“Pleasure is the first good. It is the beginning of every choice.” – Epicurus

Introduction

Utility is the usefulness of an action in leading to good consequences, such as pleasure/happiness. Utilitarianism is the normative moral theory that what makes an action morally right is its utility. This principle of utility implies that the consequences of an action determine whether it is good, not the type of action it is. Such theories are called teleological or consequentialist. The same action could produce different consequences in different circumstances, such that it might be good in one case and bad in the other.

Jeremy Bentham was the first to formalise the theory. He and most of its developers since have been atheists. If we don’t think there are any Gods making demands of us, our moral concern focuses on happiness in this life. Utilitarianism became one of the defining normative theories of the secular age.

Bentham identified the grounds for his theory as that human nature inevitably values the maximisation of positive mental states like pleasure. He concludes that’s what ethics is and ought to aim at. Even religious ethics operate on the promise of maximal happiness in an afterlife. If Bentham thought heaven existed, he would recommend we follow religious ethics to get there. That would be how to maximise happiness, if an afterlife existed. So even religious ethics are about achieving maximum happiness. This could point to the intuitiveness of the idea that happiness is our natural ultimate goal.

This intuitive appeal is a strength of the theory. Paradoxically, when we think through what acting like a consequentialist really entails, a multitude of apparent violations of our ethical intuitions arise.

A telling case is the burning building, where the utilitarian argues we should save an expensive painting over a baby, because we could sell the painting for enough money to give to charity and save one hundred babies. This intuitively strikes people as wrong. But saving a hundred babies is clearly better than saving one. There just seems to be something ‘ethically icky’ about the action required. Consequences don’t seem to be all we care about.

Utilitarianism is on firmer ground when it comes to the trolley problem. Most (around 80%) say they would pull the lever, killing one person but saving the other five. It’s interesting to consider what makes the burning building scenario seem different and what this says about how our moral psychology & how it ‘should’ be.

Such choices are not merely abstract. Terrible decisions must sometimes be made by generals in war, doctors in hospitals, or governments with budgets, about which people to prioritise and which to leave, perhaps to die. Most people would employ utilitarian thinking in such cases. It seems that saving the most people possible is best, even if it comes at the cost of letting others die. Even if it requires us to kill someone, as the trolley problem shows. Conversely, in the trolley problem, if instead of pulling a lever you have to push the one person onto the tracks to save the other five, the result switches. 70% of people say they wouldn’t do that, even though the result would be the same. There’s something that prevents most people from fully embracing the consequentialist path.

Only caring about consequences has provoked the objection that utilitarianism cannot properly incorporate ethical concepts and intuitions around individual liberty/rights, integrity and intentions. It is also criticised for the practicality of the theory, due to the difficulty of calculating future consequences and fully capturing the broadness of what humans value. Utilitarian philosophers, attracted by the intuitive appeal of the theory, have set themselves to defend it from these supposed objectionable implications.

One defensive strategy is this: to be human simply is to ultimately desire utility maximisation. So, critics who say utilitarianism fails to care about X can be countered that if X matters, its mattering must be for happiness (utility). Therefore, concern for X is really just an indirect, disguised or unappreciated concern for happiness. Bentham and Mill put it like this:

“When a man tries to combat the principle of utility, his reasons are drawn—without his being aware of it—from that very principle itself” (Bentham 1789).

“those who reject [the principle of utility], generally do no more than erect … secondary principles into first principles” (Mill 1838)

Another defensive strategy has been to alter the form of the theory, to address practicality concerns, better capture the intuition about our ultimate goal or to avoid/absorb supposed intuition violations. The different forms of utilitarianism involve variations on a few dimensions of the theory:

Utilitarians differ on: what ‘good’ consequences involve. I.e., which sort of consequences need to be maximised for an action to be right:

• Hedonic utilitarianism: utility is understood as positive mental states like pleasure. Moral rightness involves the maximisation of pleasure over pain.
• Negative utilitarianism: utility is understood as the reduction of suffering or pain. Moral rightness involves the minimisation of suffering.
• Preference utilitarianism: utility is understood as the satisfaction of preferences. Moral rightness involves the maximisation of the satisfaction of preferences of all morally relevant beings.
• Ideal utilitarianism: utility is understood as maximising plurality of goods in addition to pleasure, like aesthetic appreciation, friendship & intellectual activity. Moral rightness involves the maximisation of the total amount of these ideal goods.

Utilitarians differ on: the practical matter of how to apply the principle of utility.

• Act Utilitarians apply the principle of utility directly to actions. So, an action is good if it maximises utility.
• Rule Utilitarians apply the principle of utility to rules. So, a rule is good if its general observance maximises utility.

Utilitarians differ on: whether to understand utility as quantitative or qualitative.

• Quantitative utilitarianism claims only the amount of utility matters (e.g., the amount of pleasure for hedonic, the amount of suffering reduction for negative, the amount of preference satisfaction for preference.
• Qualitative utilitarianism claims that the type/form of utility matters. (E.g., the type of pleasure for hedonic, the type of suffering for negative, the type of preference for preference.

Different philosophers will ‘mix and match’ these different variables to create the version of utilitarianism they think best. E.g.:

Philosopher	Quant/Qual	View of utility/value	Act/Rule
Jeremy Bentham	Quantitative	Hedonistic	Act
John Stuart Mill	Qualitative	Hedonistic	Rule
Peter Singer	Quantitative	Preference	Act
R. M. Hare	Qualitative	Preference	Act
G. E. Moore	Qualitative	Ideal	Act
Karl Popper	Qualitative	Negative	Act
Richard Brandt	Quantitative	Preference	Rule
J. J. Smart	Quantitative	Hedonistic	Act

(Note that these philosophers do not always straightforwardly fit into these categories, so this list is somewhat to illustrate the way that versions of utilitarianism can differ.)

Bentham’s Act utilitarianism

Jeremy Bentham was the first to systematise utilitarianism. His morality reflects a non-religious understanding of what it means to be human. We are just a part of nature, not a special creation:

“Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne. They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think: every effort we can make to throw off our subjection, will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it. In words a man may pretend to abjure their empire: but in reality he will remain subject to it all the while. The principle of utility recognizes this subjection, and assumes it for the foundation of that system, the object of which is to rear the fabric of felicity by the hands of reason and of law. Systems which attempt to question it, deal in sounds instead of sense, in caprice instead of reason, in darkness instead of light.” (Bentham 1789)

It is human nature to find pleasure good and pain bad. Pleasure and pain determine what we ought to do and what we will do. We can say we value something else, but we would just be pretending. It just is the nature of the human animal to seek pleasure and avoid pain, so that’s all there is for morality to be about. To figure out what to do morally, we need to calculate how much pleasure and pain our possible actions would lead to and then choose the one which maximises pleasure.

