Report

Other types
Karl poppers Negative Utilitarianism
Average Utilitarianism
Sentient Utilitarianism
Motive Utilitarianism
Criticisms of Utilitarianism

Of course, as with everything there are many criticisms of utilitarianism. The following are
common criticisms (1) and their counter arguments (2).

Many people find it difficult to believe that you can quantify happiness and even more difficult to
believe you can compare different people's levels of happiness.
The counter argument to this is that we make rough estimates in real life that work out for us -
we know when someone is behaving more sad than someone else or are behaving happier than
others.
Some forms of utilitarians consider the pleasure of a sadist is equal to the pleasure of an
altruist.
Sadism results in short term pleasure but in the long run also results in long term suffering and
pain, and therefore allowing any kind of sadistic pleasure will actually result in less pleasure in
the future. Altruistic actions on the other hand result in long and short term pleasure and
satisfaction and so must be given more weight than sadistic actions.
Additionally, a lot of effort is needed to reach some conclusions using utilitarianism. The time,
money and effort could have been spent better somewhere else.
The counter argument here would be that decisions that need a lot of thought to ensure that the
right choice is made will naturally cost a lot of time and money because of the nature of its
importance. To make an uneducated guess at the answer could result devastating
consequences for millions if not billions of people.
Some people disagree with the idea that utilitarianism does not consider the motive of actions
(except for motive utilitarianism) and only consider the consequences. If somebody tries to do a
bad thing on purpose but accidentally causes good, utilitarians would look upon the result as
equal to a result that would have been caused by good intentions.
An argument back to this is that as long as the person who is known to have had bad intentions
is dealt with appropriately, the consequence for the world remains useful - regardless of how it
happened. It can be looked upon as mere serendipity - what difference does it actually make to
anyone how something good happened? The only pleasure taken away is that there is no
knowledge that someone tried to make the good thing happen to someone else which would
have caused pleasure in seeing the kindness of another human being. Though this does not
apply to all situations (people might not know that it was a person who caused the good thing to
happen).
Some people do not agree with the idea that causing happiness is the right thing to do and
claim that there is no basis for stating that this is the case.
Utilitarians would argue that happiness is what we naturally seek and it is what drives us to act -
therefore it makes logical sense to attempt to maximise this for everyone. In addition, there are
not many people who, given the opportunity, would deny happiness (since denying that
happiness and getting what they want would give them happiness from the satisfaction of
getting what they want). In short, we cannot escape wanting happiness because our very
physiognomy is built on the principle that 'if it will cause happiness either mentally or physically,
you should do it'.
Some say that although happiness is important, there are other things that we should consider
when making decisions such as equality and justice.
Utilitarians may argue that the main purpose of striving for any other consequences like equality
and justice would essentially be to maximise happiness, since most people feel happy when
they feel that they are equal and know that justice is present in their lives.