## 1. Precursors to the Classical Approach




Though the first systematic account of utilitarianism was developed
by Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), the core insight motivating the theory
occurred much earlier. That insight is that morally appropriate
behavior will not harm others, but instead increase happiness or
'utility.' What is distinctive about utilitarianism
is its approach in taking that insight and developing an account of
moral evaluation and moral direction that expands on it. Early
precursors to the Classical Utilitarians include the British Moralists,
Cumberland, Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Gay, and Hume. Of these,
Francis Hutcheson (1694-1746) is explicitly utilitarian when it comes
to action choice.




Some of the earliest utilitarian thinkers were the
'theological' utilitarians such as Richard Cumberland
(1631-1718) and John Gay (1699-1745). They believed that
promoting human happiness was incumbent on us since it was approved by
God. After enumerating the ways in which humans come under
obligations (by perceiving the "natural consequences of
things", the obligation to be virtuous, our civil obligations
that arise from laws, and obligations arising from "the authority
of God") John Gay writes: "...from the consideration
of these four sorts of obligation...it is evident that a full and
complete obligation which will extend to all cases, can only be that
arising from the authority of *God*; because God only can in all
cases make a man happy or miserable: and therefore, since we are
*always* obliged to that conformity called virtue, it is evident
that the immediate rule or criterion of it is the will of God"
(R, 412). Gay held that since God wants the happiness of mankind,
and since God's will gives us the criterion of virtue,
"...the happiness of mankind may be said to be the criterion
of virtue, but *once removed*" (R, 413). This view
was combined with a view of human motivation with egoistic
elements. A person's individual salvation, her eternal
happiness, depended on conformity to God's will, as did virtue
itself. Promoting human happiness and one's own coincided,
but, given God's design, it was not an accidental
coincidence.




This approach to utilitarianism, however, is not theoretically clean
in the sense that it isn't clear what essential work God does, at
least in terms of normative ethics. God as the source of
normativity is compatible with utilitarianism, but utilitarianism
doesn't require this.




Gay's influence on later writers, such as Hume, deserves
note. It is in Gay's essay that some of the
questions that concerned Hume on the nature of virtue are
addressed. For example, Gay was curious about how to explain our
practice of approbation and disapprobation of action and
character. When we see an act that is vicious we disapprove of
it. Further, we associate certain things with their effects, so
that we form positive associations and negative associations that also
underwrite our moral judgments. Of course, that we view happiness,
including the happiness of others as a good, is due to God's
design. This is a feature crucial to the theological approach,
which would clearly be rejected by Hume in favor of a naturalistic view
of human nature and a reliance on our sympathetic engagement with
others, an approach anticipated by Shaftesbury (below). The
theological approach to utilitarianism would be developed later by
William Paley, for example, but the lack of any theoretical necessity
in appealing to God would result in its diminishing appeal.




Anthony Ashley Cooper, the 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury
(1671-1713) is generally thought to have been the one of the earliest
'moral sense' theorists, holding that we possess a kind
of "inner eye" that allows us to make moral
discriminations. This seems to have been an innate sense of right
and wrong, or moral beauty and deformity. Again, aspects of this
doctrine would be picked up by Francis Hutcheson and David Hume
(1711-1776). Hume, of course, would clearly reject any robust
realist implications. If the moral sense is like the other
perceptual senses and enables us to pick up on properties out there in
the universe around us, properties that exist independent from our
perception of them, that are objective, then Hume clearly was not a
moral sense theorist in this regard. But perception picks up on
features of our environment that one could regard as having a
contingent quality. There is one famous passage where Hume likens moral
discrimination to the perception of secondary qualities, such as
color. In modern terminology, these are response-dependent
properties, and lack objectivity in the sense that they do not exist
independent of our responses. This is radical. If an
act is vicious, its viciousness is a matter of the human
response (given a corrected perspective) to the act (or its perceived
effects) and thus has a kind of contingency that seems unsettling,
certainly unsettling to those who opted for the theological option.




So, the view that it is part of our very nature to make moral
discriminations is very much in Hume. Further -- and what is
relevant to the development of utilitarianism -- the view of
Shaftesbury that the virtuous person contributes to the good of the
whole -- would figure into Hume's writings, though
modified. It is the virtue that contributes to the good of the
whole system, in the case of Hume's artificial virtues.




Shaftesbury held that in judging someone virtuous or good in a moral
sense we need to perceive that person's impact on the systems of
which he or she is a part. Here it sometimes becomes difficult to
disentangle egoistic versus utilitarian lines of thought in
Shaftesbury. He clearly states that whatever guiding force there is has
made nature such that it is "...the *private
interest* and *good* of every one, to work towards the
*general good*, which if a creature ceases to promote, he is
actually so far wanting to himself, and ceases to promote his own
happiness and welfare..." (R, 188). It is hard, sometimes,
to discern the direction of the 'because' -- if one
should act to help others because it supports a system in which
one's own happiness is more likely, then it looks really like a
form of egoism. If one should help others because that's the
right thing to do -- and, fortunately, it also ends up promoting
one's own interests, then that's more like utilitarianism,
since the promotion of self-interest is a welcome effect but not what,
all by itself, justifies one's character or actions.




