Teaching Utilitarianism
I’ve been trying to find a good way to help my ethics students learn about John Stuart Mill and utilitarianism. I put together this combination of reading and reflection questions to get everyone to think through the content, and every so often while the students are working independently we’ll stop and have a class discussion so that students can share and develop their responses. I’m not trying to cover every detail, but I want to bring up a few key points: 1) a general definition of utilitarianism; 2) Mill’s method of measuring the quality of pleasures; 3) the need to protect the minority from abuse by the majority.
Any suggestions for things to rewrite, different questions to ask, or resources to use are welcome.
Warmup
Give an example of something that you think is popular and has low quality. (For example, food or music or a TV show.) Then give an example of something that you think has high quality but is not popular. Finally, give an example of something that is both popular and high in quality.
Do you think that “a lot of people believe this is good†is a reliable sign that something is good? Why?
Classwork
One philosopher who did not like the idea of strict egalitarianism was John Stuart Mill, who lived in England in the 1800s. He believed it was a bad idea to treat everyone the same because everyone is not the same. Some people are clearly more talented than other people. These are the people who create new things and help society progress. If you try to make these geniuses be the same as everybody else, then they can’t use their genius for anyone’s benefit. Mill was already concerned that democracy was having a bad effect on society because geniuses are relatively rare. Most people are average, or ordinary, or mediocre. Since a democracy will tend to do what the most people will want or like, democracy puts pressure on the geniuses to conform. This is dangerous, so Mill says that society needs to guard everyone’s freedom to be individuals. This will not only help the individuals, but it will also help society.
After thinking about egalitarianism and Mill’s concerns about democracy, do you feel confident that making decisions by majority rule will lead to good things for society in the long run? Why/why not?
Mill is famous for supporting utilitarianism in addition to his defense of liberty. Utilitarianism is an ethical system that focuses on the consequences of actions. What you meant to do doesn’t matter – what you did is what matters. Think of the expression “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.†This statement suggests that it is very easy to do a bad thing even though you have good reasons. And when you think about it, most of the rules we follow about good behavior are there because we don’t like the consequences of bad behavior. Murder is wrong because people don’t want to be dead. Stealing is wrong because people don’t want to lose their property. So while some people do believe that what you mean to do is what matters, utilitarians do not. They’re called utilitarians because they believe in the idea of utility – usefulness. An action is good if it is a useful action. An action is useful if it makes good things happen.
Do you think that Mill is correct to focus on the outcome of an action in order to decide if the action was good? Or do you think that what a person means to do is more important? Explain.
The next question the utilitarians try to answer is, “If good actions are actions with good consequences, how do we figure out what good consequences are?†One famous utilitarian, John Stuart Mill, said that an action is useful if it brings about the greatest possible happiness for the people affected by the action. Why does he use happiness as his measuring stick? Because he claims that everything else that we want, we want because it makes us happy. We want a good job to make money. We want the money to buy things or do things that make us happy. But we don’t want to be happy because we want to do something else. We like being happy just for the sake of being happy. So it must be the most important priority. Everything else should be evaluated based on whether it helps us achieve this priority. If it does, it’s good. If it doesn’t, it’s bad.
Do you think that happiness is the most important thing that people are trying to get, or is there something that people want even more than they want happiness? Explain your answer.
Some people criticize utilitarians for this emphasis on happiness. They say that it makes it OK to do anything as long as it feels good or makes you happy. This emphasis on pleasure – especially physical pleasure – is usually called hedonism. Mill and other utilitarians say that this criticism is unfair. Human beings are sophisticated creatures. We don’t just get happiness from things like food, sex, or intoxicants. We get happiness from friendship. We get happiness from creating or appreciating works of art. We get happiness from intellectual achievement or by striving to improve. Since many of these pleasures are of a higher quality than the type of physical pleasures that mere animals enjoy, the utilitarian should be aiming for something better than pure hedonism. Emphasizing happiness doesn’t require people to act like animals. It requires people to act like smart, compassionate, talented people. That’s why utilitarians care about happiness.
Do you agree with Mill’s belief that human beings value intellectual, creative, and/or emotional pleasures more than they value basic physical pleasures? Why/why not?
Is hedonism a good ethical system? Should we decide that something is right if it feels good? Why?
