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To begin with, recall that utilitarianism is the name given to any ethical theory that says something is good if it brings about utility overall. If an action brings about utility, then we say that happiness or well-being is the consequence of that action.
You also need to remember that a utilitarian isn’t just concerned with adding up all the good consequences when evaluating an action; they calculate all the bad consequences as well. By weighing up the good and bad, they can get a complete account of the utility that an action has and see what the overall outcome is.
Additionally, keep in mind that this calculation isn’t simply about the presence or absence of utility. The degree or quantity of utility is important as well.
IN CONTEXT
Imagine you’re deciding on where to go on vacation. If you decide to go someplace where you can also meet up with some old friends, this will bring about more happiness than if you don't. Therefore, the utilitarian will say it’s good.
But if you decide to travel to a place that recently suffered a natural disaster and you volunteer to help survivors, this brings about even more utility. Therefore, for the utilitarian, this is a better action.
As you can see, there are different degrees of goodness for the utilitarian. The same goes for badness.
EXAMPLE
Avoiding paying your taxes is bad because it reduces the utility experienced by your fellow nationals due to less funding for public services. But if you were a lawyer helping many wealthy people avoid paying taxes, this would be worse. That’s because the reduction in revenue is much more severe.Sometimes our everyday understanding of right and wrong agrees with what brings about the greatest utility.
EXAMPLE
Most of us think giving to charity is a good thing to do. As long as the charity is successful at helping those in need, utilitarians will also say this is the right thing to do.There are many other similar cases.
EXAMPLE
Many people think that we should buy things responsibly, such as buying coffee or bananas from producers that give a fair wage to the people who harvest these products and ensure their working conditions aren’t dangerous. Assuming the workers' happiness outweighs the consumers' inconvenience, the utilitarian will agree that this is the right thing to do.There are also plenty of cases, however, where utilitarianism says we ought to do things that seem clearly wrong to us. Many of these cases involve intentionally harming someone for the benefit of others.
IN CONTEXT
Imagine you go to a hospital for a routine check-up. As you’re waiting for your doctor, several people are admitted due to a big car crash. All of them need organs to survive: heart, lungs, liver, etc. There are no organs available for them.
Your doctor gives you a sedative without your knowledge in order to harvest your organs for the injured patients. By killing you and giving your organs to other patients, many lives have been saved.
Assuming that saving several lives has greater utility than keeping one person alive, the utilitarian will say that the doctor was right to do what she did.
Most of us would find the doctor’s actions horrific because it goes against our sense of justice. You can think of many similar cases where inflicting harm produces more utility but at the cost of violating people's rights.
EXAMPLE
Imagine a government of an impoverished country forcefully sterilizes its citizens so that there will be less hunger, disease, and pain through overcrowding.If this action brings about an overall rise in utility, then the utilitarian will say the government behaved ethically, but taking away people's right to have children without their knowledge or consent seems clearly unethical.
Sometimes, it is not clear whether or not our everyday moral views fit with utilitarianism. That’s because a utilitarian can’t always give us clear evaluations of actions due to the difficulty of weighing utility in different cases.
IN CONTEXT
Imagine you have absolutely nothing but mounting debt. You decide you are going to steal someone else's identity, leaving them with your identity and all your debt.
You get away with the fraud and no one believes the victim of your crime.
It’s uncertain whether the utilitarian will say this is good or bad. That’s because it seems the overall utility stays the same after the identity theft: A wealthy person is now poor, and a poor person is now wealthy.
You find a similar problem when you’re faced with the choice between two kinds of happiness. It can be unclear which you should go for since they seem to both have utility.
EXAMPLE
Imagine you get a lot of pleasure out of eating unhealthy food, but you also want to live a long and healthy life. It’s not clear from the utilitarian view whether short-term pleasure is better than long-term benefits.Philosophers working in ethics often try to apply ethical theories to specific situations. Let’s consider how a utilitarian might apply their ethics to the following issues:
