Book Review: Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism is a version of consequentialism and a normative ethical theory which seeks to maximize well-being and minimize suffering. It stands in contrast to other theories such as deontology and virtue ethics. I had thought about normative ethics for a while, and to understand it better, read the book Utilitarianism which I review here. The authors, the philosophers Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek and Peter Singer aim to give a comprehensive overview of the field and discuss the underlying theory as well as possible applications. Despite this breadth, the book is fortunately quite thin and easily readable. Here, I don’t aim to give a summary of the whole book but instead, focus on issues I thought were particularly interesting.

I
After a quick review of the historical origins of utilitarian thought, the authors dive directly into a central question underpinning all normative morality: how to obtain a first principle from which to derive an ethical theory. They mainly discard the ideas advanced by early utilitarian philosophers and instead turn to discuss modern thinkers, especially John Harsanyi, an American Nobel prize laureate in economics. Harsanyi postulates, that a rational egoist, when assigned a random place on the economic and social ladder in society, would want to design a moral theory in such a way that it maximizes average utility. This conclusion has been criticized by John Rawls, who claimed that an egoist in such a situation would instead aim to improve the lives of the worst off and give everyone maximum freedom to improve their situation. I agree more with Rawls than with Harsanyi, even though for me assuming that pleasure is good and pain is bad is enough to ground a moral theory. De Lazari-Radek and Singer seem to think similarly when they say that most of the theories they present go back to the Golden Rule “Do unto others as you would like them to do unto you.”

II
Next, the authors discuss what should actually be maximized. The founders of utilitarianism favored “hedonistic utilitarianism” and propose simply adding up the moments of pleasure, subtracting the moments of suffering and choosing the course of action with the highest expected return. Ever since being first developed, this idea has come under criticism. A central objection is represented in the experience machine which I have discussed in another post. Instead, “preference utilitarianism” is often proposed as a viable alternative. Rather than trying to estimate utility directly and favor actions which might go against a person’s will, preference utilitarianism suggests doing whatever satisfies a person’s preference. Under that regime, if a patient at a hospital refuses pain medication, it would be morally wrong to give it to her even if she is suffering immensely and there is no possible downside. This adaption comes with its own problems. Getting someone addicted to a no-pleasure, no-pain drug and continuously satisfying the cravings by supplying it, could be seen as morally right, as the addict’s preferences are constantly satisfied. To work around this problem, some philosophers suggest considering only pre-existing preferences. What, however, if a lifelong teetotaler suddenly asks for a drink? Should you grant them that wish? What if it is their last day on earth? “Pluralist consequentialism” tries to avoid all these issues by allowing other factors, such as freedom or truth into the calculation. This, however, makes the whole thing even more complicated because there is no rational way to decide which additional “absolute goods” to choose and how to weigh them before adding them up. For me, hedonistic utilitarianism seems like the simplest and most straightforward option. It can certainly be seen as paternalistic, however, the alternatives seem difficult to put into practice and might support causing people unnecessary (but voluntary and chosen) harm which goes very much against my moral intuitions.

III
The next chapter in the book addresses possible objections to the very idea of utilitarianism. I will focus on the two I found the most interesting. The first one can be epitomized by a well-known thought experiment: A young woman, who is never been seen before in the area and knows no one, is walking into a rural hospital requesting a minor surgery. After having her put under anesthetization, the attending surgeon becomes aware that the patient’s organs are all perfectly healthy and could be transplanted easily. She is also aware that six of her patients are currently waiting for transplants and could be saved using the organs of the unsuspecting stranger. The surgeon could easily make the operation go wrong, have the patient die in a tragic but seemingly unavoidable accident and relocate her organs saving six lives while sacrificing only one. Should the surgeon do it? De Lazari-Radek and Singer respond to this by dismissing the thought experiment as largely theoretical. According to them, in practice, the murder might be discovered and the ensuing distrust in the medical system could cause many more patients to die from preventable ailments. However, they also state, that if negative effects could be reliably ruled out killing the innocent stranger would be the morally right thing to do, even if it violates our moral intuitions.

The second objection is that utilitarianism might be too demanding. It is true, that following through with it can lead to some inconvenient conclusions. As someone living in the West with access to decent healthcare and not being threatened by hunger or other mortal dangers, the utility we get from each Euro spent on “luxuries” (which would here be defined as anything that is not a basic necessity) is almost certainly smaller than what a genuinely poor person in a third-world country could derive from it. Every 7 Dollars we spent on a Netflix subscription or fancy meal could protect one child from malaria. This conclusion seems extreme and makes it difficult to do utilitarianism perfectly. The authors of Utilitarianism respond that demandingness should not be taken into account when deliberating whether a moral theory is true. Nevertheless, shaming or criticizing people for not doing enough is certainly morally wrong, because it would make them defensive and less likely to give even small amounts to charity, lowering overall utility. I have conflicting thoughts on this but will save them for another blog post.

IV
Chapter 5: Rules is more theoretical again as it discusses two different versions of utilitarianism, which the authors call act-utilitarianism and rule-utilitarianism. An act-utilitarian always makes her moral choices based on the concrete situation while a rule-utilitarian makes a decision based on rules which would yield the best results if adhered to by the vast majority of the population. The second theory is interesting as it essentially could be used to solve the surgeon’s dilemma. The problem, however, is that special circumstances, which could reverse the sign of the result of the utility calculation might not be covered by a rule. In the classic example of stealing bread to save your hungry family, the rule “Do not steal” leads to everyone dying of starvation, which is not the outcome preferred by most utilitarians. Making the rule more complex would work at first, but at some point, all possible cases have been covered and rule-utilitarianism is, in practice, no longer different from act-utilitarianism.

The last chapter, Utilitarianism in Action covers utilitarian solutions to various practical ethical problems, such as effective altruism and vegetarianism.

V
Reading this book took quite a long time, as the content is dense and almost every page presented ideas I had to spend sometimes thinking about. This is, of course, a good thing and I can fully recommend the book to anyone who is looking for an introduction to utilitarianism or ethics in general. As a results of reading the book I have joined the local Effective Altruism chapter and started giving about three percent of my monthly income to charity.