Of course, calculating how much pleasure an action will cause can be difficult. Bentham understood that. He thought people should try to do that as best they can. Ultimately, following the principle of utility requires judgment of the tendency certain types of actions have to maximise utility, as opposed to the particular consequences of an action, which are difficult to know in advance. Actions are calculated right or wrong based on general patterns of consequences produced by similar actions in similar situations in the past. Bentham accepts that perfect calculation of future consequences is impossible, though a good ideal to aim for as best we can:

“It is not to be expected that this process should be strictly pursued before every moral judgment or every legislative or judicial operation. But it can be always kept in view; and the nearer the process actually pursued on these occasions come to it, the nearer they will come to exactness” (Bentham 1789).

Bentham defines the principle of utility in a way which accommodates this difficulty:

“By the principle of utility is meant that principle which approves or disapproves of every action whatsoever according to the tendency it appears to have to augment or diminish the happiness of the party whose interest is in question” (Bentham 1789).

“An action then may be said to conform to the principle of utility. . . . when its tendency to increase the happiness of the community is greater than any tendency it has to lessen it” (Bentham 1789).

Bentham defines the principle as a means of approving or disapproving of actions. What makes an action right is that it maximises utility. But that is beyond our certainty to calculate. So, what makes an action our moral obligation is that we have best judged to a reasonable standard that it has the tendency (likelihood) to maximise utility. Or put another way, we ought to do the action we best judge to be right. Bentham thus distinguishes between the value of a pleasure or pain itself and the judgment the principle of utility makes of an action.

Bentham’s hedonic calculus. A method for measuring pleasure is required. Bentham devised the hedonic calculus to do this. It is a list of seven criteria, each measuring a different aspect of the pleasurable consequences of an action.

1. How strong the pleasure feels.
2. How long the pleasure lasts.
3. How likely it is that the pleasure will occur.
4. How far away in time the pleasure will occur.
5. The likelihood that the pleasure/pain will lead to further pleasure/pain
6. The likelihood that the pleasure will be followed by pain, or pain by pleasure.
7. How many people are affected.

The first four criteria of the hedonic calculus judge the value of a pleasure/pain in itself. The 5^th and 6^th judge the tendency of the type of action in a particular situation and on particular people(s). To fully know the rightness of an action, we would need to know the intensity, duration, etc, of its future consequences, its fecundity and purity. However, Bentham realised the impossibility of knowing that precisely. Calculating them requires our best, but never certain, judgment about expected outcomes. So, the best we can do is judge which types of action best maximise utility in different types of situations.

Bentham thought the legal system should assist people with these judgments. Laws should be based on the principle of utility, aiming to maximise happiness according to the tendency of different actions to promote happiness and avoid suffering.

“the happiness of the individuals of whom a community is composed, i.e. their pleasures and their security, is the only goal that the legislator ought to have in view” (Bentham 1789).

The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy explains:

“Bentham understood that the achievement of utilitarian objectives in practice required the translation of the utility principle into elements amenable to implementation in ways that the philosophically abstract principle itself could not be. Concrete manifestations of happiness, for example, could be found in personal security and reduced crime rates, enhanced health and declining death rates, broader opportunities for education, the reduction of diseases caused by sewage pollution, and so on … The greatest happiness principle sets the over-arching objective and is the critical standard against which existing practices are to be judged. As such, it stands ever ready to be summoned forth whenever new guidelines are needed, subordinate ends conflict, or existing laws require amendment, refinement, or further elaboration. However, in practice it is the secondary elements of the theory that do the work of producing beneficial outcomes. In this way, they give practical concreteness to the philosophically abstract end of the greatest happiness.” (Crimmins 2024).

Such laws would be considered rational and more likely to be followed as they would align with our natural inclination as utility-seekers. Law especially helps to motivate people to put aside their interests if it is for the greater good. E.g., if someone thinks it is in their interest to kill a business competitor, they will weigh that against the chance of their interests being undermined by going to prison, and hopefully decide against murder. While following laws should be the norm for Bentham, people should always be ready to break them if it would obviously maximise utility in extreme cases. He thinks that if a person breaks laws but maximises utility, they should not be punished.

Mill’s qualitative utilitarianism, swine & human dignity

Bentham thought all pleasures were equal. He said playing a children’s game ‘push pin’ was equal to reading poetry:

“Prejudice apart, the game of push-pin is of equal value with the arts and sciences of music and poetry. If the game of push-pin furnish more pleasure, it is more valuable than either” (Bentham 1825)

Thomas Carlyle captured the mood of a common objection when he famously called utilitarianism fit only for “swine”. To many, the theory has a narrow view of value. It seems to degrade, flatten and cheapen the dignity and goal of human life by reducing it to animalistic pleasure seeking.

Aristotle claimed the sole ultimate goal of human nature was not pleasure but eudaimonia (flourishing), gained through virtue. The highest form of human life involves philosophical contemplation (theōria). This influenced Aquinas’ Christian natural law ethics. Such expansive accounts of human purpose are harder to accuse of being fit only for swine. The criticism is that Bentham has failed to truly capture what humans really seek from life.

Mill combated this objection by distinguishing between:

• Lower pleasures, gained from bodily activity, such as food, sex and drugs, and
• Higher pleasures, gained from mental activity, such as poetry, reading, philosophy, and music.

Utilitarianism is accused of degrading human life by equating these higher pleasures with the lower. Mill argues there’s a way for utilitarians to value higher pleasures as superior. That would preserve the intuition that a life of higher pleasure is better than a life of lower pleasure, regardless of quantity.

Firstly, Mill points out that Utilitarian thinkers of Bentham’s qualitative variety had already shown that higher pleasures are superior at producing a greater quantity of happiness. Lower pleasures are fleeting and costly because they are addictive and tempt people to instant gratification (Which Mill calls a ‘nearer good’), over greater goods like health. Higher pleasures of the mind have no such costs.

