Utilitarianism
not g88d? Smart’s argument that ‘ordinary men’ are confused here because ‘rule obeying’ is a method to stability (in turn a means to all our pleasure and utility) is very compelling. Punishment for breaking such rules is necessary in non-desert island situations. One might also consider justice as a market for utility. Markets are famous for being brilliant satisfiers of desire, allocating scarce resources in an efficient way to maximize utility. 47 Mill says: ‘ [A] person is understood to deserve good if he does right, evil if he does wrong. ’ 48 Let us forget ‘deserve’ and instead see this idea of ‘reward and punishment’ as a market mechanism: a means to maxim izing utility. In rewarding and punishing, delivering justice could be an efficient method to utility maximization. Mill famously argued that respecting rights was the best means to maximizing utility. I cannot be certain, but I think it highly likely he is correct given how well regulated markets have worked. The only way to encourage people to seek utility increase and not decrease would be to uphold absolute execution of justice to ensure people knew there were no exceptions or loopholes they could exploit - as exploitation would decrease the utility from this method. 49 In order to maximize utility by this method, citizens must be free within the limits of law just as markets are free within the limits of regulation. If (P1) this method of maximizing utility is the most efficient and (P2) the only utilitarian action is the maximizing action, i.e. the most efficient action with minimal utility loss, then (C1) the freedom and the justice would be utilitarian. But equally, if the justice market is not the best way to maximize utility, I can still claim (with a high degree of probability) that some degree of justice is necessary in the name of order and satisfying the desires of our utility. Even with any amount of justice, there requires freedom. So freedom is still necessary to utilitarianism. 50 Freedom could also be seen as an end-desire. Most people prefer to make a mistake as a result of their own decision rather than do a beneficial action which was dictated by an authority and so not the result of free will. But the desire for independence varies person to person. We can also desire not to have freedom, for example my desire to be fit may be unachievable if I am always irrationally (emotionally) led to stay in bed instead of working out; so I may ask someone to restrict my liberty when I am not rationally minded and force me to go. 51 In this sense we can resind our liberty with consent. A response to Mill when he proposed rights as a means to utilitarianism was that this was respecting rights for the wrong reason. This is a weak response because it relies on the circularity of assuming what is right and wrong before defining right and wrong. This argument also rests on intuition, which I give little credit to since morality as a form of opinion is useless to us. Anyone who claims something is wrong in itself is expressing a circular opinion (as earlier explained.) If you were making this
47 This is an oversimplification, but roughly speaking, regardless of your opinion on markets, we can view them as a means to an end of maximizing some thing, which may not exactly align with utility but to some extent is very similar. 48 Mill 1863: 44. 49 Justice often refers to punishment of wrongdoing rather than reward of g88d actions, this may be due to impracticalities, but we could (at least in Britain) consider MBEs and Knighthoods as a form of rewarding justice. 50 Not full freedom - freedomwithin limits. Freedom that may still be curtailed by the parental state in the name
of your own interest or merely in the name of society’s interest. 51 Blackmail websites to help people go to the gym really do exist.
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