Against Utilitarianism

Ethics
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I’ve never seriously interacted with philosophy before, until today when we discussed utilitarianism in one of my classes today. I wrote this to try and articulate my own beliefs from my earlier discussion and would appreciate feedback and discussion over this topic.

Utilitarianism is the philosophy that our actions must maximize the happiness and pleasure - the utility - of society as a whole. Being a relatively simple principle, utilitarianism is often split into two separate philosophies, act utilitarianism and rule utilitarianism.

Act utilitarianism follows the idea that action taken by an individual must maximize utility in the moment. A common hypothetical example to illustrate this is a doctor who has five dying patients, all needing an organ transplant in order to survive. The doctor also happens to have a lazy neighbor who contributes little to society, has no family or friends who would notice their disappearance, and also happens to be a perfect match for all five patients. This hypothetical asks the question of whether or not it is moral for the doctor to forcefully take their neighbors organs, saving the five patients at the cost of the neighbors life. Act utilitarianism argues that yes, taking the neighbors life is saving five more lives, and as a result is a moral action.

Many are unwilling to believe such extreme ideas, giving birth to the more mellow form of utilitarianism, rule utilitarianism. Rule utilitarianism looks at the doctor hypothetical and acknowledges that more lives are being saved through taking the neighbors organs but also realizes that to do so requires the doctor to commit an inherently evil act. So instead of always trying to maximize utility, rule utilitarianism states that an individual should try and do the most overall good while still following a moral code that contains rules the individual then follows.

On paper, utilitarianism (or one of its forms) seems to be a no-brainer. Why would one not want the most happiness for society? Think of utility like a math problem; happiness minus sadness equals utility. Shouldn’t we want utility to be maximized as much as possible? Now look closely at that equation; happiness minus sadness. In this format, somebody is suffering, somebody is struggling. How can we say just because overall society is doing great, it is okay for that sadness to exist.

I think of the example of a child locked in a basement, suffering the worst pains imaginable and more, so that the world can be a utopia for everybody else. When that suffering exists at all, it creates the possibility that one else in that society can suffer, so would an overall smaller amount of utility be better at the cost of no sadness? Of course, this question has many generalizations as a part of it. Despite this, the flaws of utilitarianism still seem clear.

1 Like
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This doesn’t strike me as a good characterization of what utilitarianism means. Happiness minus sadness is more a caricature. Besides, there will always be suffering in the world.

That being said, a well written and (mostly) well thought through post.

“The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” by Ursula K Leguin.

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@mccbrady

Consider taking it up a level of abstraction (or two or five), and try to suss out why utilitarianianism is intrinsically flawed. In other words identify the underlying problem. If you do, I’d be interested in hearing your findings.

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Not entirely sure what you mean with the levels of abstraction, but here’s what I’m thinking. In attempting to create the most good Utilitarianism allows some bad, or necessary evils, as I discussed with the doctor hypothetical. This mindset flourishes in the short-term. Rule utilitarianism tries to expand that to the long-term, but I still feel it falls short. If we want to be “moral” (defining that is a whole other mess) we need to look even further than our perceived long-term, our life, and act in a manner which is overall beneficial for all of society, for as long as possible. To put it shortly, no good act is truly good if doing it may create harm in five-hundred years. Utilitarianism doesn’t seem to account for that.

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Even if you expanded utilitarianism to eternity it would remain intrinsically flawed.

Going up levels of abstraction is essentially about taking a step back, or more, in order to get a broader and subsequently deeper understanding. It helps in getting to the “why” and not just to the “what” or even “how”.

Step back further than you have been. Pick apart the very premise of utilitarianism.

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Act utilitarianism has the problem that one ends up creating countless ad-hoc exceptions that one cannot base a society that operates for the sake of the greatest utility extended indefinitely on. It is not practicable in reality as a system to base morals on.

Rule utilitarianism is more attractive, in that one instead of creating ad-hoc exceptional cases one seeks to behave in a fashion that, when generalized, will result in the greatest utility extended indefinitely.

However, there are problems with rule utilitarianism. A good example is if you know the location of someone and someone is coming to kill them and asks you where they are (and if this seems like an empty hypothetical, consider the very real historical case of knowing the location of Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe and being asked by a Nazi if one knows where any Jews are). Strong rule utilitarianism would say that it is immoral to lie, so it would be immoral to lie about the person’s location. But this is obviously wrong, because one would be causing someone’s death (e.g. by having them be caught by the Nazis and sent to the gas chambers at Auschwitz) just for the sake of following a consistent moral rule with no direct benefit.

That leads to weak rule utilitarianism, which is like strong rule utilitarianism except that one can make exceptions as needed to avoid pathological cases like this. This is attractive in cases like this, as the utility of preventing an innocent person’s death is far greater than the utility resulting from never lying. However, the question then is how does one keep this from just degenerating into act utilitarianism as more and more exceptions get added.