Week 2-Post 1: Utilitarianism

Source: Justice course on EdX by HarvardX

Lecture 2/3

Lecture 2:

• One of the most influential versions of consequentialist moral theory is the philosophy of ultilitarianism.
• Jeremy Bentham the 18th century English political philosopher gave the first expression to the utilitarian theory.
• His essential idea is that, the right thing to do, the just thing to do in situations where you're making moral decisions, is to maximise utility.
• He meant by utility the balance of pleasure over pain, happiness over suffering.
• He arrived at the principle of maximising utility by observing that all human beings are governed by two sovereign masters. Pain and pleasure. We like pleasure but dislike pain. So we should base morality, whether we are thinking about what to do in our own lives or whether as legislators or citizens, the right thing to do individually or collectively is to maximize, act in a way that maximizes the overall level of happiness.
• A slogan to sum it up is "the greatest good for the greatest number" (an outcome that produces the greatest amount of good for the greatest number of people)
• The Queen versus Dudley and Stephens- 19th century British law case
• Suppose you find yourself in a situation in which killing an innocent person is the only way to prevent many innocent people from dying. What’s the right thing to do? This question arose in The Queen v. Dudley and Stephens (1884), a famous English law case involving four men stranded in a lifeboat without food or water. How should we judge the action of Dudley and Stephens? Was it morally justified or morally wrong?
• A newspaper account of the time described the background: A sadder story of disaster at sea was never told than that of the survivors of the yacht Mignonette. There were four in the crew. Dudley was the captain, Stephens was the first mate, Brooks was a sailor, and the fourth crew member was the cabin boy, Richard Parker seventeen years old. A wave hit the ship and the Mignonette went down. The four crew members escaped to a lifeboat where the only food they had were two cans of preserved turnips. They rationed the amount of turnips they had and a turtle they caught, but they would go up to 8 days without eating. Then the captain boy got sick because he drank seawater and he appeared to be dying so on the nineteenth day Dudley, the captain, suggested that they should all have a lottery to decide who to sacrifice, but not everyone was for it. The next day there was still no ship in sight so Dudley killed him with a pen knife stabbing him in the jugular vein. Brooks emerged from his conscientious objection to share in the gruesome bounty. For four days the three of them fed on the body and blood of the cabin boy. Then they were rescued. When they got back to England, they were arrested. They claimed they had acted out of necessity, that was their defense. They argued in effect better that one should die so that three could survive the prosecutor wasn't swayed by that argument he said murder is murder and so the case went to trial. Now imagine you are the jury and just to simplify the discussion put aside the question of law, and let's assume that you as the jury are charged with deciding whether what they did was morally permissible or not.
• Questions raised by this exercise:
• Do we have certain fundamental rights? (did even that cabin boy have fundamental rights?)
• Does a fair procedure justify any result? (would it make it morally permissible if everyone had agreed to a raffle of some sort)
• What is the moral work of consent? (if the cabin boy had agreed himself, then would it be alright to take his life?)-why does it make it morally permissible

Lecture 3:

• Utilitarianism plays a role in legislation.
• The US Environmental Protection Agency tried to analyze the question of how much money should be spent on reducing air pollution.
• Tried to use a cost benefit analysis
• it asked how many lives would be saved by cleaner air
• the value of a life was set at 3.7 mil, except for people older than 70 where their lives cost 2.3 mil.
• Advocates of senior citizens were protesting
• Lying behind the different valuations was a utilitarian idea
• Saving an old persons life produces less utility than saving a younger person life, because the younger person has more life to live and therefore more happiness to enjoy.
• Was the agency right or wrong to assign a monetary value to human life?
• Review of definition of utilitarianism: The main idea is that the highest principle fo morality, whether personal orp political, is to maximize the general welfare or collective happiness, or the balance of pleasure over pain. "maximize utility"
• Pleasure and apin ar eour sovereign masters so any moral system has to take account of them
• how best tot ake account is to maximize, and thsi leads tot he principle of the greatest good for the greatest number
• What exactly should we maximize?
• bentham tells us happiness, or more precisely, utility
• maximizing utility is the principle not only for individuals but for communities and legislators
• what is a community? its the usm of the individuals who comprise it and thats why in deciding int he best policy, in deciding what the law should be, and deciding whats just, citizens and legislateors should askt hemselves. if we add up all the benefits of this policy and subtract all the costs, the right thing to do is the one that maximizes the balance of happiness of suffering. thats what it means to maximize utility.
• utilitarian logic: cost benefit analysis
• its used by companies and governments all the time
• it involves is placing a value to stand for utility, ont he costs and th benefits of various proposals
• recently there was a proposal int he czech republic, to increase the the excise tax on smoking. The Philip Moris tobacco company commisoned a study of cost benefit analysis of smoking in the czech republic and what they wfound was that the government gains by having czech citizens smoke.
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• phillip morris was pilloried int he press and had to issue an apology because of this "heartless" calculation
• what about the value of life, why wasnt it included int he analysis
• Pinto case:
• pinto was a small, popular car, but the problem was that the fuel tank was in the back fo the car and when ti was hit in crashes, it exploded and killed people
• People sued, but in the court case it was funod out the Ford already knew about that risk and did a cost benefit analysis of whether they should increase the safety of the pinto. Which they calculated at 11$ per part.
• benefits turned out to be only 49.5 mil so they did not install the safety device. (shield to go over the fuel tank to prevent it from exploding in collisions)
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• when the memo of the cost benefit analysis came out in the trial, it appalled the jurors.
• Is this a counter example to the utilitarian idea of calculating? because Ford included the value of life. Opinions:
• They were wrong to put any value at all. Cant put a price on the emotional pain the families go trhough.
• We must put a number on a human life because we have to make decisions somehow.
• Without these cost benefit analysis' the companies would not be able to make profit.
• Objection to utilitarianism as a whole si that its unfair to an individual/minority's rights.
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• There was a psychologist in the 1930's (Edward Throndike) who tried to address that second question. He tried to prove what utilitarianism assumes that it is possible to translate all goods, values, human concerns, into a single uniform measure.
• he did this by conducting a survey of the young recipients of relief, he gave them a list of  unpleasent experiences, then asked them hwo much they would have to paid to undergo the following experiences. Eat a live earth worm? Live the rest of your life ina farm in Kansas? To choke a stray cat to death with your stray hands? A little toe cut off? Upper tooth pulled out?
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• What Thorndike concluded from his study: Any want or satisfaction which exists, exists in some amount, and is therefore measurable. The life of a dog, or a cat, or a chicken, consists of appetites, cravings, desires, and their gratifications. So does the life of human beings, though the appetites and desires are more complicated. 
• but does his study support benthman's idea that all  goods all values can be captured according to a single uniform measure of value, or does the preposterous character of those different items on the list suggest the opposite conclusion? That may be whether we're talking about life, or Kansas, or the worm, maybe the things we value and cherish can't be captured according to a single uniform measure of value. And if they can't, what are the consequences for the utilitarian theory of morality? That is a question we will tackle next time.