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Utilitarianism, Rights and Equality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 January 2009

David J. Crossley
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Extract

Bentham's dictum, ‘everybody to count for one, nobody for more than one’, is frequently noted but seldom discussed by commentators. Perhaps it is not thought contentious or exciting because interpreted as merely reminding the utilitarian legislator to make certain that each person's interests are included, that no one is missed, in working the felicific calculus. Since no interests are secure against the maximizing directive of the utility principle, which allows them to be overridden or sacrificed, the dictum is not usually taken to be asserting fundamental rights that afford individuals normative protection against the actions of others or against legislative policies deemed socially expedient. Such non-conventional moral rights seem denied a place in a utilitarian theory so long as the maximization of aggregate happiness remains the ultimate standard and moral goal.

Type
Research Article
Information
Utilitas , Volume 2 , Issue 1 , May 1990 , pp. 40 - 54
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

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References

1 Griffin, James, ‘Some Problems of Fairness’, Ethics, xcvi (1985), 103.Google Scholar Perhaps the best discussion of the role of equality in Bentham's thought occurs in chapters X and XI of Rosen's, Frederick Jeremy Bentham and Representative Democracy, Oxford, 1983.Google Scholar An interesting treatment of Mill's views on equality occurs in Berger's, Fred Happiness, Justice and Freedom, Berkeley, 1984, pp. 157–66.Google Scholar

2 Mill, John Stuart, Utilitarianism, ed. Robson, John M., Toronto, 1969 (Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, vol. x), x. 257–58.Google Scholar

3 In response to Griffin's paper, Kurt Baier argues the point that there can be no real conception of or concern for equal regard at the heart of utilitarianism, if only because it would clash with the utilitarians' central commitment to maximizing utility. See Baier, Kurt, ‘Maximization and Fairness’, Ethics, xcvi (1985), 120.Google Scholar

4 Mill, , Utilitarianism, CW, x. 258.Google Scholar

5 Spencer, H., Social Statics, New York, 1915, p. 18.Google Scholar In a later chapter Spencer claims that upon examination the principle of utility turns into ‘the astonishing assertion, that all men have equal rights to happiness’ (Spencer, , p. 54Google Scholar). This passage adds nothing to Spencer's earlier argument. Moreover, it introduces some confusions resulting from Spencer's careless move from talk of rights to talk of right and wrong.

6 Although this is only hinted at in the later passage of Social Statics, p. 54Google Scholar, Spencer may have been partly motivated to introduce the notion of a right because it affords another stick with which to beat Bentham. Given the latter's proclamations that rights that are not political are fictions Spencer might have felt he had revealed a further valid ad hominem against him.

7 Sidgwick, H., The Methods of Ethics, 7th edition, Indianapolis, 1981, p. 417.Google Scholar Griffin extends this position, arguing that the utilitarian will have available, ‘when maximization does not rank options, a principle of equal well-being; and finally, when equalization does not rank options, a principle of equal chances at well-being’ (Griffin, , 104).Google Scholar

8 Sidgwick, , p. 417.Google Scholar

9 Mill, , Utilitarianism, CW, x. 257n.Google Scholar

10 In passing, it is worth noting that Spencer's text sometimes leaves it uncertain whether he thinks that the decisive factor in choosing one policy over another is the amount of aggregate happiness expected or the fact that the interests of more individuals will be promoted. He might have felt that while phrases such as, ‘that principle which states the greatest happiness of all those whose interest is in question’, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, ed. Burns, J. H. and Hart, H. L. A., London, 1970 (The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham), p. 11Google Scholar, n.a., and ‘the happiness of the party whose interest is in question’ (IPML (CW), p. 12Google Scholar) may be somewhat ambiguous, reference to ‘the consideration of the number of the interests affected’ (IPML (CW), p. 11, n.aGoogle Scholar) shows individuals to be the primary objects of concern, the issue simply being whether the interests those individuals have are or are not promoted.

Bentham took interests to be simply and solely explicable in terms of concerns about augmenting or diminishing happiness. ‘A thing is said to promote an interest, or to be for the interest, of an individual, when it tends to add to the sum of his pleasures; or … to diminish the sum of his pains’ (IPML (CW), p. 12Google Scholar). Following this, Bentham says: ‘An action then may be said to be conformable to the principle of utility … when the tendency it has to augment the happiness of the community is greater than any it has to diminish it’ (IPML (CW), pp. 12–13Google Scholar). Taking these with the remark that the interest of the community is ‘the sum of the interests of the several members who compose it’ (IPML (CW), p. 12Google Scholar) opens up the possibility of the interpretation I am suggesting Spencer might have had in mind. If Spencer did take this position on the utilitarians' view of individuals and their interests it would help explain why he is so quick to introduce the language of individual rights to describe the purported assumption behind their theory.

