Hello, this is the third of the many podcasts, this one's on utilitarianism.
Welcome to everyone listening to the podcast and welcome to you, too.
Right. Let's get started. Many people have strong intuitions to the effect that it's only the consequences of inaction that matter morally.
And these people are called consequentialist. And Utilitarians are a type of consequentialist.
They believe that the only thing that matters morally is that we produce the greatest happiness of the greatest number.
And other consequentialist might be people who believe that what matters is liberty,
for example, or some people believe that what matters is equality.
So if you're a you're a libertarian, if you believe that every action should be looked at to see what its consequences are for people's liberty.
But we're going to be talking about utilitarianism today because. Well, because that's what I'm going to talk about.
That was a lousy argument, wasn't it? OK, John Stuart Mill was a very important utilitarian notice that I've got too many brackets on that.
We're going to be doing logic soon. And you want to watch brackets? I ought to watch brackets.
Okay. That's John Stuart Mill. And here are some actions that might make you feel that utilitarianism is the right way to go morally.
Imagine a patient with a terminally ill and terminal and very painful illness,
and he desperately wants to die and his family are exhausted and they beg their doctor
to help him and the doctor gives him a dose of morphine intending it to kill him.
OK, now you might think to yourself, well, what's wrong with that?
He wants to die. He's going to die any minute.
Why shouldn't the doctor break the the rule down to logical rule, if that's what it is that says don't kill?
Why shouldn't he? The consequences of this doctor's act are the best that can be.
Therefore, it's fine. Second example,
a high ranking officer knowing that the enemy will attack a particular hotel and tells
the hotel manager to close the hotel on the grounds of an outbreak of food poisoning.
And the manager does this well, OK, the manager is being dishonest and therefore the deal anthologist wouldn't be very happy about this.
He's not perhaps expressing the virtue of honesty.
And yet if you're a utilitarian,
surely what he's doing is right because he's managing to get everybody out of the hotel when the hotel is going to be attacked.
What matters, according to the utilitarian, is the consequences of the action.
And finally, a father, knowing his unemployed son is depressed, forces him to work in the family business in order to regain his self-esteem.
Well, forcing somebody is not something that a day anthologist is going to go for.
It's not something that a virtue ethicist is going to go for, because on the whole,
it's not treating somebody as an end in himself to force them to do anything,
nor is it showing the virtue of patience, for example, or understanding or whatever.
But if you're a utilitarian, you might think, well, if he does regain his self esteem, it will have been worth it.
So for the utilitarian, the end really does justify the means.
And there's no action that can't be performed so long as performing it would produce the greatest happiness of the greatest number.
And this can lead to problems because we might think, well, surely genocide is wrong,
even if it does produce the greatest happiness, the greatest number. So imagine that those of us in this room would be very, very happy.
All say 50 of us in this room would be very, very happy if we took Steve over there and killed him.
Well, that's 50 of us.
I mean, Steve wouldn't be very happy that his parents wouldn't be either and things like that, but but nevertheless, we would be happy.
I mean, we balance these things up.
And if it turns out that the greatest happiness would be achieved by killing Steve, we kill Steve or we kill all those people over there or whatever.
Well, is that acceptable just because it produces gross happiness, gross number or not?
If it's not, then you're going to think there's something wrong with utilitarianism.
But if you really do think that what we should do is produce the gross happiness, greater number, then why not?
And again, we might say surely slavery is wrong, even if it does lead to the greatest happiness.
The greatest number of slavery treats people as tools, as means to our ends.
And that's unacceptable, surely, even if it does lead to the greatest happiness, the greatest number.
So we can imagine that we treat our slaves really well and that because we've got slaves,
we can be very productive and therefore the productivity benefits the slaves as well, etc.
You could tell a story where it looks as if slavery is going to produce the happiness greatest number.
Does that justify it? And some have said that utilitarianism, because they don't recognise any act as absolutely wrong,
can't recognise left out to see that, can't recognise rights at all.