Nonetheless, Mill thought he had a stronger response which gets to the heart of the unease around utilitarianism and human dignity. Saying that music and art are more valuable because they tend to produce a greater quantity of pleasure doesn’t fully satisfy our intuition that there is just something better about a life with them in it. This still threatens quantitative utilitarianism like Bentham’s. It suggests there is something we ultimately value other than mere quantity of pleasure. Mill claims that the superiority of higher pleasures can be proven not merely on quantitative grounds, but on a ‘higher ground’, their superior quality.

“It is quite compatible with the principle of utility to recognise the fact, that some kinds of pleasure are more desirable and more valuable than others” – Mill

Mill thinks this move allows utilitarianism to fully preserve human dignity, incorporating the intuition that music, arts, etc, are worth more than bodily pleasures. Higher pleasures are worth more because of their greater quality. Human nature doesn’t simply desire generic pleasure as Bentham had thought. Higher pleasures are more desirable. Mill argues that this is the best explanation of the choices humans make. If people prefer higher pleasures regardless of quantity, that indicates they have a greater quality.

A mind requires cultivation to appreciate and be capable of preferring higher pleasures. Some never experience higher pleasures and choose only lower pleasures. Their choices are not good evidence. If a person has never experienced A and chooses B over it, it cannot be because they have judged B better than A. Mill says we should look at ‘competent judges’, those with experience of both higher and lower pleasures. He claims they always prefer higher pleasures over lower pleasures. If all that mattered to us were the quantity of a pleasure, this preference would be inexplicable. So, the best explanation is that higher pleasures have a greater quality.

Mill is saying that if we survey human choice and subtract confounding variables, like ignorance or addictions, we find a preference for higher pleasures which could only be explained by their greater quality. Mill now has his full answer to those who say utilitarianism is a doctrine fit only for swine:

“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” (Mill 1863).

Humans can experience mental pleasures of a higher quality than the low pleasures that both humans and pigs can experience. Socrates illustrates that some humans can experience mental pleasures of a higher quality than others. Mill’s claim is that when we investigate such cases, we find that beings prefer the highest mental pleasure they are capable of experiencing over lower pleasures. People acquainted with both higher and lower pleasures show such an overwhelming preference for the higher that they will put up with discontent to get them and would not lose it even for any quantity of a lower pleasure. Quantity still matters to them, but only to a ‘small’ degree. This implies that only in extreme cases of massive quantity could the presence/absence of lower pleasures outweigh higher pleasures:

“Of two pleasures, if there be one to which all or almost all who have experience of both give a decided preference, irrespective of any feeling of moral obligation to prefer it, that is the more desirable pleasure. If one of the two is, by those who are competently acquainted with both, placed so far above the other that they prefer it, even though knowing it to be attended with a greater amount of discontent, and would not resign it for any quantity of the other pleasure which their nature is capable of, we are justified in ascribing to the preferred enjoyment a superiority in quality, so far outweighing quantity as to render it, in comparison, of small account.” (Mill 1863).

Consider an artist who suffers from financial deprivation to produce their art. A piano player who arduously wades through hours of practice to finally experience the pleasure of playing some composition of genius. A student who avoids short-term pleasures and diligently studies for their exams, to avoid a monotonous life and pursue the pleasure that comes from the exercise and eventual mastery of their talents.

Mill successfully incorporates the higher modes of human life within his concept of ‘happiness’, thereby avoiding the ‘swine’ criticism. Mill can coherently say that it is better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool or pig satisfied, because Socrates is capable of a higher quality of pleasure.

Many will object to Mill’s claim that a person who can and has experienced higher pleasures will always prefer them to lower ones. There are plenty of times when mentally cultivated people will occasionally give in to instant gratification or even sink into complete addiction to lower pleasures.

However, Mill responds that this objection misunderstands his argument. Everyone prefers the highest pleasures they have been able to experience, but it doesn’t follow that everyone always chooses them over lower ones. The ability to experience higher pleasures requires careful cultivation, which is easily lost, either due to falling into addiction, weakness of will/character (akrasia), external pressures or lack of internal support:

“Capacity for the nobler feelings is in most natures a very tender plant, easily killed, not only by hostile influences, but by mere want of sustenance; and in the majority of young persons it speedily dies away if the occupations to which their position in life has devoted them, and the society into which it has thrown them, are not favourable to keeping that higher capacity in exercise. Men lose their high aspirations as they lose their intellectual tastes, because they have not time or opportunity for indulging them; and they addict themselves to inferior pleasures, not because they deliberately prefer them, but because they are either the only ones to which they have access, or the only ones which they are any longer capable of enjoying.” (Mill 1863)

Debating Mill’s qualitative utilitarianism

Mill is often criticised as elitist. He appears to be privileging the pleasures and activities of his class of society. That could reflect an elitist bias which creates a positive view of privileged people and their enjoyments and a negative view of the underprivileged and theirs. So-called ‘upper-class’ people, or ‘high society’, sometimes use the enjoyment of higher pleasures as a status symbol. They denigrate those who lack the taste for higher pleasures as inferior. This helps the privileged feel like their unequal share of power is justified, because they imagine that it is better served in their cultured hands than that of the uncultivated and unwashed masses. Mill is criticised for playing into this cultural elitism.

Defence of Mill: As Roger Crisp and many others have noted:

“This objection is to some degree misplaced: what matters is whether Mill’s view is true or not, and it may be that the truth is unpalatable.” (Crisp 1997)

There is truth to the concern about the lack of opportunity in society. However, this is not a valid criticism of Mill’s views. Mill was in favour of radically expanding opportunity to higher pleasures, such as through access to education. If there really are higher modes of being, which only the privileged have had the opportunity to experience in the past, surely the logical reaction of someone concerned with equality would not be to deny that those higher modes exist, but to insist on equal opportunity to them. This is Mill’s view.

Experience attests that higher pleasures require cultivation to appreciate in perpetuity. Elitists do use this as an excuse to look down on those who haven’t succeeded in that. But this doesn’t mean Mill is incorrect. It just means distinctions of quality between human experiences are vulnerable to abuse. The accusation of elitism could also partly be a coping mechanism by those who are addicted to lower pleasures and want to rationalise avoiding the discipline required to change.

Mill’s Rule Utilitarianism

Rule utilitarianism is the view that an action is good if it follows a good rule. A rule is good if its general practice maximises happiness (compared to other possible rules). Mill is typically considered a Rule Utilitarian. Mill says he “entirely” agrees with Bentham’s principle of Utility. Mill calls this the ‘first principle’. However, Mill disagreed with Bentham’s application of the principle. Mill thought we should not simply judge actions by their consequences to happiness. Mill claimed that happiness is ‘much too complex and indefinite a goal’ for that.

