okay clouds so in this particular session i'm going to continue our discussion of ethics and we've been looking at a couple of different theories that try to explain the nature of morality they try to clarify what is it that makes an action moral or not and so in this particular section we're going to be looking at a particular theory very popular in our culture today one that is known as utilitarianism so i'm going to be just explaining some of the basic features of this particular theory then in the next video we'll be looking at some problems associated with this theory okay all right so first of all utilitarianism is a type of ethical theory known as consequentialism and what is what is that the term consequentialism is simply a word that basically refers to a number of ethical theories which all of them maintain that whether that what determines whether an action is right or wrong is based on the results or the consequences of that action in other words the idea here is that there is no action that is right or wrong in and of itself but that it is the consequences or the results of the action that determine whether an action is right or wrong so a good example of this is a an older ancient uh ethical theory known as hedonism the opposite of that is called non-consequentialism and these are theories that maintain that the rightness or the wrongness of an action is not based on the constant it's not based on the consequences but it's based on something else usually it's some kind of principle or some other idea that serves as the criterion by which one can determine whether an action is right or wrong so a good example of that would be the divine command theories of morality because they maintain that what makes an action right or wrong is if that action is something that has been commanded by god right so that is the principle that determines whether an action is right or wrong so utilitarianism is one of the most prominent probably the most well-known consequentialist ethical theory that is around today all right so we're going to be looking at the theory briefly the position of utilitarianism basically first of all some of the early philosophers who were instrumental in developing these positions this position were thinkers like jeremy bentim john stewart mill the theory itself was rooted in hedonism hedonism is an older philosophical theory of morality which basically maintains that the the the ultimate thing that is good that is that which has intrinsic value is happiness or pleasure and so pleasure or a state of happiness becomes the ultimate goal that serves as the basis for all of our actions and so you can obviously see how that becomes a consequentialist approach to morality the theory known as utilitarianism roughly arose during the time period of the industrial revolution there was lots of abuses going on in society such as children working and so utilitarianism attempts to provide some kind of some kind of relief to that particular situation okay so you can see there that um this particular theory as i mentioned before was rooted in this ancient philosophical theory known as hedonism and hedonism basically maintains that the only thing which is good is pleasure of course when we think of pleasure today we sometimes people could think of a life of debauchery you know just going crazy getting drunk but that's not what the older hedonists thought of when they thought of a life of pleasure when they thought of a life of pleasure they basically thought of a life that was fundamentally free from distress both physical and mental and so they actually tended to emphasize the traditional virtues such as virtues of honor courage justice and prudence so according to ancient hedonists if a person were to pursue these kinds of virtues that would enable them to achieve uh or to ultimately reach a type of life which is characterized by pleasure all right so utilitarianism is marked by that idea and so the basic i the the basic point so it starts off from hedonism and it really emphasizes the notion of as you see that they're in the title of sort of hedonism aimed at society in general in other words the basic motto is make the world a better place the basic idea of the theory is basically that it maintains that the right action is the one that produces the greatest amount of happiness or welfare for the greatest number of people so you can see here that the goal of the action is a positive state of affairs described as happiness welfare pleasure and so forth what is distinctive about utilitarianism is that it aims to bring that about but that the greatest number of people are included in one's attempts to bring that about okay this by the way this idea of saying that the right action is the action that maintains the that produces the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number of people this basic idea is generally known as the principle of utility or sometimes it's also known as the greatest happiness principle and it is the it's the basic guiding principle of a utilitarian theory of morality okay all right so why is a utilitarian as i mentioned before is a very popular theory today even though some people may not know that that's the theory that they're actually promoting why is it that it's uh attractive we could say let me just share a couple of reasons uh for with you one of those is that it aims at impartiality in other words everyone's interests count equally so for a utilitarian my interests count just as much as your interest right uh so the idea there is that there should be no priority given to my own particular interests vis-a-vis your particular interest all right so that's one reason another reason is that in general utilitarianism justifies what's called conventional moral wisdom in other words why is it that slavery rape killing are wrong well fundamentally because they produce lots of misery they make people suffer in other words they make people very