Further, to be virtuous a person must have certain psychological
capacities -- they must be able to reflect on character, for example,
and represent to themselves the qualities in others that are either
approved or disapproved of.



> 
> ...in this case alone it is we call any creature worthy or
> virtuous when it can have the notion of a public interest, and can
> attain the speculation or science of what is morally good or ill,
> admirable or blameable, right or wrong....we never say
> of....any mere beast, idiot, or changeling, though ever so
> good-natured, that he is worthy or virtuous. (Shaftesbury IVM; BKI,
> PII, sec. iii)
> 




Thus, animals are not objects of moral appraisal on the view, since
they lack the necessary reflective capacities. Animals also lack
the capacity for moral discrimination and would therefore seem to lack
the moral sense. This raises some interesting questions. It
would seem that the moral sense is a perception *that* something
is the case. So it isn't merely a discriminatory sense that
allows us to sort perceptions. It also has a propositional
aspect, so that animals, which are not lacking in other senses are
lacking in this one.




The virtuous person is one whose affections, motives, dispositions
are of the right sort, not one whose behavior is simply of the right
sort and who is able to reflect on goodness, and her own goodness [see
Gill]. Similarly, the vicious person is one who exemplifies the
wrong sorts of mental states, affections, and so forth. A person
who harms others through no fault of his own "...because he
has convulsive fits which make him strike and wound such as approach
him" is not vicious since he has no desire to harm anyone and his
bodily movements in this case are beyond his control.




Shaftesbury approached moral evaluation via the virtues and vices.
His utilitarian leanings are distinct from his moral sense approach,
and his overall sentimentalism. However, this approach highlights the
move away from egoistic views of human nature -- a trend picked
up by Hutcheson and Hume, and later adopted by Mill in criticism of
Bentham's version of utilitarianism. For writers like Shaftesbury and
Hutcheson the main contrast was with egoism rather than
rationalism.




Like Shaftesbury, Francis Hutcheson was very much interested in
virtue evaluation. He also adopted the moral sense
approach. However, in his writings we also see an emphasis
on action choice and the importance of moral deliberation to action
choice. Hutcheson, in *An Inquiry Concerning Moral Good and
Evil*, fairly explicitly spelled out a utilitarian principle of
action choice. (Joachim Hruschka (1991) notes, however, that it was
Leibniz who first spelled out a utilitarian decision procedure.)



> 
> 
> ....In comparing the moral qualities of actions...we are led
> by our moral sense of virtue to judge thus; that in *equal
> degrees* of happiness, expected to proceed from the action, the
> virtue is in proportion to the *number* of persons to whom the
> happiness shall extend (and here the *dignity*, or *moral
> importance* of persons, may compensate numbers); and, in
> equal *numbers*, the virtue is the *quantity* of the
> happiness, or natural good; or that the virtue is in a compound ratio of the
> *quantity* of good, and *number* of enjoyers....so
> that *that action* is *best*, which procures
> the *greatest happiness* for the *greatest numbers*; and
> that *worst*, which, in *like manner*, occasions
> *misery*. (R, 283-4)
> 




Scarre notes that some hold the moral sense approach incompatible
with this emphasis on the use of reason to determine what we ought to
do; there is an opposition between just apprehending what's
morally significant and a model in which we need to reason to figure
out what morality demands of us. But Scarre notes these are not
actually incompatible:



> 
> The picture which emerges from Hutcheson's discussion is of a
> division of labor, in which the moral sense causes us to look with
> favor on actions which benefit others and disfavor those which harm
> them, while consequentialist reasoning determines a more precise
> ranking order of practical options in given situations. (Scarre,
> 53-54)




Scarre then uses the example of telling a lie to illustrate: lying
is harmful to the person to whom one lies, and so this is viewed with
disfavor, in general. However, in a specific case, if a lie is
necessary to achieve some notable good, consequentialist reasoning will
lead us to favor the lying. But this example seems to
put all the emphasis on a consideration of consequences in
*moral* approval and disapproval. Stephen Darwall notes (1995,
216 ff.) that the moral sense is concerned
with *motives* -- we approve, for example, of the motive of
benevolence, and the wider the scope the better. It is the motives
rather than the consequences that are the objects of approval and
disapproval. But inasmuch as the morally good person cares about what
happens to others, and of course she will, she will rank order acts in
terms of their effects on others, and reason is used in calculating
effects. So there is no incompatibility at all.




Hutcheson was committed to maximization, it seems. However, he
insisted on a caveat -- that "the dignity or moral
importance of persons may compensate numbers." He added
a deontological constraint -- that we have a duty to others in
virtue of their personhood to accord them fundamental dignity
regardless of the numbers of others whose happiness is to be affected
by the action in question.




