Utilitarianism and The Heart

Image: “Anatomical Heart Lightbox” by Munstre

Introduction

Utilitarianism and other maximizing views are often criticized because they seem to lead to a requirement that, in some circumstances, we should kill one person to save five. On the other hand, one of utilitarianism’s great strengths is the ease with which it explains why to save five rather than one, when only one group can be saved[1]. In this paper, we will first look at what classical utilitarianism is. Then we will describe the scenarios that seem to clash with moral intuitions and the responses that try to consolidate utilitarianism with those intuitions. Finally, we will look at the roots of those intuitions and what it means for utilitarianism as a theory that we apply to our moral actions.

Utilitarianism

A derivative of consequentialism, utilitarianism claims that the moral worth of an action is determined by the total amount of utility resulting from that action. In its classical form (developed by Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, and Henry Sidwick) the theory’s definition of utility is synonymous with pleasure and the right act is that which, out of all possible acts in that circumstance, maximizes the pleasure for the greatest number of people. That is, an action is right if and only if the total amount of pleasure for all minus the total amount of pain for all is greater than this net amount for any incompatible act available to the agent on that occasion. (Cf. Moore 1912, chs. 1-2.)

For our purposes, it is important to look at three properties of utilitarianism: firstly, its definition of that which is utility (or that which is good), namely pleasure; secondly, the contrast between its consequentialist character and the deontological qualities of Kantian philosophy; and finally, the specific claims of how the quantity and quality of consequences are calculated towards that which is morally right.

Classic utilitarianism adopts a normative hedonistic value system. Normative hedonism takes the moral stance that maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain is what we ought to do; and utilitarianism is a non-egoistic version of this – that we should maximize pleasure and minimize pain for everyone and not only ourselves. Consequently, pleasure and pain are the only things that have non-instrumental value and disvalue respectively – that is, their value is not dependent upon a certain outcome or a certain origin, they are good in and of themselves. Subsequently, all other goods are instrumental and subjected, they’re valuable insofar as they provide pleasure and not valuable insofar as they generate pain. On Bentham’s account, there are at least six ‘dimensions of value in a pleasure or a pain’: intensity, duration, certainty or uncertainty, propinquity or remoteness, fecundity, and purity (Bentham 1789, ch. 4). Normative hedonists generally respond to other ethical systems by reduction, arguing that most moral rules – in some modified, masked, or reminiscent form – aim to increase pleasure and decrease pain.[2]

It follows from this account of moral value that there are no imperative obligations other than to maximize pleasure and minimize pain. It is here where we find the contrast between utilitarianism’s consequentialism and Kant’s deontology. Utilitarianism denies the objective moral value of anything other than the consequences of the acts in question, while deontology attributes moral value to the intention behind the act, as well as the act itself. With Kant, we should act in a certain way because we have a duty to do so, because of the intrinsic value of acting in that way – regardless of the effects; with Bentham and Mill, we should act in a certain way because we are confident it will cause the greatest amount of good for the greatest number of people – regardless of what the act is. Even the violation of autonomy and liberty are acceptable[3] in certain circumstances because their good is instrumental and not intrinsic. This perspective is important to our discussion as we shall see later

Although it may seem that utilitarianism simplifies a complex collection of moral intuitions to their consequences, a ‘catch-all philosophy’[4], it is actually a conglomerate of mutually exclusive claims. In our later analysis of possible compromises to utilitarianism in seemingly atrocious situations we will be manipulating these claims and so it is important for us to know them. There are eleven:

1.       Consequentialism – whether an act is morally right depends only on consequences

2.       Actual Consequentialism – whether an act is morally right depends only on the actual consequences (as opposed to foreseen, foreseeable, intended, or likely consequences).

3.       Direct Consequentialism – whether an act is morally right depends only on the consequences of that act itself (as opposed to the consequences of the agent’s motive, of a rule or practice that covers other acts of the same kind, and so on).

4.       Evaluative Consequentialism – moral rightness depends only on the value of the consequences (as opposed to other features of the consequences).

5.       Hedonism – the value of the consequences depends only on the pleasures and pains in the consequences

6.       Maximizing Consequentialism – moral rightness depends only on which consequences are best (as opposed to satisfactory or an improvement over the status quo).

7.       Aggregative Consequentialism – which consequences are best is some function of the values of parts of those consequences (as opposed to rankings of whole worlds or sets of consequences).

8.       Total Consequentialism – moral rightness depends only on the total net good in the consequences (as opposed to the average net good per person).

9.       Universal Consequentialism – moral rightness depends on the consequences for all people or sentient beings (as opposed to only the individual agent, present people, or any other limited group).

10.   Equal Consideration – in determining moral rightness, benefits to one person matter just as much as similar benefits to any other person.