very unhappy and they produce all kinds of pain and suffering and so utilitarianism recognizes that so it justifies conventional moral wisdom another reason is that another attraction of the theory is that it's a theory that aims at conflict resolution it gives you a basic methodology for making difficult moral decisions if you're faced with a very difficult moral decision then you need to ask yourself the question well which course of action will bring about the greatest amount of happiness or welfare for the greatest number of people and then another reason why this theory is attractive to lots of people in our culture is because it provides a measure of moral flexibility that is it explains why uh certain moral prohibitions like lying or stealing that sometimes those things could be broken in other words it doesn't utilitarianism does not emphasize a sort of absolutism that does not allow any kind of flexibility whatsoever so those are some reasons why the theory is basically a very attractive theory so the one of the early founders of the theory by the name of jeremy bentham he proposed right if you were to ask the question well how can i figure out whether a particular action is going to contribute to the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number he proposed something that's called the utilitarian calculus and what in the world is that well this is really just a series of questions that help you to think through um what would be the consequences of the action i'm not going to go through these in detail you can sort of read them on your own but the basic idea that he's he's sort of like uh to kind of explain it in in our in terms that we would understand today he's sort of taking um let's say if you're thinking of doing a particular action bentham is basically what he's doing is he's making a list here with these questions and he's sort of asking questions what are the positives and what are the negatives if i pursue this particular course of action and of course a very important question and this is one of the things that makes it utilitarian is noticed number seven one of the questions that bentham is going to be asking is called how is how many people will be affected by that action okay all right so this is called the utilitarian calculus now later there was another utilitarian philosopher very important philosopher by the name of john stuart mill and he agreed with utilitarianism but he wanted to emphasize he thought that bentham missed something in providing this utilitarian calculus he thought that bentham was really emphasizing more the quantity of pleasure not so much the quality of pleasure and mill believe that not all types of pleasure are created equal in other words there are some types of pleasures that seems to be qualitatively better than others so for instance mill would argue that let's say uh listening to an opera or or just uh enjoying a wonderful beautiful uh scenery in nature that that kind of pleasure is qualitatively better than let's say getting drunk at the local bar certain intellectual pleasures are qualitatively better than pleasures that just appeal to the senses and so mill emphasized this and so what he does is that he brings about a correction to be to jeremy bentham's utilitarianism and the specific correction that he brings about is he emphasizes that when you're aiming for pleasure you shouldn't just merely focus on the amount of pleasure that is the quantity of pleasure but that you should also focus on the quality of pleasure that is the kind of pleasure and so he one of his books john stuart mill wrote the following to sort of illustrate that idea he said that it is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied better to be socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied and obviously the idea there is that pigs are happy you know just wallowing in the mud but you wouldn't want that as an ideal for human beings at the same time you have a great philosopher like socrates and and he aimed for certain higher pleasures in life like intellectual pleasures uh things having to do with goodness and morality and so uh mill would argue that we should emulate obviously and to follow the example of a socrates as opposed to just merely emphasizing just the quantity you know this we should emphasize the quality of pleasure as well all right so that's the basic theory um i will say one quick note here is that some people have criticized mill when he makes this distinction uh some have argued that his position tends to be tends to reveal a certain level of elitism in other words he emphasizes certain intellectual pleasures because he was an intellectual what about someone who happens to be let's say a more practical oriented person like i don't know someone that said who's a carpenter that person will very likely emphasize the more practical kinds of pleasures you know as opposed to the more intellectual type so so a criticism against mill is that his distinction here tends to reveal a certain level of elitism and then another criticism that is presented against mill when he makes this distinction is that by saying that some pleasures are are actually better than others that he is actually introducing a criterion he's introducing a principle by which one can determine which pleasures are better than others and you may say well what's the problem with that well the problem with that is that he seems to now be going beyond what utilitarianism is saying because utilitarianism is saying that it's the consequences that determine whether an action is right or wrong and here male seems to be focusing on a specific principle that enables you to make that determination okay so anyways that's utilitarianism in general in the next video i will briefly look at a couple of other points concerning this theory and then also share with you a crit a couple of criticisms that have been presented against a utilitarian theory of morality