After reading Mill's description of utilitarian justice, I was struck with a number of questions pertaining to the practice of this sort of justice. If the goal of utilitarian justice is to maximize happiness/minimize pain in the most people, does this take precedence over personal freedom? People frequently make decisions based on convenience or short term gains without regard for a greater loss they will incur later. Should these sorts of decisions be regulated through legislation? For example, it is convenient (arguably) for our country to use fossil fuels as our primary source of energy, and it would certainly inconvenience millions of people to ban the use of fossil fuels. Nevertheless, the collective profit from ending our dependence on fossil fuels far outweighs the short term inconvenience. Is it the government's role to legislate in cases where the average citizen persists in acting to the detriment of him or herself and the rest of the community? I think that because people are not always capable of choosing what is best for themselves, justice may often be at odds with personal freedoms.
If there existed some computer that was capable of performing the most complex calculations in order to determine every action for everyone's life in order to maximize the happiness of those people, would we choose to enforce the prescriptions of that calculation? Would a society really be willing to give up all personal freedom for the guarantee of maximum happiness? For the sake of argument say that this computer managed to arrange society such that the standard deviation of happiness is also low, that is, there's near total equality between everyone so that the average is descriptive of every individual as well. Would anyone really want to live according to this computer's deductions? My thought is no, because people generally require contrast to appreciate things, that is, people would quickly become bored and choose a life of uncertainty that includes pain and suffering simply because it would accentuate their perception of pleasure and happiness.
I think that in this situation it is important to look at the happiness that freedom itself develops. Although there are benefits to society for people to always act in the best way for that society, people being to act freely according to their own will creates a greater good in society. When people are able to act freely a greater level of happiness is created than just when people are forced to act in the most utile manner. By disregarding freedom and only looking at other developers of happiness, we create a society of slaves. People who are only allowed to act as they are directed to the betterment of the society as whole. Now is a society like this really more utile? I would say no. Without the freedom to make one's own choices, a person can never truly achieve happiness. Without freedom every action is empty motion, meaningless. What allows a person to ultimately be happy is to be free to act however they choose.
ReplyDeleteAlex,
ReplyDeleteI have mulled over the questions you proposed in several of my classes. One example that is frequently cited when weighing the benefits of utilitarian justice over personal freedom is the recent legislation in New York banning large, sugary sodas, trans fat and the like. While the benefits (pleasures) of a government deciding what is best for you might pay off in the long run for the greatest number of people, this seems to tread on dangerous territory in terms of restricting personal freedom, as you suggest. In the case of the sugary sodas, who is to say that the repeated short term pleasures that result from consuming a large, fructose-corn-syrup-laden beverage do not outweigh the potential health benefits that will result far down the line?
Mill attempts to weight various pleasures as more or less significant, and in this type of scenario, I think he would say that it is worth promoting the greater, higher pleasure of health over the pleasure of personal freedom to choose unhealthy sodas. His philosophy seems to be geared towards promoting a higher, self-actualization over the enjoyment of lower, baser pleasures, even if that means giving up a degree of personal freedom.
One of the questions that I often thought about when reading Mill was the contrast between temporary happiness and long-term happiness. I think when Mill talks about the greatest happiness principle he is thinking about happiness more in the long run rather than simple pleasures as he distinguishes that some pleasures are greater than others. Some of these high pleasures would correspond to human rights, for example, the right to choose. Alex asks if it is the government's role to legislate in cases where the average citizen persists in acting to the detriment of him or herself and the rest of the community? I think that Mill would say yes, if it promoted the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest amount of people without being too restrictive on freedom. In the case of the sodas, I would say that he would leave the freedom of choice open to the people but mandate warning labels to inform the people about the choices they would be making.
ReplyDeleteI think that a computer which chose what the "best" levels of happiness could hypothetically make an ideal society the happiest for the most amount of people, but I agree with you Alex that people wouldn't be content with that. People would be much more happy with the knowledge, whether true or not, that they have a certain level of their own freedom, which no one else has any say about, instead of being told what the best things are. If this computer system were established, the best thing would be to tell no one about it, and simply find a way to "enforce" it's findings on the population while still allowing the individuals to maintain the idea of freedom. It's a very big brother like concept, that hopefully never comes to light in the real world.
ReplyDeleteI do not see any evidence to lead me to believe freedom and maximizing pleasure are mutually exclusive. You're right people are not able to choose what is best for themselves a lot of the time, but that still does not necessarily mean a governing body should choose for them, because the governing body is made up of people also. Thus, you're reducing pleasure by eliminating one's capacity to choose for themselves and to be autonomous. Making these judgments and decisions is what makes life pleasurable I would argue. I think your idea is really creative, but I think this scenario is making the assumption that if you have pleasure then your freedom is eliminated and vice versa which I would not think would be the case.
ReplyDeleteAlso you would have to insert information into this computer to weigh the outcomes etc, and would have to quantify it. Our ability to make judgments based on complex and dynamic scenarios at a high speed, is what makes our brains human, we dont just make decisions based on numeric value and binary code. We make judgments based on adaptation, experience, feeling, memory, learning, intuition etc. This is why we are human and not computers. Also there would be no way we could use a computer to make a decision in a few seconds which is how long it takes us to decide e.g kill the invader in your house. You react in a spontaneous and reflexive manner in that situation, in order to protect your self and survive the situation. There is a reason why we have evolved organically and developed brains like we have and we are not just inorganic numerically processing robots.