Phil 104 N59 U.

of Connecticut, Spring 2005

IX. Lecture Notes: Utilitarianism

1. Introduction First, I present Mill’s criterion of moral rightness, the

2. The Principle of Utility Principle of Utility. Utilitarianism is a teleological theory
3. Theory of the Good that specifies an action as right if it produces the best
4. Theory of the Right outcome: the greatest happiness of the greatest number. I
5. Theory of Moral Motivation and Practical Reason conclude with a discussion of rule-utilitarianism, which
6. Rule-Utilitarianism applies the Principle of Utility to rules rather than to actions.

1. Introduction

Utilitarianism and Kantianism are the two main ethical theories currently available. They

have exerted a vast influence not just in ethics, but in economic, political and legal thought as

well. Here we shall examine utilitarianism, which was first systematized by Jeremy Bentham

(1748~1832), and ably defended by John Stuart Mill (1806~1873). For the most part we will

follow Mill’s classic exposition of the theory in his Utilitarianism.

Utilitarianism is primarily a theory of right action. It offers us a (purportedly) objective

and universal criterion of moral judgment and action, which enables us to judge actions as right

or wrong. This criterion is called the Principle of Utility. It also doubles as a decision procedure,

which we can use to decide what we morally ought to do in any given situation.

A notable feature of utilitarianism, as a moral theory, is that it is a teleological theory.

All moral theories have two parts: a theory of the good and a theory of the right. A theory of the

good tells us what counts as a good state of affairs, and a theory of the right tells us what counts

as a right action. A moral theory is teleological if its theory of the right depends upon its theory

of the good. A teleological theory tells us that what counts as right action depends upon what

counts as good states of affairs; it tells us, in other words, that the right action is one that aims at

a good state of affairs as the outcome of the action. We shall later see exactly why utilitarianism

is classified as a teleological theory.

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2. The Principle of Utility

Mill states the Principle of Utility in several positions throughout his essay. Let me first

quote some of Mill’s statements, so as to give you a composite picture of the principle, and then

restate it in the terms that I will be using throughout these lecture notes.

Here are Mill’s own statements and brief explanations of the Principle of Utility:

(1) [T]he Greatest Happiness Principle…holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to
promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is
intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure.
(V&V, p.94)
(2) …the utilitarian standard… is not the agent’s own greatest happiness, but the greatest amount of
happiness altogether…. (V&V, p.97)
(3) According to the Greatest Happiness Principle… the ultimate end, with reference to and for the
sake of which all other things are desirable (whether we are considering our own good or that of
other people), is an existence exempt as far as possible from pain, and as rich as possible in
enjoyments, both in point of quantity and quality…. (V&V, p.97)
(4) …the happiness which forms the utilitarian standard of what is right in conduct, is not the agent’s
own happiness, but that of all concerned. As between his own happiness and that of others,
utilitarianism requires him to be as strictly impartial as a disinterested1 and benevolent spectator.
(V&V, p.97)

We may now briefly rephrase the Principle of Utility (which Mill calls “the Greatest

Happiness Principle) as follows:

The Principle of Utility. Among available courses of action, the right action is one that brings about
the best state of affairs (= greatest happiness of the greatest number).

Notice that the Principle of Utility specifies the “right” action in terms of what produces the

“best” outcome. This indicates that utilitarianism is a teleological moral theory which specifies

the right in terms of the good.

1
Here “disinterested” does not mean “indifferent” or “lacking all interest”. It means something more like “stepping
back from your own interests, so as to consider everyone’s interests (including your own) equally”, and this was the
standard way in which British moral philosophers of the sentimentalist school (including William Shaftesbury,
David Hume, Adam Smith, Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill) used the term “disinterest”.

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To illustrate how this principle works, suppose that you have two ice-cream cones, and

you have just two courses of action available to you:

Option 1: eat both ice-cream cones yourself;

Option 2: share them equally with your sister.

Then you should compare Options 1 and 2, and determine which would result in the greatest

amount of happiness for both you and your sister, and not just for yourself. Since Option 2

would result in the greatest amount of happiness for both, the right choice is Option 2.

You can also compare courses of action all of which have bad outcomes. Then

utilitarianism dictates that you should choose the course of action which results in the least bad

outcome (according to Mill, this would be the course of action which results in the least amount

of suffering for the greatest number of people).

