Questioning Natural Rights:Utilitarianism

ER 11, Spring 2012

First suspicion:

Can there be foundations for rights/morality without God?

Yes, in principle there canbut we have yet to offer an account

Second suspicion:

Maybe rights are not as important as we thought?

Maybe they are not foundational?

Utilitarianism

• act in such a way that brings about maximal amount of net happiness (compared to other available actions)

• Focused on consequences of actions; states of affairs

• Thinks of consequences in terms of overall happiness

• Aggregates happiness - does not care about distribution

Example

• Scenario 1 -- Units of happiness: 10, 10, 10, 10, 10

• Scenario 2 – Units of happiness: 20, 5, 5, 20, 5

• Utilitarians choose 2

What utilitarianism is not..

• “greatest happiness of greatest number”

• Incoherent, like search for house that is both cheapest and largest

What utilitarianism is not..

• “greatest happiness of the greatest number”

• Incoherent, like search for the house that is both cheapest and largest

What utilitarianism is not..

• “greatest happiness of the greatest number”

• Incoherent, like search for the house that is both cheapest and largest

Why utilitarianism?

• Intuitively plausible: just seems correct that one ought always to do what promotes overall good

• Seems to capture essence of morality: impartiality

• simple, determinate

Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832)

• Social reformer

• Prisons, animals

• Against theology, conventional morality

Natural rights: “nonsense upon stilts”

No good foundation available for them

Bentham Association

John Stuart Mill (1806-1873): “The creed which accepts as the

foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest-Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure.” (chapter 2)

“ the greatest amount of happiness altogether”

Happiness = Pleasure

Bentham: all pleasures count equally

Mill: higher and lower pleasures

Judgments of those who know both

“Better Socrates dissatisfied than a pig satisfied”

Two kinds of utilitarianism

• Act-utilitarianism: maximize happiness for each action

– Utilitarians will never stop calculating; need more information than they normally have

• Rule-utilitarianism: maximize happiness at level of rules

– But what if exception to rule creates more happiness?

Careful

• Not always clear which version of utilitarianism an author defends

• Case in point: Mill

Approaching Mill chapter -- Reaction to utilitarianism

• Concerns about distribution – fairness matters too

• Focus on happiness: not anything that makes individuals happy creates claims on others

• Asking too much of individuals

Utilitarianism and rights

• Sheriff in remote town

• Should he give one innocent person to the mob so that several others are saved?

• Doesn’t the innocent person have a right that this not be done?

Utilitarianism and rights

• Forced organ donations?

Utilitarianism and Rights

“In all ages of speculation, one of the strongest obstacles to the reception of the doctrine that Utility or Happiness is the criterion of right and wrong, has been drawn from the idea of justice.” (p 1)

Chapter V of Ut.

Mill’s strategy

• show that utilitarianism can say everything about rights/justice that makes sense to say

• not basic (natural), but highly derivative – devices of social coordination

A central PassageTo have a right, then, is, I conceive, to have something

which society ought to defend me in the possession of. If the objector goes on to ask, why it ought? I can give him no other reason than general utility. (…) The interest involved is that of security, to every one's feelings the most vital of all interests. (….) Our notion, therefore, of the claim we have on our fellow-creatures to join in making safe for us the very groundwork of our existence, gathers feelings around it so much more intense than those concerned in any of the more common cases of utility, that the difference in degree (…) becomes a real difference in kind.

But what happens to rights if considerations of general utility

outweigh them?

Another central passage

[J]ustice is a name for certain moral requirements, which, regarded collectively, stand higher in the scale of social utility, and are therefore of more paramount obligation, than any others; though particular cases may occur in which some other social duty is so important, as to overrule any one of the general maxims of justice. Thus, to save a life, it may not only be allowable, but a duty, to steal, or take by force, the necessary food or medicine, or to kidnap, and compel to officiate, the only qualified medical practitioner.

Rights are suspended if considerations of general utility outweigh them

Upshot

• In light of sheriff/forced organ donation scenarios, rights are too important to give up on them to the extent utilitarianism does

• But Bentham’s skepticism specifically of natural rights might still be correct

• Must see whether we can make sense of them in some other way before we give up on them

Second suspicion:

Maybe rights are not as important as we thought?

Answer: Rights really are as important as we

thought, but we still need a good account of human rights

Gallery of Skeptics Demanding Answers