Philosophy 433 History of Ethics Darwall Winter 2008
BENTHAM
II
I The role of the
principle of
utility. One way of beginning to get
the flavor of his position is to examine what he means by "the
principle
of utility." Recall that among the
eighteenth century writers we have been reading, such as Hutcheson,
Hume,
Here is
what Bentham says about what he means by the principle of utility:
"The
principle here in question may be taken for an act of the mind; a
sentiment; a sentiment
of approbation; a sentiment which, when applied to an action, approves
of its utility,
as that quality of it by which the measure of approbation or
disapprobation bestowed
upon it ought to be governed." (2n)
Now this is
actually quite complicated. He doesn't
say that this principle is one that approves of acts in proportion as
they tend
to produce happiness. Rather, it
approves of utility "as that quality of [the action] by which the
measure
of approbation of disapprobation bestowed upon it ought to be
governed." That is, it approves of
approving of actions on the ground of their utility.
One thing should already be noted here. This "second-order" approval of approving of acts on the basis of their utility apparently assumes that the "first-order" approval of acts is itself open to some kind of rational control. The person who holds (has?) the principle of utility favors favoring acts that promote utility--he favors using the utility of acts as a measure for favoring acts. He favors this measure as a rational basis for favoring acts and policies.
This
already suggests something that becomes clearer in other passages,
viz., that Bentham
believes, as against writers such as Hutcheson and
"The
various systems that have been formed concerning the standard of right
and wrong
. . . consist[,] all of them in so many contrivances for avoiding the
obligation of appealing to any external standard, and for prevailing
upon the
reader to accept the author's sentiment or opinion as a reason for
itself." (17)
Bentham
believes that any intellectually respectable ethical view regarding
must appeal
to some further justification that is external to itself, some further
ground
or standard from which it can be derived.
[Note how radical a rejection this is of all the philosophers
listed
above, with the possible exception of Hume, and even he would
strenuously
object.] And he believes that the only
possible such standard is the general happiness. Let
us see how he gets to this conclusion.
II Principle-guided public
moral
debate. The best way to
understand Bentham's position, I want to suggest, is to represent him
as fundamentally
concerned to explain what ethical thought must be if it is to be
expressible in
public discussion and debate of a certain kind, viz., discourse that is:
(a) clear and
intelligible,
(b) non-coercive,
(c) about a common
issue, and
(d) useful in
directing action.
Briefly, Bentham's position is that these criteria
will be
realized only if acts are approved on the basis of their utility. Therefore, for these reasons, he approves
approving them on this basis--he asserts the principle of utility.
A. Clear and intelligible speech
and thought. Bentham apparently makes
the radical claim
that the proposition that an action ought to be done is meaningful only
if it
is taken to mean that the action will promote utility:
"When thus interpreted, the words ought,
and right and wrong, and others of that stamp have a meaning: when otherwise, they have none."
(4) And:
"Systems which attempt to question it, deal in sounds instead of
sense, in caprice instead of reason, in darkness instead of light."
(2) And finally: "When
a man attempts to combat the
principle of utility, it is with reasons drawn, without his being aware
of it,
from that very principle itself." (4-5)
Fully to see what he means we will need to examine his other criteria of ethical discourse. For reasons that will be clearer in a moment, he is taking it that one can only put forward an ethical opinion as entitled to the assent of others if one doesn't simply express one's own feeling, but refers also to some ground for that feeling. An intellectually respectable ethical opinion must have both (recall the complicated formulation of the principle of utility). Thus Bentham asks a person who advances other principles: "let him examine and satisfy himself whether the principle he thinks he has found is really any separate intelligible principle; or whether it be not a mere principle in words, a kind of phrase, which at bottom expresses neither more nor less than the mere averment of his own unfounded sentiments; that is, what in another person he might be apt to call caprice."
So, to make
moral claims that are not simply unfounded expressions of personal
feeling, one
must refer to some "external standard". Bentham
seems to believe that it is the standard
which then gives the 'ought' claim its real
meaning
for discussion and debate.
B. Non-coercive. This becomes a little clearer with the second
criterion. About someone who proposes
that "his own approbation or disapprobation, annexed to the idea of an
act, without any regard to its consequences, is a sufficient foundation
for him
to judge and act upon," Bentham says, "let him ask himself whether
his sentiment is to be a standard of right and wrong, with respect to
every
other man, or whether every man's sentiment has the same privilege of
being a
standard to itself?" (6)
"In
the first case," he adds, "let him ask himself whether his principle
is not despotical, and hostile to all the rest of the human race."
