Are Utilitarians able to take into account Rights

When you contrast this with Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill’s Consequentialist principle of an act being right and permitted as long as it maximises the good; the lack of compatibility between the two becomes more apparent. Consequentialism is the view that whatever values an individual agent adopts, the proper response, the appropriate response is to promote them. The actor should honour the values only so far as doing so is part of promoting them or is necessary in order to promote them. The problem as has already been pointed out, is that the above two principles do not match. Deontology compared to consequentialism is too restrictive because consequentialism is based on pursuit of happiness or utility for its own sake. Deontology places too many sanctions on action for it to hold intrinsic value. To illustrate this, if I needed to lie about some kind of secret for because it would mean a great deal of suffering for another if I did not keep this, even if the information masked by the lie was not sworded or illicit, then deontology would forbid even this. Consequentialism on the other hand may be interpreted as being a little too liberal in its potential because according to Pettit there is no clear definition of what values to honour. So a person can potentially decide that mass slaughter is on the utility agenda, promote it, and then widespread promotion of slaughter, purely for the sake of promoting it may come about.

With the definition of utilitarianism and rights made apparent, and how consequentialism and deontology contrast with each other, attention must be turned to the question of whether utilitarians are able to take into account rights.

Lyons  points out that utilitarians will consider the existence of certain legal rights, (like the right not to have your parking space occupied by someone else illegally) as desirable so long as they maximise utility. But what if there is more utility in someone else taking the parking space in an emergency (an ambulance needs it perhaps). An act-utilitarian would recognise that the consequences of parking illegally would mean inconvenience to owner of the parking space but an increased chance of getting to a potential patient quickly without inconvenience. The right our parking space owner has to not have his space used without consent or warning of any kind seems to be non-existent particularly when there is more a more pressing issue. This seems to coincide well with Bentham’s idea that any action that detracts from happiness is bad and ought not to be done; however, any action that adds to it is right or permitted but is not some thing that ought to be done. So as long as it is the lesser of the two evils (so-to-speak) then it is fine for the parking space owner to at least temporarily forfeit his right to have an unobstructed space.

Support for this comes from Professor Hare (pg 207) who claims that the rational act is normally on the agent’s evidence, the right act. If a person truly wants more utility-maximising acts; the strictly right acts require some kind of moral education behind them to instil some moral principles behind certain actions. He continues by stating that utilitarian principles would turn out to be defective somewhere along the line because the principles in order to survive in some way must be made as generic as possible to apply to a broad range of circumstances and also to be simple to learn.

This still does not solve the problem of the essay question. All we have learned so far is that utilitarianism in the above circumstances doesn’t say much about the reliability of having rights under their principles. The parking space owner is a means to an end so that someone else can benefit. So even though each person’s preference counts for one and only one in utilitarianism, the needs of the paramedics (and I’d assume the patient if he were present!) would outweigh the car parking space owners’.

 This doesn’t seem to have a great deal in common with deontologies like that of Kant who stated- “Act that you use Humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means. If I were to use act-utilitarianism as a comparison to Kant’s Formula of Humanity (above) it would only show that whilst Kant’s view (which is reinforced by the Categorical Imperative [explained later] is a little stringent in the sense that it is binding, but at least it is consistent in its position. In other words the categorical imperative - as defined by Kant – is a proposition that declares a certain kind of action or inaction to be necessary and unconditional in its authority in all circumstances.

Where for example, there is a case of A stealing some money from B, an act-utilitarian would assess the situation for the remedy in his following act, the consequences he would consider, being that he will either attempt to regain his happiness through reciprocated theft or by some other means. The Kantian deontologist would simply abstain from any such thought if it were a categorical imperative to not vindicate A’s theft from B.

 Rule utilitarians however assess the situation based on moral rules which may exist. Inaction would mean that B doesn’t recover his money, and A does. So weighing up the consequences of stealing the money back may mean that B is no better morally than A in his act of recovering the money, but the fact that the money was never A’s in the first place, and B’s sole goal is to recover the stolen money, the result would probably be that our rule-utilitarian would find in favour of stealing the money back, unless he considers asking for it back would be more effective. Whilst the last option for getting the money back should be considered first of all, one may find that theft might be the only practical option if facing a stubborn A.

So where is the law in all of this misappropriation? A possible path to follow comes from John Stuart Mill (supported by David Lyons) – “…happiness is the sole end of human action , and the promotion of it the test by which to judge of all human conduct; from whence it necessarily follows that it must be the criterion of morality, since a part is included in the whole”. This means that even a legal system could adjust itself to be more desirable to the people it serves.

Over this essay I have defined various types of Utilitarianism and views on it. I have also attempted to define the whole idea of rights and whether utilitarianism (which is still a little unclear to me when regarding the consideration of those “rights”) can take these into account.

From act-utilitarianism, I have found that whilst it concerns itself with maximising utility, it does not take into account the morals implications that may lie behind the actions. Rule-utilitarianism is more preferable in terms of judging actions on a set of moral rules and therefore a better test of whether utilitarianism can take into account rights. Rights were defined as “the separateness of a person’s protection being sacrificed for another’s utility”. I found that the Consequentialist principles from Utilitarianism were grossly incompatible with the deontologies of the rights advocates such as Kant. The two principles when contrasted with each other showed that Utilitarianism would be too constrained by deontology because the principle of intrinsic value in utilitarianism would not be allowed in deontological ethics, especially acts that fall into the categorical imperative of Kant.

Whilst I have not shown that Utilitarianism can take into account rights, I’d like to think that I have illustrated the point that rule-utilitarian principles do not have to support rights to practical and occasionally applicable to real life.

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