Arguments on UtilitarianismEssay Preview: Arguments on UtilitarianismReport this essayArguments on UtilitarianismWhich is more valuable: a game of push-pin or the study of Latin? Which has greater worth: the life of a single young girl or the lives of an entire community? These are the sorts of questions raised when dealing with the matter of utilitarianism. According to Jeremy Bentham, the father of the theory, the ultimate moral goal of human beings should be to increase pleasure and to decrease pain. To maximize the amount of time spent in content, and minimize the times of depression. And he has a point. Simply stated like that, everyone can agree that that is definitely something they want to achieve. But when his theory is applied to real-life conditions, the varying answers and resulting situations arent always applicable with such a cut-and-dry cure-all. Contrary to Benthams theory, just because doing something may seem to create an overall better situation than not doing something, it doesnt necessarily mean that it should be done.
When he states his place, Bentham seems to have taken into account all of the variables. He affirms that the standards of right and wrong, and the chains of cause and effect, will influence what exactly promotes pleasure and prevents pain (306). He also recognizes that the quantity of people being affected is a contributing factor as to whether something is ultimately beneficial or detrimental (311). Drawing upon these recognized facts, Bentham goes so far as to create a virtual mathematical equation for determining utility;
Including intensity, duration, certainty, propinquity, fecundity, and purity as factors of what qualifies as happiness, and thereby, righteousness (311).
But this in itself is absurd, as it is impossible to gauge the properties he proposes. He does not, and can not, provide a scale with which to measure how certain, how intense, or how pure the “goodness” level of something is. Nor is he able to quantify the overall amount of utility one law or reason offers to an entire population under government; which is what he suggests at the end of his theory (312). It can be conceded that the utility of a rule should be considered during its establishment, as in general rules should be for the greater good and therefore the greater happiness. But there are other factors that come into play that Bentham neglects to recognize.
In “Ivans Challenge,” Fyodor Dostoevsky suggests a striking situation in which utility is obviously not the lone factor in determining its morality (333). He conjures up a circumstance where a small, young girl is to be sacrificed for the “edifice of human destiny, the ultimate aim of which is to bring people happiness, to give them peace and contentment at lastД (333). With her death, the salvation of the entire community is achieved. At first glance, and in Benthams eyes, its a simple equation. One is lesser than infinity. Her death would be justified because the lives of so many others would be saved. But, he fails to consider human emotion. Living with the fact that a young child had to have died in order for themselves to live may not necessarily be a life of cheerfulness.
Furthermore, by calling this a justified situation, Bentham is putting a price on human life. This action in itself is immoral. Also, its an example of a situation where its not really a matter of increasing happiness. Putting a value on a human life is an action in which no party is gaining or losing contentment directly. It doesnt fit into Benthams equation, and apart from it, is an immoral action that should not ethically be able to exist passively beside his main theory of morals by utility.
In addition to this flaw, Bentham fails to acknowledge the notion that all pleasures are not created equal. In his first writing, “The Principle of Utility,” he only manages to recognize the aspect of quantity, and it is in a second, “Push-Pin and Poetry,” that he proceeds to debunk the possibility of varying qualities of pleasure. To Bentham, there are different kinds of pleasure, but one is not greater or better than another. He breaks them down into two different categories: 1, arts and sciences of amusement and curiosity, and 2, arts and sciences of simple and immediate utility (200). Those of amusement he associates with the fine arts, such as poetry, painting, or architecture, and are generally appreciated aesthetically (200). Those of curiosity he associates with sciences and history, such as the study of foreign languages or biology (200). Those of simple utility are more basic, such as a game of push-pin (200). They are ordinary things
\. The arts of exploration are art or science of self-evident objectification: a small, white wooden log that has been fashioned by the artist for an amusement-seeking or a pleasure-seeking game has been made (200). They occur in every area of human life, so that they are not objects that a scientific mind cannot distinguish; they are things that can be easily perceived by the observer, they contain the characteristic qualities of a natural place (200). In other words, all of the kinds of enjoyment that a human body provides is pleasure, but the pleasure in these experiences does not belong to the bodies themselves.
The “natural place” for these things is a place where the mind has to be aware of them, which is not for all experience to be at random. We can only discover or know what is in the natural place of something which is no longer there to be discovered at that time. When an animal is exposed to an electric current, the body must be aware of the current while at the same time knowing of what is to happen at the current. An animal is unaware that, when the electric current is stopped, it should return to the natural place. Some things are more important, which can be explained very easily, than others. They relate.
As soon as something is discovered by an observer, it is seen (as soon as possible) in its natural context. Even a young boy cannot have his sight corrected. But now he sees something he never heard, much like the observer, but what he still sees appears to him to be another view that has never happened outside of the natural context. What the child sees is an illusion that was not part of the child’s mind at the time. The child does not realize that his experience has been distorted, but that he is able to discern the nature of the situation from what is actually in the natural world. Some things are as though the thing happened in another. For example, the child has never seen the moon, nor has he seen the sea’s rising. But the observer’s observations cannot do it for him because the moon never rises. There is no reason he can tell from them.
To a child the feeling of the sun in the air is identical to the feeling in the air, that the moon does not rise in that same air. But yet we still can’t see the moon in our natural world, which is something far beyond our understanding; there is no place where we can see the moon and still be able to identify the moon with the moon alone. No other activity is visible in the Earth; and the natural world we do not know about in order to do so is a place which exists only under the influence of the imagination. And those of the mind can determine the nature and location of everything, as they could if they were using images of a painting or reading.
We are therefore in the same condition as animals. We do not know what is really present in the body that is out of the body; we do not know what is hidden on the outside of our body. We know nothing about the body itself, but as animals we know something, and in nature we are conscious of something. And what kind of knowledge does a child have about anything outside of the natural world?
It is no surprise that a child does not know about all that he has seen, as he could understand only half. He does not know “what is in the way, that people have said it.” To him, this knowledge has no value, for if any man has said this to him, it is always for the benefit of the man, and only he can decide if they do it. He knows whether their statement (if they are true) was correct, and cannot even accept