This article on Utilitarianism is a re-presentation of ideas from the neurophilosopher Patricia Churchland as discussed in her recent book on the origins of moraliy [1] and related works. Utilitarianism is a contemporary moral theory, like the opposing, popular Kantianism [2,3]. Moral theories such as Utilitarianism and Kantianism identify (a) “principle(s)” akin to a fundamental rule that allows for the correctness in terms of morality to be derived for any conceivable decision encountered in life. Utilitarianism specifically is concerned with the evaluation (or computation) of action consequences regarding the “happiness and desires” of affected people. Following said line of thought, Utilitarianism might be viewed in terms of an optimization problem in mathematics. That is, Utilitarianism has the goal of maximizing an aggregate utility function that captures said notion of “happiness and desires” of a given situation. Put more formally, the optimization problem any utilitarian human being ought to strive for might be formulated as:
Definition. (Informally, Utilitarianism’s Greatest Happiness). Let
be a scalar function from the to-be-specified space of human situations that capture an “aggregate” notion of “happiness and desires” referred to as utility (in a simplified view might be the count of lives being spared in a situation like in Fig.1 below and might only be the identity taking on values in ). Then Utilitarianism solves the following optimization problem: That is, will be the morally correct decision out of all situations in .
From modern perspective, the movement of Utilitarianism is being attributed mainly to Jeremy Bentham and Henry Sidgwick [4,5]. While Bentham is most recognized for his “Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation” (1789) that introduces the key principle of “greatest happiness””, the latter Sidgwick is most famous for his work on “The Methods of Ethics” (1874). Arguably, it is not difficult to see that the proposed approach is an idealized view onto the matter of morality. In other words, there exist several probelamtic consequences of Utilitarianism that follow logically by accepting a formulation such as presented in Equation 1. To provide examples, consider the following. The term “aggregate” in the optimization refers to the fact that the moral directive insists on happiness of everyone and not just oneself. A simple logical conclusion might give the unrealistic example of “flossing your teeth is good” thereby “flossing everyone else’s teeth is better”. Churchland argues from a neurological standpoint, suggesting that aggregate also implies that there is an equal-weighting restriction on situations i.e., family members or friends are treated the same as strangers - which neurologically goes against the very wiring of human beings [1]. More examples include: providing for twenty orphans on the other side of the planet is “better” than providing for my own two children or that my one aging mother should count much less than five homeless people. Ironically, said implications of the moral system are arguably morally indecent [6]. Figure 1 illustrates another example of the discussed, implied dilemma.
Figure 1: Implications of Utilitarianism. A train in motion is about to reach a bifurcation. A human operator is capable of deciding which path of the bifurcation the train will end up on. Both paths show trapped human beings. There is a single person on one road, and on the other road there are five people. Utilitarianism’s “greatest happiness” suggests taking the single-person-path. (Figure inspired by Kaden Ng from kaden.online.) |
While the leading principle of Utilitarianism seems appealing in an intuitive and initial sense, both the logical consequences and the practicality in terms of computation seem unrealistic for humans and thus pose more than “species typical moral limitation” [7]. To quote philosopher Simon Blackburn in “Being Good: A Short Introduction to Ethics”: “Just as a lot of crimes are committed in the name of liberty, so they can be committed in the name of common happiness.” Regarding the identification of the core problematic within Utilitarianism that might allow for an improved moral theory, it has been observed by Clark Glymour that the constraint seems to be that ought implies can. In essence, to reiterate within the previous example of a mother with her children vs. orphans: Can the mother care for twenty unknown orphans while neglecting their own two children? Utilitarianism suggests the ought to, however, the question whether she can would arguably be answered no - simply from a neurological perspective [1]. Requirements as such, alongside the definition but then also (tractable) computation of value-neutral happiness, are key restrictions that halt further development in moral theory.
References
- P. Churchland, “Conscience: The origins of moral intuition”. WW Norton & Company, 2019.
- Wikipedia, “Utilitarianism”, 2021.
- Wikipedia, “Kantianism”, 2021.
- Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Jeremy Bentham”, 2021.
- Wikipedia, “Henry Sidgwick”, 2021.
- Bernard Williams, “Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy”, Fontana Press, 1985.
- T. Nagel, “You Can’t Learn About Morality from Brain Scans”, The New Republic, 2013.
- S. Blackburn, “Being Good: A Short Introduction to Ethics”, Oxford University Press, 2003.