Taking Stock of Utilitarianism

2008

In his metaethics and philosophy of language, Jeremy Bentham was strongly influenced by John Locke's empiricist framework. In his works on logic and mind (but also in his ethical writings), John Stuart Mill displayed a blend of empiricism and common sense philosophy, which he inherited from his father James. In addition to this, both Bentham and Mill viewed ethics and politics as empirical disciplines, based on human experience, and modeled after empirical, inexact disciplines, such as medicine. Despite his intuitionist leanings, even Henry Sidgwick presented his moral epistemology as a correction of an originally empiricist framework. Moreover, in Sidgwick's argument for utilitarianism, a lot of room is left to the power that a utilitarian ethical theory has in accounting for our common moral experience, embodied in our common sense moral judgements. Even through the twentieth century, utilitarianism has kept its connection with human experience, if only because of its frequent and numerous incursions in detailed applicative problems. Possibly, utilitarian ethical thinkers were the first to realize a turn to applied ethical theory. Paradoxically, the often repeated and most well-known objection to utilitarianism, namely its alleged counter-intuitiveness, concerns the relationship between utilitarian ethics and experience. This aspect of utilitarian moral theories was placed at the center of the three-day Conference "Utilitarianism: An Ethic of Experience?" (held at the University of Rome, June 12-14, 2007), where the papers published here were originally presented and discussed. From the many presentations, discussions, and informal talks that happened in those three days in Rome, it turned out that the question mark at the end of the conference title, originally indicating the ironic, yet provocative and wary spirit the organizers had toward the subject, could be removed safely. Experience is at the centre of utilitarianism, both in its historical and contemporary versions. Experience, however, is only a common point of departure, and it is not able to settle the various puzzles that scholars interested in utilitarianism must face. It is also for this reason that the title of the present collection was changed to a more neutral one, aiming to show the two directions assumed by the contemporary scholarship: an increasing penetration into the historical texts of eighteenth and nineteenth century utilitarians and a more detailed refinement of utilitarian ethical theories to respond classical and new objections and problems.

The Journal of Value Inquiry, 2005

This is the essay that I wrote for my Introduction to Ethics course in my first year of university. The introduction reads as follows: John Stuart Mill famously summarised utilitarianism as “the greatest good for the greatest number.” The theory identifies human happiness as the goal of any action and aims to provide a moral metric that quantifies outcomes on a scale of utility. In this essay, I will formalise and explain positive act utilitarianism, as made by Bentham. Secondly, I will analyse prominent objections pertaining to justice, workability and demandingness. These sections conclude that utilitarianism contravenes justice at great cost to minority interests, is practically unworkable and requires supererogation. Rule utilitarianism is then evaluated as a possible solution to the aforementioned concerns. Ultimately, I will conclude that rule utilitarianism does not escape the refutations of act utilitarianism because it either dissolves into act, or is forced to abandon the principle of utility altogether. This essay will be divided into five distinct sections: 1. The Utilitarian Argument 2. Justice and Minority Rights 3. Workability 4. Demandingness 5. Rule Utilitarianism: a possible solution?

2021

2021

Philosophers have typically shown high confidence in their evaluations of Utilitarianism, whether as an endorsement or a disparagement. Rarely, however, has much effort been spent on investigating what utilitarianism means. In their recent 2020 book The Pursuit of Happiness: Philosophical and Psychological Foundations of Utility, the cognitive scientist Louis Narens and the philosopher of science Brian Skyrms have teamed up to address the question of how utility can be measured and aggregated for the purposes of ethics and policy-making. The Pursuit of Happiness constitutes a beautiful example of benefits of collaboration between scientists and philosophers. Narens, one of the leading experts on measurement theory in the behavioral and cognitive sciences, and Skyrms, a pioneer in mathematical philosophy with his work on evolutionary game theory and the evolution of conventions, make a perfect team for examining the foundations of utilitarianism. The majority of The Pursuit of Happin...

Economics and Philosophy 24(1) (2008): 1–33, 2008

A natural formalization of the priority view is presented which results from adding expected utility theory to the main ideas of the priority view. The result is ex post prioritarianism. But ex post prioritarianism entails that in a world containing just one person, it is sometimes better for that person to do what is strictly worse for herself. This claim may appear to be implausible. But the deepest objection to ex post prioritarianism has to do with meaning: ex post prioritarianism is not a genuine alternative to utilitarianism in the first place. By contrast, ex ante prioritarianism is defensible. But its motivation is very different from the usual rationales offered for the priority view. Given their hostility to egalitarianism, most supporters of the priority view have not provided reasons to reject utilitarianism.

John Rawls' theory of "justice as fairness" aimed at presenting a superior alternative to utilitarianism. To do so, he argued that, from behind the veil of ignorance, the representatives in the original position would choose the principles of justice as fairness and would reject utilitarianism. Rawls' criticism was targeted to the classical version of utilitarianism, which places utility at the level of the individual and as some measure of happiness or wellbeing. In this paper, I attempt to introduce David Hume's concept of justice as a utilitarian theory that, first, is fundamentally different to the classical version, and two, escapes the criticism of Rawls, at least in terms of the latter's rejection of utilitarianism. I will do this by first showing that Hume's concept of utility, as opposed to Bentham's, is a means and not an end, and a means to the public interest. Then, I will argue that the public interest is for Hume an emergent property of the social order that results from the interactions of human beings, just like some properties of complex biological and physical systems arise from the interactions of its members. Next, I will show that Hume's theory is utilitarian because it rests on an argument including a contingent claim based on the consequences of human decisions: a social order can exist only if individuals cooperate under the strict observance of the three fundamental laws of justice. Finally, I will show that Rawls' criticism does not apply to Hume's theory.

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000

Harsanyi invested his Aggregation Theorem and Impartial Observer Theorem with deep utilitarian sense, but Sen redescribed them as "representation theorems" with little ethical import. This negative view has gained wide acquiescence in economics. Against it, we support the utilitarian interpretation by a novel argument relative to the Aggregation Theorem. We suppose that a utilitarian observer evaluates non-risky alternatives by the sum of individual utilities and investigate his von Neumann-Morgenstern (VNM) preference on risky alternatives. Adding some technical assumptions to Harsanyi's, we conclude that (i) this observer would use the utility sum as a VNM utility function, and crucially, (ii) any social observer would evaluate both risky and non-risky alternatives in terms of a weighted utility sum.

Utilitas, 2002

This essay examines D. G. Ritchie's claim that 'in Ethics the theory of natural selection has vindicated all that has proved most permanently valuable in Utilitarianism'. Principally, it endeavours to determine what Ritchie means by Vindicated' and what kind of utilitarianism he thinks evolutionary theory vindicates. With respect to the kind of utilitarianism vindicated, I will show how he tries to fortify Millian liberal utilitarianism with new liberal values such as self-realization and common good. Ritchie's intellectual debts were eclectic and included mostly Mill, T.

“In contemporary ethics there is a strong conviction that utilitarianism undervalues autonomy, personal integrity and personhood, and overvalues community. Explain and discuss this claim.”