11.   Agent-neutrality – whether some consequences are better than others does not depend on whether the consequences are evaluated from the perspective of the agent (as opposed to an observer).[5]

Now that we have a clear picture of classical utilitarianism, how it processes moral situations, and where it stands contrasted to deontological theories, we can look at situations that pit utilitarianism against moral intuition.

The Scenarios

We will look at four variations of the same scenario. We will label them ‘The Savior’, ‘The Robin Hood’, ‘The Vigilante’, and ‘The Redeemer’.

The Savior is the only scenario amongst the four where the utilitarian outcome favors moral intuitions. It is as follows:

Imagine six patients on electric life support in a hospital with one working doctor. Five of the patients are located in the west wing and one of the patients are in the east wing. As the doctor sips his coffee in the central wing – located midway between the east and west wings – the power to the hospital cuts out[6]. With only 30 seconds before all six patients die the doctor has to make a choice. Either he sprints to the west wing and activates the reserve power for that room and save the five patients, or he sprints to the east wing and saves the lone patient. Due to the time limit, it is impossible for him to reach both rooms in time. Classical utilitarianism dictates that the doctor rushes to the west wing and saves the five patients, as this act maximizes the pleasure and minimizes the pain brought unto the world.

The Robin Hood is as follows:

Imagine five patients in the west wing that are all going to die, less they receive transplants[7]. Fortunately, they all require different organs so they are not competing with each other on the waiting list. Also fortunate is the fact that there is a patient in the east wing who has all the necessary organs and is a compatible donor to all the five patients. Unfortunately, he is completely healthy and only visiting for a routine checkup. Because five lives being saved at the price of one death seems to maximize pleasure, just as in The Savior, utilitarianism will direct the doctor to kill, or ‘sacrifice’, the one patient to harvest his organs to save the five lives. The consequences of both The Robin Hood and The Savior – as well as all the variations of this story – seem to be identical: four lives are saved at the price of one death.

The Vigilante is extremely similar to The Robin Hood and is as follows:

The conditions of the five patients are the same as in The Robin Hood. In addition, the reason they require their transplants is because they were attacked. If they die, they will be victims of murder. Just as before, the doctor should commit one murder (of the healthy patient) to harvest his organs and save the five patients, preventing not only five deaths, but also five murders – all at the price of one murder.

Finally, The Redeemer is extremely similar to The Vigilante and is as follows:

The conditions of the five patients, as well as the reason they require treatment, are the same as in The Vigilante. This time, however, it was the doctor himself who committed the attacks in the first place. After some reflection, the doctor realizes the atrociousness of his actions and decides that he wants redemption. Utilitarianism directs the doctor to commit one more murder (on the healthy patient) to save his other five victims. If the doctor has to choose between murdering one person and five people, he should – as a utilitarian – choose the former.

The Responses

The reason we require all these variations will be revealed later, but, for now, we can agree on the fact that the latter three situations go against our moral intuitions, while the first is fine. There are several responses that attempt to conform utilitarianism into accepting the first situation but rejecting the latter three.

The first is a response to The Robin Hood. It states that if murder causes significantly more – in fact, at least five times more – pain to the world than death, killing the single patient is not worth preventing the death of the other five patients. That is, a world with five deaths is better (has more total pleasure) than a world with one murder. Now, I suspect that the idea that killing is ‘worst’ than death is not rooted in any utilitarian ideals but in intuitive Kantian ones, but that’s beyond the scope of this paper. For now, I shall rebut this response with The Vigilante scenario.

So even if we accept that a world with murder is worse than a world with death, The Vigilante still poses a dilemma. In here, we are stuck with choosing a world with one murder and a world with five murders. In situations like this, some consequentialists introduce the idea of agent-relativity (Sen 1982, Broome 1991, Portmore 2001). Agent-relativity goes against one of the claims of classical utilitarianism (agent-neutrality) and states that the value of pleasure and pain that exists in the consequential world is determined by the agent who acts and not by an outside observer. That is, one should act in ways that maximize the pleasure and minimize the pain of the world from their perspective. Notice that this is not egoistic utilitarianism as we are still maximizing pleasure for the world and not the agent – just that we are doing it from the agent’s perspective. Applied to The Vigilante, the utilitarian doctor can refuse to murder the single patient to prevent the other five murders from happening on grounds that a world with five murders is better than a world where he is a murderer. Again, I suspect that these assertions by the doctor are linked to his intuitive Kantian ideals that murder has a natural disvalue, but let us ignore this. Agent-relativity seemingly allows utilitarianism to align with our moral intuitions even in a situation such as The Vigilante. This brings us to the last of our trinity of tricky situations: The Redeemer.