And if so, this is a big problem for utilitarianism, because we do think that people have rights and we do think that these rights
sometimes overrule the any action that might produce the greatest happiness,
the greatest number. And to cope with this sort of difficulty, utilitarianism broke into two camps,
or at least people thought that maybe there are two different types of utilitarianism and that one is better than the other.
So act utilitarians are utilitarians who refer every single action to the greatest happiness principle,
to the idea that what we should do is produce the greatest happiness of the greatest number rule.
Utilitarians don't do that. What they do is, is first they look at, OK, let's take an action of this type slavery, for example.
Would that conduce to the greater we're doing that, as a general rule, conduce to the greatest happiness of the greatest number or not?
If it wouldn't, then we should have a rule that we shouldn't do it.
And then every token action is this an act of enslaving someone or not has to be referred to the rule.
So where is the act? Utilitarians only ever use rules of thumb.
So they might say, well, lying on the whole doesn't produce the greatest happiness, the greater number, therefore I won't lie.
But if they reach a lie, that would would create the greatest happiness, greatest number.
They would lie. They just break the rule. So although they use rules of thumb, there are no unbreakable rules.
In fact, utilitarianism, whereas in rule utilitarianism you say that there are some rules that have value in
themselves and the reason they have value in themselves is because they produce.
So bang them brings the greatest happiness, the greatest number.
But there is a problem for this distinction.
Some people believe that the rule utilitarianism is incoherent because it collapses into act utilitarianism.
So how does this work? Well, imagine a rule utilitarian in a situation in which you've got three options.
He can either keep his rule, he can break his rule, or he can modify his rules.
So here's a situation in which telling a lie, you say, would obviously produce the greatest happiness, the greatest number.
Should he keep his rule, should he break it or should he modify the rules?
Say we can lie except in C circumstances C And the trouble with this is that whatever he does,
he either becomes a de anthologist, which is rudely called a rule worshipper by utilitarian or he becomes an act utilitarian.
So let's say he keeps his rule.
OK, so even when it's obvious that telling this lie is going to produce the greatest happiness, the greatest number, he nevertheless tells the truth.
I think I got my words mixed up there. I hope it's obvious what I meant, even not what I said.
You should always listen to what I mean, not what I say so he can keep his rule.
Well, if he does, then in what sense is he a utilitarian? He sees that breaking the rule would produce the greatest happiness, the greatest number.
Yet he doesn't break it. He's not a utilitarian. He's a rule worshipper.
Adell anthologist. On the other hand, let's say he breaks his rule.
Well, if so, then surely he's just using rules of thumb and he's nothing more.
Act utilitarian, there's no difference between him and the ordinary, act utilitarian, who uses rules just because they're simple?
The only chance he has then of making a rule utilitarian, different from act utilitarian ism is if the rule utilitarian,
commodify the rule and therefore somehow keep what he does different from either anthologist or an act utilitarian.
But the trouble with that is, OK, the first time we think, OK,
we mustn't lie except in circumstances C and then the second time is we mustn't lie except in circumstances C, one or two.
And then we mustn't like certain circumstances. See one, see to see three and you start to think, well hang on.
Actually this chap isn't going to do anything different from the act utilitarian.
He claims to be using rules and perhaps he is using rules because he's modifying his rule every time.
But actually his use of that rule isn't making him any different from anything that an act utilitarian does.
And so the actual actions he performs are going to be the same as those of an act utilitarian.
So the fact that he calls himself a rule utilitarianism is actually irrelevant.
So rule utilitarianism is extensional equivalent to act utilitarian,
even if it's intentionally not equivalent in the same way that to have hearts and to have kidneys.
If you point to things with hearts, you're pointing to exactly the same things as the things that have kidneys because they always do the same thing.
But of course you understand the two differently. So that's the idea, you can't save utilitarianism from charges that it doesn't respect rights,
etc. by splitting it into act and rule utilitarianism, but.
