U is for Utilitarianism

One of the more extraordinary proposals to be aired as the coronavirus pandemic developed was that we should develop ‘herd immunity’.  You might be mistaken into believing this is something to do with protecting cows or sheep, but no, the approach was for the human herd.

Herd immunity is a concept used by epidemiologists to describe the situation where a population is sufficiently resistant to a disease that infection is unlikely to spread.  This is the result of so many people having acquired immunity, either through vaccination or natural antibodies, that any others are protected.  The key word in this is ‘vaccination’.  For example, mumps is a very infectious and unpleasant disease and can cause complications for an unlucky few, but it’s vaccine-preventable, and the disease is incredibly rare in the modern age.  Without getting too technical, the rate of infection from mumps is such that you need 92 percent of the population to be immune for the disease to end the risk, a ‘herd immunity’ threshold that has been reached by universal mumps vaccinations.  For coronavirus, we would need at least a 70% immunity rate to establish herd immunity, or, as we don’t have a vaccine, 250m in the US having been infected.  Achieving this would probably see some 3m people dying (some put the figure much higher).

Obviously, you would only plan for herd immunity when a vaccine has been developed, and not one second earlier, because it would be essential to safely stop an epidemic growing. [i]  Herd immunity without a vaccine is surely inconceivable.  If you want to be convinced, even Donald Trump says so:  “It would have been very catastrophic I think if that would have happened.”  He was commenting on the UK government’s original coronavirus strategy plan, which involved allowing the virus to spread in order to achieve antibody resistance to the virus in the population, an approach which would have caused millions of deaths if it had been adopted by the UK. [ii]

Population immunity against infectious diseases is one example of utilitarianism in practice. [iii]  Utilitarianism is a moral and/or practical approach, where the right action to pursue is the one which produces the most good, happiness or ‘utility’.  Doing what is good is to be understood entirely in terms of  the consequences it produces.  This leads to the view you should seek to maximize overall happiness by increasing benefits for others, not just yourself, to bring about ‘the greatest amount of good for the greatest number’.  Utilitarianism is both impartial and neutral:  everyone’s happiness counts the same. In other words, when we maximise ‘the good’, it is the good impartially judged; my happiness counts for no more than anyone else’s. Further, the reason I have to promote the overall good is the same reason anybody else has to:  it is not specific to me.  As we know, this is a far from uncontroversial approach, rubbing up against the claims of anti-vaxxers on the one hand, and super-rich doom-preppers on the other.

The concept of utilitarianism was developed back in the late 18th/early 19th Century.  Its main architects, Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, were concerned with legal and social reform.  Although they differed in some important ways, both wanted to see useless or corrupt laws and social practices changed.  In particular, Bentham considered some laws were bad because of their lack of utility, their tendency to lead to unhappiness and misery without any compensating happiness.   What distinguishes his ‘classical’ approach to utilitarianism is that Bentham viewed the moral quality of an action to be determined instrumentally. He believed actions shouldn’t be based on the view they were intrinsically wrong; rather actions were seen to be wrong by their effects, they were practically wrong. This contradicts the common view that some actions are wrong by their nature, regardless of their consequences.  Before his time, some behaviour was seen as intrinsically wrong or ‘unnatural’, some sexual practices for example, but Bentham dismissed this as a legitimate criterion. Others might be seen as wrong because they violated liberty, or autonomy.  Bentham viewed the value of these, too, only on instrumental grounds, not on an intrinsic moral basis.  Bentham was at an extreme.  His approach was far removed from other approaches, like Kant’s for example, which rested on fundamental principles, or from appeals to natural law.  For Bentham, it was happiness, measured by the calculation of outcomes.

The other great advocate of what we now call ‘classical utilitarianism’ was John Stuart Mill.  Mill was a follower of Bentham, and for most of the time he clearly admired Bentham’s work. However, he disagreed with some of Bentham’s claims, particularly on the nature of ‘utility’. Because Bentham had claimed  there were no qualitative differences between pleasures, only quantitative ones, his views led to some odd outcomes.  In his eyes, enjoying a glass beer in front of the television is comparable to solving a scientific problem, reading Shakespeare, or listening to Beethoven’s late string quartets.  Well, possibly, but it suggests human pleasures are of no more value than animal pleasures and, by implication, the moral status of animals, as conscious beings, is the same as for humans. Harming a dog and harming a person are both bad, but most view harming a person as worse, (although today some, like Peter Singer, might disagree).

