Moral - Utilitarianism Flashcards
What is ‘utility’?
The property of an object or action that helps to achieve a specific goal such as happiness
What is maximising utility?
Favouring actions that produce the largest amount of utility/pleasure
Outline Bentham’s quantitative hedonistic utilitarianism (utility/felicific calculus)
Aims to quantify happiness by considering 7 variables:
1. Fecundity (will it lead to more pleasure?)
2. Purity
3. Extent
4. Intensity (strength?)
5. Duration
6. Certainty (how likely?)
7. Propinquity (how soon will it occur?)
Outline the criticism to act utilitarianism that happiness is difficult to calculate
The calculus is impractical and complicated; how can we know the intensity of happiness without getting brain scans? Or the extent - we can’t predict the future
Outline the criticism to act utilitarianism that it may lead to tyranny of the majority
Some acts seem inherently wrong regardless of consequences, however act utilitarianism would allow such acts to be moral if it made enough people happy
E.g. a society where the majority enjoyed seeing the torture of innocent people
Outline the criticism to act utilitarianism that there are issues around partiality
Since utilitarianism emphasises the importance of considering all happiness equally, so there are no grounds to justify acting to maximise the happiness of those you know and care about, compared to a stranger which is:
- too idealistic
- forces us to ignore moral obligations to those with unique moral status (those close to us)
Outline Mill’s proof of the greatest happiness principle
He provides reason to believe in the GHP:
Like how the evidence for something being visible is that it can be seen, the only evidence that something is desirable is that it is actually desired
- each person desires their own happiness, therefore each person’s happiness is desirable
- general happiness is desirable, so each person’s happiness is a good to that person
Therefore general happiness is a good (and happiness is the only good)
