answer

   Bentham held that nature has placed us under pleasure and pain, and that the right act is the one producing the greatest happiness for the greatest number. Pleasures differ only in quantity, so they can be weighed by the hedonic calculus using intensity, duration, certainty, nearness, fecundity, purity and the number of people affected. He judged the act itself by its consequences, which makes him an act utilitarian.

4. 4

   Why did Mill think Bentham's version was not good enough?

   Model answer

   Because measuring pleasure only by quantity made the theory a doctrine fit for pigs, since simple sensual pleasure could outweigh anything. Mill distinguished higher pleasures of the intellect, imagination and moral sentiment from lower bodily ones, and appealed to competent judges who have experienced both as the test of which is preferable.

5. 5

   Besides distinguishing higher and lower pleasures, what does Mill add to utilitarianism?

   Model answer

   He tightens the theory towards rules by arguing that the accumulated experience of the species gives us secondary principles which usually track happiness, so we do not calculate afresh each time. In On Liberty he defends the harm principle, that power may be exercised over an individual against their will only to prevent harm to others, which protects minorities from being sacrificed to majority preference. He also applied the theory to women's suffrage and legal equality.

6. 6

   Distinguish act and rule utilitarianism.

   Model answer

   Act utilitarianism assesses each individual action by its own consequences. Rule utilitarianism asks which general rule, if followed, would produce most happiness, and then judges actions by that rule. Strong rule utilitarianism never breaks the rule; weak rule utilitarianism allows an exception when following the rule would clearly produce worse results.

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