Mill Essay, Research Paper

Mill’s 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 utilitarians 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 would be caused

by 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 a greater

amount of pain would be caused, at least in the present, by the bomb

exploding. 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

objectivist 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 will 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 decides 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 deaths 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.