Lecture Notes for Mill's Utilitarianism, continued

Mill's Utilitarianism: Three Main Elements

• Consequentialist Theory of Rightness and Wrongness
• Hedonistic Theory of Value
• Aggregative Theory of Goodness of Consequences

Put all of these together, and you get:

The Principle of Utility (PU): The rightness or wrongness of an action or policy depends solely on its ________________ for the sum total of ____________________ in the world, where intrinsic value resides in happiness, which is to be understood in terms of __________________.

In other words, you should do what will produce the greatest total amount of value (in terms of pleasure) in the world.

Last time we ended by critiquing the second of the three elements above: Mill's hedonistic theory of value, which is his claim that only pleasure is intrinsically good (good in itself, for its own sake), and that all pleasure is at least somewhat good (even if outweighed by competing pains). Today I want to move on to the other two elements of utilitarianism above.

1. Aggregative Theory of Goodness of Consequences: what matters is the greatest sum total of value in the world; in other words, the best state of affairs is the one where the total positive value of all the pleasure in the world minus the total negative value of all the pain in the world yields the greatest total positive value in the world. (And remember from last time that each pleasure and pain has to be suitably weighted to take account of the superior value of "higher" pleasures, etc.)

Problem: This says nothing about how that pleasure and pain is distributed. I'll go over this in detail with an example on the screen comparing two hypothetical social policies.

2. Consequentialist Theory of Rightness and Wrongness: The rightness or wrongness of an action or policy depends solely on its consequences for the sum total of intrinsic value in the world. An action or policy is right only if it will lead to at least as high a level of total intrinsic value in the world as any alternative action available to you.

(Note that there are questions about whether this is ultimately a proper interpretation of Mill's considered view--particularly in light of his discussion of justice and rights in chapter 5, which we're not going to go into for our purposes. In fact, the view he presents in chapter 5 seems to be importantly different from the view in chapter 2 in various respects (and not entirely consistent with it). A proper consideration of the view in chapter 5--which is rather subtle--and its relation to the view in chapter 2 would be lengthy and complicated. For our purposes I am going to stick with the view articulated in chapter 2. This is, in any case, a view that has been very influential. Of course, if anyone would like to discuss chapter 5 of Utilitarianism, I'd be happy to do so outside of class.)

3. Question: Does this principle get things intuitively right, and is the rationale it provides satisfactory?

4. Two Kinds of Objection: (1) The PU seems to give the wrong answers to lots of questions, even when we take account of all the effects of the action (e.g. deathbed promise; murder and organ transplant; killing of hemophiliac infant and having another in its place); (2) Even when the PU yields the intuitively right answers, the rationale doesn't seem entirely adequate. Kant will offer a different rationale, which might seem more satisfactory.

5. Should you trust me in my critique of the PU? What would I be telling you even if I really believed in the PU? (Think about the value accorded to truth, according to this theory. Does it imply that I should always tell the truth? What if lying and saying that utilitarianism is really false and trying to get you to believe in a different theory turned out to be the thing that would lead to the achievement of greatest overall utility?)