Ethics

Chapter 2

UTILITARIANISM
Chapter 2

Utilitarianism
Introduction

On January 25, 2015, the 8th Special Action Force (SAF) conducted a police operation at
Tukanalipao, Mamasapao in Maguindanao. Also known as Oplan Exodus, it was intended to
serve an arrest warrant for Zulkifli Bin Hir or Marwan, a Malaysian terrorist and bomb maker
who had a 5-million-dollar bounty on his head. This mission eventually led to a clash between
the Philippine National Police’s (PNP) SAF, on one hand, and the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom
Fighters (BIFF) and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) on the other. Although the police
operation was successful because of the death of Marwan, the firefight that ensued claimed sixty-
seven lives including forty-four SAF troopers, eighteen MILF Fighters and five civilians.
However, the relatively high number of SAF members killed in this operation caught attention of
many including Philippine media and the legislature.

In one of the Congress investigations that followed this tragic mission, then Senate President
Franklin Drilon and Senator Francis Escudero debated the public hearing of an audio recording
of an alleged conversation that attempted to cover up the massacre of the PNP-SAF commandos.
Drilon questioned the admissibility of these recordings as evidence under the Anti-Wire Tapping
Law whereas Escudero cited Section 4 of the Anti-Wire Tapping Act (RA 4200) and explained
that any communication or spoken word or the existence, contents, substance, purport, or
meaning of the same or any part thereof or any information therein contained, obtained and
secured by any person in any violation of the preceding sections of this Act shall not be
admissible in evidence in any judicial, quasi-judicial, legislative or administrative hearing or
investigation. “Seator Grace Poe, previous chairperson of the senate committee on public order
and dangerous drugs argued otherwise, “Sinabi na ni Senaator Drilon na ito daw ay illegal, na
hindi daw pwede, na ako daw ay pwedeng maging liable kung ito daw ay ipapakinig sa senado,
ako naman, ano ba naman itong mga batas na ito?... Ang mga batas na to ay para malaman natin
ang katotohanan at magkaroon tayo ng hustisya. Itong anti-wiretapping or mga recording na
ganito, kung hindi pwedeng lalabs sa publiko, pwede naming gawing basehan sa executive
session.”

Senator Poe response leads us to ask: Can the government infringe individual rights If it is
morally permissible for the government to infringe individual rights, when can the government
do so? Does it become legitimate to sacrifice individual rights when considering the greatest
benefit for the greatest number of people?

The case exposes the aftermath of the Mamasapano incident and the Senate investigations. The
senate inquiry proceedings raised questions on the possibility of wiretapping and the intrusion of
one’s right to privacy. While the 1987 Philippine Constitution does protect one’s right to private
communication, it did provide some exemptions to its inviolability. These exemptions included a
lawful order of the court and/or issues concerning public safety and order. RA 4200 (Anti-Wire
Tapping Law and RA 9372 (or the Human Security Act of 2007) both provided exemptions on
the inviolability of the right to privacy in instances of treason, espionage, rebellion and sedition.
While this is a certainty a legal issue, can it also contribute a moral concern? By raising the
distinction between moral and legal issues and concerns, do you think that these two are
different? To simplify things, let us put aside the question of law and let us assume that you were
ask to decide whether wiretapping is morally permissible or not? On what instances is
wiretapping morally permissible and on what instance it is not morally permissible.

Specific Objectives

At the end of the lesson, the students should be able to:

- Discuss the basic principle of utilitarian ethics

- Distinguish between two utilitarian models: the quantitative model of Jeremy Bentham
and the qualitative model of John Stuart Mill
- Apply utilitarianism in understanding and evaluating local and international scenarios
-
Duration
Chapter 2: Utilitarianism = 9 hours
(7 hours discussion;
2hours assessment)

Lesson
THE PRINCIPLE OF UTILITY
1
Utilitarianism
- It is an ethical theory that argues for the goodness of pleasure and the determination of right
behavior based on the usefulness of the action’s consequences.

- It claims that one’s actions and behavior are good inasmuch as they are directed toward the
experience of the greatest pleasure over pain for the greatest number of person.