Hume was heavily influenced by Hutcheson, who was one of his
teachers. His system also incorporates insights made by
Shaftesbury, though he certainly lacks Shaftesbury's confidence
that virtue is its own reward. In terms of his place in the
history of utilitarianism we should note two distinct effects his
system had. Firstly, his account of the social utility of the
artificial virtues influenced Bentham's thought on utility.
Secondly, his account of the role sentiment played in moral judgment
and commitment to moral norms influenced Mill's thoughts about
the internal sanctions of morality. Mill would diverge from
Bentham in developing the 'altruistic' approach to
Utilitarianism (which is actually a misnomer, but more on that
later). Bentham, in contrast to Mill, represented the egoistic
branch -- his theory of human nature reflected Hobbesian
psychological egoism.


## 2. The Classical Approach




The Classical Utilitarians, Bentham and Mill, were concerned with
legal and social reform. If anything could be identified as the
fundamental motivation behind the development of Classical
Utilitarianism it would be the desire to see useless, corrupt laws and
social practices changed. Accomplishing this goal required a
normative ethical theory employed as a critical tool. What is the
truth about what makes an action or a policy a morally good one, or
morally *right*? But developing the theory itself was also
influenced by strong views about what was wrong in their society.
The conviction that, for example, some laws are bad resulted in
analysis of why they were bad. And, for Jeremy Bentham, what made
them bad was their lack of utility, their tendency to lead to
unhappiness and misery without any compensating happiness. If a
law or an action doesn't *do* any good, then it
*isn't* any good.


### 2.1 Jeremy Bentham




Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) was influenced both by Hobbes'
account of human nature and Hume's account of social
utility. He famously held that humans were ruled by two sovereign
masters -- pleasure and pain. We seek pleasure and the avoidance
of pain, they "...govern us in all we do, in all we say, in
all we think..." (Bentham PML, 1). Yet he also promulgated the
principle of utility as the standard of right action on the part of
governments and individuals. Actions are approved when they
are such as to promote happiness, or pleasure, and disapproved of when
they have a tendency to cause unhappiness, or pain (PML). Combine
this criterion of rightness with a view that we should be actively
trying to promote overall happiness, and one has a serious
incompatibility with psychological egoism. Thus, his apparent
endorsement of Hobbesian psychological egoism created problems in
understanding his moral theory since psychological egoism rules out
acting to promote the overall well-being when that it is incompatible
with one's own. For the psychological egoist, that is not
even a possibility. So, given 'ought implies can' it
would follow that we are not obligated to act to promote overall
well-being when that is incompatible with our own. This generates
a serious tension in Bentham's thought, one that was drawn to his
attention. He sometimes seemed to think that he could reconcile
the two commitments empirically, that is, by noting that when people
act to promote the good they are helping themselves, too. But
this claim only serves to muddy the waters, since the standard
understanding of psychological egoism -- and Bentham's own
statement of his view -- identifies motives of action which are
self-interested. Yet this seems, again, in conflict with his own
specification of the method for making moral decisions which is not to
focus on self-interest -- indeed, the addition of *extent* as a
parameter along which to measure pleasure produced distinguishes this
approach from ethical egoism. Aware of the difficulty, in later
years he seemed to pull back from a full-fledged commitment to
psychological egoism, admitting that people do sometimes act
benevolently -- with the overall good of humanity in mind.




Bentham also benefited from Hume's work, though in many ways
their approaches to moral philosophy were completely different. Hume
rejected the egoistic view of human nature. Hume also focused on
character evaluation in his system. Actions are significant as
evidence of character, but only have this derivative significance. In
moral evaluation the main concern is that of character. Yet Bentham
focused on act-evaluation. There was a tendency -- remarked on by
J. B. Schneewind (1990), for example -- to move away from focus on
character evaluation after Hume and towards act-evaluation. Recall
that Bentham was enormously interested in social reform. Indeed,
reflection on what was morally problematic about laws and policies
influenced his thinking on utility as a standard. When one legislates,
however, one is legislating in support of, or against, certain
actions. Character -- that is, a person's true
character -- is known, if known at all, only by that person. If one
finds the opacity of the will thesis plausible then character, while
theoretically very interesting, isn't a practical focus for
legislation. Further, as Schneewind notes, there was an increasing
sense that focus on character would actually be disruptive, socially,
particularly if one's view was that a person who didn't
agree with one on a moral issues was defective in terms of his or her
character, as opposed to simply making a mistake reflected in
action.