This collapse argument rests on the assumption that utilitarianism is really a very unsophisticated
creed and that it recognises only one sort of rule and one sort of relationship towards the rule.
And this just isn't true.
I mean, you can think of utilitarianism as very unsophisticated, but if you do, you're not exercising the principle of charity.
You're you're thinking of utilitarians as idiots and they're not human society is much more complicated.
Consider the difference between a legislator and a judge.
So let's think if we're let's use the knee jerk example that's often used in utilitarian of the sheriff who's got in his prison,
a tramp who's often wanted to die, has no family,
etc. And the sheriff has a community who are really very worried about all these rapes that are going on.
The sheriff knows that the rapist is dead because he shot himself,
but he also knows that he can't justify this claim because when he shot him, he fell into a river and the body was taken away, etc.
You can add to the story as you like what the key things are that should the sheriff kill the tramp who is innocent
of these crimes in order to avoid the social riots that will happen if someone isn't accused of these rapes.
Well, let's take a legislator who's asking, well,
should we pass a rule that says innocent people should be killed in any circumstance in which doing so would lead to the greatest happiness,
the greatest number should? Is that a reasonable law? Would that lead to the greatest happiness?
Would it. I think clearly it wouldn't because we'd all be thinking, well, hang on, that's all very well.
First they came for the slaves, then they came for the I can't remember how the thing goes,
but maybe it would be me who is the innocence who was caught in the next situation.
No, of course, that couldn't be a rule. So you wouldn't think that the greatest happiness, greatest number would be served by that rule.
So the legislator would never pass a law of that kind. The sort of law that a legislator would pass was it would be don't kill.
There is an act called murder. That murder is the illegal killing of another person.
This mustn't be done because if we allow it willy nilly, we'll end up without the greatest happiness of the greatest number.
But then when you have a judge, does he have the right to say, well, actually,
in this situation, it would produce the greatest happiness, the greatest number?
The judge must look to the law and actually act on the law.
He cannot then start thinking, well, should I do this or shouldn't I do this?
It's the legislator that makes that sort of decision, not the judge.
So different roles in society have different tasks to do in relation to rules.
The legislator might act rather more like an act utilitarian, whereas the judge acts more like a rule utilitarian.
So the legislator looks directly to the greatest happiness principle where the judge looks to the rule.
And also consider the difference between an act of fraud and an ordinary lie,
and we could if you were a legislator, you might say, well, why shouldn't we make lying illegal?
Lying actually can lead to a lot of trouble in society, can really cause difficulties.
Why don't we just make it make it illegal? Well, I think you see that clearly.
That's not going to lead to the greatest happiness of the greatest number. So the legislator is unlikely to to allow that ordinary lies are illegal,
but that there should be an act of fraud, which is, again, a legal concept rather than a moral concept.
Fraud is when you lie to somebody in a situation where you've got a contract or whatever, there's a difference between an act of fraud,
which is something for which the judge would punish somebody, and an ordinary lie, which actually just doesn't come under the judicial system.
So you might as a utilitarian, when you're faced with the question of should I tell this lie or not, you can act as an act utilitarian.
So if the Nazis are at the door saying, are there any Jews here, you think, well,
would it produce the gross happiness of the greatest number or not to tell this lie?
And you might tell the lie. You should tell the lie in that case.
But if it's an act of fraud, there you look to the rule.
You look to the fact that this is this is actually forbidden in society and you will pay great penalties.
The society ensures that you will pay penalties because it's wrong.
You don't. It's not wrong because you pay penalties, you pay penalties because it's wrong,
and to recognise complications like these is to see that a utilitarian can recognise both rules of thumb,
that the act utilitarian, used and unbreakable rules such as the ones that day ontologies will recognise.
And I'm going to leave it with you. Do you think this argument means that utilitarianism can overcome the objection, that it can't recognise rights?
That's a huge question, and I'm going to let you think about that in your own time.
And other problems for utilitarians, firstly, are there really no actions that are intrinsically wrong?
Is it okay? I mean, actually, a very good example of this is the discussion about torture.
