WHAT IS UTILITARIANISM?
Utilitarianism is a doctrine that assesses good and evil in terms of the consequences of actions. Those actions that produce the greatest net pleasure compared with the net pain are better in a moral sense than those that produce less net pleasure. As Jeremy Bentham, one of the most influential proponents of utilitarianism, proclaimed, a good or moral act is one that results in ‘‘the greatest happiness for the greatest number.’’
The two major forms of utilitarianism are act utilitarianism and rule utilitarianism. Act utilitarianism assesses each separate act according to whether it maximizes pleasure over pain. For example, if telling a lie in a particular situation produces more overall pleasure than pain, then an act utilitarian would support lying as the moral thing to do.
Rule utilitarians, disturbed by the unpredictability of act utilitarianism and by its potential for abuse, follow a different approach by holding that general rules must be established and followed even though, in some instances, following rules may produce less overall pleasure than not following them.
In applying utilitarian principles to developing rules, rule utilitarianism thus supports rules that on balance produce the greatest satisfaction. Determining whether telling a lie in a given instance would produce greater pleasure than telling the truth is less important to the rule utilitarian than deciding whether a general practice of lying would maximize society’s pleasure.
If lying would not maximize pleasure generally, then one should follow a rule of not lying, even though telling a lie occasionally would produce greater pleasure than would telling the truth.
Utilitarian notions underlie cost-benefit analysis, an analytical tool used by many business and government managers today. Cost-benefit analysis first quantifies in monetary terms and then compares the direct and indirect costs and benefits of program alternatives for meeting a specified objective.
Cost-benefit analysis seeks the greatest economic efficiency, given the underlying notion that acts achieving the greatest output at the least cost promote the greatest marginal happiness over less efficient acts, other things being equal.
The primary purpose of cost-benefit analysis is to choose from alternative courses of action the program that maximizes society’s wealth. For example, based on cost-benefit analysis, an auto designer might choose to devote more effort to perfecting a highly expensive air bag that would save hundreds of lives and prevent thousands of disabling injuries than to developing an improved car hood latching mechanism that would produce a less favorable cost-benefit ratio.
The chief criticism of utilitarianism is that in some important instances it ignores justice. A number of situations would maximize the pleasure of the majority at great social cost to a minority. Under a strict utilitarian approach, it would, for example, be ethical to compel a few citizens to undergo painful, even fatal medical tests to develop cures for the rest of the world.
For most people, however, such action would be unacceptable. Another major criticism of utilitarianism is that measuring pleasure and pain in the fashion its supporters advocate is extremely difficult, if not impossible.
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