3. Theory of the Good

Utilitarianism in general involves the following three assumptions:

(a) a theory of the good: certain things are good or bad;

(b) a calculus: we can compare (i.e., measure and rank) the goodness or badness of outcomes;

(c) a theory of the right: the right action is what produces the best outcome.

We can get different versions of utilitarianism by providing different specifications of things that

are good or bad, i.e., by providing different theories of the good. Here we will compare and

contrast the specific theories of the good proposed by Mill’s utilitarian predecessor Jeremy

Bentham and Mill himself.

According to both Bentham and Mill, the ultimate end of life is to lead a pleasant life

devoid of pain. What is intrinsically good (good in itself) is happiness, or the state of existence

filled with pleasure and devoid of pain. What is instrumentally good (good as means) is

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whatever helps contribute to a happy life. Utilitarians like Mill attempt to prove the intrinsic

value of pleasure and happiness from observation of what humans actually desire. We always

desire happiness and avoid suffering.2 When it comes to moral goodness, however, it is not just

the agent’s own happiness that should be the goal of one’s pursuit, but the happiness of the

greatest number of beings—i.e., not just human beings, but any sentient creature that is capable

of feeling pain and pleasure—who can be affected by one’s actions. Hence an agent must be

impartial between her own happiness and the happiness of others; as Bentham puts it,

“everybody [is] to count for one, nobody for more than one”. It also follows that the happiness

of many is better than the happiness of one. Therefore, the best state of affairs is the greatest

happiness for the greatest number.

Up to this point, Bentham and Mill are more or less in agreement. Bentham differs from

Mill in taking only the quantitative aspects of pleasure and pain into account, ignoring qualitative

differences between different kinds of pleasures and pains. This is because Bentham wanted to

transform ethics into a scientific theory, which relies entirely upon empirical observation and

quantitative measurement. Bentham proposed seven quantitative measures of pleasure and pain:

(1) intensity,
(2) duration,
(3) certainty or uncertainty [of the expected pleasure or pain],
(4) propinquity or remoteness [of future pleasure or pain from the present moment],
(5) fecundity [the chance that a pain will be followed by other pains, or a pleasure by other pleasures],
(6) purity [the chance that a pleasure will not be followed by pains, or a pain by pleasures]
(7) extent [the number of persons to whom pain or pleasure extends].

And to help the students of utilitarianism to memorize these quantitative measures, Bentham

obligingly penned this pedagogical poem:

Intense, long, certain, speedy, fruitful, pure—

Such marks in pleasures and in pains endure.
Such pleasures seek if private be thy end:
2
Mill acknowledges that we seem to desire other things besides happiness, such as virtue, as intrinsically good. But
he argues that when we desire virtue for its own sake, we desire it because we find it pleasurable, i.e., we desire it as
a constituent part of happiness.

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If it be public, wide let them extend.

Such pains avoid, whichever be thy view:
If pains must come, let them extend to few.3

It is a consequence of Bentham’s theory that qualitative differences in pleasures and

pains do not matter: so long as they provide the same quantity of pleasure, a simple game of

push-pin is as good as poetry. It is this crude version of hedonism that Mill rebelled against, by

including qualitative dimensions of pleasures and pains into his theory of the good.

According to Mill, “[i]t is quite compatible with the principle of utility to recognise the

fact, that some kinds of pleasure are more desirable and more valuable than others” (V&V, p.95),

and therefore quantitative evaluation of pains and pleasures is not enough. If we only consider

the quantitative aspects of pleasure, there is no reason why we should prefer the life of Socrates

over the life of swine. But human beings have higher faculties than animals, and thus are

capable of enjoying higher kinds of pleasure, such as philosophy, literature and music.

Moreover, once we learn to appreciate a higher kind of pleasure, we are unwilling to give up the

higher kind of pleasure for a chance to enjoy a greater quantity of the lower kind. As Mill

famously writes, “It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be

Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied” (V&V, p.96).

