MIT OpenCourseWare http ocw mit edu 24 06J STS 006J Bioethics Spring 2009 For information about citing these materials or our Terms of Use visit http ocw mit edu terms 24 06 Utilitarianism 2 Handout We are talking about hedonic utilitarianism a moral theory built on two claims Value The intrinsic value of a world history is determined by the amount of pleasure and suffering that it contains pleasure adds to its value suffering subtracts from its value Rightness An act is wrong when its outcome has less intrinsic value than the outcome of some other act available to the agent and right otherwise Value When we calculate the amount of pleasure pain in a world history we must account for the grade of the pleasure pain the intensity of the pleasure pain the number of people experiencing the pleasure pain the duration of the pleasure pain What weight should we give to each of these factors One thing that you might think is that at the extremes differences in intensity and grade trump differences in numbers Let intensity level n pain be the pain you experience in an electric chair set at n volts You might think that it is worse that one person experience level 100 pain excruciating agony than that any number of people experience level 1 pain the mildest of mild pain comparable to an incipient hangnail Mill appeared to think something like this Here is an argument against this view let S0 be a state of affairs in which 100 people suffers level 100 pain for a day S1 be a state of affairs in which 101 people suffer level 99 pain for a day and S99 be a state of affairs in which 1099 people suffer level 1 pain for a day P1 P2 For any k Sk is better than Sk 1 The better than relation is transitive if a is better than b and b better than c then a is better than c C S0 is better than S99 What weight should we give to pleasure vs suffering There may not be perfect formula Rightness Should we always try to calculate the pleasure and suffering that will result from our doing one thing or another No because sometimes calculating will be counter productive by utilitarian standards Sometimes calculating will make the world worse when we have to make a decision quickly when other people care about how we make our decisions