Utilitarian Ethics

Prof. Kumar Neeraj Sachdev

6168-F
Dept. of Humanities and Social Sciences
 Frameworks of Ethics

• Indian Ethics
• Utilitarian Ethics
• Deontological Ethics
• Virtue Ethics
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 The Basic Idea
• Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832)
• John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)
• All human action, Bentham claimed, is
motivated by the desire for pleasure and
avoidance of pain.
• Mill says that actions are right in proportion as
they tend to promote happiness, wrong as
they tend to promote the reverse of
happiness.
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 The Basic Idea (contd.)
• Each person desires his or her
own happiness or as a means or
part of this.
• Therefore, each person’s own
happiness is desirable for that
person and a rational end for that
person to aim at.
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 The Basic Idea (contd.)

• Each person’s happiness is a

good to that person, and
general happiness, therefore, a
good to the aggregate of all
persons.

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 The Basic Idea (contd.)
• Utilitarian Morality has a natural
basis of sentiment that is social
feelings of mankind – the desire
to be in unity with our fellow
creatures.
• Social state is natural, necessary
and habitual.
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 The Basic Idea (contd.)
• Humans are unable to conceive a state of
total disregard of other people’s
happiness.
• Innumerable experiences of cooperation
with others leads to an identification
with the collective interest rather than
individual interest.

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 Utilitarian Principle

• “Maximization of overall happiness”

• Maximization – the more happiness
there is the better
• Overall – total happiness – the
effects of an action on the happiness
of all people must be taken into
consideration.
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 Utilitarian Principle (contd.)
• Efficiency may require to focus only on
those people for whom the act in
question would produce some net
change in happiness.
• Happiness – intended pleasure and
avoidance of pain
• Unhappiness – pain and privation of
pleasure
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 Utilitarian Principle (contd.)
• Higher pleasures –
intellectuality and
creativity
• Lower pleasures – body
pleasures

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 “It is better to be a human being dissatisfied
than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates
dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool,
or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is
because they only know their own side of the
question. The other party to the comparison
knows both sides.”
John Stuart Mill
Utilitarianism, Chapter 1

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 J S Mill on Calculation of Happiness

• An Example

Visit Do not
visit
You -10 +8
Aunt +15 -20
Total +5 -12
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 Criticisms
• Difficult to measure happiness or
predict the future owing to lack of
information
• Morally required to engage in never-
ending action
• Does not clearly prescribe what is
fair and ethical thing to do (An
example on next slide)
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 Unfair Consequences
• An Example

One day Sue Gets

Off each Both Days
Off
Sue +12 +22
Tom +4 -4
Total +16 +18

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 Concluding Remark
Utilitarian ethics is easy to
comprehend because it is based on
common sense morality or morality
of the collective but then it appears
to be weak precisely on this ground
as it fails to consider the individual’s
interest as such.
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 Case Studies

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 Case Study 1
Govind, a fresh MBA from the Badami Institute of Management, was
recruited by a well-known company, which had come to the institute for
campus recruitment for the first time. The company’s President
Manishankar had heard of the Institute’s course on ethics and was keen to
get a band of younger managers who would stand by ethics. Govind had
expected to start his career with the glamorous task of preparing grand
marketing strategies. Instead, he was thrown into the field competing with
‘crooks’ as he called them. He was given a tough target for the first year.
On the last day of the year when he was desperately trying to inch across,
he met his immediate boss George, an old timer of the company, who told
him that he could give him a tip that would enable him to cross the magic
figure, provided Govind paid him Rs 50, 000. This was 50 per cent of the
bonus Govind would get if he could achieve the annual target. Should he
accept George’s proposal?

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 Case Study 2
Arun Verma, Financial Controller of the multinational Bengal Silkington,
had just turned 50 when he got the boot. Silkington had stuck to the old
technology of making plate glass when sheet glass had taken over and so
had to wind up. Arun had two daughters of marriageable age and could
not afford to be without a job. So when he applied to Hindustan Coal for
the position of Deputy General Manager, he omitted to mention his date
of birth. On his wife’s advice, he dyed his hair for the interview. He was
brilliant and highly qualified, and the MD of Hindustan Coal offered him
the job across the table lest he miss out on such talent. Arun joined
immediately.
As the formalities were later being completed, his age came to light. The
MD was furious. He had an unwritten understanding that no one above 40
should be recruited. ‘They are useless,’ he said. He had however not
mentioned this in the advertisement or in the interview. ‘Oh God! At your
age and with your experience to be so unethical!’, he screamed.
Who was unethical – Arun or the MD?

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 Thank you.

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