Greg Detre
Thursday, May 17, 2001
Jeremy Watkins, Hertford
Ethics IV
�Consequentialism� refers to any ethical theory that judges how good or bad an action is solely on the basis of its consequences. Since the consequences of an action usually contain some good and bad, consequentialist theories must provide some means of evaluating an overall cost-benefit analysis into the future, against which the consequences of other actions can be compared.
Consequentialist theories tend to differ in terms of a variety of different factors. Most important is the property of the consequences being evaluated and maximised, usually pleasure or lack of pain. This property might apply only to a selection of people or to everyone, or might be calculated by incorporating different variables, like duration and intensity in Bentham�s felicific calculus. Theories differ in the epistemological demands they place on the agent. Act utilitarianism (see below), for example, really requires the agent to calculate the ramifications of his actions on a global scale right into the distant future. This results in different formulations designed to alleviate such intolerable constraints, perhaps only requiring the agent to act according to a set of simpler rules which are so designed as to result in the best consequences. Others attempt to counter or accommodate Williams� integrity objection, which throws up questions of what moralists should expect of humanity (agent-neutral and agent-relative), and to what degree we are capable of it (egoism and altruism).
The most famous consequentialist theory is utilitarianism, formulated first by Jeremy Bentham and then more fully by John Stuart Mill: �A moral theory according to which an action is right if and only if it conforms to the principle of utility�, where utility has been variously rendered as pleasure, happiness, welfare or the minimisation of pain and suffering.
Bentham�s formulation in Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789) provides a good starting point. He describes the good not only in terms of pleasure (or the absence of pain), but also as happiness, benefit, advantage etc., although his in his felicific calculus, he seems to think of them as more or less synonymous and all reducible to pleasure. His felicific calculus was an attempt to quantify, and so compare, all pleasures in terms of their intensity, duration, certainty/uncertainty, fecundity and propinquity/remoteness. People ought to act in conformance with the maximisation of the global totality of utility (with �each to count as one, and no one as more than one�), as so calculated. Of the many criticisms that have been levelled at this simple specification of utilitarianism, there are three important ones which are particular to Bentham�s formulation, and which Mill�s revisions were designed to address: Benthamite utilitarianism considers all pleasures to be of identical worth, differing only in the degree to which they please; is not at all feasible to calculate; and runs contrary to moral intuitions.
Bentham�s systemisation of pleasure summed precise numerical values, so that one pleasure corresponded to an exact fraction or multiple of another. This required the agent to assign these values, probably much harder to do than assigning a single, overall pleasure rating. Mill dispensed with this complicated system, and with any attempt to derive absolute pleasure scores, but the lesser difficulty of comparing or ranking (possibly hypothetical) pleasures remained. Though it might one day be possible to attempt this by measuring neurotransmitter release in the brain, for instance, such a hedonometer would not be in the spirit of utilitarians� argument, and reliance upon such a device would mean that we would not be able to make moral judgements without its help. I think though that we can grant Mill that an individual can state a preference between different potential or remembered pleasures, and so rank the utility of consequences in his own terms.
However, Mill added his own difficulties by rejecting Bentham�s strong implicit assumption that all enjoyable activities give rise to more or less concentrated or long-lasting versions of the same feelings of pleasure. Hedonism conjures up thoughts of reprobate parties on the beach, replete with drink, drugs and hopefully sex. Yet, as advocates of utilitarianism stress, pleasure need not simply refer to the �baser�, sensual pleasures; we gain pleasure from love, poetry, music and discussion, and experience sadness at boredom, loneliness and another person�s plight. Pleasure, in the utilitarian sense, is meant as far more than a fleeting euphoria, and pain far more than physical aches or agony. There are long-lasting, acquired pleasures too, perhaps gained only after effort or sacrifice. Certainly, Mill argued that some pleasures are more intrinsically worthy than others. But how can the pleasure derived from reading an evocative poem be ranked against vomiting oneself unconscious after a heavy night stealing traffic cones with the lads?