His point
is that if someone proposes something as an ethical opinion entitled to
the respect
of others without having any justification for it in some standard that
is
external to his ethical opinions (i.e. to his assessments of acts and
characters), then he proposes to judge others who do not share it by an
opinion
that they must regard as capricious.
The moral
seems to be that non-coercive ethical debate is possible only if
participants
assume an intellectual obligation to justify their opinions by
standards that
do not require others already to hold one's own favorite ethical
opinions--i.e.
by some nonmoral standards. Liberal
moral debate is possible only on such terms.
C. About a common issue. Without appeal to a morally uncontroversial
standard as ground for moral opinions, the only alternative to
despotism is a
relativism that disables genuine debate.
"In
the second case [i.e. when the discussant who offers his own ethical
opinion, ungrounded
in some morally uncontroversial external standard, proposes not to
judge others
by this standard, but to permit them to use their own], [let him ask
himself]
whether it is not anarchical, and whether at this rate there are not as
many
different standards of right and wrong as there are men? . . . whether all argument is not at an end? and
whether, when two men have said, 'I like this,' and 'I don't like it,'
they can
(upon such a principle) have any thing more to say?" (6-7)
D. Useful in directing action. If the other criteria establish the need for
an external, morally uncontroversial standard in support of moral
opinions,
what if someone offer something about an action which was
uncontroversially
true, e.g., that the action would reduce taxes, but leave it at that
without
any comment on whether this would benefit or harm people.
While this might satisfy the other criteria,
Bentham asks the proponent of such a principle, "let him say whether
there
is any such thing as a motive that a man can have to pursue the
dictates of it;
if there is, let him say what that motive is, and how it is to be
distinguished
from those which enforce the dictates of utility; if not, then lastly
let him say
what it is this other principle can be good for." (7)
While there
are many uncontroversial facts about actions, the only ones that can
motivate
human beings are those that concern the act's consequences for people's
happiness.
We can see the argument for the principle of
utility
proceeding in two major stages, therefore.
I. A,B, and C taken together are
supposed to
establish the need for an external, morally uncontroversial standard
for
assessing actions--a standard that can be applied by ordinary empirical
means
without assuming shared sentiments.
II. D assures that the only such standard that can play a role that enables moral discussion actually to be effective in directing collective action is the principle of utility
Only if participants are bound to point to some
justification
or ground, the acceptance of which does not require the acceptance of
their own
moral feelings and judgments, will, Bentham believes, moral debate be
able to
escape coercion.
Here are some more passages that reinforce that
this really
is Bentham's view. In II.XIV, he asserts
that "the various systems that have been formed concerning the standard
of
right and wrong" all apparently conflict with the requirement of
liberal
moral discussion that participants appeal to an external standard: "they consist all of them in so many
contrivances for avoiding the obligation of appealing to any external
standard,
and for prevailing upon the reader to accept of the author's sentiment
or
opinion as a reason for itself." (17)
And then,
in a quite amazing footnote, he proceeds to catalogue virtually all of
the
going ethical theories of the past century or so, including,
Hutcheson's
"moral sense", Thomas Reid's "common sense", Richard
Price's "rule of right", Samuel Clarke's "fitness of things",
and so on. In each case he thinks that,
because these views abjure basing moral judgment on some external,
nonmoral
justification, they must all be rejected, at least as ideas that can be
appealed to in liberal
moral discussion.
"The mischief common to all these ways of thinking and arguing (which, in truth, as we have seen, are but one and the same method, couched in different forms of words) is their serving as a cloke, and pretence, and aliment, to despotism: if not a despotism in practice, a despotism however in disposition: which is but too apt, when pretence and power offer, to show itself in practice."
III
Right/wrong, moral responsibility
(accountability), and
the principle of utility. Although
he doesn't explicitly bring it out here, part of what Bentham must have
in mind
is the tight connection between thinking something wrong and moral and responsibility
or accountability, thinking
it worthy of reproach, if not punishment,
lacking adequate excuse. Thus, if one
condemns conduct, but without appeal to any further "external"
justification, then one must think another person who doesn't in fact
share
one's disapprobation of what he did, might merit reproach, or
punishment, even
though there be no justification for the reproach that the person could
be
expected to accept without already sharing one's moral feelings.
Bentham lampoons
this thought as follows: "if you
hate much, punish much: if you hate
little,
punish little: punish as you hate. If you hate not at all, punish not at
all: the fine feelings of the soul are
not to be overborne and tyrannized by the harsh and rugged dictates of
political utility." (16-17)
[the irony drips in this last clause.]