- Its root word is “utility” which refers to the usefulness of the consequences of one’s actions.

- It is consequentialist – meaning the moral value of actions and decisions is based solely or greatly
on the usefulness of their consequences; it is the usefulness of results that determines whether the
action or behavior is good or bad.
 - According to Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) and John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), utility refers to
understanding the results of people’s actions. Specifically, they are interested on whether this
actions contribute or not to the world. The utilitarian value pleasure and happiness; this means
that the usefulness of actions is based on its promotion of happiness.

o Happiness is the experience of pleasure for the greatest number of persons, even at the
expense of some individual rights.

o The pursuit for pleasure and pain are in fact the only principle in assessing action’s
morality

o The natural preferability of pleasure Mill refers to as theory of life.

The Principle of Utility

- Refers to our subjection to our sovereign masters: pleasure and pain

- Refers to the motivation of our actions as guided by our avoidance of pain and our desire for
pleasure.

- Refers to pleasure is only good if and only if, they produce more happiness than unhappiness.
This means that it is not enough to experience pleasure, but to also inquire whether the things we
do make us happier.

Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832)

- He argued that our actions are governed by two sovereign masters – which he calls “pleasure and
pain”. These masters are given to us by nature to help us determine what is good or bad and what
to be done and not; they fasten our choices to their throne.

- He equates happiness with pleasure.

- He provided a framework for evaluating pleasure and pain commonly called Felicific Calculus.

o Felicific calculus is a common currency framework that calculates the pleasure that some
actions can produce. In this framework, an action can be evaluated on the basis of
intensity or strength of pleasure; duration or length of the experience of pleasure;
certainty, uncertainty, or the likelihood that pleasure will occur; propinquity, remoteness,
or how soon there will be pleasure.

o In measuring the tendency to choose these actions we need to consider two more
dimensions:

 Fecundity – chance it has of being followed by sensations of the same kind, and
purity of the chance it has not being followed by sensations of the opposite kind.

 Lastly is consideration of the number of person who are affected by pleasure or

pain, another dimension called Extent should also be considered.
 o Felicific calculus allows the evaluation of all actions and their resultant pleasure.

o This means that actions are evaluated on this single scale regardless of preferences and
values. In this sense pleasure and pain can only quantitatively differ but not qualitatively
differ from other experiences of pleasure and pain.

John Stuart Mill (1806-1873

- He reiterates moral good as happiness, and consequently happiness as pleasure.

- He clarifies that what makes people happy is intended pleasure and what makes us unhappy is the
privation of pleasure.

- He argues that we act and do things because we find them pleasurable and we avoid doing things
because they are painful.

- He dissents from Bentham’s single scale of pleasure. He thinks that the principle of utility must
distinguish pleasure qualitatively and not merely quantitatively.

- Utilitarianism cannot promote the kind of pleasures appropriate for pigs or to any other animals.
He thinks that there are higher intellectual and lower base pleasure.

- We are capable of searching and desiring higher intellectual pleasures more than pigs are capable
of.

- Contrary to Bentham, Mill argues that quality is more preferable than quantity. An excessive
quantity of what otherwise pleasurable might result in pain.

- In deciding over two comparable pleasures pleasure, it is important to experience both and to
discover which one is actually more preferred than the other.

- Actual choices of knowledgeable persons’ points that higher intellectual pleasures are preferable
than purely sensual appetites.
Lesson
THE PRINCIPLE OF THE
2 GREATEST NUMBER
Principle of the Greatest Number
 According to John Stuart Mill, equating happiness with pleasure does not aim to
describe the utilitarian moral agent and independently from others. This not only
about our individual pleasures, regardless of how high, intellectual, or in other ways
noble it is, but it is also about the pleasure of the greatest number affected by the
consequence of our actions.

Utilitarianism

 Utilitarianism cannot lead us to selfish acts

 It is not dismissive of sacrifices that procure more happiness for others.

 It is not at all separate from liberal social practices that aim to improve the quality of
life for all persons.

