"The greatest happiness for the greatest number" Using ToK thinking and terms, how far is the good basis for an ethical system?

GCSE Religious Studies (Philosophy & Ethics)

Name: Jonathan Tam Class: 13A

International Baccalaureate - Theory of Knowledge

Yew Chung International School

“The greatest happiness for the greatest number” Using ToK thinking and terms, how far is the good basis for an ethical system?

This statement mainly tackles with the problems arise by ethics. Theory of Knowledge tells us to investigate a problem in four ways: logic, perception, emotion and language.

Language could be one of the most important areas of debate. First of all, how to we define “happiness”? Do we talk about instantaneous happiness, or long term happiness? An instantaneous happiness might lead to a long term regret, so will this still be considered as “happiness”? If long term sadness outweighs instantaneous happiness, how do we place such happiness in terms of importance? We usually define happiness as “the possession of those circumstances or that state of being which is attended enjoyment” and it has no time limit. So in both cases we can still define it as happiness.

Perception, in this case, is nothing more than the means for us to sense pleasure thus determine our source of happiness. For example, we need our eyes to look at the monitor and ears to listen to background music in order to make us feel enjoyable when we are playing Play Station. Although seemingly unimportant in making decisions, our perception is the only way for us to tell if we are happy or not.

Emotion leads us to do things that give us the greatest happiness. For example, if sleeping impresses me, I would like to sleep more. If playing Play Station makes me happier, it is good for me to play more. However, the problem is: is it a temporary happiness or a permanent happiness? Since humans have unlimited wants, we are always unsatisfied. Playing a bit more Play Station today does not mean that I will play less tomorrow. But yet this would result in an opportunity cost, which is the time I would have used for studying and allow me to get a 7 in Physics. If this is so, we have to compare which gives me a greater happiness: playing Play Station or getting a 7 in Physics? Certainly it is the second option which gives me a greater happiness. Therefore we can conclude that happiness comes from our emotion, and the individual determines his/her happiness. Our emotion affects greatly our determination of happiness, even if we know it is not a good thing for us in the long run (e.g. taking illegal drugs). Almost everyone will agree (except employers of Sony) playing too much Play Station is not good for our education because it steals studying time and distract you from education. It is also bad for your eyes. But most students will not care about these consequences when they decide to play it.

Logic tells us that, if it is good for us, then it must be done. For example, education gives positive externalities to the economy (from Economics) therefore we have compulsory education for nine years in Hong Kong. This is because once we have more education, we are more specialized in a certain area and the more we know in that area. Logic also allows us to determine which is more important, instantaneous happiness or long term happiness. Most people will agree that long term happiness will be far better than an instantaneous happiness, because an instantaneous happiness will vanish ...

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Logic tells us that, if it is good for us, then it must be done. For example, education gives positive externalities to the economy (from Economics) therefore we have compulsory education for nine years in Hong Kong. This is because once we have more education, we are more specialized in a certain area and the more we know in that area. Logic also allows us to determine which is more important, instantaneous happiness or long term happiness. Most people will agree that long term happiness will be far better than an instantaneous happiness, because an instantaneous happiness will vanish very soon, and has no real positive influence in our future life. For example, flirting with girls will definitely give instantaneous happiness to boys as an adolescent, but will this be the same when they become adults? They would probably think this is silly and would have preferred not doing it. This is because as we become more mature, we are more likely to be able to control our emotion by our logic. We are able to evaluate the benefits and consequences of committing a particular action thus able to commit an action that we believe is best for us.

All the above only relates to how an individual determines happiness. If we are to deal with the “greatest number” part of the statement, then we will have to refer to some other philosophers. Some philosophers believe that, the ends justify the means. For example, if we can get from Point A to Point B, it does not matter which route we took, as long as we arrive at that place safely. This is what utilitarianism believed. Utilitarianism is an ethical theory, first developed by Jeremy Bentham, which is only interested in the ends and not the manner in which those ends are achieved. The way utilitarianism determines between a right and wrong action is by seeing which promotes the greatest happiness for the greatest number, and this is known as the Principle of Utility.

However, even the greatest number is satisfied does not mean that it is ethically justified and makes it a moral action. The problem with Bentham’s utilitarianism is the idea that the manner in which the ends are achieved is not important. For example a child is drugged so that she looses conscience but the drug doesn’t do any harm to her body. And while she is unconscious a group of paedophiles remove her clothes and photo her nude without abusing her. Once they are done they put her back where they left her, so that she never finds out what happened. These photos that are taken are then distributed over the Internet so other paedophiles can gain pleasure from them. According to a utilitarian their actions would be justified because it brought about the greatest amount of pleasure to the greatest number, and the manner in which they achieved this is irrelevant. However nearly everyone would agree that this action was morally wrong, and therefore this shows that something that promotes the greatest pleasure for the greatest number is not necessarily morally right. Fortunately, this is not justified using another kind of thinking – altruism. Altruists do not care very much about personal happiness, but much more on happiness of the others. In this case, altruists (on the girl’s side) will agree that this is not justified because the joy of the paedophiles is not relevant. Maintaining the happiness of the little girl is more important, because this unhappiness will spread to her family, the police force (to get the paedophiles), her teachers and her friends.

The second point is that even it is morally justified, it still does not mean it should be the way of doing so. For example, a teacher is distributing 10 chocolates to 5 students. In order to be ethical each should get 2. However, this might not be the best in this case. This is because not everyone will get the same amount of happiness out of the same action. For example Jonathan will not get any extra happiness by getting 2 chocolates because he does not like chocolate at all. Leanne will get a lot more happiness than the others if she gets the chocolates because she loves chocolates. If we put this case into a linear scale, we can have the following table:

If we put these data as happiness gained by getting 10 chocolates, assume that happiness does not decrease in each and every case, we get:

So in this case the teacher should give all the chocolate to Leanne because we get 100 units of happiness for doing so. If all the other four are egoists, who only deals with personal happiness but not happiness of the others, then they will say this is not justified because if the teacher does give all 10 chocolates to Leanne, they get 0 units out of this. Since the 100 units of happiness of Leanne are irrelevant to egoists, they will prefer the teacher to give all chocolates to themselves (in this case even Jonathan will want all the chocolate because all the other units of happiness is irrelevant). However if they are all altruists or utilitarianists then they will agree to give the chocolates all to Leanne because this will satisfy others (altruists) and get the greatest units of happiness (utilitarianists).

In the above examples, we see that it is very hard to judge whether an action is morally justified. It is even harder to determine if the greatest number is satisfied (due to the fact that there are three kinds of philosophical thinking and each will give a different result). There is no one correct answer to whether the above statement is ethical or moral. More importantly is that there are other sources which gives us happiness but cannot be quantified (e.g. love, care or other forms of emotions). This is why people need other criteria to help judging, for example science or religion, as these sources have other evidence (scientific formulae and the Bible).

Word Count: 1472

From Dictionary.com “happiness”

For some of us we are physically mature but mentally native, right?

http://www.la.utexas.edu/research/poltheory/bentham/ipml/ipml.c01.n01.html