Later in the same footnote mentioned above,
Bentham gives a
summary of his thinking:
"'But
is it never, then, from any other considerations than those of utility,
that we
derive our notions of right and wrong?'
I do not know: I do not
care. Whether a moral sentiment can be
originally
conceived from any other source than a view of utility, is one question: whether upon examination and reflection it
can, in point of fact, be actually persisted in and justified on any
other ground,
by a person reflecting within himself is another; whether in point of
right it
can properly be
justified on any other
ground, by a
person addressing himself to the community, is a third.
The two first are questions of
speculation: it matters not,
comparatively speaking, how they are decided.
The last is a question of practice:
the decision is of as much importance as any can be." (19n) [n.b.: "in point of right". One
is almost tempted to conclude that
Bentham's principle of utility as the ground of liberal moral
discussion is
based on a fundamental right not to be coerced.]
The principle of utility, then, is uniquely suited to function as the external standard necessary for a liberal moral discussion and debate whose verdicts of right and wrong, individuals will be held responsible for complying with. In Chapter IV, Bentham turns to the question of how utility is to be measured. Utility is pleasure and the absence of pain. And pleasures have no intrinsic qualitative differences; as pleasures, they vary only in their intensity and duration. How much (intrinsic) utility a series of pleasurable experiences has, then, depends on how intense these are, and how long they last. Evaluating the overall net utility associated with various alternative actions is a matter of assessing how much total net pleasure (taking pain as offsetting pleasure) will result from any action, taking into account all affected, and comparing this with that arising from alternative available acts.
Consider Bentham’s quantitative hedonism
from this
perspective. The idea would be that
whether poetry is intrinsically better than pushpin simply doesn’t
matter from
the perspective of a principle that we can reasonably hold people responsible
for following. From this perspective,
everyone gets to vote with their pleasure, as it were, and we don’t
disenfranchise some pleasures because they are less noble.
IV Motive and act.
Bentham holds that utility is the only standard for judging what a
person ought
to do. "The only right ground of
action, that can possibly subsist, is, after all, the consideration of
utility,
which if it is a right principle of action, and of approbation, in any
one
case, is so in every other. . . ." (23)
Bentham is especially clear that the motive from which an agent might do something is irrelevant to whether she should act (or should have so acted). However, he thinks it understandable that we might sometimes think that motive is relevant:
"When
the act happens, in the particular instance of effects which we approve
of,
much more if we happen to observe that the same motive may frequently
be
productive, in other instances, of the like effects, we are apt to
transfer our
approbation to the motive itself, and to assume, as the just ground for
the
approbation we bestow on the act, the circumstance of its originating
from that
motive." (23)
This,
however, if understandable, is error.
The only ground for approving of an act is not its motive, or of
what
sort of motive it would eventuate from, but only its consequences. It is fascinating to recall
Hume on just
these points. On the one hand, his
official view is that actions derive whatever merit or demerit they
have from
their actual or usual motives. On the
other
hand, his psychological account of how our approbation of motives
arises is
that it works by an association of pleasure felt in sympathy with
considered
pleasurable consequences of the motive back with the motive itself. In effect, Bentham is saying that Hume makes,
and Hume's psychological theory explains how we make, the very error
against
which Bentham warns.
V Finally, Chapter X
reinforces the message that no motive can be bad. Motives
are good or bad only in virtue of
their consequences (with an exception noted below).
Bentham alludes to two kinds of arguments
here. First, the very same motives can
lead to quite good or bad acts depending in circumstances.
"1. A
boy, in order to
divert himself, reads an improving book:
the motive is accounted, perhaps, a good one:
at any rate not a bad one. 2. He
sets his top a spinning: the motive is
deemed,
at any rate, not a bad one. 3. He sets loose a mad ox among a crowd; his
motive is now, perhaps, termed an abominable one. Yet
in all three cases the motive may be the
very same: it may be neither more nor
less curiosity."
Second, he
argues that all motives are instances of the desire for some pleasure
or to
avoid some pain. But, to this extent,
every motive is intrinsically good.
"A
motive is substantially nothing more than pleasure or pain, operating
in a
certain manner.
"Now,
pleasure is in itself a good: nay even
setting aside immunity from pain, the only good: pain
is in itself an evil; and indeed,
without exception, the only evil; or else the words good and evil have
no
meaning. And this is alike true of every
sort of pain, and of every sort of pleasure. It
follows, therefore, immediately and uncontestably,
that there is no such thing as any sort of motive
that is in itself a bad one." (102)