But Bentham does take from Hume the view that utility is the measure
of virtue -- that is, utility more broadly construed than
Hume's actual usage of the term. This is because Hume made
a distinction between pleasure that the perception of virtue generates
in the observer, and social utility, which consisted in a trait's
having tangible benefits for society, any instance of which may or may
not generate pleasure in the observer. But Bentham is not simply
reformulating a Humean position -- he's merely been
influenced by Hume's arguments to see pleasure as a measure or
standard of moral value. So, why not move from pleasurable
*responses* to traits to pleasure as a kind of
*consequence* which is good, and in relation to which, actions
are morally right or wrong? Bentham, in making this move, avoids a
problem for Hume. On Hume's view it seems that the
response -- corrected, to be sure -- determines the trait's
quality as a virtue or vice. But on Bentham's view the action
(or trait) is morally good, right, virtuous in view of the
consequences it generates, the pleasure or utility it produces, which
could be completely independent of what our responses are to the
trait. So, unless Hume endorses a kind of ideal observer test for
virtue, it will be harder for him to account for how it is people make
mistakes in evaluations of virtue and vice. Bentham, on the other
hand, can say that people may not respond to the actions good
qualities -- perhaps they don't perceive the good
effects. But as long as there are these good effects which are, on
balance, better than the effects of any alternative course of action,
then the action is the right one. Rhetorically, anyway, one can see
why this is an important move for Bentham to be able to make. He was a
social reformer. He felt that people often had responses to certain
actions -- of pleasure or disgust -- that did not reflect anything
morally significant at all. Indeed, in his discussions of
homosexuality, for example, he explicitly notes that
'antipathy' is not sufficient reason to legislate against
a practice:



> 
> 
> The circumstances from which this antipathy may have taken its rise
> may be worth enquiring to.... One is the physical antipathy to
> the offence.... The act is to the highest degree odious and
> disgusting, that is, not to the man who does it, for he does it only
> because it gives him pleasure, but to one who thinks [?] of it. Be it
> so, but what is that to him? (Bentham *OAO*, v. 4, 94)




Bentham then notes that people are prone to use their physical
antipathy as a pretext to transition to moral antipathy, and the
attending desire to punish the persons who offend their taste.
This is illegitimate on his view for a variety of reasons, one of which
is that to punish a person for violations of taste, or on the basis of
prejudice, would result in runaway punishments, "...one
should never know where to stop..." The prejudice in
question can be dealt with by showing it "to be
ill-grounded". This reduces the antipathy to the act in
question. This demonstrates an optimism in Bentham. If a
pain can be demonstrated to be based on false beliefs then he believes
that it can be altered or at the very least 'assuaged and
reduced'. This is distinct from the view that a pain or
pleasure based on a false belief should be discounted. Bentham
does not believe the latter. Thus Bentham's hedonism is a
very straightforward hedonism. The one intrinsic good is
pleasure, the bad is pain. We are to promote pleasure and act to
reduce pain. When called upon to make a moral decision one
measures an action's value with respect to pleasure and pain
according to the following: intensity (how strong the pleasure or pain
is), duration (how long it lasts), certainty (how likely the pleasure
or pain is to be the result of the action), proximity (how close the
sensation will be to performance of the action), fecundity (how likely
it is to lead to further pleasures or pains), purity (how much
intermixture there is with the other sensation). One also
considers extent -- the number of people affected by the
action.




Keeping track of all of these parameters can be complicated and time
consuming. Bentham does not recommend that they figure into every
act of moral deliberation because of the efficiency costs which need to
be considered. Experience can guide us. We know that the
pleasure of kicking someone is generally outweighed by the pain
inflicted on that person, so such calculations when confronted with a
temptation to kick someone are unnecessary. It is reasonable to
judge it wrong on the basis of past experience or consensus. One
can use 'rules of thumb' to guide action, but these rules
are overridable when abiding by them would conflict with the promotion
of the good.




Bentham's view was surprising to many at the time at least in part
because he viewed the moral quality of an action to be determined
instrumentally. It isn't so much that there is a particular kind of
action that is intrinsically wrong; actions that are wrong are wrong
simply in virtue of their effects, thus, instrumentally wrong. This
cut against the view that there are some actions that by their very
nature are just wrong, regardless of their effects. Some may be wrong
because they are 'unnatural' -- and, again, Bentham
would dismiss this as a legitimate criterion. Some may be wrong
because they violate liberty, or autonomy. Again, Bentham would view
liberty and autonomy as good -- but good instrumentally, not
intrinsically. Thus, any action deemed wrong due to a violation of
autonomy is derivatively wrong on instrumental grounds as well. This
is interesting in moral philosophy -- as it is far removed from
the Kantian approach to moral evaluation as well as from natural law
approaches. It is also interesting in terms of political philosophy
and social policy. On Bentham's view the law is not monolithic and
immutable. Since effects of a given policy may change, the moral
quality of the policy may change as well. Nancy Rosenblum noted that
for Bentham one doesn't simply decide on good laws and leave it at
that: "Lawmaking must be recognized as a continual process in
response to diverse and changing desires that require
adjustment" (Rosenblum 1978, 9). A law that is good at one point
in time may be a bad law at some other point in time. Thus, lawmakers
have to be sensitive to changing social circumstances. To be fair to
Bentham's critics, of course, they are free to agree with him that
this is the case in many situations, just not all -- and that
there is still a subset of laws that reflect the fact that some
actions just are intrinsically wrong regardless of
consequences. Bentham is in the much more difficult position of
arguing that effects are all there are to moral evaluation of action
and policy.


