Utilitarianism Summary

UTILITARIANISM

This chapter dealt with utilitarianism, which is one of the approaches in defending liberal democracy. Kymlicka discusses that utilitarianism is the morally right act or policy, which produces the greatest happiness for the members of society.  This is often referred as a comprehensive moral theory, which in the chapter’s focus as political morality.  In this view, utilitarian principles apply to what Rawls calls the basic structure of society, which stems from the belief that it is the only coherent and systematic moral philosophy.  Others reject it saying that the flaws of utilitarianism are so numerous that it cannot help but disappear from the landscape, and others find it hard to understand what else morality could be about than maximizing human happiness.  

Kymlicka deliberated two features of utilitarianism that make it an attractive theory of political morality.  First, utilitarian seek to promote does not depend on the existence of God, or a soul, or any other dubious metaphysical entity.  It seeks to promote happiness or welfare or well-being that we all pursue in our own lives, and in the lives of those we love.  It demands that pursuit of human welfare or utility de done impartially, for everyone in society.  Second, is utilitarianism’s consequentialism that says something is morally good only if it makes someone’s life better off. In this sense, utilitarianism provides a test to ensure that such rules serve some useful function.  Consequentialism seem to provide a straightforward method for resolving moral questions that morally right becomes a matter of measuring changes in human welfare and not relying on some spiritual or obscure traditions.  Utilitarianism’s two attractions conforms to our intuition that human well-being matters and to our intuition that moral rules must be tested for their consequence on human well-being.  Utilitarianism can be broken down into two parts: (1) an account of human welfare, or utility, and (2) an instruction to maximize utility, so defined, giving equal weight to each person’s utility.  

Kymlicka discusses four different conceptions of welfare. The common tradition but misleading slogan of utilitarian says “the greatest happiness of the greatest number”.  However, not all have accepted such pleasure-seeking account of human welfare.  The first view is welfare hedonism, which views experience or sensation of pleasure is the chief human good.   It sets utility equal to pleasure, pleasure being the only good.  The second view is non-hedonistic mental-state utility that contrasted the welfare hedonism proposing that pleasure is not the only good but that non-pleasurable experiences can also generate utility.  One criticism applying to both of these concepts is Nozick’s  ‘experience machine’.  The machine could generate pleasure by drugging people and letting them experience pleasurable or rewarding moments, but yet few or none volunteered.   The other two approaches relate to the satisfaction of preferences.  The third considers the preferences people show in the real world, what people expect to be the best for them at the moment.  It views that increasing people’s utility means satisfying their preferences, whatever they are.  And the fourth view is the informed preferences, which account of utility that tries to accommodate the problem of mistaken and adaptive preferences by defining welfare as the satisfaction of rational or informed preferences.  This view tries to resolve this problem by using informed preferences, the preferences that one would exhibit having full information and acting rationally.  However, the questions of what rational behavior is and given what background informed preferences should be formed have to be answered.  As preferences are the basis of the standard of rightness in welfarism, the resulting standard is prejudiced by the old circumstances the preferences were influenced by.  Utilitarians say that the right action is the one that maximizes utility, equal amounts of utility matter equally, regardless of whose utility it is, thus, the consequences, which satisfy the greatest number of preferences amongst people in the society.  The commitment to examining the consequences for human well-being is one of the attractions of utilitarianism.  However, this has been criticized as it is impossible to satisfy all preferences and our intuitions do not tell us that equal amounts of utility should always have the same weight.  This would mean that morally right actions are those that maximize utility.