Is it acceptable to torture somebody? Because in doing so, you might be able to save a lot of lives or is torture intrinsically wrong?
And to make it really difficult, you should think about perhaps torturing a baby or something like that.
Could you, by torturing a baby, produce the greatest happiness, the greatest number, and if so, should you?
That's a question that will really pull your intuitions about utilitarianism this way and that way,
which is what should be happening if you're a philosopher. And secondly, how do we know in advance what the consequences of our actions will be?
So if I take my elderly aunt out for tea and we cross a busy road, unfortunately she's mown down by a truck.
So the consequences of my actions are not good. My aunt isn't made very happy by this action, nor am I nor anyone else in the family.
So the consequences of my action are not good. Therefore, I have not acted morally in taking my aunt.
Well, we might think that's not fair because I didn't know that those would be the consequences.
Surely I did the right thing. One way we might solve this problem is to make a distinction between the agent and the action.
So an action is wrong if it doesn't produce the greatest happiness and grace.
No, but the agent is evaluated in terms of different things, for example,
in terms of their intentions, what they believe the consequences of that action will be.
Oh, and incidentally,
one thing I haven't mentioned is you can be utilitarian without thinking that everything you must do must produce the greatest happiness,
the greatest number. So it could be that what makes your action morally right or wrong is whether it does produce the greatest happiness.
Grace, no. Rather than whether you intended it to, if you see what I mean.
Another difficulty is, must we always act to produce the greatest happiness of the greatest number?
This is linked to what I've just said. I'm tired. I go home at night, I have a glass of wine.
I sit in front of the television and watch NEWSNIGHT or whatever.
Um, well, I could be working in the Oxfam shop, couldn't I?
And if I was working or I could be giving another lecture, thereby making loads of people really, really happy.
Shouldn't I be doing that instead of having a glass of wine and watching NEWSNIGHT again,
the answer here might be, well, there's a limit to how much you can actually do to produce happiness.
At some point, you've got to count yourself in the calculus.
Well, actually, it's every point if you're a utilitarian, you've got to count yourself in the utilitarian calculation.
So it could be that you can you will make people happier the following day by having a night off.
You needn't spend every single night in the Oxfam shop. A big problem for utilitarianism is what is happiness and how do we measure it?
The question of what happiness has produced as many books as would fill this room several times over, I should imagine.
So I won't need I won't go into it here. And how do we measure it?
One thing will have to be careful here is we mustn't get hung up on the idea of
measurement like you lose using a ruler or a calculator of some kind of things like that.
Sometimes we measure each other subjectively. I can see understanding on your face.
I can also see lack of understanding on your face. How do I do that? I don't know.
I certainly couldn't write. I couldn't tell you how I do it.
Human beings just do it. We are able to see perhaps not all of us and perhaps some of us see it better than others.
But we we can measure happiness without taking a ruler or something like that.
We're actually very good at doing that. A very important question, whose happiness must be counted?
I may be Hitler was a good utilitarian. It's just that he didn't count Jews.
If we don't count animals, that's going to change the utilitarian calculus quite a lot.
Maybe our grandchildren are going to say of us they ate lamb for Sunday lunch.
Whether you should be a vegetarian or not, if you're a utilitarian, is going to make a huge difference.
To be made to that decision is whether you count animals in the utilitarian calculus or you don't.
And also think about embryos. Do we count?
Embryos or not, and think of the decisions that we would make about abortions, depending on whether we count embryos or not.
And finally, we might say kind of utilitarian account for personal integrity.
Imagine that I'm working for the nuclear industry or rather that I'm offered a job in the nuclear industry.
But I think the nuclear industry is a really appalling place. But somebody points out that if I take this job, I can work within to subvert it.
And I might think, well, hang on a second. That may produce the greatest happiness, the greatest number.
My integrity would be shot. Working for the nuclear industry, and so I'll leave you again with those problems and if you'd like to go further there,
as usual, is the list of things that you might do.