Question 1

What is the best objection to the utilitarian theory?

Accepted Answer

One of the best objections to utilitarian theory, which is a moral philosophy that suggests that the best action is the one that maximizes utility, typically defined as that which produces the greatest well-being of the greatest number of people, is the "justice objection."

The justice objection argues that utilitarianism, in its pursuit of the greatest happiness for the greatest number, can lead to situations where individual rights are violated or justice is compromised. This is because utilitarianism focuses solely on the end result (the greatest overall happiness) without necessarily taking into account the means by which this happiness is achieved.

For example, imagine a scenario where punishing an innocent person would lead to a greater overall happiness for the rest of society (perhaps by preventing riots or calming public fear). According to strict utilitarian principles, this could be seen as the correct course of action because it maximizes overall utility. However, most people would argue that this is unjust because it violates the innocent person's rights and is fundamentally unfair.

This objection is powerful because it highlights a potential conflict between utilitarianism and our intuitive sense of justice. It suggests that there are moral constraints and rights that should not be violated, even if doing so would increase overall happiness. This challenges the utilitarian premise that the ends always justify the means and that moral worth is solely determined by the consequences of an action.

Other objections to utilitarianism include:

1. The difficulty of predicting consequences: It can be nearly impossible to accurately predict all the consequences of an action, which makes it difficult to determine which action will truly maximize happiness.

2. The problem of interpersonal comparisons: Utilitarianism requires comparing the happiness of different people, but it is difficult to measure and compare the subjective experiences of happiness between individuals.

3. The demandingness objection: Utilitarianism can be extremely demanding, potentially requiring individuals to always act in the interest of the greater good, even at great personal cost.

4. The special obligations objection: Utilitarianism may not adequately account for special obligations we feel towards friends, family, or certain groups, as it treats the happiness of all individuals as equally important.

Each of these objections presents a significant challenge to utilitarian theory and has led to the development of various responses and modifications by utilitarians, as well as alternative ethical theories that attempt to address these concerns.

Question 2

How would a utilitarian think about climate change?

Accepted Answer

A utilitarian approach to climate change would involve assessing the actions and policies related to climate change in terms of the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Utilitarianism, as a moral philosophy, suggests that the best action is the one that maximizes overall happiness and reduces suffering.

From a utilitarian perspective, climate change is a significant ethical concern because it has the potential to cause widespread harm to people around the world, particularly to future generations and the most vulnerable populations who are often the least responsible for the emissions that drive climate change. The negative effects of climate change, such as extreme weather events, rising sea levels, and disruptions to agriculture, threaten the well-being and livelihoods of millions of people.

A utilitarian would likely argue for proactive measures to mitigate climate change, as the long-term benefits of such actions (e.g., reduced harm, preserved ecosystems, and a stable climate) would outweigh the short-term costs (e.g., economic investments in renewable energy, changes in consumption patterns). They would support policies that reduce greenhouse gas emissions and promote sustainable development, as these would lead to a greater overall good by preventing the worst consequences of climate change.

Moreover, a utilitarian might also consider the distribution of benefits and harms. Since climate change disproportionately affects the poor and future generations, a utilitarian would advocate for climate justice, ensuring that policies not only address the aggregate good but also protect those who are most at risk.

In summary, a utilitarian would view climate change as a pressing moral issue that requires immediate and effective action to prevent widespread suffering and to promote the greatest overall good for humanity and the planet.

Question 3

How would a utilitarian think about overpopulation?

Accepted Answer

A utilitarian approach to overpopulation would involve assessing the situation based on the principle of the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. Utilitarianism, as a moral philosophy, suggests that the best action is the one that maximizes overall happiness and reduces suffering.

From a utilitarian perspective, overpopulation could be seen as a significant issue if it leads to negative consequences that affect the well-being of the majority. These consequences might include resource depletion, environmental degradation, increased poverty, hunger, and a decline in living standards due to the strain on social services and infrastructure.

A utilitarian thinker would likely consider the following factors when thinking about overpopulation:

1. **Resource Allocation**: Overpopulation can lead to the overuse of natural resources, making them scarce. A utilitarian would consider how to distribute resources efficiently to maximize happiness and minimize suffering.

2. **Quality of Life**: If overpopulation results in a lower quality of life for most people, a utilitarian would seek solutions to improve living conditions, such as family planning education, access to contraception, and policies that encourage sustainable development.

