BIRDS OF PARADISE: ASSIGNMENT 2

UTILITARIANISM

What are utilitarianism and the types utility?

Utilitarianism is a normative ethical theory.It is the most well-known and prevalent forms of consequentialism. Consequentialism is an umbrella term for a range of moral theories that state the rightness or wrongness of an action should be based solely on the results produced by that action.

There have been many different forms of theory of consequentialist nature throughout history. When modern utilitarisnism's most influential exponent, Jeremy Bentham, set out his moral theory in 1789, it was not an unfamiliar concept.

Utilitarians are consequentialists with a welfarist theory of value, that is, who focus on welfare, well-being, or happiness as the relevant consequence. There are a number of different theoretical choices to be made within the consequentialist and utilitarian families, especially about how to understand value and how to understand the function from value to duty or obligation. Different conceptions of utilitarianism result from different conceptions of happiness or well-being. Some, such as Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), interpret happiness in subjective terms as consisting in or depending importantly upon the person’s contingent and variable psychological states. For instance, hedonism claims that happiness consists in pleasure and the absence of pain. Pleasure might be thought of as a qualitatively homogenous mental state or sensation or, alternatively, as any mental state or sensation that one wants to continue and will, ceteris paribus, take steps to prolong. Similarly, pain might be thought of as a qualitatively homogeneous mental state or sensation or, alternatively, as any mental state or sensation that one dislikes and will, ceteris paribus, take steps to discontinue. Others construe happiness as consisting in the satisfaction of actual or idealized desire. Still others conceive of happiness or welfare in more objective terms as consisting in perfection (e.g. the realization of one’s essential

capacities) or some list of objective goods (e.g. knowledge, achievement, friendship).

Types of Utility

The first variant of is hedonic. It was popularised by the irrepressible social Jeremy Bentham. He took the view that something was good for people if it resulted in sentient pleasure. In other words, if it resulted in some conscious feeling of contentment or euphoria. Thus, the moral society was one that maximised sentient pleasure.

The hedonic version of utilitarianism is frequently caricatured. It would seem to encourage us to become a "mad assembly of pleasure hogs constantly out for a buzz" (goodin's words). But Goodin counters this by saying Bentham's theory was simply premised on the factual accuracy of the hedonic psychology.
For example, on the assumption that it was empirically true that people acted so as to obtain pleasure. This can easily be corrected with a more accurate and sophisticated psychology.

This bring us to the second variant: preference utilitarianism. This replaces the pictures of human beings as short-term pleasure hogs, with the picture of human beings as longer-them preference-satisficers. Actually, "replace" is not a good word because hedonic utilitarianism is really subsumed within preference utilitarianism: short term pleasures are a subset of preferences.

A problem for both of these versions of utilitarianism is that they are egalitarian in their treatment of pleasures or preferences. In other word, the goal is simply one of maximisation, the quality of what it being maximised is irrelvant. The sadist and the saint all count for the same or, in Bentham's famous words, "pushpin [a child's game] is as good as poetry".

This seemed unpalatable to some ( John Stuart Mill and G. E. Moore ), so much so that they tried to introduce some qualitative distinctions between pleasures or preferences. A certain weighting could then be given to the superior of higher pleasures or preferences.

Goodin thinks there is a more convincing answer to this worry : welfare utilitarianism. This variant does not focus on subjective pleasures or preferences. Instead, it focuses on objective welfare interests. For example, life expectancy. access to education, employment, health, access to housing and so on.