“while … we entirely agree with Bentham in his principle, we do not hold with him that all right thinking on the details of morals depends on its express assertion. We think utility, or happiness, much too complex and indefinite an end to be sought except through the medium of various secondary ends” (Mill 1838).

Secondary principles are society’s laws and rules. Both Bentham and Mill believe society’s rules should be aimed at maximising happiness. They also agree that moral decision-making should involve identifying the relevant rule. However, Bentham thinks rules can be broken if a person can reasonably judge that it would maximise utility to do so. Mill rejects this view. The immediate good consequences of an action cannot justify breaking a rule:

“In the case of abstinences … of things which people forbear to do, from moral Considerations, though the consequences in the particular case might be beneficial—it would be unworthy of an intelligent agent not to be consciously aware that the action is of a class which, if practised generally, would be generally injurious, and that this is the ground of the obligation to abstain from it” (Mill 1863).

Mill does think rules can justifiably be broken. But not just because it would have immediate good consequences. Only if two rules conflict can one be broken. We must then calculate which rule has the greater utility in our situation and follow that one, even if it means breaking the other.

“Those who adopt utility as a standard can seldom apply it truly except through the secondary principles … It is when two or more of the secondary principles conflict, that a direct appeal to some first principle becomes necessary” (Mill 1838)

“We must remember that only in these cases of conflict between secondary principles is it requisite that first principles should be appealed to. There is no case of moral obligation in which some secondary principle is not involved; and if only one, there can seldom be any real doubt which one it is” (Mill 1863).

For Mill, if you think it would maximise utility to break a rule but don’t have another one to follow, then you shouldn’t. That guarantees that people always follow socially approved rules that society has calculated to have utility. We must also consider that different rules have different levels of utility themselves. Mill illustrates that rules of justice are more obligatory than any other type, because of their supreme utility:

“Justice is a name for certain classes of moral rules, which concern the essentials of human well-being more nearly, and are therefore of more absolute obligation, than any other rules for the guidance of life; and the notion which we have found to be of the essence of the idea of justice, that of a right residing in an individual, implies and testifies to this more binding obligation” (Mill 1863).

justice is a name for certain moral requirements, which, regarded collectively, stand higher in the scale of social utility, and are therefore of more paramount obligation, than any others; though particular cases may occur in which some other social duty is so important, as to overrule any one of the general maxims of justice. (Mill 1863).

Mill seems to mean that the more utility a rule has, the more strictly it should be followed. I.e., the greater the utility must be of breaking it to follow a different type of rule. As obvious examples, Mill points to murder and theft as being injurious to human happiness. Other rules typically have less utility. But in extreme cases, there might be more utility in following them than the general precepts of justice:

“to save a life, it may not only be allowable, but a duty, to steal, or take by force, the necessary food or medicine, or to kidnap, and compel to officiate, the only qualified medical practitioner” (Mill 1863).

Mill explains his views in the case of the morality of lying:

“even [the rule to tell the truth], sacred as it is, admits of possible exceptions … when the withholding of some fact would preserve some one from great and unmerited evil, and when the withholding can only be effected by denial. But in order that the exception may not extend itself beyond the need, and may have the least possible effect in weakening reliance on veracity, it ought to be recognized, and, if possible, its limits defined; and if the principle of utility is good for anything, it must be good for weighing these conflicting utilities against one another, and marking out the region within which one or the other preponderates.” (Mill 1863).

For conflicting rules, Mill’s question is not simply which action would maximise utility. It is which rule, if followed, would maximise utility. Of course, we can only calculate this by considering the nature and consequences of our particular action. Mill’s difference to Bentham is subtle. We are not trying to figure out purely what would lead to the most happiness (as Bentham would have us do). We are trying to figure out which socially approved rule would lead to the most happiness. The upshot is that for Mill, people always follow rules, even when breaking them.

A secondary principle which Mill thinks highly important is the harm principle. People should be free to do what they want so long as they aren’t harming others. Each individual is in the best position to make themselves happy. If we allowed each other to do what made us happy, society would be the happiest it could be. Mill here is attempting to place political liberalism on a utilitarian foundation. It’s also intended to show how utilitarianism would avoid what Tocqueville had called ‘tyranny of the majority’, a concern which Mill shared.

“The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others” (Mill 1859).

Mill’s combination of rule utilitarianism with qualitative utilitarianism

Both Bentham and Mill think the principle of utility determines whether a rule is valid. Mill differs in that he understands utility qualitatively. A rule is good if it maximises the quality of pleasure in society. Bentham conceives of laws and punishment as incentives to people’s self-interest calculations to follow the rules society has best judged to maximise happiness.

For Mill, the degree to which a society is happy depends on the number of people experiencing higher pleasures and how high those higher pleasures are. The rules should aim at the long-term progress of society towards this goal of maximising the autonomy and virtue of individuals. Mill’s is a long-term, far-sighted project. The rules should aim to maximise the highest quality of happiness in society. Such rules cannot be broken simply because a large quantity of lower pleasure might result.

E.g., if a town’s inhabitants strongly wanted someone released from prison, Bentham might release them to increase the townsfolks’ happiness (so long as the risk to utility of things like the chance of reoffending, etc, was not high enough to counterbalance the happiness of the town). Bentham is criticised that allowing harm to a minority to benefit a majority is logically implied by his theory. E.g., imprisoning an innocent person if it maximises happiness (satisfies an angry community, prevents rioting, etc).

Mill could avoid this by looking at the quality of the pleasures on each side of the equation. Justice and virtue are components of a developed, happy mind. If the townspeople want the person released for unjust/unvirtuous reasons, their resulting pleasure will be low quality. Rules of justice aim at social order and encouraging virtue. Not merely at discouraging negative impulses, as Bentham had thought. This higher aim is not outweighed by lower pleasures.

For Mill, rules are not mere rules of thumb, but approximations of the requirements for human happiness in different arenas of life. Mill is attempting to incorporate insights from Aristotelian virtue ethics; he even called Aristotle a utilitarian. A human is not merely an animalistic pleasure seeker. Bentham thought laws should act as reward and punishment, to align our interest judgments with the social good. Mill thought rules ought to aim at more than that. Namely, the development of an individual’s wilful commitment to the social good through cultivating virtue. Only by satisfying all the ingredients of an educated, rational, autonomous population can happiness be maximised.