 Is interested with everyone’s happiness, in fact, the greatest happiness of the greatest
number

 Maximizes the total amount of pleasure over displeasure for the greatest number.

 J.S. Mill pushes for the moral irrelevance of motive in evaluating actions. Interested
with the best consequence for the highest number of people. It is not interested in the
motive of agent.

 Moral value cannot be discernable in the intention or motivation of the person doing
the act; it is based solely on the difference it makes on the world’s total amount of
pleasure and pain.

Lesson

3 JUSTICE AND MORAL RIGHTS

John Stuart Mill understands JUSTICE as respect for rights directed toward society’s pursuit
for the greatest happiness of the greatest number. MORAL RIGHTS is a valid claim on society
and are justified by utility.
Utilitarianism on Justice and Moral Rights
 The society is made happier if its citizens are able to live their lives knowing that their
interests are protected and that society as a whole defends it.

 A right is justifiable on utilitarian principles inasmuch as they produce an overall

happiness that is greater than the unhappiness resulting from their implementation.

 Utilitarian argue that issues of justice carry a very strong emotional import because the
category of rights is directly associated with the individual’s most vital interests

 Mill associates utilitarianism with the possession of moral and legal rights. He
understands that legal rights are neither inviolable nor natural, but rights are subject to
some exceptions.

 He points out that when legal rights are not normally justified in accordance to the
greatest happiness principle, then these rights neither be observed, nor be respected. This
is like saying that there are instances when the law is not morally justified, and in this
case, even objectionable.

 It is commendable to endure legal punishments for acts of civil disobedience for the sake
of promoting a higher moral good.

 Mill points out that moral rights take precedence over legal rights

 Moral rights are only justifiable by considerations of greater overall happiness.

 What matters in what we do is the resultant happiness, then anything may be justified for
the sake of producing the greatest happiness of the greatest number of people.

 For Mill, justice can be interpreted in terms of moral rights because justice promotes the
greater social good.

Mill explains that the idea of justice supposed two things: a rule of conduct and a sentiment
which sanctions the rule. The first must be supposed common to all mankind, and intended for
their good. The other (sentiment) is a desire that punishment may be suffered by those who
infringe the rule. There is involved, in addition, the conception of some definite person who
suffers by the infringement; whose rights (to use the appropriated to the case) are violated by it.
And the sentiment of justice appears to me to be, the animal desire to repel or retaliate a hurt or
damage to oneself, or to those whom one sympathizes, widened so as to include all persons, by
the human capacity of enlarged sympathy, and the human conception of intelligent self-interest.
From the latter elements, the feeling derives its morality; from the former, its peculiar
impressiveness, ad energy of self-assertion.

SUMMARY

Bentham and Mill see moral good as pleasure, not merely self-gratification, but also the
greatest happiness principle or the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. We are
compelled to do whatever increases pleasure and decreases pain to the most number of persons,
counting each as one and none as more than one. In determining the greatest happiness for the
greatest number of people, there is no distinction between Bentham and Mill. Bentham suggests
his felicific calculus, a framework for quantifying moral valuation. Mill provides criterion for
comparative pleasures. He thinks that persons who experience two different types of pleasures
generally prefer higher intellectual pleasures to base sensual ones.

Mill provides an adequate discourse on rights despite it being mistakenly argued to be the
weakness of utilitarianism. He argues that rights are socially protected interests that are justified
by their contribution to the greatest happiness principle. However, he also claims that in extreme
circumstances, respect for individual rights can be overridden to promote better welfare
especially in circumstances of conflict valuation.

References/Additional Resources/Readings

Bulaong O.G. et. al., 2018, “Ethics: Foundations of Moral Valuations” distributed by Rex
Bookstore, Inc.

Albee, Ernest. A Histry of English Utilitarianism. New York: Macmillan, 1902.

Alican, Necip Fikri. Mill’s Principle of Utility: A Defense of John Stuart Mill’s
Notorious Proof. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1994

Berger, Fred R. Happiness, Justice, and Freedom: The Moral and Political Philosophy of
John Stuart Mill. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984.