### 2.2 John Stuart Mill




John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) was a follower of Bentham, and, through
most of his life, greatly admired Bentham's work even though he
disagreed with some of Bentham's claims -- particularly on
the nature of 'happiness.' Bentham, recall, had
held that there were no qualitative differences between pleasures, only
quantitative ones. This left him open to a variety of
criticisms. First, Bentham's Hedonism was too
egalitarian. Simple-minded pleasures, sensual pleasures, were
just as good, at least intrinsically, than more sophisticated and
complex pleasures. The pleasure of drinking a beer in front of
the T.V. surely doesn't rate as highly as the pleasure one gets
solving a complicated math problem, or reading a poem, or listening to
Mozart. Second, Bentham's view that there were no
qualitative differences in pleasures also left him open to the
complaint that on his view human pleasures were of no more value than
animal pleasures and, third, committed him to the corollary that the
moral status of animals, tied to their sentience, was the same as that
of humans. While harming a puppy and harming a person are both
bad, however, most people had the view that harming the person was
worse. Mill sought changes to the theory that could accommodate
those sorts of intuitions.




To this end, Mill's hedonism was influenced by perfectionist
intuitions. There are some pleasures that are more fitting than
others. Intellectual pleasures are of a higher, better, sort than
the ones that are merely sensual, and that we share with animals.
To some this seems to mean that Mill really wasn't a hedonistic
utilitarian. His view of the good did radically depart from
Bentham's view. However, like Bentham, the good still
consists in pleasure, it is still a psychological state. There is
certainly that similarity. Further, the basic structures of the
theories are the same (for more on this see Donner 1991). While it is
true that Mill is more comfortable with notions like
'rights' this does not mean that he, in actuality, rejected
utilitarianism. The rationale for all the rights he recognizes is
utilitarian.




Mill's 'proof' of the claim that intellectual
pleasures are better *in kind* than others, though, is highly
suspect. He doesn't attempt a mere appeal to raw
intuition. Instead, he argues that those persons who have experienced
both view the higher as better than the lower. Who would rather be a
happy oyster, living an enormously long life, than a person living a
normal life? Or, to use his most famous example -- it is better to
be Socrates 'dissatisfied' than a fool
'satisfied.' In this way Mill was able to solve a problem
for utilitarianism.




Mill also argued that the principle could be proven, using another
rather notorious argument:



> 
> The only proof capable of being given that an object is visible is
> that people actually see it.... In like manner, I apprehend, the
> sole evidence it is possible to produce that anything is desirable is
> that people do actually desire it. If the end which the utilitarian
> doctrine proposes to itself were not, in theory and in practiced,
> acknowledged to be an end, nothing could ever convince any person that
> it was so. (Mill, U, 81)




Mill then continues to argue that people desire happiness -- the
utilitarian end -- and that the general happiness is "a good
to the aggregate of all persons." (81)




G. E. Moore (1873-1958) criticized this as fallacious. He
argued that it rested on an obvious ambiguity:



> 
> 
> Mill has made as naive and artless a use of the naturalistic
> fallacy as anybody could desire. "Good", he tells us,
> means "desirable", and you can only find out what is
> desirable by seeking to find out what is actually desired....
> The fact is that "desirable" does not mean "able to
> be desired" as "visible" means "able to be
> seen." The desirable means simply what *ought* to be
> desired or deserves to be desired; just as the detestable means not
> what can be but what ought to be detested... (Moore, PE, 66-7)
> 




It should be noted, however, that Mill was offering this as an
alternative to Bentham's view which had been itself criticized as
a 'swine morality,' locating the good in pleasure in a kind
of indiscriminate way. The distinctions he makes strike many as
intuitively plausible ones. Bentham, however, can accommodate
many of the same intuitions within his system. This is because he
notes that there are a variety of parameters along which we
quantitatively measure pleasure -- intensity and duration are just two
of those. His complete list is the following: *intensity,
duration, certainty or uncertainty, propinquity or remoteness,
fecundity, purity,* and *extent.* Thus, what Mill
calls the intellectual pleasures will score more highly than the
sensual ones along several parameters, and this could give us reason to
prefer those pleasures -- but it is a quantitative not a qualitative
reason, on Bentham's view. When a student decides to
study for an exam rather than go to a party, for example, she is making
the best decision even though she is sacrificing short term
pleasure. That's because studying for the exam, Bentham
could argue, scores higher in terms of the long term pleasures doing
well in school lead to, as well as the fecundity of the pleasure in
leading to yet other pleasures. However, Bentham will have to
concede that the very happy oyster that lives a very long time could,
in principle, have a better life than a normal human.