The issue of calculation

Utilitarianism claims that the goodness of an action depends on whether it maximises pleasure. This requires that in each moral situation, we can know the immediate and long-term consequences of all the actions we could take. We must then calculate the utility of those actions to determine which one maximises it. Utilitarianism seems to require us to know the future, which is often incredibly difficult. Furthermore, these calculations might need to be made in time-sensitive conditions.

Finally, these calculations include objectively measuring subjective mental states like pleasure and pain. We can only make objective measurements of objective things. E.g., we can measure a thing’s length by putting a tape measure next to it. The calculations about the amount of pleasure and pain an action will lead to require that we measure subjective feelings, which seems impossible. There is no objective way to measure subjective feelings because we can’t put a ruler next to them.

Bentham and Mill’s responses to the calculation issue.

Both Bentham and Mill accepted that perfectly acting on the principle of utility was impossible because of these calculation issues. However, they argued it can be acted on with sufficient approximation for utilitarianism to function as a normative theory. Both accepted that we cannot make complex calculations of all the consequences on all possible affected parties. Sometimes we do not have the time or the means, or either.

Bentham and Mill’s definitions of the principle of utility both say it is the ‘tendency’ of actions that makes them morally right, as opposed to their particular consequences. Actions are calculated right or wrong based on general patterns of consequences produced by similar actions in similar situations in the past.

Bentham and Mill thought it was the obligation of society and the legislature to assist here by fashioning rules/laws aimed at maximising utility. Individual moral responsibility is to follow the secondary principles our civilisation has best judged to maximise utility. This places the main burden of calculation more reasonably on lawmakers and culture in general.

This defence functions by distinguishing moral goodness from moral obligation. The moral goodness of an action depends on maximising happiness. But because of the impossibility of calculating that, our moral obligation is to do our best to follow the secondary principles. Individuals do not need to know the future, make complex calculations, or measure subjective feelings.

 “Again, defenders of utility often find themselves called upon to reply to such objections as this—that there is not time, previous to action, for calculating and weighing the effects of any line of conduct on the general happiness. This is exactly as if any one were to say that it is impossible to guide our conduct by Christianity, because there is not time, on every occasion on which anything has to be done, to read through the Old and New Testaments. The answer to the objection is, that there has been ample time, namely, the whole past duration of the human species. During all that time mankind have been learning by experience the tendencies of actions; on which experience all the prudence, as well as all the morality of life, is dependent. People talk as if the commencement of this course of experience had hitherto been put off, and as if, at the moment when some man feels tempted to meddle with the property or life of another, he had to begin considering for the first time whether murder and theft are injurious to human happiness” (Mill 1863 – my emphasis).

Mill’s final statement on this is quite witty and amusing, so I’ve been tempted to quote it in full:

“It is truly a whimsical supposition, that if mankind were agreed in considering utility to be the test of morality, they would remain without any agreement as to what is useful, and would take no measures for having their notions on the subject taught to the young, and enforced by law and opinion. There is no difficulty in proving any ethical standard whatever to work ill, if we suppose universal idiocy to be conjoined with it, but on any hypothesis short of that, mankind must by this time have acquired positive beliefs as to the effects of some actions on their happiness; and the beliefs which have thus come down are the rules of morality for the multitude, and for the philosopher until he has succeeded in finding better … Men really ought to leave off talking a kind of nonsense on this subject, which they would neither talk nor listen to on other matters of practical concernment. Nobody argues that the art of navigation is not founded on astronomy, because sailors cannot wait to calculate the Nautical Almanack. Being rational creatures, they go to sea with it ready calculated; and all rational creatures go out upon the sea of life with their minds made up on the common questions of right and wrong” (Mill 1863).

This goes to a strength of Bentham and Mill’s response: society already functions by creating rules/laws to guide individuals. Calculation is already going on regarding which laws to make. Utilitarians simply propose that the laws be designed to maximise utility.

However, Bentham allowed rule-breaking more than Mill.

Bentham’s use of laws defends his approach from requiring calculation in all moral decisions, but he still requires it in some. Bentham thinks people should consider whether utility would be maximised by breaking laws/rules. To comply with this, individuals must always consider whether a law should be broken. However, Bentham is keenly aware of the difficulty of doing this in practice. He would say that it is only when it’s reasonable to expect someone to realise that breaking a rule would maximise utility that it becomes an obligation. If it is obvious that breaking a law would maximise happiness, and it does, Bentham says they should not be punished. If someone doesn’t have the time or ability to judge, they should stick to following the laws. Bentham’s definition of the principle of utility was that our approval of an action should be proportioned to its tendency to maximise happiness. He held up the ideal of a perfect calculation as something to aim for, while admitting it was impossible to achieve.

Mill thought he could improve on this approach by adding stricter criteria to rule-following. He disagreed that the perfect calculation of an individual action was the ideal to approximate as best we can in our actions. He thought the principle of utility couldn’t be applied to actions on their own, but always to rules. This takes off even more of the calculation burden from individuals. The only calculation individuals need to do is which rule to follow when they conflict. If it would maximise happiness to break a rule, Mill says you can only do so if rules conflict, so you still have another rule to follow.

Mill’s qualitative approach further assists with calculation. He says quality “so far [outweighs] quantity as to render it, in comparison, of small account.” When deciding which rules to create, society should aim them at encouraging the highest pleasure for the most people. We should strongly prioritise the quality over the quantity of the pleasure it could produce. This means less measuring quantity is required. Mill thus requires less calculation than Bentham during individual moral decision-making.

The issue of liberty/rights

Human rights are traditionally conceived as intrinsic to a person and thus inalienable. No circumstance or supposed greater good could justify violating them. So, the moral foundation of human rights seems to be deontological, i.e., duty-based. Respecting rights is good and violating rights is bad because of the nature/type of such actions, not their consequences. This seems to conflict with consequentialist ethics. Utilitarians could never say a type of action is wrong in itself. They can only say that X is right/wrong if it maximises or fails to maximise utility. Utilitarianism is argued to justify the tyranny of the majority, where the rights of a minority are violated to benefit a majority. So long as utility is maximised, utilitarian logic seems to judge such exploitations as morally acceptable.

E.g., if 10 people gained happiness from torturing one person.

E.g., Philippa Foot’s illustration that a utilitarian doctor would kill a healthy patient to give their organs to 5 transplant patients, as that maximises happiness.

