utility as something ‘mentalistic’ – a feeling or state of mind. This raises an
epistemological question: how do we know someone is happy, or feeling pleasure,
or has the right state of mind? Contemporary utilitarians avoid the epistemological
question by defining utility as preference satisfaction. This has the advantage that
there are available real-world systems for ordering preferences: voting and markets.
When we cast a vote or buy a pair of shoes we are expressing a preference.
To maximise utility we have to be able to measure it, and two options are
available: either we add up instances of utility (cardinal measurement), or else we
rank instances of utility (ordinal measurement). The definition of utility affects how
we go about measuring it: mentalistic definitions lend themselves to cardinal
measurement, while preference satisfaction fits best with ordinal measurement. In
fact, it was the difficulty of measuring pleasure or happiness that led to a shift to
defining utility as preference satisfaction.
We now come to the third – and most obviously political – question: if we are
utilitarians, how should we behave? There are some standard criticisms of
utilitarianism:
- What makes people happy, gives them pleasure, or what they prefer is completely
open: if torturing another person gives you pleasure, then it must be counted
into the ‘maximand’ (that which is to be maximised). - We cannot respect the law if breaking it will increase utility.
- Utilitarians cannot respect individual rights – J.S. Mill’s attempt to establish a
‘sphere of non-interference’ (rights) on the basis of ‘human interests in the widest
sense’ (utility) is incoherent. - One person could be made to suffer excruciating pain in order to give a million
people each a minuscule amount of pleasure. A less extravagant criticism is that
utilitarians cannot be concerned about the distribution of welfare, but merely its
overall level. - You are as much responsible for what you allow to happen as what you do in
a more direct sense of doing. For example, given the choice between (a) killing
one person and ‘allowing’ 19 to live, or (b) ‘standing by’ while all 20 are killed,
utilitarianism requires you to kill that one person (Smart and Williams, 1973:
98–9).
These criticisms are dismissed by utilitarians as unrealistic. The way to avoid them,
it is claimed, is to distinguish between direct and indirect utilitarianism. Direct
utilitarianism – or ‘act-utilitarianism’ – requires that you seek to maximise utility
on every occasion. Indirect utilitarianism, which includes ‘rule-utilitarianism’ and
‘institutional utilitarianism’, separates action and justification: what we should do
is follow rules, such as respecting individual rights, and the consequence of doing
so is that utility will be maximised. Institutional utilitarianism is compatible with
contractarianism: in the contract situation we agree to a set of institutions, the
operation of which will maximise utility.
Utilitarianism and liberalism
There is no doubt that since the early nineteenth century, utilitarianism has
developed in sophistication. However, our concern is with the relationship of
Chapter 8 Liberalism 187