Mill's version of utilitarianism differed from Bentham's
also in that he placed weight on the effectiveness of internal
sanctions -- emotions like guilt and remorse which serve to
regulate our actions. This is an off-shoot of the different view
of human nature adopted by Mill. We are the sorts of beings that
have social feelings, feelings for others, not just ourselves. We
care about them, and when we perceive harms to them this causes painful
experiences in us. When one perceives oneself to be the agent of
that harm, the negative emotions are centered on the self. One
feels guilt for what one has done, not for what one sees another
doing. Like external forms of punishment, internal sanctions are
instrumentally very important to appropriate action. Mill also
held that natural features of human psychology, such as conscience and
a sense of justice, underwrite motivation. The sense of justice,
for example, results from very natural impulses. Part of this
sense involves a desire to punish those who have harmed others, and
this desire in turn "...is a spontaneous outgrowth from two
sentiments, both in the highest degree natural...; the impulse of
self-defense, and the feeling of sympathy." (Chapter 5,
*Utilitarianism*) Of course, he goes on, the justification
must be a separate issue. The feeling is there naturally, but it
is our 'enlarged' sense, our capacity to include the
welfare of others into our considerations, and make intelligent
decisions, that gives it the right normative force.




Like Bentham, Mill sought to use utilitarianism to inform law and
social policy. The aim of increasing happiness underlies his
arguments for women's suffrage and free speech. We can be
said to have certain rights, then -- but those rights are
underwritten by utility. If one can show that a purported right
or duty is harmful, then one has shown that it is not genuine.
One of Mills most famous arguments to this effect can be found in his
writing on women's suffrage when he discusses the ideal marriage
of partners, noting that the ideal exists between individuals of
"cultivated faculties" who influence each other
equally. Improving the social status of women was important
because they were capable of these cultivated faculties, and denying
them access to education and other opportunities for development is
forgoing a significant source of happiness. Further, the men who
would deny women the opportunity for education, self-improvement, and
political expression do so out of base motives, and the resulting
pleasures are not ones that are of the best sort.




Bentham and Mill both attacked social traditions that were justified
by appeals to natural order. The correct appeal is to utility
itself. Traditions often turned out to be "relics"
of "barbarous" times, and appeals to nature as a form
of justification were just ways to try rationalize continued deference
to those
relics.


In the latter part of the 20th century some writers criticized
utilitarianism for its failure to accommodate virtue evaluation.
However, though virtue is not the central normative concept in Mill's
theory, it is an extremely important one. In Chapter 4 of
*Utilitarianism* Mill noted 



> ... does the utilitarian doctrine deny that people
> desire virtue, or maintain that virtue is not a thing to be desired?
> The very reverse. It maintains not only that virtue is to be desired,
> but also that it is to be desired disinterestedly, for
> itself. Whatever may be the opinion of utilitarian moralists as to the
> original conditions by which virtue is made virtue ... they not only
> place virtue at the very head of things which are good as a means to
> the ultimate end, but they also recognize as a psychological fact the
> possibility of its being, to the individual, a good in itself, without
> looking to any end beyond it; and hold, that the mind is not in a
> right state, not in a state conformable to Utility, not in the state
> most conducive to the general happiness, unless it does love virtue in
> this manner ...


In *Utilitarianism* Mill argues that virtue not only has
instrumental value, but is constitutive of the good life. A person
without virtue is morally lacking, is not as able to promote the good.
However, this view of virtue is someone complicated by rather cryptic
remarks Mill makes about virtue in his *A System of Logic* in
the section in which he discusses the "Art of Life." There he seems
to associate virtue with aesthetics, and morality is reserved for the
sphere of 'right' or 'duty'. Wendy Donner
notes that separating virtue from right allows Mill to solve another
problem for the theory: the demandingness problem (Donner 2011). This
is the problem that holds that if we ought to maximize utility, if
that is the right thing to do, then doing right requires enormous
sacrifices (under actual conditions), and that requiring such
sacrifices is too demanding. With duties, on Mill's view, it is
important that we get compliance, and that justifies coercion. In the
case of virtue, however, virtuous actions are those which it is
"...for the general interest that they remain free."


## 3. Henry Sidgwick




Henry Sidgwick's (1838-1900) *The Methods of Ethics* (1874) is
one of the most well known works in utilitarian moral philosophy, and
deservedly so. It offers a defense of utilitarianism, though some
writers (Schneewind 1977) have argued that it should not primarily be
read as a defense of utilitarianism. In *The Methods* Sidgwick
is concerned with developing an account of "...the
different methods of Ethics that I find implicit in our common moral
reasoning..." These methods are egoism, intuition based
morality, and utilitarianism. On Sidgwick's view, utilitarianism is
the more basic theory. A simple reliance on intuition, for example,
cannot resolve fundamental conflicts between values, or rules, such as
Truth and Justice that may conflict. In Sidgwick's words
"...we require some higher principle to decide the
issue..." That will be utilitarianism. Further, the rules
which seem to be a fundamental part of common sense morality are often
vague and underdescribed, and applying them will actually require
appeal to something theoretically more basic -- again,
utilitarianism. Yet further, absolute interpretations of rules seem
highly counter-intuitive, and yet we need some justification for any
exceptions -- provided, again, by utilitarianism. Sidgwick
provides a compelling case for the theoretical primacy of
utilitarianism.