Kant envisaged a federation of nations, which anticipated the current United Nations. The UN 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) used Kantian language regarding the dignity, inalienability, and equal nature of rights. Kant, and his influences like the UDHR and philosophers like John Rawls, reject utilitarianism as a basis for rights, as it cannot ground the notion of intrinsic moral worth. Utilitarianism seems to violate our moral intuitions. It could also suggest incompatibility with social order. No one would want to live in a utilitarian society if they could be tortured, enslaved or have their organs taken at any time.

Bentham’s response to the liberty/rights issue

Bentham responded that this objection misunderstood his theory. The utilitarian logic of maximising happiness might appear prima facie (superficially, at first glance) to justify harming people. However, Bentham says we must then consider the implications of allowing actions like that on the average person. Firstly, he points out that if you allow an injustice to one person, the logic suggests you do it again to a second, and so on, until utility is no longer maximised. It can’t coherently be kept to an insignificant number of cases. He argues that the majority would not actually benefit, since they would have to share society with oppressed people. The only positive feelings will not be real happiness, but enjoyment over the misery of others.

“Your streets will everywhere present unfortunate citizens whom you will have plunged into indignance … cries of despair will resound on every side. The cries of joy, if there are any, will not be expressions of happiness, but of that antipathy which rejoices in the misery of its victims.” (Bentham 1840)

“If it is a good thing to sacrifice the fortune of one individual to augment that of others, it will be yet better to sacrifice a second, a third, a hundred, a thousand, …; for whatever may be the number of those you have sacrificed, you will always have the same reason to add one more. In one word, the interest of everybody is sacred, or the interest of nobody” (Bentham 1840)

Bentham concludes that equality in matters of security, such as life and property, is a utilitarian priority. Not because security is good in itself, but because it is necessary to the general happiness of society. The upshot seems to be that it might be justified to steal or even kill, to save lives – i.e., reduce suffering. But it can’t be justified to harm others just to increase happiness, since that requires systematic oppression and violation of equality.

However, there are still cases that Bentham’s defence here struggles to deal with.

It’s an interesting idea, that oppressors cannot secure true happiness for themselves. It’s also an idea found in Hegel and arguably in Christian ethics. It might be a bit of a hopeful/romanticised view, though. Unfortunately, it’s the nature of privilege to blind itself to its own unfairness and even existence.

We could add to Bentham that no one would want to live in a society where they could be victimised for the sake of net happiness. Ultimately, it would decrease happiness if, for example, we knew that our organs could be snatched at any point. However, there are cases of harm to a minority where the majority could feel safe from being victimised by that harm themselves.

E.g., the European and American slave trade. White people had no fear of being enslaved under their country’s slavery laws.

There are more theoretical examples that Bentham would also struggle to avoid:

E.g., people who have been bred to be ‘happy slaves’, or given drugs so they enjoy servitude, as in Aldous Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’. Then, the victims would not even be unhappy. It seems Bentham’s reasoning cannot defend against this.

Huxley gets to the centre of our discomfort over the idea that what’s wrong with oppression can be fully reduced to whether happiness is maximised. The core intuition seems to be that violating rights is just wrong in itself, regardless of how happy people, even the victims, might have somehow been manipulated to be.

Mill’s response to the liberty/rights issue

Mill’s qualitative rule utilitarianism can better satisfy our intuition that the problem with the happiness gained from victimisation is its quality. I.e., there’s something wrong with the type of pleasure gained from oppression, e.g., from being a ‘happy slave’ or an oppressed person who is drugged into happiness. Such cases do not involve higher pleasures. For that, society must cultivate rational autonomy and virtue for all people. We might be able to bring lower animalistic pleasure through victimising people, but autonomy cannot be properly enabled through sacrificing the autonomy of another. Nor is it consonant with virtue, which Mill argued is also a component of genuine happiness. Bentham himself comes close to saying this with his illustration of oppressors not being truly happy, but he needs Mill’s distinction. A human is the type of being that is made happiest through rational autonomy and virtue. Therefore, we need moral rules in favour of liberty and against unvirtuous acts involving harm to others.

E.g., Mill’s ‘harm principle’ rule states that people should be free to do what they want, so long as they are not harming others.

Utilitarianism doesn’t conflict with liberty but, on the contrary, supports it, because liberty enables happiness. The justification for this freedom from harm is not that people have a ‘right’ to be unharmed, but that it is for the greatest happiness for the greatest number that we live without harming each other. So, while Mill doesn’t believe in intrinsic rights, he proposes rules that seem identical to rights in their ethical outcome.

So, Mill can overrule these individual cases in which happiness is gained from harming a minority. Firstly, there is no rule to follow which justifies such cases. Secondly, the happiness is really just lower pleasures.

Defenders of a deontological basis for rights (Kant & Rawls) will still object that Mill can’t say violations of rights are wrong in themselves. Mill only thinks we should treat people as if they had rights because that maximises happiness when followed as a rule. Even the Rule version of utilitarianism cannot satisfy our intuition that rights are inherent to the dignity of a person, rather than merely something socially useful for enabling happiness.

Debates over Rule Utilitarianism

Act utilitarianism is accused of calculation issues and violation of rights. Rule utilitarianism promises to answer these charges. But Act utilitarians reject it, claiming it faces a dilemma regarding cases where breaking a rule would maximise utility.

‘Weak’ rule utilitarianism holds that rules can be broken if it would maximise happiness. However, this is Bentham’s view of rules, so it collapses back into Act Utilitarianism.

‘Strong’ rule Utilitarianism holds that rules should not be broken even if it would maximise utility in a situation. This is criticised for becoming deontological. It seems to be abandoning the principle of utility and consequentialism because it says you should follow rules even if breaking them would have good consequences.

J.J. Smart makes this criticism of strong rule utilitarianism, arguing that the act utilitarian approach to rules is superior. He uses the descriptor ‘useful rule of thumb’ to describe Bentham’s idea of the socially approved rules/laws people reach for to assist in moral decision-making. Smart claims that if we lack time/ability or partiality, we should just follow such rules. However, if we do have time and ability, and we figure out that breaking the rule would maximise utility, we should break the rule. Smart says to follow the rule regardless would be to turn rules into a “sort of idol”:

“Is not this a form of superstitious rule-worship (easily explicable psychologically) and not the rational thought of the philosopher?” (Smart 1956)

Rule utilitarians, following arguments hinted at by Mill, argue that we have to look beyond the immediate consequences of the action itself to the broader consequences of allowing the breaking of rules. We will be encouraging the breaking of that rule socially. We will be weakening the importance people place on it. We will be disordering our habits and character (our virtue) against the following of that rule.