It is also very important to remember that the utilitarian is not just concerned with his or her own pleasure. The utilitarian needs to think about the happiness of all of the people who will be affected by an action. So if the utilitarian is faced with a choice between: 1) making himself happy while other people are miserable or 2) making several other people happy while he becomes less happy, then the utilitarian must choose the second option. Utilitarianism is not about every person looking out for himself or herself. It’s about every person looking out for the entire community, which is very different from a self-centered philosophy like hedonism.
Is it the right thing to do to make yourself unhappy if it will make other people happy? Why/why not?
Do you have any confidence that many other people will give up their own happiness to make you happy? Why/ why not?
One of the major concerns with utilitarianism is that, even if you accept the idea that good actions are the ones that produce the most happiness, you still need to figure out which actions produce the most happiness. That means you have to be able to measure happiness. Mill says that we should do this like any other scientific investigation and get empirical data. If you want to know if pleasure A is of a higher quality than pleasure B, ask people who have tried both which one they would prefer. If there’s a clear consensus for pleasure B, then pleasure B produces more happiness. If more people would choose a steak dinner over a McDonald’s hamburger, the steak must be a higher quality pleasure. So eating the steak produces more happiness than eating the burger, which makes it the right thing to do.
Do you think that Mill’s idea is a good way to measure happiness? Why/why not?
Is there any good way that we could measure happiness? Why do you believe this?
Mill did throw a wrinkle into this scheme. He said that the only people whose experiences should count for this pleasure survey would be people who were capable of experiencing and appreciating both pleasures. After all, you wouldn’t ask someone who was colorblind to compare two different shades of red. But that does raise the problem that a utilitarian might want to go against the opinion of the crowds because their tastes are not sophisticated enough to appreciate a really high quality pleasure. (Think of how often the movies that make the most money are not the movies with the best reviews.) As a result, utilitarians are often accused of being elitist – of thinking that some people’s opinions are more important than others because they are part of a special group.
Would you be comfortable trusting an expert’s decisions about what is good or bad, or what is right or wrong? What qualifications would such an expert need? Explain your answer.
Another criticism of utilitarianism is that it can allow a majority to trample on the rights and happiness of a minority. A utilitarian might be able to justify enslaving a small group of people because the slave labor makes everybody else happier. A utilitarian might even be able to justify murder if the victim’s death would somehow bring pleasure to people.
Imagine that someone proposes a tax system that would make 99 out of 100 people poorer, but the 100th person would make so much more money that the total wealth of the 100 people would go up. Would you support this tax system under any circumstances? Explain your answer.
There are different ways that utilitarians try to deal with the problem. Some accept the criticism – they say that it might not seem fair to the person who gets enslaved or killed, but on the other hand, is it fair to deprive a larger group of the happiness that it could have had? There is no completely good option – there are almost always negative consequences for something. Utilitarians want to minimize those negatives consequences.
Can you think of a good way to protect the rights of the minority when the majority wants to take advantage of the minority for its own benefit? How should society deal with these situations?
Mill had another answer. Even though he was afraid that democracy encouraged society to accept mediocrity (because the majority of society isn’t talented enough to do better), he still supported democracy and the rights of every individual. Whether you were average or exceptional, Mill thought that it was important that you be free to be the best you that you could be. Every person needs to be free to grow. If society stopped you from doing that, you would suffer and so would society. Imagine if society forced you to walk around in a cast so that you could never move your arm. After a few years with the cast, your arm wouldn’t work right even if you got the cast off. Living with too many restrictions would make you less happy and less able to make other people happy. Mill believed that if society did things that interfered with liberty and human rights, like allowing slavery, then society would be making it harder for people to experience the high-quality, sophisticated pleasures that make people better than wild animals. Even if the slave labor made a lot of people rich, it would be making them less happy in the long run because it would take away their opportunities for the best pleasures. It would stunt the growth of society and its members. It would take away the ability of some of its geniuses to flourish. Therefore, slave labor would actually result in an overall decrease in happiness, and therefore slave labor would be wrong.
Do you think that Mill’s defense of liberty would prevent utilitarians from abusing a minority? Why?
After reading about Mill, do you think that utilitarianism is a good way to decide what’s right and what’s wrong? Why/why not?
About Dave Thomer
Born and raised in Philadelphia. Studied philosophy at Fordham University in the Bronx, where I made many great friends and met my wonderful wife. We moved back to Philadelphia, where I studied philosophy some more and became a teacher. Online and off, I'm looking for ways that we can be better citizens and build stronger communities.