Mill’s Utilitarianism
Mill’s Utilitarianism
Mills 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 in
evaluating 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 would be caused
by the bomb exploding or how much pain would be caused by the torture.
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 a greater
amount of pain would be caused, at least in the present, by the bomb
exploding. 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 Mills utilitarianism. Mills 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 utilitarians 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 which will be set by the action. Unfortunately for