Crisp, Roger. Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Mill on Utilitarianism. London:

Routledge, 2009.
 Lyon’s David. Rights, Welfare and Mill’s Moral Theory. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1994.

Mill, John Stuart. Collected Works of John Stuart Mill. 33 Volumes, London: Routledge
and Kegan Paul, 1994.

Ryan Alan. The Philosophy of John Stuart Mil. London: Macmillan, 1987.

Semmel, Bernard. John Stuart Mill and the Pursuit of Virtue. New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1984.

Skorupski, John, editor. The Cambridge Companion to Mill. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 2001.
Activity Sheet
Activity 2

NAME: _________________________________ DATE: ________________

COURSE YEAR SEC: ____________________ SCORE: ______________

Direction: Put the case for or against your view or idea by giving evidence for your
claims/reasons for or against; attempt to influence the reader to accept your view

In view of Bentham and Mill’s assertion of the greatest happiness of the greatest number, do you
think that animal rights and welfare should even be a concern in the Philippines where millions
of people below the poverty threshold are struggling to have decent lives? Is the concern for
animal rights and welfare a first world problem?
Assessment
Assessment 2

NAME: _________________________________ DATE: ________________

COURSE YEAR SEC: ____________________ SCORE: ______________

Direction: Put the case for or against your view or idea by giving evidence for your
claims/reasons for or against; attempt to influence the reader to accept your view

1. Are all pleasures commensurable? Can they be evaluated on a single scale? Can some
goods like friendship, be balanced against other goods like money?

2. Mill revises utilitarianism by arguing for “higher” pleasures. Which pleasures are higher?

3. Mill proposes that higher pleasures are those preferred by the majority of people. Do you
agree that this is a good way of distinguishing between higher and lower pleasures? Can a
well-informed majority prefer higher pleasures?

4. Does utilitarianism questions individual rights? What if violation the civil rights of
minority increases the sum total of pleasure of the majority?

5. Do you agree that happiness is the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain, and that
all actions are directed toward pleasure?

6. Are all pleasures comparable, even objectionable pleasures? What if the majority derives
pleasure from being sexist?

7. Is it justifiable to build a basketball court because there are basketball fans, than to build
a hospital because there are fewer sick people?

8. When is it justifiable to torture suspected criminals?

Rubrics for Essay

Each question will be graded based on this five (5) point rubric.

Score Completion Accuracy Comprehension Organization Conventions

5 The answer is All Content Content is well- No major

complete. information demonstrates a organized and grammatical or
provided is deep easy to read. spelling errors.
accurate. understanding and Points follow a No more than
application of logical two minor
ethical concepts. progression. It errors.
provides
examples which
supports the topic
with wit and
analysis

4 The answer is All Content Content is well- No major

missing slight information demonstrates organized and grammatical or
details provided is understanding and easy to read. spelling errors.
accurate. application of Points follow a No more than
ethical concepts. logical five minor
progression. It errors.
provides
examples which
supports the topic
with wit and
analysis

3 The answer is Most Content Content is Some major

missing information demonstrates basic organized and and minor
multiple provided is understanding and easy to read. errors that don’t
details. accurate. application of Points follow a necessarily
ethical concepts. mostly logical impair
progression.It communication
provides .
examples which
supports the topic
 with wit and
analysis

2 Content Some Content Content may be Major and

suggests lack information demonstrates less unorganized and minor errors
of preparation provided is than basic difficult to read. significantly
or accurate. understanding and Points do not weaken quality
comprehensio application of follow a solidly of
n. ethical concepts. logical communication
progression and , although still
have provided comprehensible
unrelated .
examples.

1 Content only A small Content Content is Communication

marginally amount of demonstrates a unorganized, seriously
related to the the lack of illogical, and impaired by
question/prom information understanding and difficult to read. multitude of
pt. is accurate. application of spelling/gramm
ethical concepts. atical errors.

0 Content fails None of the Content Content is very Multitude of

to meet the information demonstrates a poorly organized, major and
basic provided is complete lack of illogical, and minor errors
requirements accurate. understanding and difficult to read. makes the
of the task. application of answer
ethical concepts. incomprehensib
le.