One enduring criticism of utilitarianism has always been that, as it rests upon precise calculations of utility, it is unworkable. This chapter explores this objection, with a focus on the following questions. How does utilitarianism deal with uncertainty? Can utility be measured? Does utilitarianism presuppose that utility can be measured? If utility cannot be precisely measured, what guidance can utilitarianism offer?
The practical objection to utilitarianism is straightforward.
Utilitarianism tells us to maximize human happiness.
Therefore, if we do not know what would maximize human happiness, then we cannot know what utilitarianism tells us to do.
But we have no idea how to maximize human happiness.
Therefore, we have no idea what utilitarianism tells us to do.
We explore various utilitarian responses to this objection, and its impact on the shape of utilitarianism. Two kinds of uncertainty plague utilitarianism, as we do not know what will happen (practical uncertainty), and we do not know how to evaluate what will happen (uncertainty about values). We begin with practical uncertainty.
Actualism versus probabilism
Two buttons
The evil genius has locked you in a room with two buttons (X and Y). To escape you must push one of the buttons. Your innocent friend Bertold is strapped to an electric chair in another room. Independently, a computer generates a random number from 1 to 100. If you press button X and the number is 100, then Bertold is electrocuted.[…]
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.