Mill�s answer to comparing two pleasures is to ask those who have experienced both pleasures, and state that if there is a consensus in preferring one of the two, then that one must be the higher. Fairness dictates that any judge would need to be able to make a comparison based on his own experience. After all, human preference is the only way that pleasures can be ranked, since pleasure is in the eye of the beholder. However, individuals (who may or may not have experienced both pleasures) may disagree with this consensus. The problem here is that his criterion seems inherently biased towards the views of minorities, whether they be academics or sadists. The example of academics, whose intellectual pleasures he clearly supported, illustrates the point. In his time there were very few members of the general population who had experienced academia, but probably at least some academics who had tried most other forms of entertainment, so a committee to decide the status of academia would be mostly comprised of academics, and would likely class intellectual pleasures as extremely worthy, as Mill would have concurred. But might not the same decision be made about sado-masochism (between consenting adults), say, since very few people to whom it does not appeal have tried it? I suppose in response, Mill could require that fine, upstanding citizens were forced to try sadomasochism for a short while to determine their stance on it.
As has been said, utilitarianism requires the agent to know his own mind with regard to which pleasure he would prefer, and for there to be some means of comparing pleasures between different people. But the real problem with a Benthamite scheme is that it really requires the agent to be able to determine the minute favourable or unfavourable consequences that emerge from a given action until the end of time. This is an act utilitarian formula, since it is the utility of the actual act that is being considered. Given that we have only very limited means to predict the future, especially with regard to others� decisions, this can lead to situations where an act committed with the best of utilitarian intents could have unforeseen, negative consequences and so be classed morally wrong.
This gives rise to rule utilitarianism, where �Individual acts are judged right or wrong by reference to the rules; the rules, but not the individual acts, are judged by the results of accepting them. The right action is, roughly, the one that is in conformity with a set of moral rules which, if generally accepted, would tend to produce better results than any other set of viable rules we might accept� (Routledge). This gives the agent a much easier set of rules to apply, rather than having to evaluate each action fully every time. However, it may lead to situations where the morally right action for a rule utilitarian is not the morally right action for an act utilitarian. Rule utilitarianism is happy to accept this, since its set of rules are intended to give rise to the maximised utility most of the time if everyone follows them, and potentially more often even than a well-meaning act utilitarian with highly imperfect knowledge.
A case has also been made that act utilitarianism runs contrary to moral intuitions, in that it can occasionally sanction what seem like morally insupportable acts if they further the greater good, e.g. torturing one innocent person to save ten others. I think that a utilitarian might legitimately claim that our moral intuitions amount to little more than hunches, and that utilitarianism fleshes them out by providing the underlying principle. If that principle sometimes seems at odds with intuition, then we simply have to decide which of the two we have more faith in. If we turn back to Mill�s �proofs� of utilitarianism, we may be disappointed. His leap from �each person�s happiness is a good to that person� to �the general happiness [is], therefore, a good to the aggregate of all persons� is famously suspect, and would suddenly feel particularly unconvincing to the potential innocent torture victim.
In the case of act utilitarianism, much of its initial appeal had arisen from its apparent harmony with our methods of making ethical decisions. Unfortunately though, it is very easy to consider situations where act utilitarianism seems to produce the wrong answer, as in the example above. Even rule utilitarianism cannot really help. As described above, rule utilitarians do not require us to apply our criterion for right action to every single act, but only to apply a set of rules carefully chosen to be utility-maximising, In the case of our torture victim, we might have a rule that precludes torturing innocent people, or even torturing people at all under any circumstances. In this case, we need a means of deciding which rule to break: torturing innocents, or ten people�s deaths. Most people�s moral intuitions balk at the prospect of the choice to the extent that we are not really sure what we intuitively think would be right � in such borderline cases, at least rule utilitarianism offers us a well-meaning way to decide.
Utilitarianism is the most well-known and intuitively appealing consequentialist system, since it is based on the recognition that happiness must be our ultimate goal in all ethical issues. It provides a clear criterion for right, which is dissociated from the decision procedure in rule utilitarianism, thus preserving what most people would hold as the standard laws of morality.