Mill considered these consequences as unacceptable.  As he saw it, intellectual pleasures are of a higher, better sort than the ones that are merely sensual, the ones we share with animals.  Given this, Mill wanted to square his views with being a utilitarian.  He argued people who have experienced both intellectual and sensual pleasures view the former as better than the latter. To use his most famous example, it is better to be Socrates ‘dissatisfied’ than a fool ‘satisfied’.  In identifying ‘higher goods’, Mill had fundamentally modified the logic of utilitarianism.

Indeed, if Bentham was a purist in his approach, Mill also accepted much more than ‘happiness’ into assessing utility.  He placed weight on the effectiveness of internal sanctions, emotions like guilt and remorse which serve to regulate our actions.  This is an off-shoot of Mill’s particular view of human nature.  Human beings have social feelings, feelings for others, not just for themselves. We care about other people, and when we see them being harmed, this causes pain for us, too.  Further, when we are the source of that harmful action, the negative emotions aroused are centered on ourselves, feeling guilt for what we have done, distinct from the moral censure we apply to others’ actions.  Like external forms of punishment, these internal sanctions are important in shaping how we act.  Mill also believed a sense of justice, human psychology and conscience all underwrite motivation.  He argued a sense of justice, for example, results from very natural impulses.  Part of this involves a desire to punish those who have harmed others, and this desire in turn “…is a spontaneous outgrowth from two sentiments, both in the highest degree natural … the impulse of self-defense, and the feeling of sympathy.” [iv]

Like Bentham, Mill considered utilitarianism to provide the basis for law and social policy.  The aim of increasing happiness justified his arguments for women’s suffrage and free speech.  In his view, we can be said to have certain rights, but these rights are underwritten by utility.  The corollary was true too: if  a purported right or duty is harmful, then it is not genuine.  One of Mills most famous arguments to this effect can be found in his writing on women’s suffrage when he discusses marriage, noting that the ideal exists between individuals of “cultivated faculties” who influence each other equally.  Improving the social status of women was important because they were capable of these cultivated faculties, and denying them access to education and other opportunities for development would be forgoing a significant source of happiness.  He viewed men who would deny women the opportunity for education, self-improvement, and political expression as doing so out of ‘base motives’. [v]  Quite right, too.

However, by adding to Bentham’s instrumental utilitarianism, Mill also destroyed its clarity.  The right thing to do was no longer measured in assessing the practical consequences of actions, but was extended to their moral assessment, thus enlarging the precept to embrace ‘virtue’.  Mill argued that virtue is not only to be assessed by instrumental outcomes, but to live a virtuous life is also part of the good life. A person without virtue is morally lacking, unable to promote the good.  This formulation was important for Mill.  If Bentham’s model was accepted, it implied we had a ‘duty’ to pursue the greater good, and that would justify social and government action to ensure this, precisely what Mill was opposed to in his writing on liberty.  However, virtuous actions are those which it is “for the general interest that they remain free.” [vi]  His emphasis on freedom for the individual to choose the good thing to do undermined Bentham’s practical utilitarianism, leaving choice to personal preference, however well justified on moral grounds.  Bentham’s approach was much clearer, but for most of us, Mill’s is rather more acceptable!

Utilitarianism is one of the major solutions to the age old problem of justice: what is the right thing to do?  In pursuing virtue, Mill was shifting attention away from outcomes to underlying moral principles.  In the same way, Kant had argued for categorical imperatives, principles that are intrinsically valid, that are good in and of themselves, and are to be obeyed in all situations and circumstances if we are to observe the moral law.  These principles can only be based on something that is an “end in itself”, and have to be universal.  What is right to do is to follow these principles, without exception.  As later writers have pointed out, that’s not as easy as it sounds.  The familiar example is the principle ‘never lie’, and the challenge of keeping to this rule for those hiding Jewish people from the Gestapo during the Second World War.

In more recent times, Rawls argued for justice as equality, an approach which leads to policies such as affirmative action; libertarians go in the opposite direction, seeking to remove any form of coercion.  There also some, like Judith Shklar, who have suggested we should go down yet a third path, choosing our actions on the basis of not causing harm.

