Philosophy Mills Utilitarianism
Philosophy - Mills UtilitarianismMill’s Utilitarianism: Sacrifice the innocent for the common good?
When faced with a moral dilemma, utilitarianism identifies the
appropriate considerations, but offers no realistic way to gather the
necessary information to make the required calculations. This lack of
information is a problem both in evaluating the welfare issues and in
evaluating the consequentialist issues which utilitarianism requires be
weighed when making moral decisions. Utilitarianism attempts to solve
both of these difficulties by appealing to experience; however, no
method of reconciling an individual decision with the rules of
experience is suggested, and no relative weights are assigned to the
various considerations.
In deciding whether or not to torture a terrorist who has planted a
bomb in New York City, a utilitarian must evaluate both the overall
welfare of the people involved or effected by the action taken, and the
consequences of the action taken. To calculate the welfare of the people
involved in or effected by an action, utilitarianism requires that all
individuals be considered equally.
Quantitative utilitarians would weigh the pleasure and pain which would
be caused by the bomb exploding against the pleasure and pain that would
be caused by torturing the terrorist. Then, the amounts would be summed
and compared. The problem with this method is that it is impossible to
know beforehand how much pain would be caused by the bomb exploding or
how much pain would be caused by the torture. Utilitarianism offers no
practical way to make the interpersonal comparison of utility necessary
to compare the pains. In the case of the bomb exploding, it at least
seems highly probable that a greater amount of pain would be caused, at
least in the present, by the bomb exploding. This probability suffices
for a quantitative utilitarian, but it does not account for the
consequences, which create an entirely different problem, which will be
discussed below. The probability also does not hold for Mill’s
utilitarianism.
Mill’s Utilitarianism insists on qualitative utilitarianism, which
requires that one consider not only the amount of pain or pleasure, but
also the quality of such pain and pleasure. Mill suggests that to
distinguish between different pains and pleasures we should ask people
who have experienced both types which is more pleasurable or more
painful. This solution does not work for the question of torture
compared to death in an explosion. There is no one who has experienced
both, therefore, there is no one who can be consulted.
Even if we agree that the pain caused by the number of deaths in the
explosion is greater than the pain of the terrorist being tortured, this
assessment only accounts for the welfare half of the utilitarian’s
considerations. Furthermore, one has no way to measure how much more
pain is caused by allowing the bomb to explode than by torturing the
terrorist.
After settling the issues surrounding the welfare, a utilitarian must
also consider the consequences of an action. In...
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