The Ultimate Utilitarian
Hello fellow students. I’m going to talk about a subject that has been near and dear to my heart for years. I’m talking today about the philosophical calculation of utilitarianism and how students (and anybody for that matter) can apply it to make the world a much better place. This is related to chapter two in the VTA Method so go check that out if you’re interested in a more general overview of philosophies of life.
What is Utilitarianism
Utilitarianism is very simply an idea that the moral worth of any action is determined by the contribution to its overall utility. Therefore, the moral worth of an action is determined by its outcome, or as Spock would say “The ends justify the means”. (I’m pretty sure other people said that too but when I think of a pure Utilitarian, I always think of Spock)… Yes I’m a dork.
So what’s the point of Utilitarianism?
So the point of utilitarianism is to maximize utility which can mean different things to different people, but most utilitarian’s define this as happiness or pleasure. The opposite of happiness and pleasure is pain and dissatisfaction. Therefore the goal of a utilitarian is to maximize happiness and pleasure while minimizing pain. Broadly based, utilitarianism is a form of consequentialism which has many flavors but relates to the general concept that ones actions has consequences and therefore ones actions must be weighed in order to achieve whatever goal one set out to do.
Origins of Utilitiarianism
Utilitarianism’s origins can be found in the work of Epicurus but was popularized by Jeremy Bentham who saw the world through the dualism of pain and pleasure. From this understanding he produced the rule of utility being that good is what brings the greatest happiness to the greatest amount of people. Later utilitarians have actually refocused this philosophy and dropped the ‘greatest amount of people’ as it produces an ethnocentric outlook and excludes other forms of life that can experience pain. A utilitarian outlook is seen as a philosophy of practicality as you simply input variables into your own calculation for creating the greatest good and then make a choice based on your conclusions. This can produce some problems however as each person holds different weight to good and bad. Let me give you the following example which should make things quite clear.
The dynamite dilemma:
Five people are stuck in a cave on a beach next to the ocean. The sixth person is quite fat and has become stuck in the entrance to the cave. The tide has started to come in and if they cannot escape the cave they will all drown. They have in their possession a stick of dynamite and a fuse. They can set a charge on the fat guy and blow him up which will free them but they will have killed the man in the process.
The question becomes, should they or should they not dynamite the fat guy?
A Utilitarian would look at this and perform a hedonistic calculation and ask themselves questions something like this:
What is the cost of inaction?
What is the cost of action?
Is the life of the fat guy creating more happiness than five lives in the cave?
Does the violent death of one person create more pain than the drowning death of five people?
Based on the few variables being presented most utilitarians would choose to dynamite the fat guy and save the five people. But let’s make this a little more complicated.
The fat guy is Barrack Obama (and yes I know he currently isn’t fat, just go with me) and his death would create a global economic and political disaster. He will also survive the drowning as his head is high enough above the tides finale water line as to survive.
Based on this new piece of information, our calculation changes considerably.
Our cost of action is a global economic and global disaster.
Our cost of inaction results in the drowning deaths of 5 regular people.
Therefore, the survival of Barrack will create more happiness than the survival of 5 random people, all things remaining equal.
How this can become even more complicated
You can add many more variables to the process but generally you can see how ones conditions can change dependent upon the variables presented and the individual making the hedonistic calculation. As an example, Spock would probably not blow up Barrack as he would realize with his Vulcan logic that his death, although horrible, will serve to create less pain in the world than the death of Barrack. Me on the other hand, I might still dynamite Barrack.
I may have the selfish desire to survive and/or have the feeling that the combined lives of the people in the cave will create so much good in the world that they will outweigh the ensuing economic and political disaster that blowing Barrack into a million little presidential bits will produce.
You can also look at this from other contexts, such as a popular argument that it would have been cheaper to simply buy all the slaves in the southern United States instead of having the American civil war. Generally, complex utilitarian decisions have different outcomes dependent upon the variables and the people weighing them. This is the big problem with utilitarianism and why many philosophy snobs think utilitarianism is junk.
Next post I’ll go into the critiques of utilitarianism and why many philosophy snobs hate utilitarianism. I’ll also teach you how to debate philosophy majors and take them down a notch.
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