Mills Utilitarianism
When faced with a moral dilemma, utilitarianism identifies the
appropriate
considerations, but offers no realistic way to gather the
necessary information
to make the required calculations. This lack of
information is a problem both in
evaluating the welfare issues and in
evaluating the consequentialist issues
which utilitarianism requires be
weighed when making moral decisions.
Utilitarianism attempts to solve
both of these difficulties by appealing to
experience; however, no method of
reconciling an individual decision with the
rules of experience is suggested,
and no relative weights are assigned to the
various considerations. In
deciding whether or not to torture a terrorist who
has planted a bomb in New
York City, a utilitarian must evaluate both the
overall welfare of the people
involved or effected by the action taken, and the
consequences of the action
taken. To calculate the welfare of the people
involved in or effected by an
action, utilitarianism requires that all
individuals be considered equally.
Quantitative utilitarian would weigh the
pleasure and pain which would be
caused by the bomb exploding against the
pleasure and pain that would be
caused by torturing the terrorist. Then, the
amounts would be summed and
compared. The problem with this method is that it is
impossible to know
beforehand how much pain the bomb exploding or how much pain
would be caused
by the torture. Utilitarianism offers no practical way to make
the
interpersonal comparison of utility necessary to compare the pains. In
the
case of the bomb exploding, it at least seems highly probable that the
bomb
exploding would cause a greater amount of pain, at least in the present.
This
probability suffices for a quantitative utilitarian, but it does not
account for
the consequences, which create an entirely different problem,
which will be
discussed below. The probability also does not hold for Mill's
utilitarianism.
Mill's Utilitarianism insists on qualitative
utilitarianism, which requires that
one consider not only the amount of pain
or pleasure, but also the quality of
such pain and pleasure. Mill suggests
that to distinguish between different
pains and pleasures we should ask
people who have experienced both types which
is more pleasurable or more
painful. This solution does not work for the
question of torture compared to
death in an explosion. There is no one who has
experienced both; therefore,
there is no one who can be consulted. Even if we
agree that the pain caused
by the number of deaths in the explosion is greater
than the pain of the
terrorist being tortured, this assessment only accounts for
the welfare half
of the utilitarian's considerations. Furthermore, one has no
way to measure
how much more pain is caused by allowing the bomb to explode than
by
torturing the terrorist. After settling the issues surrounding the welfare,
a
utilitarian must also consider the consequences of an action. In weighing
the
consequences, there are two important considerations. The first, which
is
especially important to objective Utilitarianism, is which people will
be
killed. The second is the precedent, which will be set by the
action.
Unfortunately for the decision-maker, the information necessary
to make either
of these calculations is unavailable. There is no way to
determine which people
will be killed and weigh whether their deaths would be
good for society.
Utilitarianism requires that one compare the good that
the people would do for
society with the harm they would do society if they
were not killed. For
example, if a young Adolf Hitler were in the building,
it might do more good for
society to allow the building to explode.
Unfortunately for an individual
attempting to use utilitarianism to make for
decisions, there is no way to know
beforehand what a person will do.
Furthermore, without even knowing which
building the bomb is in, there is no
way to predict which people will surely be
in the building. A subjectivist
utilitarian would dismiss this consideration and
would examine only what a
rational person would consider to be the consequence;
however, even the
subjectivist utilitarian must face the question of precedent
setting.
Utilitarianism considers justice and humane treatment to be good for
society
as a whole and therefore instrumentally good as a means to
promoting
happiness. Utilitarianism considers precedent to be important, but
does not
offer any method of determining exceptions. It is impossible to
determine how
much effect on precedent any given isolated action will have.
In the case of
determining whether or not to torture the terrorist, one must
consider whether
it is good for society to allow torture to be used as a
method of gaining
information. If it is bad, one must determine whether this
action will create a
precedent. If it will create or contribute to the
creation of a precedent, one
must compare the detrimental effects of this
precedent with the other
consequences and welfare caused by the action.
Utilitarianism offers no method
for comparison. The problem is that a person
faced with making the decision
cannot get the information. Even through
experience, it is hard to judge how
much effect each action has on precedent.
More specifically, it is hard to
determine whether an action is worthy of
being an exception to a rule.
Utilitarianism offers no resolution to this
problem. Utilitarianism also
considers the Theory of Desert to be
instrumentally valuable to the promotion of
happiness. It is generally good
for society to reward people for doing right and
to punish them for doing
wrong. Using this belief in the value of justice, a
utilitarian would have
more trouble torturing the child of the terrorist than
with torturing the
terrorist. The dilemma would be similar to that of precedent.
A
utilitarian would ask how much it would harm society's faith in the
punishment
of evildoers and the protection of the innocent to torture the
child. The sum of
the consequences would then be compared to the sum of the
welfare considerations
to decide whether or not to torture the terrorist and
whether or not to torture
the child of the terrorist. In some way, these
things must therefore all be
comparable and assigned weights; however,
Utilitarianism offers no method of
comparison. There must be some percentage
of consideration given to the harmful
precedent set compared to the amount of
pain caused by the deaths, compared to
the pain the terrorist or the child
being tortured feels, compared to the harm
society will be saved from by the
deaths of people in the explosion, compared to
the good that society will be
deprived of by the deaths in the explosion. The
overarching problem with
utilitarianism as a method for decision making is that
not enough of the
necessary information is available and there is no scale on
which to weigh
the various considerations. Basically, the subjective utilitarian
would
probably consider that the death of many is worse than the torture of
one.
Depending on how much weight is given to the detrimental effects of
the
precedent which would be set by torturing the terrorist, the utilitarian
could
consider this to outweigh the greater pain caused by the explosion or
not.
Different people have different moral consciences, which dictate
different
actions. These differences will dictate where the person puts the
most weight in
the utilitarian considerations, since utilitarianism does not
specify.
Similarly, depending on how much weight is given to the
detrimental precedent of
torturing innocent children, the utilitarian could
consider it to outweigh the
pain caused by the explosion or not. In the end,
utilitarianism does not help in
making the moral decision. The information
necessary to calculate all of the
considerations identified by utilitarianism
is not available. Furthermore, what
is required is a method of comparing and
weighing the considerations, and this
method is not defined by
utilitarianism. In the end, the decision-maker is still
left to make the
decision based on internal moral feelings of what is right and
what is wrong
which do not come from
utilitarianism.