Phi202

Consequentialism/Utilitarianism

Up till now we've looked mainly at descriptive issues.

Metaphysical issues - e.g are there moral facts?

Semantical issues - e.g is a moral statement a description or a prescription?

^^Those are descriptive issues

Strictly speaking, only the semantical issues are genuinely meta-ethical; but people often use the term loosely to mean 'a descriptive issue in ethics'.

Relativism has some normative component, but the focus is on the meta-ethical/descriptive.

The theories we'll be looking at in the next few weeks are ones where the normative component is central.

(The meta-ethical component can generally be taken to be factualist, roughly)

For now, assume these theories to agree that there is a fact of the matter as to what is good/bad, right/wrong.


Recall that normative theories roughly speaking fall into three classes: Consequentialist (good/bad consequences), deontological (right/wrong rules), aretoic (virtuous/dispositions)

Consequentialist: Different situations, involve/contain different amounts of good. The right thing to do at any point is to choose the option available to you that will have the best consequences in terms of goodness. The right thing to do is to maximise good consequences.

Consequentlialism is consistent with a number of different views as to what sort of goodness to define rightness in terms of. Historically, the original consequentialist theories chose a certain sort of feature to play this rightness determining role.

Theories which invoke that notion of goodness are utilitarian.

The stereotypical utilitarian theory is hedonic utilitiarianism. This was first systematically formulated by English radical Jeremy Bantham.

This theory holds that the sort of good that determines rightness is pleasure. The right thing to do is to perform the act that will as a consequence produce the situation containing the most pleasure overall for atleast humanity (not egoistic hedonism). Other consequentialist theories can also count as utilitarian, depending how much the notion of goodness they invoke resembles pleasure (In certain respects which we'll attempt to articulate).

Bantham took the theory very literally. All pleasure was on a par, aside from its intensity, quality or location was immaterial. Pleasure of philosophy was no more weighty than the pleasure of beer. Human pleasure was no more weighty than animal pleasure.

Famous quote: "Prejudice aside, pustpin is as good as poetry"

The point was not libertonian. But radicalism. Bentham felt unusually for the time, that many existing laws and practices in England were unjust - e.g severely punishing acts that caused no-one displeasure/harm for what he saw as un-justified reasons of tradition.

This radical levelling quality was felt by many, even those sympathetic to reform,to be extreme. So more conventional forms of utilitarianism developed.

e/g John Stuart Mill, mid 19th c author of Itilitarianism held that pleasure could be divided into higher and lower forms.


Higher quality pleasure are accorded greater weight in the maximisation process. But still, many felt, this places at the centre of the moral universe something that does not matter very much.

So why not dump pleasure entirely at the relevant notion or the good to be maximised.