FREE ESSAY ON UTILITARIANISM

UTILITARIANISM

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 inevaluating 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 the bomb exploding or how much pain would be caused by the
torture would cause. 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 the bomb exploding would cause a greater amount of
pain, at least in the present. 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 weighing the
consequences, there are two important considerations. The first, which is especially
important to objectivist Utilitarianism, is which people will be killed. The second is
the precedent that will be set by the action. Unfortunately for the decision-maker, the
information necessary to make either of these calculations is unavailable. There is no
way to determine which people will be killed and weigh whether their deaths would be good
for society. Utilitarianism requires that one compare the good that the people would do
for society with the harm they would do society if they were not killed. For example, if
a young Adolf Hitler were in the building, it might do more good for society to allow the
building to explode. Unfortunately for an individual attempting to use
Utilitarianism to make for decisions, there is no way to know beforehand what a person
will do. Furthermore, without even knowing which building the bomb is in, there is no way
to predict which people will surely be in the building. A subjectivist utilitarian would
dismiss this consideration and would examine only what a rational person would consider
to be the consequence; however, even the subjectivist utilitarian must face the question
of precedent setting. Utilitarianism considers justice and humane treatment to be good
for society as a whole and therefore instrumentally good as a means to promoting
happiness. Utilitarianism considers precedent to be important, but does not offer any
method of determining exceptions. It is impossible to determine how much effect on
precedent any given isolated action will have. In the case of determining whether or not

to torture the terrorist, one must consider whether it is good for society to allow
torture to be used as a method of gaining information. If it is bad, one must determine
whether this action will create a precedent. If it will create or contribute to the
creation of a precedent, one must compare the detrimental effects of this precedent with
the other consequences and welfare caused by the action. Utilitarianism offers no method
for comparison. The problem is that a person faced with making the decision cannot get
the information. Even through experience, it is hard to judge how much effect each action
has on precedent. More specifically, it is hard to determine whether an action is worthy
of being an exception to a rule. Utilitarianism offers no resolution to this problem.
Utilitarianism also considers the Theory of Desert to be instrumentally valuable to the
promotion of happiness. It is generally good for society to reward people for doing right
and to punish them for doing wrong. Using this belief in the value of justice, a
utilitarian would have more trouble torturing the child of the terrorist than with
torturing the terrorist. The dilemma would be similar to that of precedent. A utilitarian
would ask how much it would harm society's faith in the punishment of evildoers and the
protection of the innocent to torture the child. The sum of the consequences would then
be compared to the sum of the welfare considerations to decide whether or not to torture
the terrorist and whether or not to torture the child of the terrorist. In some way,
these things must therefore all be comparable and assigned weights; however,
Utilitarianism offers no method of comparison. There must be some percentage of
consideration given to the harmful precedent set compared to the amount of pain caused by
the deaths, compared to the pain the terrorist or the child being tortured feels,
compared to the harm society will be saved from by the deaths of people in the explosion,
compared to the good that society will be deprived of by the deaths in the explosion. The
overarching problem with utilitarianism as a method for decision making is that not
enough of the necessary information is available and there is no scale on which to weigh
the various considerations. Basically, the subjective utilitarian would probably consider
that the death of many is worse than the torture of one. Depending on how much weight is
given to the detrimental effects of the precedent which would be set by torturing the
terrorist, the utilitarian could consider this to outweigh the greater pain caused by the
explosion or not. Different people have different moral consciences, which dictate
different actions. These differences will dictate where the person puts the most weight
in the utilitarian considerations, since utilitarianism does not specify. Similarly,
depending on how much weight is given to the detrimental precedent of torturing innocent
children, the utilitarian could consider it to outweigh the pain caused by the explosion
or not. In the end, utilitarianism does not help in making the moral decision. The
information necessary to calculate all of the considerations identified by utilitarianism
is not available. Furthermore, what is required is a method of comparing and weighing the
considerations, and this method is not defined by utilitarianism. In the end, the
decision maker is still left to make the decision based on internal moral feelings of
what is right and what is wrong which do not come from Utilitarianism.