Individuals in Utilitarianism

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

Recently I have been studying various moral theories and from discussing them the following question remains unanswered to me.

Please correct me if you think I’m wrong or add if you think something is missing.

I’ve heard that a common complaint against utilitarianism is that it doesn’t take into account individual human beings.
Though I don’t really understand what is meant by this.

Do most people mean that in utilitarianism an action can be morally good when it would bring about a very substantial decrease in an individual’s happiness,
as long as it would increase the cumulative happiness of society as a whole? (or whatever ‘group’ you limit the calculation to).

If this is the case (please correct me/elaborate on the above) how is this a weakness of the theory? It seems to me that if the total/cumulative happiness is increased it shouldn’t really be a problem since I don’t think there are many cases where the ultimate depletion of one’s happiness would lead to more ‘netto’ happiness.

Is this the way in which this objection is commonly made?

If I haven’t been able to bring my question across in an understandable way, my apologies, please ask if anything is unclear.

2

If you have a few people in a hospital who need organ transplants, then the utilitarian thing to do would be to kill someone and use their organs to save a bunch of people in the hospital. That is the action that would bring about the most good, at least if preserving life is considered good. But, it seems intuitively wrong, at the very least, to go around killing people and harvesting their organs.

3

If you have a few people who can donate to a whole bunch needing organs, then how would the few from the whole bunch to whom the few organs could be donated?

Public policy will require the inverse proportion, a whole bunch is needed to donate to a few. Otherwise they go on a waiting list.

Utilitarianism’ offspring is public policy, utility draws with a bold premise, it is not geared toward individuals, but society as a whole.

4

Its even better if you make it better for everyone, rather than the few or the majority.

5

The key to utilitarian harmony is in the risk agreement.