Jeremy Bentham's Act Utilitarianism Flashcards
What was the starting point for Act Utilitarianism?
His claim that people are motivated by the desire to achieve happiness, which he understood as pleasure, and avoid pain. This leads to the Principle of Utility.
What was Bentham’s version of the Principle of Utility?
The Greatest Happiness Principle: maximising pleasure and minimising pain for all those affected by an action.
Did Bentham believe everyone had an equal right to happiness?
Yes, irrespective of status or situation in life. For Bentham, sentience and not intellectual capacity, race or even being a member of the human species was what mattered.
What did Bentham say was the sole intrinsic good?
Happiness/pleasure. He said everything else is at best instrumentally good.
How did Bentham say moral decisions should be made.
Each situation needs to be considered in its own right. Experience and generally accepted principles have secondary importance and rules are not to be obeyed as a matter of course, only if they serve to increase human happiness.
What was Bentham’s approach to happiness?
In terms of quantity. He did not distinguish between different types of happiness or attribute different values to them.
How did Bentham measure pleasure/pain?
The hedonic calculus: a way of estimating the overall rightness or wrongness of an action.
The Hedonic calculus.
Each person affected by the action was to have equal consideration. Individuals were to think of the general happiness and not just their own, though by seeking the former they were likely to ensure their own also. There are seven different criteria.
What were the seven different criteria of the Hedonic calculus?
Intensity, certainty, duration, remoteness, fecundity, purity and extent.
What is an intrinsic good?
A quality that has value in itself.
What is an instrumental good?
A quality that might or might not have value, depending on what it leads to.
Three challenges to Bentham’s Act Utilitarianism.
-Too much emphasis on consequences which we cannot be certain of.
-Motive, rules and duties are seen as being of no importance.
-Potential for injustice as the interests of minorities might be suppressed or ignored.
How can you respond to the criticism of Bentham’s Utilitarianism that: ‘There is too much emphasis on consequences which we cannot be certain of’?
In most cases we can be reasonably sure. As in all aspects of life, we have to go by foreseeable consequences.
How can you respond to the criticism of Bentham’s Utilitarianism that: ‘Motive, rules and duties are seen as being of no importance’?
Motives are the same as the intended consequence, so are considered. Rules and duties do have a place, but only if they serve the Greatest Happiness Principle.
How can you respond to the criticism of Bentham’s Utilitarianism that: ‘There is potential for injustice as the interests of minorities might be suppressed or ignored’?
it would be unjust to favour minority rights over those of the majority. In the case of injustices often cited e.g. gang rape, applying all the calculus criteria would mean that such injustices could never be justified.
