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Mill's Utilitarianism: Sacrifice the innocent for the common good?

When faced with a moral dilemma, utilitarianism identifies theappropriate considerations, but offers no realistic way to gather thenecessary information to make the required calculations. This lack of

information is a problem both in evaluating the welfare issues and inevaluating the consequentialist issues which utilitarianism requires beweighed when making moral decisions. Utilitarianism attempts to solveboth of these difficulties by appealing to experience; however, nomethod of reconciling an individual decision with the rules ofexperience is suggested, and no relative weights are assigned to thevarious considerations.

In deciding whether or not to torture a terrorist who has planted abomb in New York City, a utilitarian must evaluate both the overallwelfare of the people involved or effected by the action taken, and theconsequences of the action taken. To calculate the welfare of the peopleinvolved in or effected by an action, utilitarianism requires that all

individuals be considered equally.Quantitative utilitarians would weigh the pleasure and pain which wouldbe caused by the bomb exploding against the pleasure and pain that wouldbe caused by torturing the terrorist. Then, the amounts would be summedand compared. The problem with this method is that it is impossible toknow beforehand how much pain would be caused by the bomb exploding orhow much pain would be caused by the torture. Utilitarianism offers nopractical way to make the interpersonal comparison of utility necessaryto compare the pains. In the case of the bomb exploding, it at leastseems highly probable that a greater amount of pain would be caused, atleast in the present, by the bomb exploding. This probability sufficesfor a quantitative utilitarian, but it does not account for theconsequences, which create an entirely different problem, which will be

discussed below. The probability also does not hold for Mill'sutilitarianism.

Mill's Utilitarianism insists on qualitative utilitarianism, whichrequires that one consider not only the amount of pain or pleasure, butalso the quality of such pain and pleasure. Mill suggests that todistinguish between different pains and pleasures we should ask peoplewho have experienced both types which is more pleasurable or morepainful. This solution does not work for the question of torturecompared to death in an explosion. There is no one who has experiencedboth, therefore, there is no one who can be consulted.

Even if we agree that the pain caused by the number of deaths in theexplosion is greater than the pain of the terrorist being tortured, this

assessment only accounts for the welfare half of the utilitarian'sconsiderations. Furthermore, one has no way to measure how much morepain is caused by allowing the bomb to explode than by torturing theterrorist.

After settling the issues surrounding the welfare, a utilitarian mustalso consider the consequences of an action. In weighing theconsequences, there are two important considerations. The first, whichis especially important to objectivist Utilitarianism, is which peoplewill be killed. The second is the precedent which will be set by theaction. Unfortunately for the decision maker, the information necessaryto make either of these calculations is unavailable.

There is no way to determine which people will be killed and weighwhether their deaths would be good for society. Utilitarianism requires

that one compare the good that the people would do for society with theharm they would do society if they were not killed. For example, if ayoung Adolf Hitler were in the building, it might do more good for

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society to allow the building to explode. Unfortunately for anindividual attempting to use utilitarianism to make for decisions, thereis no way to know beforehand what a person will do. Furthermore, withouteven knowing which building the bomb is in, there is no way to predictwhich people will surely be in the building.

A subjectivist utilitarian would dismiss this consideration and wouldexamine only what a rational person would consider to be the

consequence; however, even the subjectivist utilitarian must face thequestion of precedent setting. Utilitarianism considers justice andhumane treatment to be good for society as a whole and thereforeinstrumentally good as a means to promoting happiness.

Utilitarianism considers precedent to be important, but does not offerany method of determining exceptions. It is impossible to determine howmuch effect on precedent any given isolated action will have. In thecase of determining whether or not to torture the terrorist, one mustconsider whether it is good for society to allow torture to be used as amethod of gaining information. If it is bad, one must determine whetherthis action will create a precedent. If it will create or contribute tothe creation of a precedent, one must compare the detrimental effects of

this precedent with the other consequences and welfare caused by theaction. Utilitarianism offers no method for comparison.The problem is that a person faced with making the decision cannot get

the information. Even through experience, it is hard to judge how mucheffect each action has on precedent. More specifically, it is hard todetermine whether an action is worthy of being an exception to a rule.Utilitarianism offers no resolution to this problem.

Utilitarianism also considers the Theory of Desert to be instrumentallyvaluable to the promotion of happiness. It is generally good for societyto reward people for doing right and to punish them for doing wrong.Using this belief in the value of justice, a utilitarian would have moretrouble torturing the child of the terrorist than with torturing theterrorist. The dilemma would be similar to that of precedent. A

utilitarian would ask how much it will harm society's faith in thepunishment of evildoers and the protection of the innocent to torturethe child.

The sum of the consequences would then be compared to the sum of thewelfare considerations to decides whether or not to torture theterrorist and whether or not to torture the child of the terrorist. Insome way, these things must therefore all be comparable and assignedweights; however, Utilitarianism offers no method of comparison. Theremust be some percentage of consideration given to the harmful precedentset compared to the amount of pain caused by the deaths, compared to thepain the terrorist or the child being tortured feels, compared to theharm society will be saved from by the deaths of people in theexplosion, compared to the good that society will be deprived of by thedeaths in the explosion.

The overarching problem with utilitarianism as a method for decisionmaking is that not enough of the necessary information is available andthere is no scale on which to weigh the various considerations.Basically, the subjective utilitarian would probably consider that thedeaths of many is worse than the torture of one. Depending on how muchweight is given to the detrimental effects of the precedent which wouldbe set by torturing the terrorist, the utilitarian could consider thisto outweigh the greater pain caused by the explosion or not. Differentpeople have different moral consciences, which dictate differentactions. These differences will dictate where the person puts the mostweight in the utilitarian considerations, since utilitarianism does not

specify. Similarly, depending on how much weight is given to thedetrimental precedent of torturing innocent children, the utilitariancould consider it to outweigh the pain caused by the explosion or not.

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In the end, utilitarianism does not help in making the moral decision.The information necessary to calculate all of the considerationsidentified by utilitarianism is not available. Furthermore, what isrequired is a method of comparing and weighing the considerations, andthis method is not defined by utilitarianism. In the end, the decisionmaker is still left to make the decision based on internal moralfeelings of what is right and what is wrong which do not come from

utilitarianism.