But how do we compare two different kinds of pleasure in terms of quality, and how do

we evaluate quality against quantity? Mill proposes the following ingenious test:

Of two pleasures, if there be one to which all or almost all who have experience of both give a
decided preference… that is the more desirable pleasure. If one of the two is, by those who
are competently acquainted with both, placed so far above the other that they prefer it… and
would not resign it for any quantity of the other pleasure which their nature is capable of, we
are justified in ascribing to the preferred enjoyment a superiority in quality, so far
outweighing quantity as to render it, in comparison, of small account. (V&V, p.95)

Notice that this proposed test is purely empirical: of two pleasures, we can determine which is

the higher kind of pleasure, or in which case the higher quality of one pleasure is preferable over

3
Jeremy Bentham, Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (Hafner: New York, 1948).

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the greater quantity of the other pleasure, by observing the preferences of people who are well

acquainted with both pleasures. Thus Mill manages incorporate qualitative distinctions between

pleasures in his theory of the good, while remaining true to utilitarianism’s empirical stance.

4. Theory of the Right

Utilitarianism is a form of consequentialism, according to which the rightness or

wrongness of actions are determined by their consequences. Thus utilitarianism is forward-

looking—i.e., in order to determine whether an action is right or wrong, we look to the future

consequences of an action, and estimate how much happiness to how many people the action will

produce. More specifically, what the Principle of Utility dictates is this. In any given situation,

the course of action that will produce the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people

who will be affected by the action is the right one, and all other courses of action are wrong.

The Principle of Utility is a powerful decision-making tool which enables us (certainly

not in practice but always in principle) to settle upon a uniquely correct decision in any scenario.

No other well-known criterion of right action, such as the Principle of Consistency, the Golden

Rule, or even Kant’s Categorical Imperative, is efficient enough to settle all moral conflicts.4

5. Theory of Moral Motivation and Practical Reason

(a) Moral motivation. Mill insists that the Golden Rule captures the complete spirit of

utilitarianism: “To do as you would be done by, and to love your neighbour as yourself,

constitute the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality” (V&V, p.97). Thus it should come as no

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But one may wonder whether it is a good thing to be able to solve all moral conflicts without remainder, just as the
Principle of Utility enables us to do. Sometimes life is tragic, and it confronts us with irresolvable moral dilemmas.
But the Principle of Utility all too efficiently eliminates any trace of tragedy from our moral landscape—if
Shakespeare had been a utilitarian, there would have been no Hamlet, no agonizing question whether to be, or not to
be. This is one of Bernard Williams’s insightful criticisms of utilitarianism, in Morality: An Introduction to Ethics.

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surprise that Mill takes sympathy or fellow-feeling to be the ultimate motivation for following

the Principle of Utility. We all desire pleasure over pain, but this desire for happiness is usually

limited to ourselves or our loved ones, and therefore cannot serve by itself as a reliable motive to

impartial moral conduct, i.e., the pursuit of the greatest happiness of the greatest number. It is

sympathy or fellow-feeling that enables us to extend the personal desire for happiness to the

happiness of other sentient beings.

(b) Practical reason. By “practical reason” is meant the kind of reasoning that is

employed in providing reasons for acting one way or another. The kind of reasoning that

utilitarianism employs is instrumental or means-end rationality. Means-end reasoning dictates

that one should take the most efficient means to the end one has adopted, the relation between

the means and the end being a relation between cause and effect. Now, we have already seen

that the ultimate end from the utilitarian point of view, which moral agents should aim at, is the

greatest happiness of the greatest number. Keeping this ultimate end fixed, the Principle of

Utility dictates that in any given situation the agent should follow means-end reasoning, and

thereby adopt the most effective steps towards attaining the greatest overall happiness possible.

Like many moral philosophers before him, Mill tries to justify morality (namely his

Principle of Utility) on the slender basis of practical reason, i.e., instrumental rationality. He

fails, however, because he first has to—and cannot—demonstrate that the greatest happiness of

the greatest number is indeed the ultimate goal of all our conduct, before he can show that it is

irrational (according to the standard of instrumental reasoning) not to pursue this goal.

6. Rule-Utilitarianism

We shall now examine the motivation for adopting a more complex form of utilitarianism,

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called rule-utilitarianism (which I like to call utilitarianism-on-steroids). But let me first restate

the version of utilitarianism we began with, which I will now refer to as act-utilitarianism:

[Among the different courses of action available to the individual agent,]

the right action is the one which produces the greatest happiness for the greatest number.

