An action is right from the ethical point of

view if and only if the sum total of utilities

produced by the act is greater than the sum
total of utilities produced by any other act
the agent could have performed in its place.
- Jeremy Bentham (1748 1832)

It advocates maximizing utility

It matches well with moral evaluation of
public policies
Appears intuitive to many people
It helps explain why some actions are
generally wrong and others are generally
right.
It has influenced economics.
This philosophy has measurement problems

Though utilitarian ideally requires accurate

quantifiable measurements of costs and
benefits, it can be relaxed when such
measurements are impossible.

How can the utilities different actions have for different

people be measured and compared as utilitarianism
requires?
Some benefits and costs seem intractable to measurement
Because many of the benefits and costs of an action
cannot be reliably predicted, they also cannot be
predictably measured.
It is unclear exactly what is to count as benefit and what is
to count as cost
The utilitarian assumption that all goods are measurable
implies that all goods can be traded for equivalent of each
other. This is questionable for there are noneconomic
goods too.

Although utilitarianism requires accurate quantitative

measurements of costs and benefits, this requirement can
be relaxed when such measurements are impossible.
Common-sense criterion can be used to evaluate the costs
and benefits w.r.t. needs and wants
Where market prices are incapable of providing
quantitative data for comparing costs and benefits, other
sorts of quantitive measures are available.

Two Moral Issues

Those relating to rights and
Those relating to justice
Utilitarianism implies that certain actions are
morally right when in fact they are unjust or
violate peoples right.

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