Smart answers these concerns by drawing on Sidgwick’s distinction between the utility of the action and the utility of the praise of it. An action that breaks a rule might be useful, even if it would also be useful to condemn the person for doing it, to help to re-align their character with following them, and to encourage general rule-following in society. Regarding the issue of weakening the social acceptance of the rule, Smart points to cases where only the person themselves will know what they have done. E.g., two people on a desert island. One dies after expressing a wish for their money to be given to a horse racing club. The other person escapes the island but realises there’s more utility in telling people the dead person wanted the money to go to charity. This breaks the rule of lying, but will not weaken the social acceptance of the rule because only one person knows about it. The person may only have to lie once, without much weakening of their habit to tell the truth.

“we must not forget that even if it would be most rational of me to give the money to the hospital it would also be most rational of you to punish or condemn me if you did, most improbably, find out the truth … Furthermore, I would agree that though it was most rational of me to give the money to the hospital it would be most rational of you to condemn me it. We revert again to Sidgwick’s distinction between the utility of the act the utility of the praise of it” (Smart 1956)

The validity of a rule in utilitarianism can only be the utility of following it. If there is a situation where following a rule does not have utility, then we ought to break it. Smart’s critique is that a utilitarian has no logical basis to demand that rules be followed in such cases.

“I conclude that in every case if there is a rule R the keeping of which is in general optimific, but such that in a special sort of circumstances the optimific behaviour is to break R, then in these circumstances we should break R. Of course we must consider all the less obvious effects of breaking R, such as reducing people’s faith in the moral order … and if we have weighed in the balance our own fallibility and liability to personal bias, what good reason remains for keeping the rule? I can understand ‘it is optimific’ as a reason for action, but why should ‘it is a member of a class of actions which are usually optimific’ or ‘it is a member of a class of actions which as a class are more optimific than any alternative general glass’ be a good reason? You might as well say that a person ought to be picked to play for Australia just because all his brothers have been … The [Act] utilitarian does not appeal to artificial feelings … such artificially begotten pro-attitudes smack of superstition. Let us get down to realities, human happiness and misery, and make these the objects of our pro-attitudes and anti-attitudes.” – Smart

However, we could defend Mill on this point.

Mill does say there is a basis for not breaking rules, which is that happiness is ‘too complex and indefinable a goal’ to act towards directly. Developing this, we could argue that we shouldn’t have a rule of allowing people to break rules purely because they think it will maximise utility. Smart insists there will be times when people can judge that rightly. That seems true. But if we allow people to judge, there will be times when they get it wrong. Sidgwick was an act utilitarian, but admitted he wasn’t sure it should be spread to the average person who wasn’t very philosophical or empirical. Smart disagreed with Sidgwick on this point, but clearly there is a tension amongst Act utilitarians themselves which undermines Smart’s claim that there is no basis for a rule utilitarian to insist people always follow rules. The calculation issue might just be too strong for Act to deal with.

We could say that Mill’s ‘meta-rule’ is:

• We ought always to act on socially approved rules.

An implication is:

• • The only appropriate breaking of a rule is to follow an alternative conflicting rule which we judge to better maximise utility in our situation.

So, Smart seems to have missed Mill’s point when he argued that the strong rule utilitarian has no basis other than superstition for following rules, even if utility might be maximised by breaking them. He fails to consider the utility of allowing individual judgment without any guardrails of socially approved rules. Mill’s version is more flexible than standard strong rule utilitarianism, because he allows breaking rules (even if only to follow another rule).

The issue of partiality

Utilitarianism holds that we should do whatever action leads to the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. This requires impartiality; that we put aside any personal desires to do otherwise. Some worry that impartiality is incompatible with human psychology. The problem is felt most keenly when personal relationships are involved. E.g., if someone had to choose between saving their family member or five random people. The Utilitarian calculation would be that saving the multiple random people would maximise happiness. Whatever unhappiness we might feel over that would be less than the amount caused to the greater number of family relations of the random people. The issue is that it cannot be realistically expected that people will act on utilitarian lines in such cases. The reality of human psychology regarding family or friend relationships is that we do prioritise them over others. A normative theory has to work in and with reality.

Singer’s ‘shallow pond’ paper is similarly accused of illustrating the way utilitarianism places responsibilities on people which ignores the reality of partiality. If we saw someone drowning and had to ruin our £80 clothes to save them, most people say they would. Yet, most people fail to give that amount to charity even though it also could save a life. Singer says this is a moral inconsistency. He concludes we ought to prevent bad things, unless it requires sacrificing something of comparable moral importance.

The implications seem to place life-altering requirements on everyone. We should give our money/resources away until we reach the point of marginal utility, where it would cause us more suffering to give than we would alleviate from others. Singer’s condition of comparable moral importance is meant to prevent this requirement from extending further. But it’s hard to see how that follows from utilitarian reasoning. No self-sacrifice should be too great, so long as it leads to a greater good. E.g., we ought to give away our organs to multiple needy people. Bernard Williams recognised this:

“the issue … can be pressed on the question of how limits are to be placed on one’s apparently boundless obligation, implied by utilitarianism, to improve the world” (Williams 1973).

Utilitarians defend their theory by arguing that impartiality is important in ethics.

Sidgwick argues that impartiality is a rational principle:

“the self-evident principle that the good of any one individual is of no more importance, from the point of view (if I may say so) of the Universe, than the good of any other … each one is morally bound to regard the good of any other individual as much as his own, except in so far as he judges it to be less, when impartially viewed, or less certainly knowable or attainable by him” (Sidgwick 1907).

Singer agrees:

“an ethical principle cannot be justified in relation to any partial or sectional group. Ethics takes a universal point of view … in making ethical judgments we go beyond our own likes and dislikes … Ethics requires us to go beyond the ‘I’ and ‘you’ to the universal law, the universalisable judgment, the standpoint of the impartial spectator or ideal observer” (Singer 1993).

Singer adds that divergent ethical theories on the importance of putting aside one’s desires and biases (E.g., Stoics, Christian golden rule and agape, Kantian deontology, Bentham, and existentialists like Sartre).