3. **Environmental Impact**: The environmental degradation caused by overpopulation can lead to long-term unhappiness for future generations. A utilitarian would weigh the current benefits of population growth against the potential future costs to the environment and the well-being of those future generations.

4. **Economic Consequences**: Overpopulation can lead to economic strain, unemployment, and increased poverty rates. A utilitarian would consider how to create economic policies that provide the greatest good for the greatest number, possibly by encouraging economic systems that can sustain larger populations or by finding ways to curb population growth.

5. **Social Stability**: High population density can lead to social unrest and conflict. A utilitarian would be concerned with maintaining social stability to prevent suffering caused by conflict.

6. **Ethical Considerations**: While utilitarianism focuses on outcomes, a utilitarian thinker would also have to consider the ethical implications of any measures taken to control population growth. They would need to ensure that any policies respect individual rights and freedoms.

In summary, a utilitarian would likely advocate for policies and actions that address the challenges of overpopulation in a way that maximizes happiness and minimizes suffering for the largest number of people. This could involve a combination of education, economic planning, environmental conservation, and ethical considerations to ensure that the measures taken are both effective and respectful of individual rights.

Question 4

What is the best objection to ethical egoism?

Accepted Answer

The answer of What is the best objection to ethical...

Question 5

Is happiness valuable for its own sake?

Accepted Answer

The answer of Is happiness valuable for its own sake?...

Question 6

All the following are true of utilitarianism except
A) the act that brings the most happiness is sometimes morally wrong.
B) it recognizes the right act as that which maximizes well-being.
C) everyone's well-being matters equally.
D) utilitarianism sometimes conflicts with conventional morality.

Accepted Answer

Utilitarianism is a moral theory that suggests an action is right if it leads to the most happiness for the greatest number of people. It does not consider an act that brings the most happiness as morally wrong, which contradicts the fundamental principle of utilitarianism. Choices B, C, and D accurately reflect aspects of utilitarianism: it aims to maximize well-being (B), considers everyone's well-being equally (C), and acknowledges that its conclusions can sometimes conflict with conventional morality (D).

Question 7

Why might a utilitarian think that expected consequences are what matter to utilitarian evaluation instead of actual?
A) If we could go back in time to change things, we would change acts based on their actual consequences because what happens is all we care about.
B) Our inability to know all the actual consequences of an act would make knowing right from wrong impossible.
C) The purpose of utilitarianism is to evaluate acts by consequences, not serve as a decision-making procedure.
D) The only purpose of utilitarian theory is to specify the conditions under which an act is right or wrong.

Accepted Answer

Utilitarianism focuses on the outcomes of actions to determine their moral worth. Since it's impossible to know all actual consequences of an act beforehand, utilitarians rely on expected consequences as a practical measure to guide decision-making. This approach acknowledges human limitations in predicting outcomes, making moral evaluation feasible.

Question 8

Act utilitarians believe that the right-making features of an act
A) are the consequences of that particular act, not the hypothetical effects of some set of rules.
B) include the consequences of the act for everyone affected by it from the time it is performed until the end of time.
C) depends on how well the consequences of that act rank when compared to the consequences of all alternative acts available to the agent.
D) All of the above

Accepted Answer

Act utilitarianism evaluates the morality of an action based on the consequences of that specific act, considering the effects on everyone affected and comparing those consequences to all other possible actions.

Question 9

Which best describes Bentham's utilitarianism?
A) We should only promote pleasures we would want others to promote for ourselves.
B) Utility should always be universalizable.
C) Utility is a function of certainty, duration, remoteness, and intensity of pleasure.
D) There are higher and lower pleasures and we should prefer to maximize the higher pleasures.

Accepted Answer

Bentham's utilitarianism is characterized by the principle that the best action is the one that maximizes utility, defined in terms of the happiness or pleasure generated. He quantified this utility in terms of factors like certainty, duration, remoteness, and intensity of pleasure, which is what option C describes.

Question 10

Which of the following best fits with the claim that the rightness of an act requires summing its consequences across more than one domain of value?
A) Egalitarianism
B) Prioritarianism
C) Multidimensionalism
D) Hedonism

Accepted Answer

Multidimensionalism best fits with the claim that the rightness of an act requires summing its consequences across more than one domain of value, as it explicitly acknowledges multiple dimensions (or domains) of value in its ethical considerations.

