use theory of meaning See MEANING, PHILOSOPHY. OF LANGUAG. utilitarianism, the moral theory that an action is morally right if and only if it produces at least as much good (utility) for all people affected by the action as any alternative action the person could do instead. Its best-known proponent is J. S. Mill, who formulated the greatest happiness principle (also called the principle of utility): always act so as to produce the greatest happiness. Two kinds of issues have been central in debates about whether utilitarianism is an adequate or true moral theory: first, whether and how utilitarianism can be clearly and precisely formulated and applied; second, whether the moral implications of utilitarianism in particular cases are acceptable, or instead constitute objections to it. Issues of formulation. A central issue of formulation is how utility is to be defined and whether it can be measured in the way utilitarianism requires. Early utilitarians often held some form of hedonism, according to which only pleasure and the absence of pain have utility or intrinsic value. For something to have intrinsic value is for it to be valuable for its own sake and apart from its consequences or its relations to other things. Something has instrumental value, on the other hand, provided it brings about what has intrinsic value. Most utilitarians have held that hedonism is too narrow an account of utility because there are many things that people value intrinsically besides pleasure. Some nonhedonists define utility as happiness, and among them there is considerable debate about the proper account of happiness. Happiness has also been criticized as too narrow to exhaust utility or intrinsic value; e.g., many people value accomplishments, not just the happiness that may accompany them. Sometimes utilitarianism is understood as the view that either pleasure or happiness has utility, while consequentialism is understood as the broader view that morally right action is action that maximizes the good, however the good is understood. Here, we take utilitarianism in this broader interpretation that some philosophers reserve for consequentialism. Most utilitarians who believe hedonism gives too narrow an account of utility have held that utility is the satisfaction of people’s informed preferences or desires. This view is neutral about what people desire, and so can account for the full variety of things and experiences that different people in fact desire or value. Finally, ideal utilitarians have held that some things or experiences, e.g. knowledge or being autonomous, are intrinsically valuable or good whether or not people value or prefer them or are happier with them.
Whatever account of utility a utilitarian adopts, it must be possible to quantify or measure the good effects or consequences of actions in order to apply the utilitarian standard of moral rightness. Happiness utilitarianism, e.g., must calculate whether a particular action, or instead some possible alternative, would produce more happiness for a given person; this is called the intrapersonal utility comparison. The method of measurement may allow cardinal utility measurements, in which numerical units of happiness may be assigned to different actions (e.g., 30 units for Jones expected from action a, 25 units for Jones from alternative action b), or only ordinal utility measurements may be possible, in which actions are ranked only as producing more or less happiness than alternative actions. Since nearly all interesting and difficult moral problems involve the happiness of more than one person, utilitarianism requires calculating which among alternative actions produces the greatest happiness for all people affected; this is called the interpersonal utility comparison. Many ordinary judgments about personal action or public policy implicitly rely on interpersonal utility comparisons; e.g., would a family whose members disagree be happiest overall taking its vacation at the seashore or in the mountains? Some critics of utilitarianism doubt that it is possible to make interpersonal utility comparisons.
Another issue of formulation is whether the utilitarian principle should be applied to individual actions or to some form of moral rule. According to act utilitarianism, each action’s rightness or wrongness depends on the utility it produces in comparison with possible alternatives. Even act utilitarians agree, however, that rules of thumb like ‘keep your promises’ can be used for the most part in practice because following them tends to maximize utility. According to rule utilitarianism, on the other hand, individual actions are evaluated, in theory not just in practice, by whether they conform to a justified moral rule, and the utilitarian standard is applied only to general rules. Some rule utilitarians hold that actions are right provided they are permitted by rules the general acceptance of which would maximize utility in the agent’s society, and wrong only if they would be prohibited by such rules. There are a number of forms of rule utilitarianism, and utilitarians disagree about whether act or rule utilitarianism is correct. Moral implications. Most debate about utilitarianism has focused on its moral implications. Critics have argued that its implications sharply conflict with most people’s considered moral judgments, and that this is a strong reason to reject utilitarianism. Proponents have argued both that many of these conflicts disappear on a proper understanding of utilitarianism and that the remaining conflicts should throw the particular judgments, not utilitarianism, into doubt. One important controversy concerns utilitarianism’s implications for distributive justice. Utilitarianism requires, in individual actions and in public policy, maximizing utility without regard to its distribution between different persons. Thus, it seems to ignore individual rights, whether specific individuals morally deserve particular benefits or burdens, and potentially to endorse great inequalities between persons; e.g., some critics have charged that according to utilitarianism slavery would be morally justified if its benefits to the slaveowners sufficiently outweighed the burdens to the slaves and if it produced more overall utility than alternative practices possible in that society. Defenders of utilitarianism typically argue that in the real world there is virtually always a better alternative than the action or practice that the critic charges utilitarianism wrongly supports; e.g., no system of slavery that has ever existed is plausibly thought to have maximized utility for the society in question. Defenders of utilitarianism also typically try to show that it does take account of the moral consideration the critic claims it wrongly ignores; for instance, utilitarians commonly appeal to the declining marginal utility of money – equal marginal increments of money tend to produce less utility (e.g. happiness) for persons, the more money they already have – as giving some support to equality in income distribution.
Another source of controversy concerns whether moral principles should be agent-neutral or, in at least some cases, agent-relative. Utilitarianism is agent-neutral in that it gives all people the same moral aim – act so as to maximize utility for everyone – whereas agent-relative principles give different moral aims to different individuals. Defenders of agent-relative principles note that a commonly accepted moral rule like the prohibition of killing the innocent is understood as telling each agent that he or she must not kill, even if doing so is the only way to prevent a still greater number of killings by others. In this way, a non-utilitarian, agent-relative prohibition reflects the common moral view that each person bears special moral responsibility for what he or she does, which is greater than his or her responsibility to prevent similar wrong actions by others. Common moral beliefs also permit people to give special weight to their own projects and commitments and, e.g., to favor to some extent their own children at the expense of other children in greater need; agent-relative responsibilities to one’s own family reflect these moral views in a way that agent-neutral utilitarian responsibilities apparently do not.
The debate over neutrality and relativity is related to a final area of controversy about utilitarianism. Critics charge that utilitarianism makes morality far too demanding by requiring that one always act to maximize utility. If, e.g., one reads a book or goes to a movie, one could nearly always be using one’s time and resources to do more good by aiding famine relief. The critics believe that this wrongly makes morally required what should be only supererogatory – action that is good, but goes beyond ‘the call of duty’ and is not morally required. Here, utilitarians have often argued that ordinary moral views are seriously mistaken and that morality can demand greater sacrifices of one’s own interests for the benefit of others than is commonly believed. There is little doubt that here, and in many other cases, utilitarianism’s moral implications significantly conflict with commonsense moral beliefs – the dispute is whether this should count against commonsense moral beliefs or against utilitarianism. See also ETHICS, HEDONISM , JUSTICE , KANT, MOOR. D.W.B.