Understanding Utilitarianism

• Utilitarianism is a highly influential form of consequentialism.
• Some equate consequentialism with utilitarianism.

Basic Elements

• Richard Hare suggests utilitarianism's morality claims are best understood through consequentialism, welfarism, and aggregationism.
• Utilitarianism determines an action's morality based on its consequences.
• Utilitarianism is a welfarist theory due to its consideration of consequences affecting individuals' welfare (well-being).
• Welfare generally refers to what benefits those affected by an action, improving their quality of life.
• Hare defines welfare as attaining a high or reasonable quality of life that a person desires or prefers.
• Welfare can vary; some see it as experiencing beauty/pleasure, while others see it as attaining knowledge, fulfilling desires or satisfying preferences.
• Utilitarianism is an aggregationist theory focused on maximizing the total welfare of all affected individuals.
• According to Mill, this perspective is agent-neutral; it prioritizes the greatest happiness overall, not just the agent's happiness.
• The morally good act maximizes the aggregate or sum total of welfare for everyone affected.
• Aggregation leads naturally to impartiality.

Hedonistic and Non-Hedonistic

• Hedonistic utilitarianism posits pleasure as the only intrinsic good and pain as the only intrinsic bad.
• This is represented by Bentham and Mill.
• Bentham's principle of utility approves or disapproves of actions based on their tendency to increase or decrease happiness.
• Mill's utility, or the greatest happiness principle, states that actions are right as they promote happiness and wrong as they produce the reverse.
• Happiness is defined as pleasure and the absence of pain and pain is defined as the privation of pleasure.
• Pleasure and freedom from pain are the only desirable ends, either for their inherent pleasure or as means to promote pleasure and prevent pain.
• Bentham's hedonistic utilitarianism emphasizes quantitative differences in pleasures, termed quantitative hedonistic utilitarianism.
• Mill's version emphasizes qualitative differences, termed qualitative hedonistic utilitarianism.
• Quantitative utilitarianism does not differentiate significantly between physical and mental pleasures, unlike qualitative utilitarianism.
• Bentham sees little difference between pleasures derived from simple games and poetry, whereas Mill does.
• Bentham devised the calculus of felicity or hedonistic calculus to quantitatively compare alternative pleasures based on intensity, duration, certainty, propinquity, fecundity, purity, and extent.
• Mill employs his own qualitative utilitarianism.
• Utilitarianism may seem to endorse a "swinish doctrine" that reduce human pleasure to the same level as animals.
• It in effect puts the value of human pleasure and pains of the same level of that of animals
• A potential failing of utilitarianism is failing because of the lack of objective measure of pleasure and no means of ranking different types of pleasure.
• Utilitarianism may struggle to account for moral acts of martyrdom or self-sacrifice.

Non-Hedonistic Forms

• Non-hedonistic utilitarianism, a form of non-hedonistic consequentialism, rejects that pleasure and pain are always the only intrinsic factors.
• Pleasure is not the only intrinsic good or bad, other factors exists.
• While pleasure is an intrinsic good, there are other intrinsic good as well
• Exclusive non-hedonistic utilitarianism rejects hedonism on pleasure where as inclusive non-hedonistic rejects hedonism in the second way.
• Preference utilitarianism maximizes satisfaction of preferences, not just pleasure, with Hare and Peter Singer as key proponents.
• Pluralistic Utilitarianism recognizes multiple intrinsic goods like beauty, knowledge, power, and relationships, with Rashdall and G.E. Moore being proponents.
• Pluralistic utilitarianism views actions as morally good if they maximize any of these intrinsic goods.