FREE ESSAY ON UTILITARIANISM

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
affected by the action taken, and the consequences of the action taken. To calculate the
welfare of the people involved in or affected by an action, utilitarianism requires that
all individuals be considered equally. Quantitative utilitarians would weigh the pleasure
and pain that 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 the bomb exploding would cause 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 Mill's utilitarianism. 
Mill's 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 that 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 utilitarian's 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 the decision maker, the
information necessary to make either of these calculations is unavailable. 
There is no way to determine which people will be killed and weigh whether their deaths
would be good for society. Utilitarianism requires that one compare the good that the
people would do for society with the harm they would do society if they were not killed.
For example, if a young Adolf Hitler were in the building, it might do more good for
society to allow the building to explode. Unfortunately for an individual attempting to
use utilitarianism to make for decisions, there is no way to know beforehand what a
person will do. Furthermore, without even knowing which building the bomb is in, there is
no way to predict which people will surely be in the building. A subjectivist utilitarian
would dismiss this consideration and would examine only what a rational person would
consider to be the consequence; however, even the subjectivist utilitarian must face the
question of precedent setting. 
Utilitarianism considers justice and humane treatment to be good for society as a whole
and therefore instrumentally good as a means to promoting happiness. Utilitarianism
considers precedent to be important, but does not offer any method of determining
exceptions. It is impossible to determine how much effect on precedent any given isolated
action will have. In the case of determining whether or not to torture the terrorist, one
must consider whether it is good for society to allow torture to be used as a method of
gaining information. If it is bad, one must determine whether this action will create a
precedent. If it will create or contribute to the creation of a precedent, one must
compare the detrimental effects of this precedent with the other consequences and welfare
caused by the action. Utilitarianism offers no method for comparison. The problem is that
a person faced with making the decision cannot get the information. Even through
experience, it is hard to judge how much effect each action has on precedent. 
More specifically, it is hard to determine whether an action is worthy of being an
exception to a rule. Utilitarianism offers no resolution to this problem. Utilitarianism
also considers the Theory of Desert to be instrumentally valuable to the promotion of
happiness. It is generally good for society to reward people for doing right and to
punish them for doing wrong. Using this belief in the value of justice, a utilitarian
would have more trouble torturing the child of the terrorist than with torturing the
terrorist. The dilemma would be similar to that of precedent. A utilitarian would ask how
much it would harm society's faith in the punishment of evildoers and the protection of
the innocent to torture the child. The sum of the consequences would then be compared to
the sum of the welfare considerations to decide whether or not to torture the terrorist
and whether or not to torture the child of the terrorist. 
In some way, these things must therefore all be comparable and assigned weights; however,
Utilitarianism offers no method of comparison. There must be some percentage of
consideration given to the harmful precedent set compared to the amount of pain caused by
the deaths, compared to the pain the terrorist or the child being tortured feels,
compared to the harm society will be saved from by the deaths of people in the explosion,
compared to the good that society will be deprived of by the deaths in the explosion. 
The overarching problem with utilitarianism as a method for decision-making is that not
enough of the necessary information is available and there is no scale on which to weigh
the various considerations. Basically, the subjective utilitarian would probably consider
that the deaths of many are worse than the torture of one. Depending on how much weight
is given to the detrimental effects of the precedent which would be set by torturing the
terrorist, the utilitarian could consider this to outweigh the greater pain caused by the
explosion or not. 
Different people have different moral consciences, which dictate different actions. These
differences will dictate where the person puts the most weight in the utilitarian
considerations, since utilitarianism does not specify. Similarly, depending on how much
weight is given to the detrimental precedent of torturing innocent children, the
utilitarian could consider it to outweigh the pain caused by the explosion or not. In the
end, utilitarianism does not help in making the moral decision. The information necessary
to calculate all of the considerations identified by utilitarianism is not available. 
Furthermore, what is required is a method of comparing and weighing the considerations,
and this method is not defined by utilitarianism. In the end, the decision maker is still
left to make the decision based on internal moral feelings of what is right and what is
wrong which do not come from utilitarianism.