Utilitarianism and future mistakes

2021

Journal of Philosophy

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?

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.

This article is an attempt to take an overview of the current position of utilitarian theory. It begins by providing a definition of utilitarianism as it is found in the works of Bentham, Mill and Sidgwick. These authors are all interpreted as intuitionists. It is claimed that the main rivals to utilitarianism are egoism on the one hand, and reflective non-egoistic pluralism, as found in the work of Ross, on the other. The significance of disagreement between proponents of these views is explained, and modern attempts to ground utilitarianism are found lacking. The article ends with a plea for history.

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.

Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 1997

One problem for any utilitarian alternative to act utilitarianism, such as rule utilitarianism, is the feeling that act utilitarianism is the most natural form of utilitarianism. Other forms seen unmotivated, inconsistent, or irrational. This argument is found in Smart, Foot and Slote. It turns on the assumption that utilitarianism must be motivated by the "teleological motivation," the idea that one must derive one's entire moral theory from the notion of the good. I respond that act utilitarianism itself has a problem from the point of view of the teleological motivation, a problem solved, surprisingly, by several utilitarian alternatives including rule 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.

The Journal of Value Inquiry, 2005

International Journal of Philosophy

Classical utilitarianism is very demanding and entails some counter-intuitive implications in moral dilemmas such as the trolley problem in deontological ethics and the repugnant conclusion in population ethics. This article presents how one specific modification of utilitarianism can avoid these counter-intuitive implications. In this modified utilitarian theory, called 'discounted' or 'mild' utilitarianism, people have a right to discount the utilities of others, under the condition that people whose utility is discounted cannot validly complain against such discounting. A complaint made by a utility discounted person is not valid if either the existence of the discounting people in that option is in a specific sense necessary or the existence of the discounted person is in a sense not necessary. According to mild utilitarianism, we should choose the option that maximizes the total validly discounted or complaint-free discounted utility, i e. the sum of everyone's utility minus the complaint-free discounts. As there are two conditions that make a complaint invalid, this right to discount can be translated into two versions: the right to bodily autonomy and the right to procreation autonomy. The former right relates to the mere means principle in deontological ethics, the latter right is useful in avoiding the repugnant conclusion problem in population ethics. The possibility of democratically imposing an upper bound on the permissible amount of discounting is discussed.