Philosophy Now Forum

Recently I have been studying various moral theories and from discussing them the following question remains unanswered to me.

Please correct me if you think I'm wrong or add if you think something is missing.

I've heard that a common complaint against utilitarianism is that it doesn't take into account individual human beings.
Though I don't really understand what is meant by this.

Do most people mean that in utilitarianism an action can be morally good when it would bring about a very substantial decrease in an individual's happiness,
as long as it would increase the cumulative happiness of society as a whole? (or whatever 'group' you limit the calculation to).

If this is the case (please correct me/elaborate on the above) how is this a weakness of the theory? It seems to me that if the total/cumulative happiness is increased it shouldn't really be a problem since I don't think there are many cases where the ultimate depletion of one's happiness would lead to more 'netto' happiness.

Is this the way in which this objection is commonly made?

If I haven't been able to bring my question across in an understandable way, my apologies, please ask if anything is unclear.

Utilitarianism does take the individual, every individual, into account. Criticisms are usually phrased that u-ism doesn't take individuals into account in the right way.

A common criticism is that the maximization of utility may violate a right of an individual. All of Jill's many friends and relatives will be miserable if Jill marries Jack. Jill will, as a matter of fact, be moderately happy with Jack, but when we take everything and everybody into account, total utility will be higher if she doesn't marry Jack. The critics of u-ism say it is not wrong for Jill to marry Jack, because it is her decision to make.

A different criticism turns not on rights but on a purported independent value of equality. Suppose that 1000 people each have 1000 units of utility (utils). There is a possible redistribution on which 999 of them have 1001 utils and one person has 2. Because of, what would certainly have to be rather weird preference functions, this 1001 util state turns out to be the highest utility that can be obtained for this bunch. Some, e.g. Rawls, would say that this utilitarian solution would be unjust. Intuitively, the very slight increase in utility for almost everyone does not seem morally to outweigh the huge decrease for the one.

Aweuifhawe wrote:Recently I have been studying various moral theories and from discussing them the following question remains unanswered to me.

Please correct me if you think I'm wrong or add if you think something is missing.

I've heard that a common complaint against utilitarianism is that it doesn't take into account individual human beings.
Though I don't really understand what is meant by this.

Do most people mean that in utilitarianism an action can be morally good when it would bring about a very substantial decrease in an individual's happiness,
as long as it would increase the cumulative happiness of society as a whole? (or whatever 'group' you limit the calculation to).

If this is the case (please correct me/elaborate on the above) how is this a weakness of the theory? It seems to me that if the total/cumulative happiness is increased it shouldn't really be a problem since I don't think there are many cases where the ultimate depletion of one's happiness would lead to more 'netto' happiness.

Is this the way in which this objection is commonly made?

If I haven't been able to bring my question across in an understandable way, my apologies, please ask if anything is unclear.

This should clear up those misconceptions, here:

http://antibullshitman.blogspot.ca/2014 ... 8.html?m=1

Negative average preference utilitarianism takes into account the individual. In fact, demands it as primary.