11 It might be objected that rather than casting about in the texts of other authors for interpretations, it would be more natural and more useful to turn to Bentham's texts to determine what commitment he thought the dictum was marking. Unfortunately, although he sometimes says things that are close Bentham never presents the maxim in the exact words ‘quoted’ by Mill, so far as I have been able to discover. The editors of the Collected Works of John Stuart Mill refer the reader to Bentham's Plan of Parliamentary Reform (Utilitarianism, CW, x. 267Google Scholar). See also Hart's, H. L. A. ‘Introduction’, for An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, ed. Burns, J. H. and Hart, H. L. A., London, 1982, p. xlvii.Google Scholar

In both instances the reference is to Bowring, , iii. 459.Google Scholar The most clearly relevant quotation on the page cited is: ‘The happiness and unhappiness of any one member of the community—high or low, rich or poor—what greater or less part is it of the universal happiness and unhappiness, than that of any other?’ In that same work Bentham also remarks that if there is a reason to grant one person the right to vote, ‘then how can it be otherwise than right, in the instance of any one other such person’ (Bowring, , iii. 452Google Scholar). The former seems merely an assertion of Mill's arithmetic principle, although it is possible that Bentham thought it expresses moral concern for each individual; the latter looks to be a formal consideration, much like one of Sidgwick's self-evident axioms of practical reason — (specifically, the axioms of justice discussed in the Methods on pages 379–80Google Scholar). Moreover, were Bentham to understand the dictum in the way Sidgwick does one of his self-evident axioms, as the demand to treat each person similarly so long as ‘there be no reason apparent for treating him differently’ (Sidgwick, , p. 417Google Scholar), he would seem always to have a ceteris paribus escape clause available since utility maximization is always an acceptable justification, a sufficient reason, for unequal treatment. On this interpretation, Bentham's dictum cannot consistently introduce rights that constitute constraints on the maximizing principle.

A somewhat more promising statement occurs in the Codification Proposal when Bentham asks, ‘on what ground … can any one man's happiness be shown to have any stronger or less strong claim to regard than others?’ (Bowring, , iv. 540Google Scholar). Perhaps Spencer thought that his arguments about ‘equal claims to happiness’ were noting something like this; that is, establishing the case not for equal treatment but for treatment as an equal or equal regard. But it is not obvious that this text cannot be read as merely noting a formal impartiality constraint on practical reasoning. Besides, it seems little progress to ‘explain’ the dictum by phrases such as ‘equal regard’ or ‘treatment as an equal’, which are as opaque as the language of the dictum itself.

12 In passing, it must be admitted that the theory tended to narrow the focus of concern to sentient beings who are rational. While this is partly explained by concerns about the conditions of responsibility, it was also partly due to their casuistic view of moral theory. That moral theory is to establish rules of conduct necessarily restricts the sphere of morality to creatures capable of intentional mental states, and specifically to those exhibiting self-awareness, a sense of temporal continuity and identity and the ability to grasp the logic of moral imperatives.

13 Sumner, L. W., The Moral Foundation of Rights, Oxford, 1987, chapter 2.Google Scholar

14 It is perhaps dangerous to use the term ‘permitted’ since it suggests placing the acts of utilitarian agents in the deontic category of the allowable (the deontically possible) as opposed to either of the other deontic categories, the prescribed and the proscribed. We may feel that an action is permitted just in case I may do it, in the sense that it is not proscribed, and if I may choose not to do it, that is, it is not required. In terms of these distinctions the utilitarian maximization rule clearly does not permit but rather prescribes actions of a certain sort. In the text, however, ‘licence’ and ‘permit’ are used to reflect the fact that the requirement to do an action entails the freedom to do that action. This is meant to remark not that the requirement to do an action demands freedom from compulsion, although this may be true, but that if I am required to do an action it follows that the act is not forbidden, even if the logic of the deontic concept of being required plus the rule of inference, double negation, entail that I am not to omit doing the act.

15 Whether there are some who are incapable of increased happiness is an interesting question. Arguments from marginal utility produce cases of decreasing felicific increments but likely few feel that their happiness could not be augmented in some way.

16 Perhaps the most famous is the footnote about animal suffering in chapter XVII of IPML (CW), pp. 282–83, n.b.Google Scholar