Sidgwick was also a British philosopher, and his views developed out
of and in response to those of Bentham and Mill. His
*Methods* offer an engagement with the theory as it had been
presented before him, and was an exploration of it and the main
alternatives as well as a defense.




Sidgwick was also concerned with clarifying fundamental features of
the theory, and in this respect his account has been enormously
influential to later writers, not only to utilitarians and
consequentialists, generally, but to intuitionists as well.
Sidgwick's thorough and penetrating discussion of the theory
raised many of the concerns that have been developed by recent moral
philosophers.




One extremely controversial feature of Sidgwick's views
relates to his rejection of a publicity requirement for moral
theory. He writes:



> 
> 
> Thus, the Utilitarian conclusion, carefully stated, would seem to be
> this; that the opinion that secrecy may render an action right which
> would not otherwise be so should itself be kept comparatively secret;
> and similarly it seems expedient that the doctrine that esoteric
> morality is expedient should itself be kept esoteric. Or, if this
> concealment be difficult to maintain, it may be desirable that Common
> Sense should repudiate the doctrines which it is expedient to confine
> to an enlightened few. And thus a Utilitarian may reasonably desire,
> on Utilitarian principles, that some of his conclusions should be
> rejected by mankind generally; or even that the vulgar should keep
> aloof from his system as a whole, in so far as the inevitable
> indefiniteness and complexity of its calculations render it likely to
> lead to bad results in their hands. (490)




This accepts that utilitarianism may be self-effacing; that is, that
it may be best if people do not believe it, even though it is
true. Further, it rendered the theory subject to Bernard
Williams' (1995) criticism that the theory really simply
reflected the colonial elitism of Sidgwick's time, that it was
'Government House Utilitarianism.' The elitism in his
remarks may reflect a broader attitude, one in which the educated are
considered better policy makers than the uneducated.




One issue raised in the above remarks is relevant to practical
deliberation in general. To what extent should proponents of a
given theory, or a given rule, or a given policy -- or even
proponents of a given one-off action -- consider what they think
people will *actually* do, as opposed to what they think those
same people *ought* to do (under full and reasonable reflection,
for example)? This is an example of something that comes up in
the Actualism/possibilism debate in accounts of practical
deliberation. Extrapolating from the example used above, we have
people who advocate telling the truth, or what they believe to be the
truth, even if the effects are bad because the truth is somehow misused
by others. On the other hand are those who recommend not telling
the truth when it is predicted that the truth will be misused by others
to achieve bad results. Of course it is the case that the truth
ought not be misused, that its misuse can be avoided and is not
inevitable, but the misuse is entirely predictable. Sidgwick
seems to recommending that we follow the course that we predict will
have the best outcome, given as part of our calculations the data that
others may fail in some way -- either due to having bad desires,
or simply not being able to reason effectively. The worry
Williams points to really isn't a worry specifically with
utilitarianism (Driver 2011). Sidgwick would point out
that if it is bad to hide the truth, because 'Government
House' types, for example, typically engage in self-deceptive
rationalizations of their policies (which seems entirely plausible),
then one shouldn't do it. And of course, that heavily
influences our intuitions.




Sidgwick raised issues that run much deeper to our basic
understanding of utilitarianism. For example, the way earlier
utilitarians characterized the principle of utility left open serious
indeterminacies. The major one rests on the distinction between
total and average utility. He raised the issue in the context of
population growth and increasing utility levels by increasing numbers
of people (or sentient beings):



> 
> 
> Assuming, then, that the average happiness of human beings is a
> positive quantity, it seems clear that, supposing the average
> happiness enjoyed remains undiminished, Utilitarianism directs us to
> make the number enjoying it as great as possible. But if we foresee as
> possible that an increase in numbers will be accompanied by a decrease
> in average happiness or *vice versa*, a point arises which has
> not only never been formally noticed, but which seems to have been
> substantially overlooked by many Utilitarians. For if we take
> Utilitarianism to prescribe, as the ultimate end of action, happiness
> on the whole, and not any individual's happiness, unless
> considered as an element of the whole, it would follow that, if the
> additional population enjoy on the whole positive happiness, we ought
> to weigh the amount of happiness gained by the extra number against
> the amount lost by the remainder. (415)




For Sidgwick, the conclusion on this issue is not to simply strive
to greater average utility, but to increase population to the point
where we maximize the product of the number of persons who are
currently alive and the amount of average happiness. So it seems
to be a hybrid, total-average view. This discussion also raised
the issue of policy with respect to population growth, and both would
be pursued in more detail by later writers, most notably Derek Parfit
(1986).