Act-utilitarianism applies the Principle of Utility directly to particular courses of action that are

available to the agent. Let us now see what rule-utilitarianism is. It basically applies the

Principle of Utility to a set of general rules, and not to particular courses of action. Rule-

utilitarianism can be stated thus:

(i) [Among the courses of action available to the individual agent,]

the right action is the one which is required or permitted by the justified set of general rules.
(ii) [And among the general set of rules that can be observed by all or most members of society,]
the justified set of rules is the one which produces the greatest happiness for the greatest number.

Rule-utilitarianism is motivated by the insight that human beings have much to benefit by

engaging in cooperative practices and participating in social institutions, which can exist only if

people generally comply with the rules that define the practice or institution. For instance, the

institution of borrowing books from libraries can exist only if people in general observe the rule

that they return the books they borrow from libraries. If no one ever returns books, libraries

would disappear as public institutions, along with the benefits that derive from being able to

borrow books for free. Rule-utilitarianism applies the Principle of Utility to general rules that

define such cooperative practices or social institutions. The set of general rules that produce the

greatest happiness for the greatest number of people, when these rules are observed by all or

most participating members of cooperative practices or social institutions, is the set justified by

the Principle of Utility.

Rule-utilitarianism also says, with regard to any particular course of action open to an

agent, that the right course of action is the one that accords with a general rule justified the

Principle of Utility. This means that a course of action that produces more harm than benefit on

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a particular occasion can be the right one, if it is required by a justified rule. For instance, telling

the truth on some particular occasion is the right course of action, even if it would cause more

harm than benefit on that occasion, because it is required by the rule that one ought never to lie.

The rule itself—that one ought never to lie—is justified in terms of the overall benefit that

general compliance with the rule confers on humankind. It is because the rule is generally (not

exceptionlessly, but for the most part) followed that we are able to trust what we read in history

books and scientific journals, for instance. Hence, for rule-utilitarians, it is not the particular

course of action, but the general rule, which is justified on utilitarian grounds.

In Chapter 2 of Utilitarianism, Mill begins by defending an act-utilitarian version of the

Principle of Utility. Thus he says that “actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote

happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness” (V&V, p.94). But in the

course of defending utilitarianism against objections (more specifically in response to a moral

problem and a practical difficulty that the act-utilitarian version faces) he revises his position to a

rule-utilitarian version.5 Let us first consider the objections, and then see how Mill revises his

position in response.

First, the moral problem with act-utilitarianism is as follows. It seems possible that on

any particular occasion, the Principle of Utility might tell us that lying, stealing, or killing is the

right course of action, because that happens to lead to the greatest happiness of the greatest

number. But lying, stealing or killing is clearly wrong, and therefore act-utilitarianism is an

immoral doctrine.

Second, the practical difficulty with act-utilitarianism is this. In order to decide upon the

course of action that will lead to the greatest amount of happiness, one has to first know which

course of action will bring about that outcome. But one never has enough time to collect
5
As these further discussions were not included in your text (V&V, pp.93~98), I am summarizing them here.

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relevant information and carry out calculations, on any given occasion, about which course of

action will lead to the greatest overall happiness.

Mill responds to both objections by amending his position from a form of act-

utilitarianism to rule-utilitarianism. Mill argues that utilitarianism can address the moral

problem thus: any short-term benefit of lying on a particular occasion is outweighed by the long-

term cost of undermining the trust we repose in verbal testimony. Conversely, the overall benefit

of general compliance with the rule that one should always tell the truth is so great as to offset

any short-term cost of complying with the rule on particular occasions. Thus Mill can justify

compliance with general rules against lying, theft, and murder, for instance, on the basis of the

Principle of Utility.

Mill then tackles the practical difficulty. It is simply not true that on each particular

occasion we have to gather new information and calculate afresh the expected utility of each

available course of action. We may rely upon the entire past experience of humankind, and upon

the general rules that have passed the test of time, to decide what to do on each particular

occasion. Over the millennia humans have been learning about the typical tendencies of various

courses of action to result in harm or benefit, and the received rules of morality are the

summations of this accumulated wisdom. The acceptance of such rules as secondary principles

is compatible with the Principle of Utility, so long as we apply the Principle of Utility to these

secondary principles, rather than to particular courses of action.

Thus we have seen that rule-utilitarianism can overcome several of the objections that

act-utilitarianism is incapable of addressing, and this is a great advantage that rule-utilitarianism

has over act-utilitarianism.

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