  Consequentialism
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Consequences
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Loosely, everyone is looking for happiness
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 Loosely because happiness used to be construed more as hedonistic satisfaction, then a more general happiness, and now satisfaction of desire.
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Jeremy Bentham and James Mill
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Bentham primarily concerned with punishment
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Saw punishment in England as producing no good (pointless)
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Rehabilitation model - trying to rehabilitate criminals.
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Retribution model - trying to get retribution for the crimes.
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Judging the worth of our actions based on the consequences of those actions was a radical idea at the time of JB and JM.
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Classical Utilitarianism
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Wants to provide the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people.
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Essentially, an economic model.
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When you want to decide if something is right or wrong, what you do is add up the score. How many "happy points" come from this? How many "unhappy points"? How does its score compare to other actions that are possible? (We do this all the time by making pro/con lists.)
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Problem: How do you measure happiness?
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Three characteristics! (p. 102) (Three Propositions that characterize Classical U.)
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The only things that counts in determining whether an action is right or wrong are the consequences.
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The only consequence that counts is happiness.
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Everyone's happiness must be treated the same. (Impartiality, not equality.)
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Proposed additions (rejected because sub-points of happiness):
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Friendship
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Experience of beauty
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Issues!
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Is happiness all that matters?
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Good isn't all about happiness. When a piano player loses his ability to play, it's a tragedy that can't be improved by cheering the piano player up.
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What if the pianist hates playing the piano? Pianist is happy, but parents are upset, we can't ever hear her music.
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If I ridicule my friend but he never hears it, is it still wrong?
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Justice, rights, backward looking conditions (promises and contracts) - three examples of non-happiness-derived "good" things.
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Is Utilitarianism too demanding?
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Requires us to live at a low level of subsistence and devote the rest of our resources to saving lives, etc.
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While some people do this, it's required by Utilitiarianism, whereas now doing this creates saints.
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Requires us to treat people impersonally
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Can save 2 kids or your own. Who do you save? U says save the 2.
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Defenses
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Criticisms are not real world examples. (True or false?)
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(2 more - coming Monday!)
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Rule Utilitarianism
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Complex Utilitarianism (p. 196 s. 14-3)
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Good to read: John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism and On Liberty.
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Filled out a more complex version of utilitarianism with a gradiated scale of pleasures: the satisfaction from poetry might be worth more than the satisfaction from playing darts.
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On Liberty says that you should be able to do whatever you want as long as you're not hurting anyone else. Individual freedom is a much stronger idea here than community, etc.
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People got upset with On Liberty because it seemed very different than Utilitarianism as a theory - On Liberty seems to espouse selfishness, whereas Utilitarianism seems to suggest the opposite. Not so much true, though - the idea is that we allow people to do whatever they want to maximize happiness. Mill thought it was a very benevolent theory overall, this idea of letting people do as they liked, so long as they didn't hurt with others.
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