Question 11

All of the following express the position of some type of consequentialism except the consequences that make an act right
A) must benefit everyone equally.
B) are the consequences for the agent.
C) depend upon different variables.
D) must pass the universalizability test of conception.

Accepted Answer

The correct answer is D because the universalizability test of conception is a principle associated with deontological ethics, particularly Kantian ethics, rather than consequentialism. Consequentialism focuses on the outcomes or consequences of actions to determine their moral worth, not on whether they can be universally applied, which is what the universalizability test is about.

Question 12

Suppose a healthy patient requiring minor surgery is at the hospital, and the surgeon realizes this patient is a donor match for five patients dying of organ failure and decides to let the scalpel slip and kill the patient to maximize utility by harvesting his organs. How might John Rawls object?
A) If the practice of killing healthy patients to harvest organs were followed as a general rule, it would reduce utility as healthy patients would avoid the hospital, causing their conditions to worsen.
B) If the killing could be done such that no one but the surgeon knew, then the killing would maximize utility and be morally necessary. The problem is that this contradicts conventional morality.
C) The requirement to kill this patient to make others well alienates the doctor from his larger practical project of healing people.
D) The calculation of consequences treats the individual patients as mere containers for valuable experiences and fails to factor in that the loss of one person cannot be replaced by saving another.

Accepted Answer

The answer of Suppose a healthy patient requiring minor surgery...

Question 13

Some objections to utilitarianism include that it (a) would sanction murder in certain cases, (b) fails to adequately respect the value of persons, and (c) makes many of our everyday pursuits and activities immoral because they fail to optimize consequences. Which of the following best summarizes the common criticism to all three objections?
A) Utilitarians moral judgments often conflict with the pretheoretical moral judgments we make in everyday life. As a theory, utilitarianism cannot explain them and the degree to which we think our pretheoretical moral judgments are true disconfirms utilitarianism.
B) Utilitarianism cannot account for the feeling of moral shame or regret that one might feel when performing the act that maximizes utility.
C) Utilitarianism demands too much of people's cognitive abilities to anticipate consequences.
D) Agents are more likely to reverse-engineer anticipated consequences to satisfy utilitarian requirements for a course of action they already favor than to actually investigate what consequences they should expect.

Accepted Answer

The common criticism to all three objections is that utilitarianism's moral judgments often conflict with our everyday moral intuitions or pretheoretical judgments, suggesting that the theory may not adequately capture our moral experiences or the complexity of moral decision-making.

Question 14

Which of the following best describes ethical egoism?
A) The ego emerges from the initial internalization of other people's moral judgments as a small child.
B) People are going to always act in their own self-interest.
C) The moral act is the one that maximizes consequences for oneself.
D) The most important aspect of the ethical life is taming the ego and self-interest.

Accepted Answer

Ethical egoism is the normative ethical theory that the promotion of one's own good is in accordance with morality. In simpler terms, it posits that actions are morally right if they maximize one's self-interest.

Question 15

Consider the following prisoner's dilemma: If Alice and Bob cooperate with one another by not confessing to police and informing on the other, they will each serve three years. If both choose not to cooperate with one another but to confess to the police and inform on each other, they will each serve eight years. And if one decides to cooperate with the other prisoner by not confessing and informing, but the other prisoner confesses and informs, the prisoner who confesses gets only one year and the other twenty-five. Egoistic reasoning by both Alice and Bob leads to what?
A) Bob serves one year in prison, and Alice serves twenty-five.
B) Bob and Alice each serve three years in prison.
C) Bob serves twenty-five years in prison, and Alice serves one.
D) Bob and Alice each serve eight years in prison.

Accepted Answer

Egoistic reasoning leads both Alice and Bob to confess and inform on each other to minimize their own potential prison time, resulting in both serving eight years in prison.

Question 16

John Stuart Mill proposed the following argument for utilitarianism: "No reason can be given why the general happiness is desirable, except that each person, so far as he believes it to be attainable, desires his own happiness." How might one criticize it?
A) This argument is problematic because Mill seeks to derive an "ought" from an "is."
B) This argument is problematic because Mill was a well-known supporter of duty ethics.
C) This argument is problematic because the conclusion is a factual statement, not a moral one.
D) This argument is problematic because Mill confused happiness with Aristotle's notion of Eudaimonia.