If we step away from philosophical debates, it is clear actions for ‘the greater good’ are central to individual behaviour and social practices today.  At one extreme, we can look at the conduct of war.  Volunteering in the two World Wars, later superseded by conscription, saw millions of young people sacrificed for the sake of the country.  Mill would have argued they died to ensure liberty, democracy, and freedom from fear; Bentham that they were dying to save the lives of others. Similarly, even if they might have disagreed on the exact reasons, they would have agreed we expect firefighters and the police to take risks for our benefit .  The idea of the greater good is implicitly understood in our appreciation of what people like these do.

In the case of soldiers, firefighters or police, it tends to be younger adults who are acting for the common good.  But it can the other way around.  Older people want the young to survive.  For example, in her novels Martha Grimes’ Superintendent Richard Jury from Scotland Yard is a rather lonely figure, close to depressed much of the time.  However, he is galvanised when a young person is under threat or murdered.  They have their lives ahead of them.  You know that, if it came to the pinch, he would sacrifice himself for a youngster, a straightforward ‘greater good’ perspective, an example of how older people offer to sacrifice themselves for the young.

This takes us right back to Covid-19.  Back in late March, Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick (a Republican) argued  that the elderly ought to be willing to die from COVID-19 for the sake of the economy. During an interview with Fox News host Tucker Carlson, Patrick argued that social distancing measures against the coronavirus should be lifted to let Americans go back to work, even if this led to increased numbers of older people becoming infected with the illness.  “Those of us who are 70+, we’ll take care of ourselves but don’t sacrifice the country,” Patrick said. “Don’t do that.  Don’t ruin this great American Dream.”  The lieutenant governor asserted that grandparents have a “choice” to make in the face of “total collapse” in the economy.  “We all want to live.  We all want to live with our grandchildren as long as we can,” he said. “But the point is our biggest gift we give to our country and our children and our grandchildren is the legacy of our country, and right now, that is at risk.” [vii]  Patrick’s comments came as other Republicans, including President Donald Trump, were pushing for an end of social distancing in order to rescue the ‘sinking economy’, even as the coronavirus continued to roil the country.

He was ridiculed, but surely this was a utilitarian approach.  I wasn’t surprised by the criticism he received, but suppose he had argued, in the face of increasing pressure on ICU places and ventilators, older people should refuse ventilator support for the sake of younger patients?  This was a real issue, and will be in the future.  In fact, rationing of care is an ever-present dilemma.  We appear to prefer seeing it swept under the carpet, knowing, guiltily, that doctors are being forced to make decisions like these.  Should determining the greater good be left to pressured medical practitioners alone?  Would it not be better to allow older sick people to make that decision themselves?  If Bentham was with us, he would have no doubt: when hospitals are overwhelmed, push the oldest out of the ICU beds first: utilitarianism before rights.  Mill would want people to have the freedom to choose: sadly, that ‘liberty’ could well mean the rich would continue to demand every kind of life prolonging care at the expense of younger, less ill patients.  Neither would be happy to see the principles at stake hidden behind closed bedside curtains.

We live in a world dominated by utilitarian practice, albeit in a rather modern, twisted variant.  Actions are taken for the greater good, but not necessarily the greater good of the majority.  It is often affluent minorities happiness pursued at the expense of poor majorities; affluent nations enjoying life at the expense of huge poor third world countries.  Hang on: I think I may have got my words mixed up.  I am describing exploitation, not utilitarianism.

[i] For more see: https://www.sciencealert.com/why-herd-immunity-will-not-save-us-from-the-covid-19-pandemic

[ii] https://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-uk-herd-immunity-coronavirus-catastrophic-boris-johnson-covid-2020-4-1

[iii] A good summary of utilitarianism can be found in https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/utilitarianism-history/

[iv] Ibid

[v] Ibid.  Also J S Mill, The Subjection of Women, Longman, Green Reader and Dyer, 1869; republished many times

[vi] Utilitarianism, Parker, Son and Bourn, 1863; see also Part d, iii in https://www.iep.utm.edu/milljs/#SSH2d.ii

[vii] https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/texas-dan-patrick-grandparents-sacrifice-lives-coronavirus-economy

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