In The Redeemer, the doctor is already a murderer so, unless it is significantly different to be a murderer of five people and a murderer of one person with five other attempts on your belt, it seems hard to consolidate our moral intuitions with utilitarianism – it seems that the killer doctor must perform the transplant. The response to this scenario is rule consequentialism, which judges the moral value an act by the consequences to the world if everyone acted in the same way. So, applied to The Redeemer, the killer doctor should not perform the transplant, simply because if all doctors performed transplants from an unwilling healthy patient to multiple sick patients, there would be disastrous consequences. One consequence is that mildly sick people would not go to doctors, in fear of being harvested. Although it seems that rule consequentialism can help us consolidate utilitarianism with our moral intuitions, it introduces some obvious counterintuitive notions as well. For example, according to rule consequentialism, lying – in any capacity – would be disallowed because a world where everyone lies would result in a poor world. However, we all know that disastrous consequences can be avoided merely by lying (e.g. Giving a fake address to a raging madman rather than the address of the people he/she wants to hurt). It seems that rule consequentialism gives us directions that are closer those of Kantian deontology[8] than of classical utilitarianism.

Commentary

I think that we can agree, at least superficially, that the attempts to unite utilitarianism with our moral intuitions are quite weak. I suspect that the problem is not utilitarianism but rather our moral intuitions. To investigate this suspicion I want to briefly discuss why we find the latter three scenarios intuitively immoral – why we have these intuitions.

The element that echoes in all the intuitively atrocious situations is that someone is actively killed. That is, their life is ended by an active agent without their consent.  It seems that the number of lives saved[9] as a consequence of the murder is irrelevant to our rejection of it. I speculate that our moral intuition is offended due to our sense of autonomy and the rights that are packaged with it. Why we are predisposed to this Kantian idea of ‘rights’ is beyond the scope of this essay, the important thing is that it is the source of our discomfort with murder. It seems that we lack the same reserve when sacrificing things that do not have autonomy. For example, we would not think twice about amputating a body part in order to save the life of a person. I speculate that it is the idea that everyone is a ‘self’ and that each ‘self’ is entitled to ‘rights’ that differentiates the relationship that the body part has to the body and the relationship that each individual person has to the rest of humanity. Furthermore, whether or not the ‘donor’ chooses to be ‘killed’ is important in our intuitive sense of moral action. Interestingly enough, the willful sacrificing of one’s life for the lives of others is not only intuitively seen to be one of the greatest things one can do, but also historically. Embedded in our Western culture are idols, heroes, saints, and even gods, who have given up their lives (not in suicide but in allowing themselves to be killed) to save the lives of many. So it seems that it is not the violation of autonomous life that offends our moral intuitions, but rather the violation of free will and the person’s ‘right’ to his existence. To support this conclusion further, we need to look no further than the application of the death penalty. In law[10], the death penalty is justified because those criminals on death row have given up – by the severity of their crimes – their right to choose whether or not they should exist.  Alas, it is morally permissible to end the autonomous lives of these inmates simply because we are not violating the rights they have given up.

Conclusion

So, through summarizing the nature of classical utilitarianism, witnessing the weakness in attempts to consolidate utilitarianism with our moral intuitions, and briefly analyzing the roots of these moral intuitions, it seems that the necessity to consolidate in the first place is silly.  That is, since utilitarianism – by nature – is a consequentialist theory and thus in direct contrast with deontological beliefs, and our moral intuitions seem to be rooted in the deontological beliefs of autonomy and individual ‘rights’, it is fruitless to attempt a unity between the two opposing forces. Full acceptance of utilitarianism as a way to direct our moral actions requires us to drop our deontological inclinations. If we want to live in a way that compromises both theories, I speculate we would have to create a new framework, a hybrid of the two, rather than trying to forcefully bend utilitarianism to fit our deontological molds.

Bibliography

Bennett, J. 1989. ‘Two Departures from Consequentialism’, Ethics, 100: 54-66.

Bentham, J., (1789), An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation.

Broome, J. 1991. Weighing Goods. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Moore, G. E. 1912. Ethics. New York: Oxford University Press.

Portmore, Douglas W. 2001. ‘Can an Act-Consequentialist Theory be Agent-Relative?’ American Philosophical Quarterly, 38: 363-77.

[2] A large part of this paragraph is from my previous essay for this class.

[3] From the utilitarian standpoint

[4] A philosophy where many situational complexities are lumped together, processed simply – and often mathematically – and then resolved in a finite conclusion. Often, catch-all philosophies oversimplify the issues.

[5] A list from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy – Under ‘ consequentialism’.

[6] Unfortunately, the backup power generator was in repair that week.

[7] Assume a transplant will recover these patients to full health.

[8] We shouldn’t lie because we have a duty to tell the truth, regardless of the consequences.

[9] At least five lives in exchange for one.

[10] In countries/states where the death penalty is legal