We could conclude that partiality and impartiality are both intuitive, forming an ethical tension in moral psychology. Rather than being solved, this tension may instead need to be balanced and managed. This would explain why the moral dilemmas arising from the balance between family ties and our broader social responsibilities have always been a theme in cultural awareness (E.g., ancient Greek theatre like Sophocles).

The issue of integrity

Integrity is the sense that our actions flow from our own commitments, character and virtue. Utilitarianism is criticised for its interaction with integrity. E.g., when a person’s virtuous character repels them from a typically immoral action that happens to lead to good consequences in an unusual situation. Utilitarianism seems to require us to violate our integrity. Bernard Williams argues that such cases indicate an issue:

Jim and the Indians. Williams asks us to imagine a person called Jim who finds himself in a town who are about to execute 20 Indians for protesting the government. The captain in charge says that if Jim kills one Indian himself, the rest will be freed.

Utilitarianism clearly says it’s obvious that Jim should kill the Indian, because it would maximise happiness. Williams says he doesn’t necessarily disagree with the judgment about what to do. His issue is with the way utilitarianism reaches its judgments. Specifically, with the way integrity is included in moral decision-making.

There are other cases which also illustrate the issue with excluding integrity:

The burning building. Imagine you could save a baby or an expensive painting from a burning building. A utilitarian would say you should save the painting, as you could sell it for enough money to give to charity and save one hundred babies. Giles Fraser argues this illustrates how consequentialism encourages people to act like a “heartless bastard” (Fraser 2015).

The trolley problem is similar. Most people say they would pull the lever, killing one to save five. But we had to push the one person on the tracks to derail the cart and save the five, most people say they wouldn’t. Utilitarians would say that’s irrational, because it’s the same good outcome.

Utilitarianism implies that we should put our feelings of squeamishness aside to do what’s right for the greater good. Our negative feelings about the action do not outweigh its positive consequences. Saving multiple people and feeling terrible is better than saving one person and not feeling terrible. Such feelings are selfish and irrational as they run contrary to the greater moral good.

Williams’ issue is that this treats integrity and its moral feelings as mere data points in the utility calculus. Merely negative mental states, to be ignored if we calculate them outweighed by the good our action would do.

Williams objects that this misunderstands the role of integrity in ethics. Our character and moral feelings are a means by which we morally relate to and navigate the world. Alienation is when we experience a part of ourselves as not part of us, often due to being pressured into a form of life that constrains or distorts our authentic selves. Viewing our ethical discomforts as data points alongside the other pleasures and pains caused by our actions is alienating. Viewing our moral feelings as irrational further intensifies alienation.

Our habitual moral behaviours orient our moral feelings within a certain form of social life. There will be extreme cases when acting against them, or even a re-orientation, is required. A virtuous person would accept and feel the horror of such actions. They should be undertaken with a solemn and weighty conscience. That would preserve integrity and avoid utilitarianism’s morally disordering alienation.

“The reason why the squeamishness appeal can be very unsettling, and one can be unnerved by the suggestion of self-indulgence in going against utilitarian considerations, is not that we are utilitarians who are uncertain what utilitarian value to attach to our moral feelings, but that we are partially at least not utilitarians, and cannot regard our moral feelings merely as objects of utilitarian value. Because our moral relation to the world is partly given by such feelings, and by a sense of what we can or cannot ‘live with’, to come to regard those feelings from a purely utilitarian point of view, that is to say, as happenings outside one’s moral self, is to lose a sense of one’s moral identity; to lose, in the most literal way, one’s integrity. At this point utilitarianism alienates one from one’s moral feelings” (Williams 1973).

Williams thinks that even though Jim killing the innocent person might be right, utilitarianism is wrong for encouraging the disregard of ethical discomfort as merely an icky and irrational feeling.

This draws on the Aristotelian view of our moral emotions as components of virtue. Virtue requires that our emotions align with our rational appreciation of what is morally right. Utilitarianism calls virtuous emotional habits irrational. That is disordering.

Defence of utilitarianism: perhaps our moral psychology is what needs to change

Williams is right that integrity is how we navigate our ethical lives. He thinks utilitarianism clashes with our moral psychology. However, sometimes integrity actually is wrong, or at least maladaptive. A person’s integrity is adapted to a particular form of life. It might be an immoral or insufficiently moral life. The integrity of people which has adapted to life in stable countries may not be adaptive in extreme cases. Utilitarianism offers a framework to judge when our moral feelings are adaptive.

Our moral feelings are conditioned by the associations created for them in ordinary moral decision-making. They are helpful for developing the habit of acting rightly in typical life situations. Disgust over killing innocents is beneficial there. When people are thrust into extreme life-or-death situations, they often find that their typical emotional habits are out of their depth. That doesn’t judge integrity as an irrational data point. It judges it as an ordinarily useful habit, which needs assistance from the principle of utility in such cases. That seems less alienating.

Further reading and media links

 

Videos

 

Books

 

Webpages

Reference list

Bentham, Jeremy. 1789. An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation. London: T. Payne.

Bentham, Jeremy. 1840. Theory of Legislation. Translated by Richard Hildreth. Originally published in French as Théorie Législative, 1802. Boston: Weeks, Jordan & Co.

Mill, John Stuart. 1859. On Liberty. London: John W. Parker and Son.

Mill, John Stuart. 1838. “Bentham” in London and Westminster Review 30, no. 59 (August 1838): 467–506.

Mill, John Stuart. 1863. Utilitarianism. London: Parker, Son, and Bourn.

Sidgwick, Henry. 1907. The Methods of Ethics. 7th ed. London: Macmillan.

Smart, J. J. C. 1956. “Extreme and Restricted Utilitarianism.” The Philosophical Quarterly 6 (25): 344–354.

Williams, Bernard. 1973. “A Critique of Utilitarianism.” In Utilitarianism: For and Against, by J. J. C. Smart and Bernard Williams, 75–150. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Singer, Peter. 1993. Practical Ethics. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Crisp, Roger. 1997. Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Mill on Utilitarianism. London and New York: Routledge.

Philosophy overdose. “A Controversial Philosopher: Peter Singer”. Clips from a 2002 documentary. YouTube video, uploaded in 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VX3bgJFSvjY

Intelligence Squared. 2015. William MacAskill & Giles Fraser in “Effective Altruism: A Better Way to Lead an Ethical Life.” YouTube video, uploaded in 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qslo4-DpzPs.

Crimmins, James E., “Jeremy Bentham”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2024 Edition), Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman (eds.), URL = https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2024/entries/bentham