Accepted Answer

Mill's argument is criticized for attempting to derive an ethical principle (what we ought to do) from a descriptive fact (what is the case), which is a version of the is-ought problem identified by David Hume.

Question 17

Imagine that five patients will die unless they receive new organs from a healthy stranger. From a utilitarian point of view, it thus seems right to kill one innocent patient to save five.
A) Utilitarians can respond that all things considered the overall consequences of killing healthy patients would be negative, because patients would no longer trust their doctors.
B) Utilitarians can respond that all things considered the overall consequences of killing healthy patients are hard to predict, which means that we have a compelling reason for not killing healthy patients.
C) Utilitarians respond that all things considered the overall consequences of killing healthy patients can be expected to be negative under some circumstances, which means that we have a compelling reason for not killing healthy patients.
D) All of the above

Accepted Answer

Utilitarianism focuses on the overall consequences of actions. All provided responses (A, B, C) highlight different aspects of how utilitarians might argue against killing a healthy patient to save five others, emphasizing negative outcomes, unpredictability, and context-specific consequences, all of which align with utilitarian principles of maximizing overall happiness or well-being.

Question 18

A common objection to ethical egoism is that the theory is self-defeating.
A) The essence of this objection is that if all of us do what is best for ourselves, then this would entail a version of utilitarianism, so ethical egoism defeats itself.
B) The essence of this objection is that if all of us do what is best for ourselves, then everyone will end up in a situation that is worse from an egoistic point of view.
C) No, ethical egoism is not self-defeating, but the utilitarian theory is.
D) No, ethical egoism is not self-defeating, but Kant's duty ethics is.

Accepted Answer

The objection posits that if everyone acts purely in their own self-interest, the collective outcome would be less favorable for each individual than if some degree of altruism or consideration for others were involved. This scenario suggests a paradox where acting solely for one's own benefit could lead to worse outcomes for oneself, thus challenging the practicality and coherence of ethical egoism.

Question 19

According to John Stuart Mill, "It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied." If true, this is a problem for
A) mainstream utilitarians because their theory entails that it would be better to be a satisfied pig.
B) virtue ethicists because their theory entails that it would be better to be a satisfied pig.
C) duty ethicists because their theory entails that it would be better to be a satisfied pig.
D) None of the above

Accepted Answer

Mainstream utilitarianism focuses on maximizing happiness or satisfaction, regardless of the source of that satisfaction. Mill's statement challenges this by suggesting that the quality of pleasures matters, not just the quantity, which is a critique of a simplistic utilitarian approach that might prioritize a satisfied state over the nature of the satisfaction.

Question 20

Utilitarianism is
A) a general ethical theory that is applicable to all decisions made by engineers as well as others.
B) the view that an act is right just in case it bring about the greatest sum total of pleasure or well-being for everyone affected by the act.
C) incompatible with the political slogan "America first!" when interpreted in the intended way.
D) All of the above

Accepted Answer

The answer of Utilitarianism is
A) a general ethical theory that...

Quiz 5: Utilitarianism and Ethical Egoism

What is the best objection to the utilitarian theory?

How would a utilitarian think about climate change?

How would a utilitarian think about overpopulation?

What is the best objection to ethical egoism?

Is happiness valuable for its own sake?

All the following are true of utilitarianism except

Why might a utilitarian think that expected consequences are what matter to utilitarian evaluation instead of actual?

Act utilitarians believe that the right-making features of an act

Which best describes Bentham's utilitarianism?

Which of the following best fits with the claim that the rightness of an act requires summing its consequences across more than one domain of value?

All of the following express the position of some type of consequentialism except the consequences that make an act right

Suppose a healthy patient requiring minor surgery is at the hospital, and the surgeon realizes this patient is a donor match for five patients dying of organ failure and decides to let the scalpel slip and kill the patient to maximize utility by harvesting his organs. How might John Rawls object?

Which of the following best describes ethical egoism?

John Stuart Mill proposed the following argument for utilitarianism: "No reason can be given why the general happiness is desirable, except that each person, so far as he believes it to be attainable, desires his own happiness." How might one criticize it?

Imagine that five patients will die unless they receive new organs from a healthy stranger. From a utilitarian point of view, it thus seems right to kill one innocent patient to save five.

A common objection to ethical egoism is that the theory is self-defeating.

According to John Stuart Mill, "It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied." If true, this is a problem for

Utilitarianism is