## 4. Ideal Utilitarianism




G. E. Moore strongly disagreed with the hedonistic value theory
adopted by the Classical Utilitarians. Moore agreed that we ought
to promote the good, but believed that the good included far more than
what could be reduced to pleasure. He was a pluralist, rather
than a monist, regarding intrinsic value. For example, he
believed that 'beauty' was an intrinsic good. A
beautiful object had value independent of any pleasure it might
generate in a viewer. Thus, Moore differed from Sidgwick who
regarded the good as consisting in some consciousness. Some objective
states in the world are intrinsically good, and on Moore's view,
beauty is just such a state. He used one of his more notorious
thought experiments to make this point: he asked the reader to
compare two worlds, one was entirely beautiful, full of things which
complemented each other; the other was a hideous, ugly world, filled
with "everything that is most disgusting to us." Further,
there are not human beings, one imagines, around to appreciate or be
disgusted by the worlds. The question then is, which of these worlds is
better, which one's existence would be better than the
other's? Of course, Moore believed it was clear that the
beautiful world was better, even though no one was around to appreciate
its beauty. This emphasis on beauty was one facet of
Moore's work that made him a darling of the Bloomsbury
Group. If beauty was a part of the good independent of its
effects on the psychological states of others -- independent of,
really, how it affected others, then one needn't sacrifice
morality on the altar of beauty anymore. Following beauty is not
a mere indulgence, but may even be a moral obligation. Though
Moore himself certainly never applied his view to such cases, it does
provide the resources for dealing with what the contemporary literature
has dubbed 'admirable immorality' cases, at least some of
them. Gauguin may have abandoned his wife and children, but it
was to a beautiful end.




Moore's targets in arguing against hedonism were the earlier
utilitarians who argued that the good was some state of consciousness
such as pleasure. He actually waffled on this issue a bit, but
always disagreed with Hedonism in that even when he held that beauty
all by itself was not an intrinsic good, he also held that for the
appreciation of beauty to be a good the beauty must actually be there,
in the world, and not be the result of illusion.




Moore further criticized the view that pleasure *itself* was
an intrinsic good, since it failed a kind of isolation test that he
proposed for intrinsic value. If one compared an empty universe
with a universe of sadists, the empty universe would strike one as
better. This is true even though there is a good deal of
pleasure, and no pain, in the universe of sadists. This would
seem to indicate that what is necessary for the good is at least the
absence of bad intentionality. The pleasures of sadists, in
virtue of their desires to harm others, get discounted -- they are
not good, even though they are pleasures. Note this radical
departure from Bentham who held that even malicious pleasure was
intrinsically good, and that if nothing instrumentally bad attached to the
pleasure, it was wholly good as well.




One of Moore's important contributions was to put forward an
'organic unity' or 'organic whole' view of
value. The principle of organic unity is vague, and there is some
disagreement about what Moore actually meant in presenting it.
Moore states that 'organic' is used "...to
denote the fact that a whole has an intrinsic value different in amount
from the sum of the values of its parts." (PE, 36) And, for
Moore, that is all it is supposed to denote. So, for example, one
cannot determine the value of a body by adding up the value of its
parts. Some parts of the body may have value only in relation to
the whole. An arm or a leg, for example, may have no value at all
separated from the body, but have a great deal of value attached to the
body, and increase the value of the body, even. In the section of
*Principia Ethica* on the Ideal, the principle of organic unity
comes into play in noting that when persons experience pleasure through
perception of something beautiful (which involves a positive emotion in
the face of a recognition of an appropriate object -- an emotive
and cognitive set of elements), the experience of the beauty is better
when the object of the experience, the beautiful object, actually
exists. The idea was that experiencing beauty has a small positive
value, and existence of beauty has a small positive value, but
combining them has a great deal of value, more than the simple addition
of the two small values (PE, 189 ff.). Moore noted:
"A true belief in the reality of an object greatly increases the
value of many valuable wholes..." (199).




This principle in Moore -- particularly as applied to the
significance of actual existence and value, or knowledge and value,
provided utilitarians with tools to meet some significant
challenges. For example, deluded happiness would be severely
lacking on Moore's view, especially in comparison to happiness
based on knowledge.


## 5. Conclusion




Since the early 20th Century utilitarianism has undergone a variety
of refinements. After the middle of the 20th Century it has
become more common to identify as a 'Consequentialist'
since very few philosophers agree entirely with the view proposed by
the Classical Utilitarians, particularly with respect to the hedonistic
value theory. But the influence of the Classical Utilitarians has
been profound -- not only within moral philosophy, but within
political philosophy and social policy. The question Bentham
asked, "What use is it?," is a cornerstone of policy
formation. It is a completely secular, forward-looking
question. The articulation and systematic development of this
approach to policy formation is owed to the Classical Utilitarians.